THUNDERCLAP! Fox acknowledges class struggle

Without a moment's pause for reflection, Donald Trump has done a cannonball into the cesspool of U.S. neoliberal consensus politics. He's upset the still, fetid waters with his bloated, self-unaware orange corpus and in reaction conventional politicians and pundits are floundering, saying and doing things you would never see or hear them do otherwise, when everybody sticks to the script.

Such was the case yesterday with far-right political pundit Charles Krauthammer on the O'Reilly Factor.

Mark this moment: tried-and-true conservative Charles Krauthammer said that class and (lack of) education were central to Trump's appeal and the U.S. Presidential race.

He said, beautifully, that the GOP is already a party of whites, so Bill O'Reilly's adducing "white grievance" was irrelevant to the GOP primary contest.

Krauthammer said that Trump has tapped into something else.

If a Democrat would have said this on any other Monday, FOX would have shrieked "class warfare." But this was no ordinary Monday, no ordinary GOP primary. And sometimes, a little bit of the truth squirts out when you bite into a bullshit sandwich.

Enjoy:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4831340298001/white-grievance-and-the-republican-party/

P.S. -- The bullshit bread of this truth sandwich was Krauthammer's assertion that we don't know how to address lack of education and opportunity in America. No, we know plenty. Just listen to Bernie Sanders. Step 1: Educate, train and heal American workers without putting them into a lifetime of debt. Step 2: Stop giving tax breaks and trade deals to multinational corporations (MNCs) that are nominally American yet do most of their production, and pay most of their taxes, overseas, and then "import" their products into America. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Apple.

Fox's ideas on fighting terror are a distinction without a difference

I'm going to quote FoxNews "security analyst" K.T. McFarland at length, with my comments, on her prescriptions for fighting violent Islamists... THINGS THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS LARGELY ALREADY DOING:

KTM: "An economic component that bankrupts radical jihad by cutting off their oil revenues  - attacking their oil fields, refineries and tankers  -- while we also develop our own resources to be energy independent of Arab oil."

Me: The U.S. is already energy independent, thanks to Obama's relaxing rules on fracking. We have so much U.S. oil -- and that's a mixed blessing, if you read the WSJ or Bloomberg -- that Obama even ended the long-time ban on exporting U.S. oil.  ISIS does control oil fields in Syria, but they sell it all on the black market, and we are already bombing them. 

KTM: "A banking component that uses the US primacy in international banking and finance to freeze out any country or company that does business with radical Islamists from ISIS to Boko Haram."

Me: Ditto the above.  I'm sure we could do more to root out the middle men trading ISIS's oil, (cough! Turkey!) but again, it's not like ISIS is trading oil on the world futures market.

KTM: "An alliance component that draws together moderate Muslims into an alliance against radical Islam.  If they’re reluctant to join an anti-Islamist alliance, we should let them know they shouldn’t come running to us if things don’t work out.   We should call them out if they have some in their inner circles that play both sides.  

"And we may have to hold our noses and partner with countries we do not always approve of, as we did during World War II."

Me:  Who are the moderate Muslim countries that have the capacity to fight ISIS?  I can think of only one: Turkey.  Saudi Arabia has the capacity but it is not a moderate Muslim country.  The Kurds are everybody's favorite moderate Muslims but they don't have their own state; and moderate ally #1, Turkey, will not allow the Kurds to form their own state. 

KTM: "An anti-hostage component – we will not negotiate, exchange prisoners with nor pay ransom to terrorists. If you take our people hostage, we will turn the tables on you and put a very large bounty on your heads. We promise to hunt down kill anyone who kills our citizens, no matter now long it takes."

Me: Who's the greatest terrorist hunter of all time?  President Barack Obama.  Indeed, The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg just revealed that, "killing the so-called caliph of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is one of the top goals of the American national-security apparatus in Obama’s last year." 

And that's not an empty threat, coming from the guy who killed bin Laden and most of Al Qaeda's senior leadership during his term in office.

KTM: "A communications component which champions western values, like we had during WWII and the Cold War. Violent radical Jihad and western civilization are NOT morally equivalent.  No apology tour, no comparing the Crusades to ISIS.  Be proud of America or be quiet."

Me: Communications are a funny thing. Compel somebody to say something they don't believe -- good luck with that! -- and it comes across as lame.  And when the U.S. tries to do it ourselves -- and we do, assiduously -- the results are mixed, because we're even lamer, and nobody there trusts our motives.  The truth is that, in the age of social media and instant viral communication, it's very hard to shape the dialog, especially in a region we understand poorly.  Putin's Russia does the best job of it, with an army of paid trolls and bloggers, but what they mainly accomplish is sowing doubt in the concept of objective truth of events itself to create cover for Putin's maneuvers, not creating a new accepted truth.

