Bill Maher wants you to forgive Rush

A privileged white guy who makes sexist comments would like us to pardon a privileged white guy for doing the sameMary Elizabeth Williams
Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/07/bill_maher_wants_you_to_forgive_rush

This week in rich, delicious irony: A privileged, middle-aged man known for making sexist, derogatory comments would like America to forgive a privileged, middle-aged man for making sexist, derogatory comments.

After admitting that he does “Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh,” Bill Maher went on to tweet Tuesday, about the radio host: “he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout.” Wait, who looks bad here? My sides, they’re splitting!

Maher, of course, is a professional provocateur, a guy who views himself as an equal opportunity fly in everyone’s ointment. But he’s also the man who recently gave a cool million dollars to Obama’s super PAC and once suggested “don’t ask, don’t tell” be overturned purely “because it will make Rush Limbaugh explode like a bag full of meat dropped from a helicopter.” As such, he no doubt felt uniquely qualified to appeal to the left’s sense of justice. And no doubt there are plenty of talking heads – the ones who erroneously keep insisting that liberals and feminists have no problem with Maher’s track record of offensive remarks – who’d go along with him.

But as a matter of fact, lots of us were revolted when Maher called Sarah Palin a “cunt” and a “dumb twat,” and were grossed out by his ill-timed assessment of Lara Logan’s “intrepid hotness” last year. We actually don’t find sexism adorable just because someone lets Marc Maron on his show.

Maher has, quite rightly, said that “When you are a public figure you’re out there and you’re fodder for comedians to make comments on you.” And when you’re a comic and a genuinely smart guy, you can probably do it without reducing a woman to her genitals. Women can take criticism and satire just fine. It’s the misogyny that gets old.

Moreover, here’s a reminder. Limbaugh’s remarks about Sandra Fluke were not about a “public figure” –- they were about a relatively unknown law student. They were made again and again, dozens of times, over a full three-day period in which he called her a whore and a slut and demanded she post videos of herself having sex. They were followed by a deeply unsatisfying statement that “my choice of words was not the best.” Since then, the marketplace has asserted itself, American style, with both consumers and advertisers deciding what form of conversation they choose to support with their time and money.

Rush Limbaugh may still have a road-to-Damascus moment and express some genuine contrition for his three-day hate binge. But until that time, what we don’t need is another smug, condescending, overpaid white dude telling us to accept a phony olive branch, suggesting that our disgust makes us “look bad.”

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.

The Little Bill That Could

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-karr/the-little-bill-that-coul_b_798768.html

Timothy Karr
Campaign Director, Free Press and SavetheInternet.com
December 19, 2010
The Little Bill That Could

Little noticed but extremely important to progressives, on Saturday afternoon Congress also passed the Local Community Radio Act.

This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).

Its passing will bring new choices and voices on the radio dial nationwide, but is especially relevant to a broadcast area reaching 160 million people who lived in areas where these stations had previously been barred from local airwaves.

Anyone tracking the rise of radio personalities like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage understands the primary political significance of gaining access to spectrum.

With the opening of the airwaves to LPFM stations, progressives can gain a small but consequential spot on the radio dial. The challenge now is to organize local groups to gain access to licenses. Follow and support the Prometheus Radio Project to learn more.

Shaming the lobbyists

This bill would not have passed without the tireless work of a small, but dedicated corps of radio activists who faced down one of the most powerful corporate lobbies in Washington -- the National Association of Broadcasters.

After ten years of pushing and broad-based organizing these activists got broadcasters to yield on Friday.

With the corporate lobby out of the way the bill passed both the House and the Senate in little more than 24 hours.

This is what's possible.

Videogame of the Week

Brave New PacMan

http://www.bravenewpacman.com/

Where PacMan battles Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin...

Democrats Running Scared

http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-democrats-running-scared
There should be no mystery to why Obama and the Democrats have failed to stir the passions of the party’s traditional base. Obama flounders because he tried to obey corporate directives while simultaneously “marketing himself as an agent of progressive change.” But Obama has delivered far more to the Right than to the Left. “He truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table” than the rich.

Freedom Rider: Democrats Running Scared
BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Wed, 10/20/2010

“It is the Democrats who are in power and the Democrats who must be called to account.”

All signs point to Democrat losses in the upcoming congressional elections to be held on November 2nd. In 2006 and in the presidential election year of 2008, the decline of the Republican Party as a brand gave Democrats decisive victories in the House and Senate. These are all about to be undone by the usual Democratic propensity to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

President Obama looks like a man running scared, unsure of how to stop the oncoming flood. He has appeared on vacuous television shows such as The View, making his case for Democratic support by chatting with Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg. Next he shows up at backyard barbecues and in high school auditoriums, and of course he always hobnobs with wealthy donors while loudly proclaiming his displeasure with the progressives who largely stood down and did nothing to oppose him.

The president’s latest sad attempt to stave off the inevitable is a bizarre, whiny interview in the New York Times magazine. The man who tried to straddle the fence of obeying the directives of the corporate interests who run the country while simultaneously marketing himself as an agent of progressive change, is of course floundering. He and his senior staffers claim not to have known that Republicans would obstruct his every move, while also claiming that Republicans will be more amenable to compromise after whipping the Democrats at the polls.

“Obama truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table.”

The nonsense has some degree of logic because Obama is a true believer in political consensus, which favors the powerful. He truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table. The deeply flawed health care bill is but one example of his modus operandi of cutting deals with the conservatives he feels more in tune with, while simultaneously asking progressives to stand down and let him do whatever he wants.

Even as he crisscrosses the country in an effort to pull off an upset victory, his true self emerges. He made this stunning statement at a town hall meeting:

“I set up a bipartisan fiscal commission that is made up of Republicans and Democrats to sit and meet over the last several months to start looking at how we generally start reducing our debt and our deficit so we’re not leaving it to the next generation. They’re supposed to report back to me after the election because we specifically designed it so they wouldn’t get caught up with silly season and would be able to just focus on what makes sense.”

Obama revealed more than he perhaps intended to with this statement. His Cat Food Commission has been designed to release its bad news of benefit cuts after the election. What the president calls the silly season, citizens making informed decisions when they vote, is inconvenient when politicians are planning to take actions which are harmful to the interests of the people.

“Insurance companies across the country are using the health care so-called reform plan to drop coverage.”

While Obama and White House insiders scratch their heads and wonder why no one loves them as much as they think they should be loved, insurance companies across the country are using the health care so-called reform plan to drop coverage. It is true that children cannot now be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies were willing to support a plan which gave them what they wanted, millions of new customers, but they are still for profit companies, and they have responded by dropping children-only plans.

If the Obama administration had worked for a single payer, Medicare for all reform plan, Democrats could now run for office boasting of the good deal their party had brought home to their constituents. Instead there is a patchwork of good and bad and most of it won’t even go into effect until 2013. Democrats in tough races are disavowing the plan, the president and their own party because they have no good news for voters. The smarty pants Obamaites outsmarted themselves, and on election day they will find out just how badly they messed up.

Should the Republicans take control of Congress, there must not be a repeat of 1994, when the Newt Gingrich-led victory over Bill Clinton created never before seen levels of Democratic support for that president. The Obama administration has consistently left progressives off of their agenda and publicly humiliated them with diatribes against the “professional left” and never passing up opportunities to make it clear that their demands will never be met.

“The Obama administration has consistently left progressives off of their agenda and publicly humiliated them.”

Democratic control of Congress didn’t save ACORN from destruction, hasn’t stopped wars, or eliminated the anti-gay don’t ask don’t tell policy in the military. It has given us a health care plan that may be worse than no plan at all, the continued transfer of public funds to Wall Street, and no end to the unemployment or housing crises.

If the Democrats go down to defeat, they should hear a loud “We told you so.” The obsessive interest in Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh ought to disappear. It is the Democrats who are in power and the Democrats who must be called to account for the state of the nation and their own inability to provide a platform which gives voters a reason to support them.

Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in BAR, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley@BlackAgandaReport.com .

Limbaugh: ‘Some people are just born to be slaves’

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/limbaugh-some-people-born-slaves/

Limbaugh: ‘Some people are just born to be slaves’
Saturday, October 9th, 2010

In a polemic almost worthy of Ayn Rand herself, radio host Rush Limbaugh explained Friday why equality is impossible and declared that "some people are just born to be slaves."

But that's fine, Limbaugh explained, because "everybody's needed for something."

"There is no equality," Limbaugh said on his radio show. "You cannot guarantee that any two people will end up the same. And you can't legislate it, and you can't make it happen. You can try, under the guise of fairness and so forth, but some people are self-starters, and some people are born lazy. Some people are born victims. Some people are just born to be slaves."

Limbaugh seemed to be echoing the "objectivist" philosopher Ayn Rand's belief that only a few gifted people are capable of moving society forward, while all others must depend on the efforts of the elite few for their well-being.

"Some people ... are born and they're not going to take anything from anybody," Limbaugh continued. "They're going to be totally in charge of their lives. They're not going to sit around and wait for something. They're going to make it happen. You can see this throughout the American population."

Limbaugh went on to postulate that the existence of "self-starters" and those "born to be slaves" was "probably a matter of intelligent design."

"The vast majority of people are not self-starters," Limbaugh continued. "And in a way, it all works out. Because everybody's needed for something."

Conspiracies and conspiracism

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_6047.shtml

Conspiracies and conspiracism
By Jim Fetzer
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jun 28, 2010

MADISON, Wisc. -- A new study from Political Research Associates. entitled Toxic To Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, & Scapegoating, by Chip Berlet now proclaims that conspiracy theories are “toxic to democracy” because they share some portion of moral responsibility for irresponsible acts, such as the shooting of the abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller, which some have associated with Rush Limbaugh and other pro-life zealots. By adopting a sweeping stance that does not discriminate between different cases on the basis of logic and evidence, Berlet discredits himself. Since conspiracies only require collaboration between two or more individuals in illegal acts, they are as American as apple pie.

Perhaps Berlet didn’t get the memo, but according to the government, the US was attacked on 9/11 by 19 Islamic fundamentalists who used box cutters to hijack four airplanes, outfox the most sophisticated air defense system in the world, and commit multiple atrocities under the control of a guy in a cave in Afghanistan. When I published a critique of the “official account,” which suggests the facts contradict it, I used the title, THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY, in the knowledge that either way a conspiracy was involved -- either one told by the government using THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT, or something far more sinister, which involved key members of the Bush administration with a little help from their friends.

According to Berlet, belief in a conspiracy turns out to be the manifestation of a “belief system” that violates the principles of logic. Having taught logic, critical thinking, and scientific reasoning for 35 years, however, the violations of logic seem to be committed by the author. Berlet commits many fallacies in the course of his study, including some stunning, easily disprovable generalizations about reasoning:

“Conspiracism is neither a healthy expression of skepticism nor a valid form of criticism; rather it is a belief system that refuses to obey the rules of logic. These theories operate from a pre-existing premise of a conspiracy based upon careless collection of facts and flawed assumptions. What constitutes ‘proof’ for a conspiracist is often more accurately described as circumstance, rumor, and hearsay; and the allegations often use the tools of fear -- dualism, demonization, scapegoating, and aggressively apocalyptic stories -- which all too often are commandeered by demagogues.” (Toxic to Democracy)

No one would deny that a certain proportion of the American public may be vulnerable to “conspiracism” in this sense, which represents the modus operandi of Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing zealots, who find conspiracies to be a ubiquitous part of public life, from left-wing efforts to spend the country into oblivion to encouraging illegal immigrants to flow into the country unabated to questioning whether Barack Obama has the qualification for office of being “native born.” These are the kinds of “conspiracy theories” that are dime a dozen, which find gullible followers across the country by the bushel basket.

But so what? If conspiracy theories like these are supposed to be “toxic to democracy,” then democracy needs to be made of sterner stuff. Circumstance, rumor, and hearsay, after all, tend to be the starting point for more serious studies of specific events. The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point. Who has not heard swirling rumors about Halliburton having cut corners, the BP practice of putting profits before safety, and the further catastrophes that await those who reside along the coast of the states that are most directly affected? Puzzlement over phenomena that do not readily fit into our background knowledge and preliminary understanding is the point of departure for scientific investigations that may better reveal the truth.

Suppose we were prohibited from speculation and rumor in relation to the events that have made the most difference to American history in recent time? The most important aspect of reasoning is comparisons between different theories to measure which best explains the data. Indeed, Jesse Ventura’s AMERICAN CONSPIRACES advances no less that 14 illustrations of the collaboration between two or more individuals to bring about illegal ends, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (where four co-conspirators were hanged from the same gallows at the very same time), to the big-money conspiracy to overthrow the government in 1934 on to Watergate, the Jonestown Massacre, the Iran-scam that gave the presidency to Ronald Reagan, drug-dealing by the CIA, and many more -- a list that can be readily expanded by the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X (see, for example, JFK and RFK: The Plots that Killed Them, The Patsies that Didn’t).

Berlet claims (what he calls) conspiracism “must be confronted as a flawed analytical model, rather than a legitimate mode of criticism of inequitable systems, structures, and institutions of power.” He claims it suffers from four debilitating features as “metaframes” of the model:

dualism, according to which the world is -- presumably simplistically -- divided into the forces of good and the forces of evil;

scapegoating, according to which an individual or group of people is wrongly stereotyped with negative characteristics;

demonization, according to which an individual or a group is taken to be the personification of evil; and,

apocalyptic aggression, which occurs when scapegoats are targeted as enemies of the “common good” and may be subjected to violence.

What is fascinating about these categories is how well they fit many of the government’s own campaigns to convince the American people to support an unpopular course of action. After 9/11, for example, the world was divided into the forces of good (the Americans) and those of evil (the Mulsims). Members of the Muslim community were said to be fanatical and violent, contrary to the principles of the Koran. Nineteen alleged hijackers and al Qaeda were scapegoated as responsible for those atrocities. And wars of aggression would be launched against Iraq and Afghanistan, which continue to this day.

Berlet tells us that what “conspiracy theorists lack is the desire or ability to follow the basic rules of logic and investigative research.” We can all remember being told Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, but eventually even George W. Bush acknowledged that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. We were told that Iraq was in cahoots with al Qaeda, but investigations by the Senate and the Pentagon showed that that was not the case. And when Ed Haas of “The Muckraker Report” questioned Tex Tomb of the FBI about why 9/11 received no mention on a “wanted poster” for Osama bid Laden, he was told the reason was the FBI had “no hard evidence” connecting Osama bin Laden to the events of 9/11. But if Saddam was not responsible and if Osama was not responsible, then who was responsible for 9/11?

Indeed, according to THE 9/11 COMMISSION, 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. The number from Iraq was zero. So why did we attack Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia? That looks like a stunning illustration of the failure to follow basic rules of logic or investigative research. As Ron Suskind, THE PRICE OF LOYALTY, reported, George W. Bush’s first secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil, was astonished that war with Iraq was discussed at the first meeting of the cabinet, nearly nine months before the events of 9/11. Which means 9/11 was used as a fabricated rationale to support a predetermined conclusion, which appears to have been a policy that was adopted by Bush and Cheney before their formal inauguration.

While Berlet insists that “conspiracism” fails to follow the basic rules of logic and investigative journalism, he should have explained that rumor and conjecture represent the second stage of scientific modes of reasoning, where it is crucial to elaborate all possible alternative explanations to insure that the true hypothesis is not excluded from scratch. Thus, the first stages of puzzlement and of speculation are followed by those of adaptation (of hypothesis to evidence, using likelihood measures of evidential support) and of explanation (when the evidence has “settled down” and the best supported hypothesis is entitled to acceptance in the tentative and fallible fashion distinctive of science.

The essence of Berlet’s book, however, is that he believes conspiracy theories come out of psychological needs of prejudiced people, which makes them INTERNAL FANTASIES. He is thereby throwing the crime baby out with the conspiracy bath water. Conspiracies really do happen in the EXTERNAL WORLD. They are not merely internal figments of the imagination. It is true that some people embrace conspiracy theories and reveal themselves by the inability to improve or adjust their views in light of new evidence or new hypotheses. If they are scapegoating, then the internal origin of their conspiracy need is manifest. However, conspiracy crimes are commonplace and external to us. When they are the subjects of objective investigations, those who study them are governed by logic and evidence, which are basic to rationality.

Ultimately, Berlet has defined a belief system called “conspiracism” that has only tenuous connections with conspiracies. While some gullible persons may satisfy its constraints, there are vastly more conspiracies than there are examples of conspiracism. Ask what Shakespeare would have had to write about if not for plots against the kings and queens of England. How many victims of conspiracies have died in the 20th century alone? In his brilliant study, “The Silence of the Historians,” for example, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., lists the names of more than two dozen prominent political figures -- from Franz Ferdinand and Czar Nicholas II to Salvadore Allende and Fidel Castro -- who were targeted for assassination by multiple conspirators on a single page of MURDER IN DEALEY PLAZA (page 402).

The ultimate failure of Berlet’s study is that it succumbs to the kind of simplistic thinking that he condemns. The world is divided into forces of good (the rational thinkers) and evil (the conspiracy theorists). The evil conspiracy theorists are stereotyped as trading in circumstance, rumor, and hearsay, while the rational thinkers follow the rules of logic and investigative journalism. Their careless collections of facts and flawed assumptions are often commandeered by demagogues. And of course they can be used to incite unjustified violence against innocent parties. But this presumes knowledge of which claims are true and which assumptions are flawed. Simplistic thinking of Berlet’s kind does not advance understanding. As Michael Moore said, when asked if he was into conspiracy theories, ”Only those that are true.” Each case must be evaluated on its merits using logic and evidence.

Thanks to Mike Sparks for inviting my attention to Berlet’s study and more.

James H. Fetzer is the editor of assassinationscience.com and co-editor of assassinationresearch.com. He has a blog at jamesfetzer.blogspot.com. His academic web site is found at www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer.

In Discussion of Mine Disaster Coverage, Only Imaginary Unions Allowed

http://www.fair.org/blog/2010/04/16/in-discussion-of-mine-disaster-coverage-only-imaginary-unions-allowed/

In Discussion of Mine Disaster Coverage, Only Imaginary Unions Allowed
04/16/2010 by Peter Hart

Andrew Tyndall makes a good point about how the network newcasts covered the Upper Big Branch mining disaster (flagged by Liz Cox Barrett at CJR):

Not once, in all five days of coverage, did a single reporter mention the organization that has worked hardest over the decades to make sure that mining management does not cut safety corners and that miners can monitor their own working conditions with impunity. The union went unmentioned, as did the fact that the Upper Big Branch workforce went unorganized.

Rush Limbaugh, for his part, did mention the miners union--to bash the non-existent union at Massey (Think Progress, 4/13/10):

Where was the union? The union is generally holding these companies up demanding all kinds of safety. Why were these miners continuing to work in what apparently was an unsafe atmosphere?