KTM: " An Internet component that blocks their online recruiting and training efforts and uses metadata to track and destroy terrorist leaders."

Me: This sounds a lot like more cyber spying.  And who's the greatest cyber spy of all time?  Again, President Obama. 

KTM: "A religious and ideological component which applauds moderate Muslim leaders – like Egyptian President Sisi and the Grand Imam of Al Ahzar Mosque- who speak out against radical Islam."

Me: Ouch.  Egyptian President Sisi is now widely regarded in Egypt and the region as a worse tyrant than President Mubarak.  He doesn't "speak out" against radical Islam, he jails, tortures and kills anybody suspected of associations with such.  That's not exactly clean and neat, and certainly not representative of traditional American values.  Nevertheless... who is Sisi's greatest patron?  Again, President Obama.

KTM: "And finally, a military component which does not, repeat does not, require thousands of American combat forces, but rather gives our allies every inducement and all the arm twisting necessary so they put their own boots on the ground.  And which supplies them with whatever they need to do the job."

Me: This is the only semi-novel and impactful recommendation of McFarland. She's basically saying, arm the Saudis and the Turks to fight our battles for us, because nobody else has the capacity even to accept such help.  Israel does but they don't want to get involved. (BTW, gee, isn't it funny that our bestest ally in the Mideast isn't helping us to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq?  Why is that??) But we have problems with Turkey (see: Kurds); and with Saudi Arabia, which spends millions of dollars all over the world promoting a radical Wahhabist version of Sunni Islam; and which is still more concerned with Iran than ISIS or Al Qaeda.

So in summary, McFarland's prescriptions on how to fight "global jihad" boil down to a distinction without a difference vis-a-vis current U.S. policy. The truth is, there is only so much the U.S. can do in the world, especially in the fractious and conflicted Arab Middle East, and even less our "allies" are willing to do, no matter what bribes or inducements we throw at them.

Finally, I've said it before, but comparing all of these people to the Nazis or the USSR, and saying we can copy-paste what we did in the 40's or the Cold War to defeat them is moronic, stupid, wrong, impractical...I just don't know how else to say it.  Political correctness has nothing to do with this fight either.  Whenever you hear somebody say any of this, know you're listening to an old fogey who doesn't understand "franchised" terrorism and the root of these many regional conflicts -- which have nothing to do with Islam, originally -- that create power vacuums and provide the perfect breeding ground for Islamist terrorism. 


Yes, America, it's war. Here's how we can stop losing and start winning
By K.T. McFarland
March 22, 2016 | FoxNews
URL: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/03/22/yes-america-its-war-heres-how-can-stop-losing-and-start-winning.html?intcmp=hphz01

A few more lessons from Bernie Sanders' run for President

I don't disagree with Jeb Lund on the positivity of Sen. Bernie Sanders' run for President, but there's a bit more to say here.

First, about being the right-looking "blowdried" candidate with a red tie: yes, true, alas. But let's not swoon over Bernie just because he "doesn't give a f--k" about his image. Let's swoon over him because he does give a f--k about the right things. And he actually proposes good legislation: on the minimum wage; regulating the Wall Street fraudsters; and on and on.

I mean, image is a terrible thing nowadays. The Republicans' version of the perfect-image candidate is Ben Carson: a black identity politician whose positions are indistinguishable from anybody else's (insofar as he has stated positions on anything). His bona fides are that he pulled himself up by his bootstraps despite being black and poor, can't stand his fellow African-American Barack Obama, and most importantly, rails against Obamacare. Beyond that, Ben Carson is a cipher... or an empty suit. He doesn't have many policy ideas because, as is blindingly obvious -- and this only adds to his appeal among Republicans -- it never occurred to him to run for President until quite recently, at the urging of Republicans who were out to prove they didn't distrust black people... as long as they believed all the "right" things.  

Second, Bernie's humble economic station is a good thing nowadays; but a politician's wealth or privileged background was not always a predictor of his political leanings or his performance in office. FDR, an all-time top 3 U.S. President and blueblood patrician, proved that. What Roosevelt had was a sense of old-money, old-fashioned noblesse oblige. With the recent departure of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the closest things we have to old money in U.S. politics today are Jeb Bush and Donald Trump.  

In fact, running for President today -- the GOP presidential nomination, that is -- is not a result of a candidate's wealth and privilege, necessarily, it is a path to wealth and privilege: as a FOX contributor / talk radio host / author / highly-paid guest speaker. Never before was political loserdom a path to anything but a ticket to retirement.  Now with enough Super PAC money and a favorable audience with Sheldon Anderson, a nominee can be plucked from political obscurity and made a front-runner, with his guaranteed payday at the end, whatever the result.

Third, there's something different about a Bernie Sanders or Ralph Nader running for the Democratic nomination, knowing he's going to lose, in the hopes of nudging (or embarrassing) the eventual nominee to move slightly to the Left, and the gaggle of Republican candidates trying to outrun each other to the Right, eastward beyond the horizon.  Because many Democratic voters would be uncomfortable with a Bernie Sanders as a nominee -- "too liberal!" -- whereas, no matter who gets nominated by the GOP, most Republican voters will be dissatisfied -- "he's not conservative enough" -- or even bestow the worst insult imaginable -- "he's a RINO."  

Most Republicans probably don't stop to think why there's no equivalent of the "RINO" label among Democrats. (I wish there were). But if they did, they might realize that we Democrats are a pretty diverse bunch who can't even agree among ourselves what a true Democrat is. On the Republican side, talk radio settled that issue at least 15 years ago; and the media masters of the GOP police their ideological purity mercilessly...even at the expense of losing elections. (Which I grudgingly give them credit for; although they have convinced themselves that they speak for America's "Silent Majority," and when they lose, it is thanks to George Soros and the Lib'rul Media conspiracy, not their ideology). 

Bernie Sanders doesn't have to win the Democratic primary to do a lot of good

By Jeb Lund

May 27, 2015 | Guardian

URL: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/27/bernie-sanders-democratic-primary-do-good?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Gmail

Godspeed, Ebola 'czar' Ron Klain!

Am I missing something or is the "unqualified" Ebola czar Ron Klain the most successful "czar" under any U.S. President? No Americans died, Ebola is off the TV and out of the papers, we're all breathing easy again.... I mean, the only possible retort I can think of is that Ebola wasn't that big a deal to begin with; that the CDC had it under control all along; that maybe the GOP and its colleagues on Fox and talk radio just made it erupt into a pants-shitting crisis to win votes and then promptly dropped it mid-November as soon as they had what they wanted -- a Congressional majority...

..But no, no. I can't accept that cynical explanation. I prefer the more positive explanation: that Ron Klain is public health genius on par with Albert Sabin and a saint on par with Mother Teresa.

Godspeed, Mr. Klain!  We thank you for your selfless service to our country!

Ebola czar Klain to depart White House in March

By Anita Kumar

December 8, 2014  | McClatchy Washington Bureau

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/08/249390/ebola-czar-klain-to-depart-white.html

5 hysterical myths about U.S. 'border crisis'

Lately I've had the possibility -- nay, the privilege -- to listen to a lot of AM talk radio, and lemme tell you, it's all "border crisis" all the time.

Naturally, since Obama is the Anti-Christ, a cypto-Muslim/Marxist and America-hater, not to mention he's trying to seed America with future America-hating Democratic voters, there are a lot of conspiracy theories surrounding the unfortunate surge of thousands of South American children at our southern border.  

If you're interested in facts, can manage to catch your breath and count to 10, then please read this fact check, courtesy of The Guardian.

Illegals and gangsters and Ebola, oh my! 5 conservative immigration myths of the moment, made sane

By Megan Carpentier, Kayla Epstein, Lauren Gambino, Nadja Popovich and Matt Sullivan

July 15, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/4vxyg

TDS: Obamacare threatens Third-World U.S. healthcare

Obama is a 'tyrant' for issuing fewer executive orders than Reagan and Bush

Sooner or later, most conservative chain-email garbage finds its way down to the talk radio-FOX cesspool. Latest case and point:Obama's executive orders.

FOX's resident legal expert Andrew Napolitano, who still goes by the title "Judge," called Obama's executive orders "tyranny." And good ole' Rush Limbaugh riffed on this on his show today.  

Rush calls folks who disagree with him "low information voters." Well, a simple Google search reveals that, lo and behold, conservative hero Ronald Reagan issued 381 executive orders, Dubya issued 291, whereas Obama has issued 168 as of January 20, 2014.

Rush deifies Reagan, yet calls Obama's use of executive orders "an impeachable offense." Now that's not stupid and partisan at all, no siree. Because Obama is a Democrat, and different rules apply to Democrats. See?

Even more outrageously, Republicans' hypocrisy has come up in the context of immigration reform. Speaker John Boehner says the Republicans can't make a deal with President Obama and the Democrats because they can't trust him to enforce a new immigration law, even though Obama has broken all records for the number of illegal immigrants deported, earning him the nickname "deporter-in-chief," as even FOX News Latino (not to be confused with FOX News Anglo, aka FOX News) couldn't help but note. Yet again, there is a different set of rules for Democrats.  Go figure.