Alerted to the fact that Massey was, in fact, famously anti-union, and had busted the union at the Upper Big Branch mine, Limbaugh tried to find a way to save himself (4/15/10):

So I checked the e-mail during the break and a bunch of people say: "Hey, Rush, there was no union at that mine. At that Massey mine there was no union. Blankenship kept the union out of there. You can't blame the union for it." The left are trying to blame the Massey disaster on its union-busting, in fact. But: "In 2009 the National Labor Relations Board agreed with a decision that Massey Energy rehire 85 coal miners who said they had been discriminated against because they were union members." So there were union workers there, and so the United Mine Workers should have been overseeing their safety.... You people, it's been 21 years. At some point you are going to learn: If you go up against me on a challenge of fact, you are going to be wrong. It's just that simple.

Is it really that simple? Workers who belong to a union getting their jobs back at a non-union mine is not at all the same as workers having the protection of a union contract. But one of the remarkable things about Limbaugh is that even his most logically tenuous claims may be built on a foundation of make-believe. As UMWA president Cecil Roberts pointed out in the AFL-CIO blog (4/16/10):

Yesterday, Rush said on his program, "But in 2009, the [NLRB] agreed with the decision that Massey Energy rehire 85 coal miners who said they had been discriminated against because they were union members. So there were union workers there. So the United Mine Workers should have been overseeing their safety, the United Mine Workers of America."

Wrong again, Rush. The decision you refer to was AT ANOTHER MINE! And Massey is appealing that decision, meaning the workers who were discriminated against at the Cannelton mine (in another county from the Upper Big Branch mine) have yet to reclaim their rightful jobs as the NLRB ordered.

Those are the facts. Who's wrong now, Rush?

Why NFL Owners Must Flush Rush

By Dave Zirin

National Football League owners could be on the verge of a catastrophic error in judgment. In a league that is 70 percent African-American, an unapologetic racist is in talks to buy a team. Yes, Rush Limbaugh, along with St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts, is close to buying the St. Louis Rams. In his last NFL intervention, the man who claims “talent on loan from God” lasted less than a month as an NFL commentator on ESPN after saying the Philadelphia Eagles' Donavon McNabb was overrated because the media wanted to see a black quarterback succeed.

Limbaugh said to KMOX radio, "Dave and I are part of a bid to buy the Rams, and we are continuing the process. But I can say no more because of a confidentiality clause in our agreement with Goldman Sachs." So Rush Limbaugh, champion of East Coast elite-bashing, is in financial cahoots with bailout world champion Goldman Sachs.

But financial scuzziness aside, Limbaugh's bid must be stopped. The NFL owners have the power to nix any prospective owner, and if they have a shred of conscience in their overfed, underworked bodies, they should collectively veto Limbaugh's joining their exclusive club.

This has nothing to do with Limbaugh's conservative politics. Most NFL owners are to the right of Dick Cheney. Over the last twenty years, officials on twenty-three of the thirty-two NFL clubs have donated more money to Republicans than Democrats.

Most of them are also anonymous figures on the sports landscape. However, with Limbaugh at the helm, the face of one of the most valuable sports properties in the world would officially be a person who has a history of brazen contempt for people of African heritage.

How can the NFL in good conscience embrace an owner who once said , "The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it."

In a league that has practiced historic partnerships with the NAACP, how can you have an owner who has said, “The NAACP should have riot rehearsal. They should get a liquor store and practice robberies."

In a league with an all-white ownership and a paucity of African Americans in front office positions, how can you have an owner who says, “We didn't have slavery in this country for over 100 years because it was a bad thing. Quite the opposite: slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

In a league that has long had a mutually beneficial interaction with whoever was occupying the oval office, how can you have an owner who compares the President to a Nazi and says about “life in "Obama's America":

“The white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, ‘Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on."’

And finally, in a league made up of predominately African-American athletes, how can you have an owner who says, "[Black people] are 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?"

You might think that NFL players with their nonguaranteed contracts and short shelf life may not be the first people to speak out against Limbaugh. But you'd be wrong.

New York Giant Mathias Kiwanuka said in the New York Daily News , "I don't want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants; it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play."

McNabb said in his weekly press conference, "If he's rewarded to buy them, congratulations to him. But I won't be in St. Louis anytime soon."

New York Jets linebacker Bart Scott said, "I can only imagine how his players would feel.... He could offer me whatever he wanted; I wouldn't play for him."

In the NFL there has always been one code of conduct for players and one for ownership. Retired player Roman Oben called out the hypocrisy perfe ctly: "Character is a constant point of emphasis for NFL and team officials when it comes to the players; potential owners should be held to the same level of scrutiny and accountability."

Oben is absolutely right. In a league where commissioner Roger Goodell constantly drones on about "character," the idea that a prominent bigot could rise to a position of power would be an example of unforgivable hypocrisy. Tell your local NFL owner: you must flush Rush.

Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .

Michael Moore: 'Capitalism is anti-Jesus'

http://money.cnn.com/2009/09/22/news/economy/michael_moore_capitalism_love.fortune/

Michael Moore: 'Capitalism is anti-Jesus'
In a Fortune interview, the flame-throwing director explains why his new film brings his religion into the picture for the first time.
By Scott Cendrowski, reporter
September 23, 2009

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- The title of Michael Moore's latest film, "Capitalism: A Love Story," may be ironic, but there's nothing subtle about the message, right from the opening scenes.

The two-hour documentary begins with footage of a family being evicted from their foreclosed home by a half dozen police officers. Then he presents more incriminating evidence: a bankrupt Chicago factory where workers are denied pay, a privately run juvenile prison that paid off judges to give convicts longer sentences, and last year's $700 billion bailout of the banking system.

Moore, 55, ends with this conclusion: "Capitalism is an evil and you can't regulate evil. You have to replace it with something that is good for everyone."

The writer-director-partisan, who rose to prominence after his 1989 takedown of GM in the documentary "Roger & Me" and his mainstream hit "Fahrenheit 9/11" in 2004, spoke with Fortune on the eve of his film's Wednesday opening in New York City and Los Angeles (it opens nationwide on Oct. 2).

Moore talked about how his Catholic upbringing influenced the film, why Corporate America still irks him, and how to fix his economically troubled home state of Michigan. Excerpts:

You've said you started filming "Capitalism: A Love story" a year and a half ago. Did the film change after Lehman went bankrupt and the stock market crashed?

I've thought about this for 20 years. Ever since "Roger and Me," I've felt the problem here is an economic system that is unjust and unfair. It's not democratic. And I keep making these films but I dance around the subject: it's General Motors here, the health-care industry there, and I started thinking, "Why don't I just name it?"

I started out wanting to explore the premise of capitalism being anti-American, and anti-Jesus, meaning it's not a Democratic economy. And it's not run with a moral or ethical code. But when the crash happened, it added a third plot line: not only is capitalism anti-American and anti-Jesus, it doesn't work.

[The wealthiest Americans] proved that the free market is something they really don't believe in, they don't believe in competition, they actually do believe in socialism, that we the people should use our tax dollars to keep them in their mansions and their yachts.

I think they exposed themselves to a lot of middle class people who did believe in their system and they showed everybody the Ponzi scheme that it is. It's set up like a pyramid, so that the richest 1% at the top have more financial wealth than the 95% beneath them.

But the trick here is to get the 95% believing that if they work hard and slave away, they would get to the top of the pyramid. Of course, as we know, only a few people can stand on top of a pyramid. The fact that this crash exposed our economic system as a corrupt scam was something I didn't intend on happening while I was making the movie.

How is this film different from your previous ones?

I talk about my religion, which I have never talked about. I think religion should be a private matter. But I thought it was important to this discussion. I'm not a proselytizer, but I do have very strong beliefs and these beliefs were formed not in the school of Karl Marx, but in the Catholic Church. Priests and nuns taught me these lessons of how we're to treat each other, how we're to treat the poor, and how we're to divide up the pie.

I'm one of the few people on the left who's been fortunate to have access to a mainstream audience. I'm always thinking about ways to communicate with them and stay true to myself, because I am them, and I come from Middle America. I have very conservative values that go contrary to the fictional character that's been created of me by Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and the Fox News Channel. I've been with the same woman for 30 years, I don't invest my money in anything but a savings account.

Has your view of corporate America changed since your first film, "Roger & Me," opened in 1989?

I've become all the more agitated, especially with what I've seen and with having a peak behind the curtain. Having the life I do, working in an industry that's owned by major corporations. [Moore's film is distributed by a unit of Liberty Media, whose CEO John Malone is a formidable capitalist.]

Just a couple weeks ago, the film was going to debut in the Toronto Film Festival in the Elgin Theatre. Visa sponsors the theater, so during the festival it's called the Visa Screening Room. So they had [the film studio] call me to ask, Is there any reference against Visa in the movie? And this is while they're still deciding whether to put the movie in the festival.

Are there any good things happening in American business?

I see very little support for the things we really need to be investing in. Where's the cure for cancer? Where's the bullet train to take us from New York to L.A. in 10 hours? Where are the alternative energy systems to save us when we run out of oil?

I wish these were the priorities. But when Wall Street sucks up our best mathematicians, physicists, engineers, when they should be working on these other things and instead they're working to create derivatives ... c'mon. We're in deep, deep trouble. We need the best minds working on these things.

You live in Michigan, where you were born and raised. How can Detroit be saved?

It revolves around good-paying jobs. We've allowed the middle class to be decimated over the last 30 years. We've allowed our industrial infrastructure to collapse. So instead of initially giving bailout money to a General Motors that was never going to change or to banks so they can cover losses from crazy betting schemes, this money should be going to helping to create jobs in places like Detroit. People need to work. There are so many things we need to build and create for the 21st century.