Debunking 'job-killing regulations'

A new study shows that, when it comes to the economy, the modern Republican party has one leg less to stand on. 

To wit, we have proof that "job-killing regulations" are just a myth propagated by companies and their lobbyists who want to pass on the real economic costs of their pollution, dangerous operations, and unfair business practices to society at large. 

Ironically, as this study debunking "job-killing regulations" is coming out, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a glorified wing of the Republican Party) is pledging a "war" on "the vast regulatory state" and an "unprecedented flow of regulations" because, says the Chamber's President, "We must lift the veil of uncertainty hanging over every business and investor if we want to revive our economy."

Another leg of the GOP fell off long ago: tax cuts on the rich (aka trickle-down, voodoo economics and Reaganomics) have never proven effective in growing the economy, jobs and incomes, as even Pope Francis recently noted. 

So now that those two legs of the GOP's three-legged economic stool are gone, what's left? Cutting entitlements. That's right: "Work or Starve." (Official 2014 GOP campaign motto). Well, Republicans have gone ahead and cut food stamps and other forms of "welfare," and we'll have plenty of time to see how badly that works out for Americans and the economy before next November.  

Methinks by then the GOP will be sitting on the floor.

(Now to get a bit wonkish. The true cost of regulations may be hard to calculate; nevertheless, we can compare the U.S. to other countries. After all, everything is relative and businesses can't re-locate to Mars. The World Bank's annual Doing Business survey compares countries on a range of indicators, like ease of starting a business and ease of paying taxes. In 2013, even in the dark depths of the Obama Regime, the U.S. ranks 4th in the world out of 189 countries. As in past years, we are topped only by tiny islands Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand. So the United States is still the place to do business, with the best climate for investment and the biggest consumer market in the world. Anybody who says otherwise is a crank or a charlatan.)

UPDATE (06.12.2013): Right on cue, our fair & balanced friends at FOX gave us this big headline: "Regulation Nation: Gov't regs estimated to pound private sector with $1.8 T in costs." On FOX's home page they rounded that estimate, courtesy of the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute, up to $2 trillion. (What's $200 billion nowadays anyway? Just rounding.)  FOX doesn't offer any dissenting opinions on that estimate, or even information how it was derived; it's just presented as fact. Nor does FOX mention that CEI is a libertarian think tank that has defended Big Tobacco, opposed fuel efficiency standards, and disputed global warming science. It's all in day's work shilling for corporate interests.

Right-wing garbage debunked: No, regulation doesn’t kill jobs

By Sean McElwee

December 2, 2013 | Salon 

It’s one of the oldest right-wing claims: “Excessive” regulation will harm job creators and kill the economy. But is it based on sound economics?

One new study, which examines this particular argument, finds it absurd on its face. Taylor Lincoln, who authored the report for Public Citizen, tells Salon the goal was to “point out hypocrisy and contradictions and the chasms between rhetoric and reality.” To that end, the report cites one Heritage Foundation study which asserted that a more efficient regulatory system could create 9.6 million jobs. The problem, as Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein noted: “there are only 7 million unemployed Americans.”

Heritage isn’t the only one making this argument. A Phoenix Foundation study claimed that, “a 5 percent reduction in the federal regulatory budget would yield 5.9 million new jobs over five years.” But the Public Citizen report points out that this leads to a ludicrous conclusion: “a 16 percent decrease (a figure the authors chose to parallel the amount by which they say federal spending had exceeded revenue since 2000) would result in the creation of 18.8 million new jobs over five years. In contrast, there are only about 11.3 million unemployed Americans.”

Dr. Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas professor who has studied regulation for decades, finds the right-wing argument wanting. As to whether cutting regulation could increase economic growth, he tells Salon, “it’s a silly argument. The impact of regulation, particularly in this era when it’s so darn hard to write a regulation, is nothing compared to what the Fed does each meeting.” His most recent book, Freedom to Harm, details how a decade-long assault on regulation threatens workers and the environment.

In fact, the OMB estimates that regulations provide huge economic benefits. They find that major regulations benefit the economy between $193 billion and $800 billion a year at a cost of $57 to $84 billion. McGarity confirms this, telling Salon, “The thing that is most troubling to me is, when the right-wing think-tanks or the government estimates the cost of regulation, they never go back and see how much it did cost. The few retrospective studies that have been done have shown uniformly that the cost estimates have been higher, much higher than the actual cost of the regulation. The reason is that once the regulations are in place companies are able to adapt to them very quickly.”

The irony is that Republicans always hail the ability of businesses to innovate and adapt, but their anti-regulatory stance is premised on the idea the businesses cannot adapt to new regulation.

Both McGarity and Lincoln noted that Nixon, Ford and H.W. Bush were all very pro-regulation. McGarity tells Salon that “there used to be strong environmentally conscious Republicans in the House and Senate, [but] you can’t point to one Republican now who is a strong environmental advocate.” Lincoln says the anti-regulatory impulse is tied to the economy. When the economy is strong, businesses quickly adapt to regulation, but in hard times, regulation appears as a scapegoat for the weak economy. Both feared that the Republican party is now ruled largely by business interests unconcerned with the common good.

But it’s not just right-wing think tanks and demagogues claiming that cutting regulation will somehow magically create jobs. The Economist claimed this year: “But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively.” The article concludes that regulation may “crush the life out of America’s economy.”

In the New York Times earlier this month, Tyler Cowen wrote:

We don’t really know the total regulatory burden in our economy today, in part because there are too many rules and side effects to add up all the costs. Nonetheless, we are continually increasing the obstacles to doing business. America has lost the robust productivity growth of much of the postwar era, and the share of start-ups in the economy has been falling each decade since the 1980s. Although overregulation is hardly the only culprit, it is very likely contributing to the problem.

When arguing to gut America’s regulatory regime, one doesn’t need data or statistics, just a general feeling that regulation is probably harming economic growth.

Opponents of regulation often suggest that regulations create uncertainty and therefore stymie growth, but in truth they do the opposite. To understand why, imagine a world without regulation, one in which railroad track gauges are divergent, food and drugs are released without trials and buildings are built on a whim.  Americans who visit countries with a weak governance are often surprised to find that the stairs aren’t of equal height. By establishing a minimum standard for environmental degradation, customer safety and worker treatment, regulation can change entire industries.

The auto industry is a quintessential example. Today’s advertisements focus on fuel efficiency and safety, and we take air bags and seat belts for granted, but cars were once death traps. Lincoln explains, “Their market research showed that adding seat belts didn’t help and they’re not seeing profit it it, they’re not seeing dollar signs.” All of that began to change with Ralph Nader’s famous “Unsafe at Any Speed.” Customers didn’t know that cars could be safer and more fuel-efficient until the government began enforcing the regulations. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Consumers are naturally conservative and they are heavily influenced by advertising. George McGovern, echoing the arguments of J. K. Galbraith, said that advertising can “brainwash the consumer” because “no one was ever born with the taste for huge automobiles.” Companies were stuck on producing slick fancy cars, not safe cars. Regulation upended the industry and entirely changed the way that customers and society viewed the car: not a luxury toy, but a utilitarian mode of transportation. This changed the way customers thought about safety and companies thought about advertising.

The report shows how regulations we now take for granted — catalytic converters, unleaded gasoline, fuel efficiency standards, worker safety protection, minimum wages, environmental protections — were once denounced by industry shills as “job killing” or “economy strangling.” Industry experts predicted that worker safety regulations would destroy jobs and tank industries. The day before the bills would pass they would shout Cassandra-like warnings and hold up Mayan calendars. But the next day the air was cleaner, workers were safer and the economy chugged along.

Even Tom Donohue, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is forced to concede, “I think we need a strong public sector. We have about a $1.7 trillion a year regulatory bill. Seventy-five, 80 percent of that is very useful. You’ve got to have air traffic control. You’ve got to have food safety.”

Today, the same absurd claims once raised about now banal regulations are being tossed about again. Already industry experts have predicted 12.9 million job losses from Dodd-Frank, the Affordable Care Act and Obama’s GHG regulation proposals. Lincoln’s goal is simple: “We are trying to lay down a record of what they’re saying now, because they are going to be wrong again.”

Sirota's prediction coming true as Boston bombers identified

It didn't take long for David Sirota's dire prediction to come true:

It will probably be much different if the bomber ends up being a Muslim and/or a foreigner from the developing world. As we know from our own history, when those kind of individuals break laws in such a high-profile way, America often cites them as both proof that entire demographic groups must be targeted, and that therefore a more systemic response is warranted. At that point, it’s easy to imagine conservatives citing Boston as a reason to block immigration reform defense spending cuts and the Afghan War withdrawal and to further expand surveillance and other encroachments on civil liberties.

Already conservatives are saying there is a larger Muslim (this time Chechen Muslim) jihadi conspiracy at work in the U.S.

Speculated conservative Judicial Watch: "There’s no telling how many of these Chechen terrorists have infiltrated the United States or how many opportunities the government has missed to protect the country by deporting them."