I would do what my friend Dan Kildee is doing in Flint, Michigan. He's the county treasurer and he's taken over 9,000 homes that have been abandoned. He's tearing them down and his idea essentially shrank the city in physical size. They restored neighborhoods by building parks, fields and woods.

For crime in Detroit: what is the chance, if the person down the street is making $50,000 to $60,000 a year, [that he would] break into your home to steal your TV?

You tried to get Hank Paulson on the phone in the film, but weren't successful. If you got him on the phone today, what would you ask?

If I had a chance to talk to him, I'd want him to come clean and tell me the truth about how he rigged this whole thing. Tell us what happened because we don't know the details. How did so many Goldman people end up in the administration? How is it that Goldman's chief competitors are left to die -- not bailing out Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns falls apart, Merrill Lynch is absorbed into Bank of America -- and look who's left standing: the company that's got all their boys inside the administration.

If capitalism is evil, what's the solution?

Some people say to me, democracy is not an economic system, it's a political system. My answer to that is, you think capitalism has nothing to do with politics?

Let's quit talking like we're back in Economics 101. Capitalism is not only an economic system that legalizes greed, it also has at its foundation a political system of capitalism that is, "We have to buy the political system because we don't have enough votes. We're only 1% of the votes. We have to buy the people, and we have to buy the people by convincing them if they work hard, they too can be rich one day." [Americans] have gone along with it for the last 30 years.

Is the Right's attack on Obama's legitimacy new?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/12/conservatives/index.html

Glenn Greenwald
Saturday Sept. 12, 2009
Is the Right's attack on Obama's legitimacy new or unprecedented?

Several people objected in comments, emails and other places to my argument yesterday that what Rep. Joe Wilson did -- though dumb and juvenile -- was hardly some grave threat to the Republic or even a substantial deviation from standard right-wing political behavior. Some argued that Obama's race has caused the Right's hostility towards him to be both unique and unprecedentedly intense. That some people react with particular animus towards the first black President is obvious. But there is nothing new about the character of the American Right or their concerted efforts to destroy the legitimacy of Obama's presidency.

To see that, just look at what that movement's leading figures said and did during the Clinton years. In 1994, Jesse Helms, then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claimed that "just about every military man" believes Clinton is unqualified to be Commander-in-Chief and then warned/threatened him not to venture onto military bases in the South: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He better have a bodyguard." The Wall St. Journal called for a Special Prosecutor to investigate the possible "murder" of Vince Foster. Clinton was relentlessly accused by leading right-wing voices of being a murderer, a serial rapist, and a drug trafficker. Tens of millions of dollars and barrels of media ink were expended investigating "Whitewater," a "scandal" which, to this day, virtually nobody can even define. When Clinton tried to kill Osama bin Laden, they accused him of "wagging the dog" -- trying to distract the country from the truly important matters at hand (his sex scandal). And, of course, the GOP ultimately impeached him over that sex scandal -- in the process issuing a lengthy legal brief with footnotes detailing his sex acts (cigars and sex talk), publicly speculating about (and demanding examinations of) the unique "distinguishing" spots on his penis, and using leading right-wing organs to disseminate innuendo that he had an abandoned, out-of-wedlock child. More intense and constant attacks on a President's "legitimacy" are difficult to imagine.

This is why I have very mixed feelings about the protests of conservatives such as David Frum or Andrew Sullivan that the conservative movement has been supposedly "hijacked" by extremists and crazies. On the one hand, this is true. But when was it different? Rush Limbaugh didn't just magically appear in the last twelve months. He -- along with people like James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Bill Kristol and Jesse Helms -- have been leaders of that party for decades. Republicans spent the 1990s wallowing in Ken Starr's sex report, "Angry White Male" militias, black U.N. helicopters, Vince Foster's murder, Clinton's Mena drug runway, Monica's semen-stained dress, Hillary's lesbianism, "wag the dog" theories, and all sorts of efforts to personally humiliate Clinton and destroy the legitimacy of his presidency using the most paranoid, reality-detached, and scurrilous attacks. And the crazed conspiracy-mongers in that movement became even more prominent during the Bush years. Frum himself -- now parading around as the Serious Adult conservative -- wrote, along with uber-extremist Richard Perle, one of the most deranged and reality-detached books of the last two decades, and before that, celebrated George W. Bush, his former boss, as "The Right Man."

It's also why I am extremely unpersuaded by the prevailing media narrative that the Right is suddenly enthralled to its rambunctions and extremist elements and is treating Obama in some sort of unique or unprecedented way. Other than the fact that Obama's race intensifies the hatred in some precincts, nothing that the Right is doing now is new. This is who they are and what they do -- and that's been true for many years, for decades. Even the allegedly "unprecedented" behavior at Obama's speech isn't really unprecedented; although nobody yelled "you lie," Republicans routinely booed and heckled Clinton when he spoke to Congress because they didn't think he was legitimately the President (only for Ted Koppel to claim that it was something "no one at this table has ever heard before" when Democrats, in 2005, booed Bush's Social Security privatization proposal during a speech to Congress).

This is why so many people were so skeptical of the heartfelt belief among many Obama supporters that he was going to usher in some sort of new, harmonious "post-partisan" age. The long-standing and well-established nature of the American Right would never permit such a transformation. After 1990s House Majority Leader Dick "Barney Fag" Armey told Joan Walsh on Hardball earlier this year that "I am so damn glad that you could never be my wife," I wrote:

These are the people who have largely been in power for the last two decades and the country is in the shape one would expect it to be in as a result. That's why all of this chatter about post-partisan transcendence and trans-partisan harmony and the like is so inane.

Why would anyone think that "common ground," on any consistent basis, can be found with people like this, or that it would be beneficial to eliminate real differences in order to accommodate their views?

Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right -- and that's been true for a very long time now. It didn't just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don't really believe in the country's core founding values and don't merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren't part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn't any truer then than it is now. All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency -- to say nothing of the Bush years -- to see that none of this is remotely new. Nothing they're doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it's just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.

Beast of the Month - April 2009

Beast of the Month - April 2009
Rick Santelli
Pseudo-populist Cable Shill

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

Populism in America is a funny thing. When it comes from the mouths of guys like Michael Moore, Jim Hightower or Greg Palast who focus their energy defending the little guy against corporate abuse and the collusion of big business and big government, the work gets either ignored or relentlessly attacked. When so-called populism focuses its ire on lesser (and often uglier) targets, on the other hand, it gets highlighted as something to take notice of.

Take Glenn Beck, for example. (And we really mean it, PLEASE take him.) He has become a leading doomsayer in the Obama hackathon that takes place daily on Fox News, and a ratings champ on the "We report, you decide" network. This despite (or perhaps because of) the fact any examination of Beck's rants would reveal a man who isn't a populist like often hyped, but rather someone who is utterly psychotic. Stephen Colbert recently had fun with this on his show, urging Beck to "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!" He did so after Beck presented an apocalyptic scenario Colbert described as "the most terrifying fictional future I have ever heard yanked right out of someone's ass." He summed up Beck's future vision of America as a land of "ignorant, illiterate, whacked-out hillbillies with nothing to lose. Terrifying! But, more viewers for Fox News!" It's hard to believe that Fox, already the home of borderline personalities such as Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, could actually lower the bar for unhinged behavior, but, by golly, we gotta hand it to them, they have.

Then there's good old Rush Limbaugh, who is being touted as the new leader of the GOP. Limbaugh, much like O'Reilly, has long portrayed himself as a champion against the establishment, though already unconvincing after any comparison of his deranged oxy-fueled radio rants with Republican talking points memos. Besides this, it's hard to take seriously a multi-millionaire who has never worn blue jeans his entire life when he feigns to be a common man, especially when he froths about right-wing economics that screws the working class in favor of the rich.

Speaking of the working class, how about Joe Wurzelbacher, AKA Joe the Plumber, who was made into a working class hero near the end of the desperate McCain campaign? This after Joe whined to Obama about plans to raise taxes on people making over $250K a year (not a major working class concern.) To be fair, Joe W. deserves some sympathy after the Obama machine began illegally digging into his private files in order to uncover dirt after McCain used him as a political prop. However, Plumber Joe has since exploited his faux-celebrity status as a tool for reactionary political forces. Recently, he was hired by the Orwellian-named Americans for Prosperity to speak at rallies against the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize. Actual blue collar workers managed to sneak in to the events and heckle Joe while wealthy right-wingers cheered on his anti-worker pandering. Plumber Joe, hope you're enjoying your Warholian fifteen minutes while they last.

Still, the most offensive faux-populist moment of recent has not come from Rush, Beck or even Joe W. Instead, the award must go to CNBC's Rick Santelli, The Konformist Beast of the Month.

Santelli was, until February 19th, a fairly unknown third-rate correspondent for the minimally watched CNBC business news network. That all changed when discussing Barack Obama's Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan to help nine million families avoid foreclosure with a $75 billion fund. On the network, he blasted the plan: "The government is promoting bad behavior... Why don’t you put up a Web site to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages, or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water... It's time for another tea party!"

(As he said this, Santelli was on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and the traders who cheered him on appeared to be the wimpiest, most pasty-skinned mob since the Brooks Brother riot in Florida during the 2000 election.)