I'm sure Russia's President for Life Vladimir Putin is ROTFLHAO right now....

Actually FOX News published a story that was fairly fair-minded, dismissing a larger conspiracy, albeit with a provocative title as FOX is wont to do, but I'm sure it won't last, FOX and the rest of the conservative media will jump on the jihadi conspiracy wagon soon enough.... 

It's still Dubya's America and we're just living in it... including President Obama.

UPDATE (04.21.2013): Here's another anti-Muslim screed in reaction to the alleged Boston bombers from somebody named Andrew McCarthy at the respected National Review Online: "Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away." I still subscribe to elementary school writing lessons, when they taught us to end an essay with a call to action. Here's McCarthy's:

There are all kinds of Islam, including the supremacist kind that is far more widely held than we’re comfortable acknowledging. Until we get beyond that discomfort, until we are prepared to ask, “What Islam?” — and until we are prepared to treat Islamic supremacism as the pariah it should be — Boston’s hellish week will remain our recurring nightmare.

Everybody got that? Got any idea how to act on that?  Neither do I.  And that's why all such conservative op-eds and diatribes are stupid and ultimately racist and/or anti-Muslim, because all they do is stir up suspicion and hatred for innocent Americans who happen to be Muslim.

And here's another one from NRO by Mark Steyn, an on-air substitute for Rush Limbaugh: "The 'Co-exist' Bombers." Steyn jokes how disappointed David Sirota must be that the bombers were indeed immigrants and Muslims. Besides taking a lot of swipes at Massachusetts liberals, the only sensible thing Steyn wrote was this, again, at the end. (Why do conservative pundits always save their one cogent thought for the end?):

On Monday, [April 15], it didn’t feel Islamic: a small death toll at a popular event but not one with the resonance and iconic quality the big-time jihadists like — like 9/11, the embassy bombings, the U.S.S. Cole. After all, if the jihad crowd wanted to blow up a few people here and there IRA-style they could have been doing it all this last decade.  

Good point! Too bad more blood-and-guts American Islamophobes aren't thinking about this more deeply and honestly. Indeed, how do you draw the connection between the U.S.S. Cole in 2000 and these two kids in Boston in 2013? That's more than six degrees of Bacon, to be sure. 

See, that's a big problem for the neocons and Islamophobes, because it's their task to cast any terrorist attacks as part of a larger conspiracy, a global jihad. So far, it's working for many of them simply to make that bald assertion of jihad; but I think more & more folks are starting to wise up to this con that leads us nowhere... or even worse, leads us to places like Iraq.  

Ugly liar James O'Keefe pays another ACORN victim

Vile pipsqueak James O'Keefe, a convicted wiretapper and accessory to breaking into a Democratic senator's office, was born in the wrong country at the wrong time. He would have been a wonderful hatchet man for Joseph Goebbels. 

Of course nobody at FOX or talk radio will issue retractions or make apologies for airing as truth O'Keefe's deliberate fabrications and slander.

James O'Keefe pays out to just one victim of his Acorn video deception

By Bertha Lewis

March 12, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3ec9z

FOX: Could there be a 'Second American Revolution'?

Great journalism!  Fair & Balanced!  (A pro-gun host, an NRA lawyer, and a pro-gun sheriff who threatens violent revolution.)  Nope, no pandering to the NRA at all, just tough, smart reporting.  And anyway, treating what-ifs as if they were real news is is not nearly as dangerous as some kids playing video games in their basements, no sir.

Seriously though, it is totally irresponsible of FOX to debate hypothetical scenarios (government confiscating guns, or a government gun registry) that nobody in government including Obama has proposed, and to scare gun owners and encourage crazies to go over the edge.  

Then again, beating the crazy conservative hornets nest with a rhetorical stick just to see what happens next is what FOX does best.

Second American Revolution on the horizon?

February 24, 2013 | FOXNews

URL: http://video.foxnews.com/v/2186710402001/second-american-revolution-on-the-horizon/?intcmp=obnetwork

Obama worst socialist ever...but what does it mean?

I'm glad to see that people are actually looking up the words "socialism" and "capitalism" in the dictionary, since these words -- especially socialism -- get thrown around quite carelessly in U.S. political discourse. Judging by the number of times you hear the "socialist" label applied on talk radio and FoxNews, you'd think there were more socialists in America today than in Russia circa 1917.

The truth is, there are no real socialists left in America anymore, at least not in government. It's a bogeyman label used to scare independents and keep deer-like Republicans in line. 

There have even been attempts by conservatives to re-define socialism to cover just about anything to the left of Sen. Rand Paul.

President Obama is certainly not a socialist, or if he is, he is the Worst Socialist Ever, as I've noted before. A true socialist in the White House would not allow the One Percent to to take 93 percent of economic gains since the Great Recession, or stand idly by while U.S. corporate profits reached an all-time high.

Lots Of Confused People Looked Up The Word 'Socialism' In The Dictionary Because Of The Election

By Jason Linkins

December 7, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/SDZfIX

Will Republicans pop their media bubble?

Call me a pinko, damned liberal, whatever you want, but I ain't no bubble boy.  I read Fox News and Rush Limbaugh more often than the NYT or Wash Post -- not because these are real or worthy sources of information, but rather, because I want to know what the bubble boys are thinking and what gets them mad.  Eighty percent of the time, I find that it takes no effort at all to refute their self-serving logic and selective use of evidence.  And the remaining 20 percent of the time, well, it just forces me to flex my intellectual muscles a bit, making me stronger and more secure in my left-wing beliefs.

As for my dear Republican friends... I can't tell you how many times they have reacted to something I post with, "Look at the source!  Pffft!" as if that is all that needs to be said.  

We saw how far bubbles, echo chambers and groupthink got them on November 6.  Now all sorts of post-mortems are coming out about what went wrong and how the GOP should reform itself.  I don't care, frankly.  America would be better off without the GOP.  Moreover, I don't think they have it in them to change.  The older ones -- the core of the party nowadays with all the money for donations -- are too crotchety and stuck in their ways.  By gum, they like the way they are.  They like the GOP being nativist, mean and anti-poor.  The party as it is suits them just fine... it's just losing at the polls that bothers them.  

But here's the worst part: they are addicted to their anger. And the pushers who feed their anger habit -- Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Drudge, et al -- know their ratings depend on liberal villains to keep the whole racket going. Take away their anger and the energy of the GOP evaporates.  It's kind of like -- and I know this is a bit over the top, but... -- the dark side of the Force: Siths and Republicans alike draw their strength from fear, anger and hatred.    

The GOP's media cocoon

By Jonathan Martin

November 12, 2012 | Politico

A long-simmering generational battle in the conservative movement is boiling over after last week’s shellacking, with younger operatives and ideologues going public with calls that Republicans break free from a political-media cocoon that has become intellectually suffocating and self-defeating.

GOP officials have chalked up their electoral thumping to everything from the country’s changing demographics to an ill-timed hurricane and failed voter turn-out system, but a cadre of Republicans under 50 believes the party’s problem is even more fundamental.

The party is suffering from Pauline Kaelism.

Kael was The New Yorker movie critic who famously said in the wake of Richard M. Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972 that she knew only one person who voted for Nixon.

Now, many young Republicans worry, they are the ones in the hermetically sealed bubble — except it’s not confined to geography but rather a self-selected media universe in which only their own views are reinforced and an alternate reality is reflected.

Hence the initial denial and subsequent shock on the right that the country would not only reelect President Barack Obama — but do so with 332 electoral votes.

“What Republicans did so successfully, starting with critiquing the media and then creating our own outlets, became a bubble onto itself,” said Ross Douthat, the 32-year-old New York Times columnist.

“The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality,” is how 30-year-old think tanker and writer Ben Domenech put it.

Citing Kael, one of the most prominent Republicans in the George W. Bush era complained: “We have become what the left was in the ’70s — insular.”

In this reassuring conservative pocket universe, Rasmussen polls are gospel, the Benghazi controversy is worse than Watergate, “Fair and Balanced” isn’t just marketing and Dick Morris is a political seer.

Even this past weekend, days after a convincing Obama win, it wasn’t hard to find fringes of the right who are convinced he did so only because of mass voter fraud and mysteriously missing military ballots. Like a political version of “Thelma and Louise,” some far-right conservatives are in such denial that they’d just as soon keep on driving off the cliff than face up to a reality they’d rather not confront.

But if the Fox News-talk radio-Drudge Report axis is the most powerful force in the conservative cocoon, technology has rendered even those outlets as merely the most popular destinations in the choose-your-own-adventure news world in which consumers are more empowered than ever.

Facebook and Twitter feeds along with email in-boxes have taken the place of the old newspaper front page, except that the consumer is now entirely in charge of what he or she sees each day and can largely shut out dissenting voices. It’s the great irony of the Internet era: People have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.

“The Internet amplifies talk radio and cable news, and provides distribution for other sources like Newsmax,” said Trey Grayson, 40, the former Kentucky secretary of state and the current head of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. “Then your friends, who usually agree with you, disseminate the same stories on Facebook and Twitter. And you assume that everyone agrees with you!”