The so-called "Rant of the Year" was curious in many respects. Imagine, for example, if a cable news correspondent had pulled something similar about the Iraq War being a scam right before it was launched. Just what would've been the reaction to that? No doubt he/she would've been blasted for lacking journalistic objectivity and likely would've lost their job. Or perhaps for an even more recent comparison, when the Wall Street $700 billion dollar bailout was being debated in September and October, where were the Rick Santellis blasting the promotion of bad behavior and declaring the recipients of the boondoggle to be losers? Instead, all objectivity was thrown out the window and the swindle was pushed through with establishment media hysteria behind it, promoting bad behavior be damned. Yet suddenly, when the issue becomes providing $75 billion in aid to help victims of subprime loan scams keep their homes, outrage becomes acceptable. This, of course, is the bigger point: attacking trillion-dollar war rackets and Wall Street handouts isn't kosher, but calling poor and middle-class home owners "losers" while they struggle to remain afloat is okely-dokely.

The hypocrisy in this case is even worse: on the Website The eXiled, Mark Ames and Yasha Levine reported that General Electric, the parent company to CNBC, received $139 billion in government-backed loan guarantees to keep GE Capital from going bankrupt and sinking the GE empire, CNBC included, with it. That amount, incidentally, is $64 billion more than what nine million subprime victims Santelli mocked as losers are to receive in the Obama plan. Noting these facts, Ames & Levine sarcastically dismissed Santelli as a bailout welfare queen.

The response to Santelli's rant proves just how okay the media establishment was with his hypocritical stand. As Santelli frothed, the folks in the CNBC anchor booth chuckled as though it was entertaining truths. Quickly, the rant went "viral" on YouTube, which is quite unusual since media/entertainment oligopolies such as NBC normally ruthlessly suppress any free distribution of their copyrighted work over the Internet. The "viral" nature of the video was pushed on cyberspace by Matt Drudge, who seemed flushed with an excitement he normally gets only from gay porn. On CNBC's big sister MSNBC, it was promoted by smiling mouthpieces who gushed about the - here comes the "P" word - populist nature of his rant.

Of course, perhaps the fault here lies in the continuing promotion of the George Magazine philosophy which has turned politics into entertainment, reducing actual debate about substance and ideas into shallow celebrity cults of personality. In that context, Santelli is indeed a "populist" hero, as his manufactured celebrity status qualifies him for the name brand certification.

But laying the blame at the feet of poor John-John (who even in death has been the most influential man in journalism over the last decade, though that is definitely influence to the worst) wouldn't be honest. For it wasn't mere celebrity narcissism behind the promotion of the Santelli rant, but rather a heavily financed right-wing machine. A Playboy article by Ames and Levine links Santelli's demand for a "tea party" with a project backed by the deep pockets of the ultra-right Koch family. Santelli’s call for a "Chicago Tea Party" was a mainstream push for an Astroturf "grass-roots" campaign for “tea parties” nationally protesting Obama's economic policies from the right. The case made by Ames and Levine is pretty simple: if Santelli wasn't pimping out his minimal journalistic cred for major Koch bucks, he was definitely selling himself short.

Here's another case study to show how out of whack the framing of "populism" is in the USA: the telling reaction to the AIG bonus scandal. When it was revealed that AIG had paid $165 million out of $170 billion in bonuses to employees, there was legitimate widespread outrage in the public, outrage that was neither orchestrated nor anticipated. (And yes, let's ignore for a second that, at this point, $165 million is chump change for Wall Street.) Establishment politicians chimed in, feigning outrage as well, including Barack Obama, who unconvincingly pretended to be upset, even though his administration directed legislation allowing the bonus loophole. Faced with mass anger, Congress originally pushed for 90 percent surtaxes on Wall Street bailout company bonuses for anyone making over $250K, but after Obama declared opposition to the plan, it appears to be dead on arrival. (Obama's excuse, that to stop the bonuses from going through would interfere with legal contracts, oddly wasn't used when he forced UAW members take massive pay cuts in Detroit.) Quickly, the korporate media, rather than helping the AIG outrage go viral, tried to squash it, with Michael Gerson of the Washington Post decrying the controversy as "demagoguery" rather than genuine.

To be fair, there was some backlash against Santelli as well. Still, it seems the main source of any mainstream outrage against him was not for his crude dismissal of struggling homeowners, but rather for how his rant was an attack on Barack Obama, the patron saint of yuppie liberalism. (Tellingly, it was Jon Stewart, the leading media mouthpiece of yuppie liberalism, who smacked up CNBC the most, using Jim Cramer of the news network's Mad Money as a stand-in after Santelli wimped out on a Daily Show appearance.)

Meanwhile, after Team Obama later announced their trillion dollar "toxic asset" bailout for Wall Street, there was again no populist rant on cable news against subsidizing losers and promoting bad behavior. Putting it all together, let's note the pattern:

* $700 billion TARP bailout deal for Wall Street: Mass cheerleading for the plan

* $787 billion Obama Stimulus Plan that was somewhat aimed at the middle and lower class: Controversy and vigorous debate

* $75 billion Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure: Smug “journalist” denounces it as a plan to help "losers"

* Attempt to tax $165 million in bonuses at bailout recipient AIG: Controversy is denounced as "demagoguery"

* $1 trillion plan to bailout Wall Street's "toxic assets": No controversy whatsoever


It seems the only time any controversy is hyped in the mainstream press is when the recipient of the money is even partially the poor, the working class and the middle class. Meanwhile, though the public is indeed outraged by the massive swindle over the last year by Wall Street (with up to $9 trillion in government resources pumped in to these korporate parasites) blowhards like Santelli are trying to intentionally confuse the public, equating the Wall Street bailout with the stimulus package and focus the ire of rage against the poor and disenfranchised rather than the bankers.

Perhaps most important, there appears to be a concerted attempt by the right wing to frame Barack Obama's positions as far left, even though he has pushed more to give handouts to Wall Street than even the Bush Administration. With unemployment at 8.5 percent and rising, hopefully the image of Obama as the great progressive champion will soon be gone (and good riddance.) Until then, it appears that even Santelli isn't the worst example of phony populism coming from Chicago.

In any case, we salute Rick Santelli as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Ricky!!!

Sources:

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High On Koch?" Playboy 27 February 2009 <http://www.playboy.com/blog/2009/02/backstabber.html>.

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "'Slick Rick' Santelli Is A Bailout Queen." The eXiled 3 March 2009 <http://exiledonline.com/%E2%80%9Cslick-rick%E2%80%9D-santelli-is-a-bailout-queen-tea-party-mascot%E2%80%99s-company-took-139-billion-in-bailout-funds-ge-uses-taxpayer-money-to-censor-its-critics-destroy-bailout-program-f/>.

Ames, Mark and Levine, Yasha. "Victory Gloat: Ames & Levin Serve Up Santelli's Head on The Daily Show." Huffington Post 5 March 2009 <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/05/jon-stewart-eviscerates-c_n_172057.html>.

Calmes, Jackie and Story, Louise. "Outcry Builds in Washington for Recovery of A.I.G. Bonuses" New York Times 19 March 2009 <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19bailout.html>.

"CNBC's Santelli Rants About Housing Bailout." ABC News 19 February 2009 <http://blogs.abcnews.com/theworldnewser/2009/02/cnbcs-santelli.html>.

Donmoyer, Ryan J. "Dodd Blames Obama Administration for Bonus Amendment." Bloomberg 19 March 2009 <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=washingtonstory&sid=aT_tMXRy2vDs>.

"Doom Bunker - Glenn Beck's 'War Room'." ColbertNation.com 4 March 2009 <http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/220649/march-04-2009/doom-bunker---glenn-beck-s--war-room->.

Edwards, David and Webster, Stephen C. "Colbert Mocks 'Crazy Eyes' Beck with 'Doom Bunker' Segment." Raw Story 5 March 2009 <http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Colbert_mocks_Glenn_Beck_with_doom_0305.html>.

Ford, Glen. "So President Obama Is Finally Pissed Off? So What?" Black Agenda Report 18 March 2009 <http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/so-president-obama-finally-pissed-so-what>.

Grey, Barry. "Wall Street Celebrates Government Windfall for Banks and Big Investors." World Socialist Web Site 24 March 2009 <http://wsws.org/articles/2009/mar2009/toxi-m24.shtml>.

Oswald, Rachel. "Union Plumbers Heckle and Jeer 'Joe the Plumber' at Rally." Raw Story 31 March 2009 <http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Union_plumbers_heckle_Joe_Plumber_at_0331.html>.

Ritholtz, Barry. "Rick Santelli’s Planted Rant?" The Big Picture 28 February 2009 <http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/rick-santellis-faux-rant>.

Sirota, David. "Welcome to Double-standard America." Salon 21 March 2009 <http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/21/sirota>.

Spitzer, Eliot. "The Real AIG Scandal." Slate 17 March 2009 <http://www.slate.com/id/2213942/>.

White Men Can't Judge

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-boykin/white-men-cant-judge_b_244358.html

Keith Boykin is a CNBC contributor and editor of The Daily Voice.
July 24, 2009
White Men Can't Judge

The most disturbing aspect of the news coverage about Henry Louis Gates' arrest has been the running commentary by white men about appropriate decorum for black men.

Of course, it was no surprise that blowhards like Rush Limbaugh would jump in to defend the white police officer and impugn Professor Gates. Nor that the conservative radio talk show host would turn his attack to President Obama after the president labeled the Cambridge Police Department behavior "stupid."

Limbaugh's an easy case. More troubling is the commentary from Sergeant James Crowley himself, an "expert" on racial profiling who still doesn't understand why a black man would be upset to be accused of breaking into his own house.

"From the time he opened the door it seemed that [Gates] was very upset, very put off that I was there in the first place," Sergeant Crowley told Boston sports radio station WEEI this week. "Not just what he said, but the tone in which he said it, just seemed very peculiar -- even more so now that I know how educated he is."

So educated people can't get upset?

I'm a Harvard graduate, and I reacted angrily just a few days ago when a New York City police officer stopped me Sunday inside a Manhattan subway station and accused me of jumping the turnstiles, which I clearly had not done. I made a scene, much like Professor Gates probably did, because I felt I was being unfairly singled out.

After I proved that I had entered the station legally, an unknown black woman standing nearby came to my defense. "Do you know who he is? He worked in the White House," she said, much to my surprise.

In fact, it's the "educated" and "successful" black men who are most likely to become indignant in racial profiling situations. Many younger black men I know suffer through random police stops on a regular basis and have grown accustomed to the procedure. But older, middle-class and upper-income blacks are often shocked when the police come for them, too. Yet in the eyes of the police, a black Harvard professor is just another potential suspect.

The officer in the Gates case wrote in his police report that the professor exhibited "loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place." Actually, the professor was in a private place until the officer -- who admitted in the report that Gates "appeared to be a resident" -- asked him to step outside. But even in public, why can't a black man be loud when he's angry about real or perceived police harassment?

And why wouldn't an expert in racial profiling understand the long history of police abuse of African American men and consider that in evaluating Gates' response to the situation? After everything black men have been through in this country, from slavery to segregation to racial denialism, it's a wonder that well-educated black men like Gates and Obama are usually so controlled.

That's what CNN anchor Lou Dobbs seemed to miss Thursday night on his show when he asked CNN contributor Roland Martin to calm down in responding to the ridiculous charges about Barack Obama's citizenship. "You're yelling and you're getting awful excited about something that doesn't require this level of remarks," Dobbs scolded Martin.

Dobbs had just finished expressing his doubts about Professor Gates in a segment with CNN's Soledad O'Brien when he expressed sympathy with those who questioned the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate. So let me get this straight. We're supposed to believe a lone white police officer in Massachusetts but not believe the entire state of Hawaii about Obama's birth?

Yes, in our society, white men are considered believable and those pesky people of color (Hawaiians or African Americans) are not. That's why all the evening news anchors on every news network (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC) are white, and nearly all of those are men. And that's why a 42-year-old cop is more credible than a distinguished 58-year-old Harvard professor.

No matter how much progress we've made, black men still don't have the right to get upset and indignant, even in their own homes. Crotchety old white guys like Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs can foam at the mouth on radio and television all day about immigrants and blacks, but a black male public figure can't complain too loudly. That would be ungrateful and undignified.

And it doesn't matter what your status if you're a black man. A black TV personality can't get upset with a white guy on CNN. A black White House veteran can't get upset with the NYPD on the subway. A black Harvard professor can't get upset with the Cambridge Police in his house. And apparently a black president can't get upset in his house either.

She won't say it, but Judge Sonia Sotomayor was right when she spoke about a wise Latina judge often reaching a better decision than a wise white man. Many white men still can't judge these situations fairly because they don't understand what it means to be black in America.

Whether you're a pundit, a professor or the president, if you're a black man you better know your place.

Follow Keith Boykin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/keithboykin

Savage: Obama appointees the Nazi Party

http://www.prisonplanet.com/savage-%e2%80%9cobama-appointees-actually-have-almost-the-same-exact-policies-as-the-nazi-party-did%e2%80%9d.html

Savage: “Obama appointees actually have almost the same exact policies as the Nazi Party did”
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars
March 13, 2009

Michael “Savage” Weiner, corporate media talk show host and former beatnik, has told his audience that Obama’s appointees are following the policies of the Nazis. Savage, a former Bush supporter and notorious carnival barker for the false right-left paradigm (and neocon Muslim-hater), does not bother to call out a single Obama appointee by name. Instead, in the audio clip here, Weiner concentrates on Obama’s “green shirts,” an allusion to Hitler’s SA brown shirts.

Savage is correct about the fascistic character of Obama’s mass movement, but he has conveniently omitted an important part of the larger picture.

Hitler was a creation of Wall Street financiers and the international bankers, a historical fact documented by British economist, historian, and writer Antony C. Sutton. Sutton documents the roles played by J.P. Morgan, T. W. Lamont, the Rockefeller interests, General Electric Company, Standard Oil, National City Bank, Chase and Manhattan banks, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, and other elitists in the rise of Hitler and Nazism.

“Wall Street financed the German cartels in the mid-1920s which in turn proceeded to bring Hitler to power,” writes Sutton in the final chapter of his book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler. “Hitler and his S.S. street thugs came in part from affiliates or subsidiaries of U.S. firms, including Henry Ford in 1922, payments by I.G. Farben and General Electric in 1933, followed by the Standard Oil of New Jersey and I.T.T. subsidiary payments to Heinrich Himmler up to 1944.” Hitler’s mass movement was a creation of bankers and industrialists.

In Adam Lebor’s Hitler’s Secret Bankers (see also Charles Higham’s Trading With the Enemy), we learn how the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and its American president, Thomas McKittrick, continued trading and money laundering on behalf of the Nazis throughout the Second World War.

BIS is an international organization of central banks established under the globalist Bretton-Woods International Financial scheme. BIS is closely associated with the Bilderberg Group, the elitist organization established by the Nazi collaborator Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands (see Alden Hatch’s H. R. H. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for more on Bernhard’s SS connections).

It should be noted that Timothy F. Geithner, Obama’s point man on the economy and former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, sits on the board of directors of BIS (Fed mob boss Ben Bernanke also sits on the board of this one-time Nazi front group that now controls the IMF and World Bank).

It is no mistake Bilderberg and Rockefeller stooge Henry Kissinger came out early in favor of Obama, as did Rockefeller minion and co-founder of the Trilateral Commission, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Obama’s appointees are overwhelmingly of the globalist and bankster persuasion — a preponderant number are members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission.

Financial support for the Obama campaign flowed in from Goldman Sachs, Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and others.

Michael “Savage” Weiner would have us believe Obama is a “neo-marxist fascist dictator” and his hand-picked appointees “actually have almost the same exact policies as the Nazi Party did,” when in fact Obama’s policies are those of the bankers, not Hitler or Ernst Röhm, co-founder of the Sturmabteilung or SA. In fact, Obama is a puppet for the global elite and it is completely irrelevant if he subscribes to Marxism, Nazism, or anything else.

Savage and the neocons are fond of conflating Nazism with “progressive” Democrat liberalism — which is yet another artificially generated flavor of bankster dominated statism — a tactic they employed in the days following the false flag attacks of September 11, 2001, when neocons absurdly attempted to demonize Muslims as “Islamofascists.”

In a call to Savage’s radio show, activist Mark Dice was able to get the former beatnik turned talk show host to admit he believes any mention of the Bilderbergers is too “esoteric” for his largely neocon wannabe audience. It is not the Bilderbergers (and by way of extension the CFR and the Trilateralists) we need to worry about, but rather the “Democrat socialist group run by Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Ann Feinstein, and the others.”

Weiner further admits he has known about the Bilderberg Group since 1990, and yet he refuses to discuss the organization’s objectives and the indisputable fact members are at the highest levels of government, including the Obama administration. It is the Democrats we need to worry about, declares Savage, not the international banking elite.

“The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers,” wrote the historian of the elite, Carroll Quigley, in his book Tragedy and Hope. “Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can throw the rascals out at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.”

Michael “Savage” Weiner understands this all too well. His role — along with Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and other corporate media “conservatives” — is to foment a carefully orchestrated and controlled opposition to the current regime so that in four or eight years, after Obama has accomplished the tasks assigned to him by the global elite, the American people “can throw the rascals out… without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy.”

Barack 'Hoover' Obama

http://rense.com/general85/hoov.htm

Barack 'Hoover' Obama
Bruce Marshall
3-11-9

The American people must quickly understand this one reality: that the economic policies of Barack H. Obama are essentially identical to those of Herbert Hoover's ill-starred Reconstruction Finance Corporation, which bailed out bankrupt banks in a totally futile exercise between 1931 and 1933.. Obama is doing the same thing as Hoover ; bailing out a hopelessly bankrupt zombie banking system, this time with trillions of dollars, while further destroying the productive economy of the United States in this insane giveaway to those who caused the crisis. Unlike Hoover, Obama has put some popular programs up as camouflage for the massive giveaway to the derivatives mafia that is going on in the background under the auspices of Geithner, Summers, Bernanke, and Volcker.

The present problem is that Obama is more dangerous than Hoover . This is because Obama has people fooled into thinking that he will initiate New Deal policies and leadership akin to FDR to deal with the present financial meltdown crisis and depression. Consider that the stimulus package offers a measly $45 billion towards infrastructure projects with very limited $20 billion increase in food stamps and a microscopic $18 billion of welfare benefits needed in this crisis. These crumbs allow Obama to continue to present the image that he is some sort of populist from the left, while Obama provides massive welfare for the 'Zombie banks" on Wall Street to the tune of 10 Trillion, no questions asked.

Here is the breakdown of the giveaway: Federal Reserve $8 trillion, $5.5 trillion, Bush-Paulson TARP- $.7 trillion, Obama-Geithner derivatives bailout $.75 trillion, carbon cap and trade tax scam $.65 trillion - the next bubble. Geithner's undisclosed phase 2 will be at least at least $750 billion, but will soon spiral into the trillions. Thus the beginning of Obama's era of his 'responsibility' to the derivatives speculators first.

To keep the charade going Obama has launched into an attack on the reactionary Rush Limbaugh, Wall Street's right wing enforcer, who is all to eager to continue to mislead people about the true nature of the present crisis. Obama and Rush are working together, in a false polemic that divides people and prevents real solutions from being discussed and implemented. Rush provides Obama with the left label and cover that he needs to implement policies that Rush and the right could never deliver for their same Wall Street masters. Yes, both are creatures of Wall Street, Obama the Keynsian Malthusian, and Rush the Austrian School free market Malthusian. Rush will freak out about increases for food stamps and the paltry help that Obama will give to a fraction of the foreclosed, but not a word about the real problem: the $ 1.8 quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble black hole which Obama is feeding with the U.S taxpayer and economy as collateral. Why is Rush not freaking out about this real tax increase and enslavement? The answer is that he really approves of it.

Derivatives are at the center of this financial meltdown and economic depression. Derivatives are financial instruments that are based upon a fictitious reality that does not correspond with activities that yield tangible wealth and economic progress. Derivatives are essentially exotic betting practices that involve real money, thrown into a huge pool. We are talking quadrillions of dollars, sums of money that can never be repaid, even by the combined GDP of the world. Obama is giving the "Zombie banks" trillions, where nothing will satiate the speculative derivatives black hole, while at the same time it is estimated that trillions are needed to keep people in homes and factories producing. The fact already seen is that the trillions from the Fed, the TARP's have done nothing to stop the economic depression. That money will never be recovered as it is already lost to derivatives speculation.

The only solution is to outlaw all derivatives once again. They were once illegal, until 1982 when options trading in commodities was introduced and later in the 1990's when Fed Chair Alan Greenspan created and fed the fictitious derivatives racket.

Along with outlawing derivatives, the responsible approach to this crisis is to force the derivatives investment houses, the Wall Street banks and hedge funds, into bankruptcy organization, wiping out the bad dept with one stroke of the pen. Instead of doing this as he could and should have, Obama has instead rewarded these criminals with more trillions of taxpayer money, money that should be invested in infrastructure, by the trillions.

The fact of the matter is that Obama has proven that he is no FDR, but a Hoover money vacuum for Wall Street derivatives 'zombie' banks, to which he blows the nation's wad, and thus the chance for a real economic recovery.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg, please define "populist"

http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200902210004

NYT's Sheryl Gay Stolberg, please define "populist"
Sat, Feb 21, 2009
Eric Boehlert

The Times reporter dutifully anoints the previously unknown Rick Santelli of CNBC a "populist" because he uncorked an on-air rant about the Obama housing recovery while reporting among all-white, all-male traders on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It was a rant where Santelli suggested Obama was leading America down the road to communism.

But nowhere in her article does the Times reporter explain why Santelli, who Chris Matthews rightfully likened to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, in any way tapped into a "populist" feeling. The former VP for Drexel Burnham Lambert (you remember that `80's hothouse of populist fever, right) simply mouthed divisive, right-wing talking points, and disconnected media elites crowned him a populist anyway. The closest Stolberg came to suggesting Santelli articulated populist rhetoric was when she pointed out:

[Santelli] called for the creation of a Web site where Americans could vote on whether they "really want to subsidize the losers' mortgages."

She might think that's "populist," but probably lots of Times readers simply chalk that up as being idiotic.

FIAT FOOLISHNESS

FIAT FOOLISHNESS
by Kenn Thomas
steamshovelpress.com

It started out as an interesting week for parapolitics: the son of Louis Jolyon West wrote an article on the assisted suicide of the famous CIA-MKULTRA scientist and Francis O’Neill, one of the FBI agents who remarked on “surgery to the head area” in a report of JFK’s wounds that led to David Lifton’s Best Evidence theory of body alteration, died. I circulated these stories on various conspiracy discussion lists and figured it would lead to some provocative feedback.

Jolyon West had been well-known for his association with mind control, dating to the time when he headed the psychiatry department at Lackland Air base and the US discovered many of its shot-down fighter pilots brainwashed by the North Koreans. (see: “Bug Bombs,” in the first volume of Cyberculture Counterconspiracy.) West also killed a bull elephant once by mis-administering LSD to it. He developed plans to for human experimentation as part of a Reagan-supported “anti-violence” center.

Oddly, even as Francis X. O’Neil’s obituary hit the web, so did a feature on retired Secret Service agent Dale Wunderlich, of the 11/22/63 secret service security detail, from Longmont Times-Call in Colorado. Wunderlich gave a Rotary Club talk trying to make a case for the lone nut theory. “The sight of Kennedy’s body, face down in the hospital, is still engraved on Wunderlich’s mind,” according to the article. Fruitless book and net searches for such an image--JFK’s body face down—added some weight to Wunderlich’s own statement that “I had such tears in my eyes that I couldn’t see anything.” Those not inclined to regard Wunderlich as carrying on a decades-long mythology that few really believe may have taken the kinder view that Wunderlich sees only what he wants to see about this momentous event in his life.`

That’s about where any thoughtful reflection on these parapolitical footnotes went. The lists instead got clogged with things like another poorly written Ann Coulter rant against the “fiat money” that Barack Obama plans to print up to fund the stimulus program. Coulter doesn’t disguise her role as a narrow minded and barely literate ideologue. Her readers and critics hear no complaints from her when the government starts over-printing fiat money for the sake of the military, which does as much to deplete currency value as anything. So her criticisms remain select and transparent even as her writing style shows her up as—challenged. (Christopher Hitchens has great fun with this.) I had a girlfriend once who labeled Coulter one of the "dumb blondes for Bush." The other was Barbara Olson, who died on one of the 9/11 planes. Olson’s tragic death didn't improve her arguments any which often fell along the lines of Coulter’s aping the hypocritical old "less government" bull. She supports only a shift in big government spending, not a reduction. It’s a fairly obvious false dialogue. I would have greatly preferred a discussion of things of more historical weight, like the stories of people like West and O’Neill.

Conspiracy critics do themselves a disservice by ever alluding to any of these mainstream pundits. If you have a point to make, make it yourself. Coulter and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all those others making similar points—often gleaned from the very online conspiracy sources they say they eschew--are at best like a broken clock, right twice daily, if then. They serve the agenda most students of parapolitics claim they oppose. Their political heroes (Reagan, Bush) have time and again advanced the practice of issuing exorbitant “fiat money” far more than anyone. The TV pundits are about shifting the priorities to which the money is applied. They didn't say a word when Bush's Wall Street buddies, the courtesans of his monarchy, raided the treasury during his last weeks in office. It's only the threat that Obama wants to spend on social programs that's put a bee in their bonnet now. They could give a damn about fiat money, as they always support it for corporate welfare and when the military budget expands. All are welcome to take whatever side they want on the spectrum, of course, but all also, at least when it comes to the endeavor to understand conspiracy, must acknowledge the process of false dialogue and media brainwash. Talking about West, O’Neil and Wunderlich would have been a much more enlightening path to this understanding.

Videos by Geert Wilders have made the rounds of late as well and offer a similar lesson. He’s a right wing Dutch politician who fattens his own political fortunes by very publicly opposing the spread of jihadist Islamic culture in Europe. Wilders is at least as right about that as “conservative” “right” or whatever media is about “fiat money”, but does anyone have to support the right in the Netherlands to agree with him? Of course not. They can, in fact, oppose Wilders and the jihadists at the same time. One long-time list manager even circulated material that literally came from a neo-Nazi group in the UK because it has the same anti-jihad message! This is exactly where the false dialogue leads, islamo-fascists on one side; neo-nazis on the other. It’s not an issue of blaming the messenger. These "messengers" are the same people the conspiracy critical world has always opposed.

As for JFK and the Federal Reserve: he issued silver certificates in smaller denominations in order to help remove them from circulation. The value of the silver used in making coins had become greater than the value of the coins, so Kennedy facilitated the effort to stop using actual silver in minting coins, fully realized in 1965, under Johnson. This was a move clearly in the direction of fiat money, not toward it. The US has been off the gold standard since 1934, so Kennedy was acting in the grand tradition of FDR by doing the same for the silver standard. It's hard to think that Kennedy was shot for this purpose. Whether it’s gold, silver or the goodwill of a cabal of Jewish conspirators, money is what everyone agrees to call money—American GIs used cigarettes as currency in post WWII Germany. It’s supposed to be a consensus reality. The only place where mainstream pundits and the parapolitical underground agree is on the lack of that consensus.

NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Whistleblower_Bushs_NSA_targeted_reporters_0121.html

Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Wednesday January 21, 2009

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists.

"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications -- faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications," Tice claimed. "It didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications."

Tice further explained that "even for the NSA it's impossible to literally collect all communications. ... What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata ... and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected."

According to Tice, in addition to this "low-tech, dragnet" approach, the NSA also had the ability to hone in on specific groups, and that was the aspect he himself was involved with. However, even within the NSA there was a cover story meant to prevent people like Tice from realizing what they were doing.

"In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them," Tice told Olbermann. "What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year -- and it made no sense. ... I started to investigate that. That's about the time when they came after me to fire me."

When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, "An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists."

"To what purpose?" Olbermann asked. "I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every email sent by all the reporters at the New York Times? Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York?"

Tice did not answer directly, but simply stated, "If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything." He added, however, that he had no idea what was ultimately done with the information, except that he was sure it "was digitized and put on databases somewhere."

Tice first began alleging that there were illegal activities going on at both the NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency in December 2005, several months after being fired by the NSA. He also served at that time as a source for the New York Times story which revealed the existence of the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program.

Over the next several months, however, Tice was frustrated in his attempts to testify before Congress, had his credibility attacked by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in an apparent attempt at intimidation.

Tice is now coming forward again now because George Bush is finally out of office. He told Olbermann that the Obama administration has not been in touch with him about his latest revelations, but, "I did send a letter to, I think it's [Obama intelligence adviser John] Brennan -- a handwritten letter, because I knew all my communications were tapped, my phones, my computer, and I've had the FBI on me like flies on you-know-what ... and I'm assuming that he gave the note to our current president -- that I intended to say a little bit more than I had in the past."

A slightly creepy cult of personality about all this...

"There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this."

http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/11/06/newsweek-editors-obama-a-creepy-deeply-manipulative-creature/

Newsweek Editors: Obama a “Creepy,” “Deeply Manipulative,” “Creature”
Posted by: Mike's America
11-6-8

Why didn’t they say this in their magazine BEFORE the election?

Yesterday I shared with you the audio of Tom Brokaw being interviewed by Charlie Rose where both men admit they don’t know who Obama really is or what he intends to do in office. Now, a post election admission from Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek; also interviewed by Charlie Rose. Audio is provided with commentary by Rush Limbaugh (transcript):


MEACHAM: You know, they don’t let him out. And have you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage?

ROSE: Mmm.

MEACHAM: No adoring wife, no cute kid. He is the messenger.

THOMAS: There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this. I mean, he’s such an admirable –

ROSE: Slightly. Creepy. Cult of personality.

THOMAS: Yes.

ROSE: What’s slightly creepy about it?

THOMAS: It — it — it just makes me a little uneasy that he’s so singular. He’s clearly managing his own spectacle. He’s a deeply manipulative guy.

RUSH: Now, let me tell you what they’re saying that they’re not saying. We’ve seen this before. We have seen this creepy cult of personality. We have seen this singular, managing his own spectacle. We’ve seen this deeply manipulative guy. We saw this before. They are scared. They are not saying that, but I hear fear. Here’s the next bite. Charlie Rose continues here with a question.

ROSE: Watching him last night in that speech, he finishes –

MEACHAM: Yeah.

ROSE: — and he sort of — it’s almost like he then ascends to look at the circumstance.

MEACHAM: He watches us watching him.

THOMAS: Watching him!

ROSE: Exactly!

THOMAS: He does –

MEACHAM: It’s amazing.

ROSE: It is amazing.

THOMAS: He writes about this metaphor being a screen upon which Americans will project. He said they want of Barack Obama; I’m not sure I am Barack Obama.

ROSE: Mmm!

THOMAS: He had — he has the self-awareness to know that this creature he’s designed isn’t necessarily a real person, and he’s self-aware enough –

ROSE: Ahhhhhh!

RUSH: Ahhhh. Charlie Rose, light goes on, ahhhh. Self-aware enough to know that this creature he’s designed isn’t necessarily a real person. That is fear. These guys are looking at Obama and they’ve seen him the exact way we have, all of this time. They only now after they think they got him into office are now starting to talk about their fears about how nobody knows anything about him, his resume is thin, he’s only written two books, and they’re autobiographies, we don’t know what other books he’s read. Yes, we do. We don’t know anything about him. It’s creepy, never seen a victory speech with nobody on stage — what is this making fun of Biden, by the way? Locking Biden in the bar so he doesn’t come out? Look at all they hid. Look at all that they refused to report. They had plenty of chances to write editorials at Newsweek magazine, and they didn’t write one reflective of what they really saw and know and fear about Obama.


At what point will Meacham and Thomas, along with Brokaw and so many others face the fact that they committed journalistic malpractice by hiding the character concerns they are only now sharing about Obama? Were they just tooooo busy digging dirt on Sarah Palin’s children and Joe the Plumber to tell the American people what a “creepy,” “manipulative,” “creature” Obama is?

Obama & McCain's Spiritual Advisors

Obama & McCain's Spiritual Advisors

Robalini's Note: It's telling that when Obama's religious advisor states some uncomfortable truths, Obama predictably betrays and denounces him, while when McCain's advisor feeds intolerance and hatred, McCain doesn't say anything (nor is he expected to.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/15/us/politics/15wright.html

March 15, 2008
Obama Denounces His Pastor’s Statements
By JODI KANTOR

In the handful of years Senator Barack Obama has spent in the national spotlight, his stance toward his pastor has gone from glowing praise to growing distance to — as of Friday — strong criticism.

On Friday, Mr. Obama called a grab bag of statements by his longtime minister, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., “inflammatory and appalling.”

“I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue,” he wrote in a campaign statement that was his strongest in a series of public disavowals of his pastor’s views over the past year.

Earlier in the week, several television stations played clips in which Mr. Wright, of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago, referred to the United States as the “U.S. of K.K.K. A.” and said the Sept. 11 attacks were the result of corrupt American foreign policy.

On Friday, Senator John McCain’s campaign forwarded a Wall Street Journal opinion piece to reporters in which Mr. Wright was quoted as saying, “Racism is how this country was founded and how this country is still run,” and accusing the United States of importing drugs, exporting guns and training murderers.

Later in the day, Rush Limbaugh dwelled on Mr. Wright in his radio program, calling him “a race-baiter and a hatemonger.”

In the statement he released a few hours later, Mr. Obama, known for his uplifting messages about national unity, professed a certain innocence about his pastor’s most incendiary messages.

“The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation,” he said.

The eight-paragraph statement, first posted on the Web site The Huffington Post, did not recount Mr. Wright’s claims but addressed concerns about whether Mr. Wright’s beliefs reflected Mr. Obama’s. “He has never been my political adviser,” Mr. Obama wrote. “He’s been my pastor.”

Mr. Obama has belonged to Trinity for two decades. He was married by Mr. Wright and his two daughters were baptized by him.

Mr. Obama credits a sermon of Mr. Wright’s, “The Audacity of Hope,” with drawing him to Christianity, and he used those words as the title of his second book.

But the evening before he announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama started to distance himself from Mr. Wright, canceling an invocation he had asked the minister to give at his presidential announcement.

Mr. Wright, 66, who last month fulfilled longstanding plans to retire, is a beloved figure in African-American Christian circles and a frequent guest in pulpits around the country. Since he arrived at Trinity in 1972, he has built a 6,000-member congregation through his blunt, charismatic preaching, which melds detailed scriptural analysis, black power, Afrocentrism and an emphasis on social justice; Mr. Obama praised the last quality in Friday’s statement.

His most powerful influence, said several ministers and scholars who have followed his career, is black liberation theology, which interprets the Bible as a guide to combating oppression of African-Americans.

He attracts audiences because of, not in spite of, his outspoken critiques of racism and inequality, said Dwight Hopkins, a professor at University of Chicago Divinity School, in an interview last year.

But Mr. Wright’s blistering statements about American racism can shock white audiences.

“If you’re black, it’s hard to say what you truly think and not upset white people,” said James Cone, a professor at Union Theological Seminary and the father of black liberation theology, who has known Mr. Wright since he was a seminary student.

Mr. Wright is no longer on Mr. Obama’s African American Religious Leadership Committee, though Mr. Obama’s aides would not elaborate on the circumstance of his departure, and Mr. Wright did not answer a message left on his cellphone requesting an interview.

The minister’s defenders say the statements that have been playing this week on television are outliers, taken out of context, and that he is not anti-white. The United Church of Christ, the denomination of the Chicago church, is overwhelmingly white. And Mr. Wright is an equal opportunity critic, often delivering scorching lectures about black society, telling audiences to improve their educations and work ethic.

“I can remember Jeremiah saying in probably half his sermons: Everyone who’s your color ain’t your kind,” Richard Sewell, a church member, said in an interview last year.

One of the statements that has been most replayed this week comes from the sermon Mr. Wright delivered following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards,” he said. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”

Asked in an interview last March to explain the sermon, Mr. Wright said he had been questioning the country’s desire for vengeance against the perpetrators, counseling his congregants to look inward instead.

Immediately after the attacks, the country’s response was “to pay back and kill,” he said. But before it got “holier than thou,” he said, the nation should have considered how its own policies had led to the events of that day. (Last year, Mr. Obama said, “The violence of 9/11 was inexcusable and without justification,” and added that he and his wife were at home on the day of the sermon, tending to their new baby.)

In the interview last spring, Mr. Wright expressed frustration at the breach in relationship with Mr. Obama, saying the candidate had already privately said that he might need to distance himself from his pastor. But perhaps the two could repair things, said Mr. Wright, pointing out that Mr. Obama’s opponent, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, had faced worse.

“At least there are no semen stains on any dresses,” Mr. Wright said, one of several digs he has taken at Mrs. Clinton.

“That kind of frankness scares people in the campaign,” he added.

*

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=47232&sectionid=3510203

McCain advisor: Destroy Islam
Thu, 13 Mar 2008

Televangelist Rod Parsley, a key McCain ally in Ohio and his spiritual adviser, has called for eradicating Islam as a 'false religion'.

Senator John McCain hailed Parsley, as the Ohio megachurch pastor called upon Christians to wage a "war" against Islam to destroy it.

On February 26, McCain appeared at a campaign rally in Cincinnati with Reverend Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus. During the rally McCain called the evangelical minister a "spiritual guide."

The leader of a 12,000-member congregation, Parsley has written several books outlining his fundamentalist religious outlook.

Parsley in his book "The 2005 Silent No More" in a chapter titled "Islam: The Deception of Allah," warns there is a "war between Islam and Christian civilization."

He also calls Islam an "anti-Christ religion", urging the US to launch a new crusade to eradicate Islam.

In the past Parsley's church has been accused of engaging in pro-Republican partisan activities in violation of its tax-exempt status.

McCain's relationship with Parsley is politically significant. In 2004, Parsley's church was credited with driving Christian fundamentalist voters to the polls for George W. Bush.

JM/PA