Grayson continued: “It’s very striking for me living in Cambridge now. My Facebook feed, which is full of mostly conservatives from Kentucky, contains very different links to articles or topics than what I see in Cambridge. It is sort of the reverse up here. They don’t understand how anyone would eat Chick-fil-A, watch college sports or hold pro-life views.”

“Social media has made it easier to self-select,” added 45-year-old GOP strategist Bruce Haynes. “Who do you follow on Twitter, who do you friend on Facebook? Do they all look the same and say the same things? If so, you’ve created a universe for yourself that is wedded to its own self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Like Grayson, Haynes and many of the approximately two-dozen young Republicans interviewed for this story noted that Democrats have their own self-reassuring echo chambers.

What worries Republicans, though, is that their Kaelism may be harder to overcome in the short term.

“Unfortunately, for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party, the echo chamber [now] is louder and more difficult to overcome,” said Grayson.

That’s partly because of the difference between the two cocoons in the two parties.

First, the Al Sharptons and Rachel Maddows of the left don’t have the same influence as their counterparts on the right. There are as many, if not more, NPR-oriented liberals as MSNBC devotees on the left; the Democratic media ecosystem is larger and more diverse.

Further, and more importantly, the Democratic Party has a leader in Obama who for over four years has sought to appeal to a majority of Americans for the obvious political reasons.

“Being a Democrat means being identified with Barack Obama, not Ed Schultz and Martin Bashir,” said Douthat, citing two liberal MSNBC hosts.

Conversely, for nearly six years, since President Bush’s second term went south, Republicans have been effectively without a leader. And into that vacuum has stepped a series of conservative figures whose incentives in most cases are not to win votes but to make money and score ratings by being provocative and even outlandish.

“Their bottom line is their main goal, but that doesn’t mean they’re serving the population that buys their books,” said Domenech.

And this, say next-generation Republicans, is where cocoonism has been detrimental to the cause.

The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.

The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.

“Dick Morris is a joke to every smart conservative in Washington and most every smart conservative under the age of 40 in America,” said Douthat. “The problem is that most of the people watching Dick Morris don’t know that.”

The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere that enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary and blocks needed policy reforms, and generally leave an odor on the party that turns off swing voters.

It even fosters an atmosphere in which there’s a disconnect with the ostensible party leaders.

Consider: In the fall of the past two presidential campaigns, those in the conservative cocoon were talking about, respectively, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama as a black radical, and the seemingly impeachment-worthy scandal surrounding the deaths of U.S. officials in Libya. Meanwhile, on the actual campaign trail, John McCain and Mitt Romney showed little interest in even mentioning either topic.

And the entertainers’ power isn’t just with gullible grass-roots activists who are likely to believe whatever nefarious rumor about Obama is forwarded to them in an e-mail chain — it’s with donors, too.

Outside of Washington, New York and state capitals, the big conservative givers are as likely to have read Ed Klein’s Obama book and seen Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016,” and generally parrot whatever they just heard on Fox News as the old lady stuffing envelopes at county GOP headquarters.

“One of the reasons the entertainment complex has the influence they do is because the people who are supposed to be responsible figures in the party, those who fund the campaigns, have bought into this apocalyptic world view,” said Douthat.

More than a few Republicans said it was such donors whom Romney was trying to impress when he infamously riffed about the “47 percent,” a variation of the makers-versus-takers world view that has become popular in the conservative cocoon (Rush Limbaugh has called Obama “Santa Claus” since Election Day).

The tension between entertainers and operatives-thinkers may have come into sharpest relief in the prolonged, and for many Republicans, painful 2012 GOP primary. The thinkers and the operatives cringed at the umpteen debates and carnival-like procession of candidates with little chance of landing in the Oval Office.

“Look at Newt Inc., [Herman] Cain and [Michele] Bachmann,” sighed Haynes. “What’s the purpose of entering a presidential primary anymore?”

Suggesting the incentives for getting in the race now owe as much to fame as to winning the job, Haynes added: “If that market didn’t exist, what would our primary look like?”

The sexual harassment scandal around Cain offered a vivid example of the different goals of the two groups. To the entertainment-based right, it was a great opportunity to rally the faithful against a purportedly liberal media targeting a black conservative. It touched almost every erogenous zone for the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But for the operatives and thinkers, the story threatened to tarnish the GOP with a sex scandal and make a martyr out of a marginal figure they were already cringing over before POLITICO reported the harassment charges.

Long after the primary ended, the entertainment-based right was still promoting figures that many in the GOP believe are harmful to the party’s brand. Take Donald Trump, who made regular appearances on “Fox & Friends” all year and delighted in pushing the discredited idea that Obama wasn’t born in America. Why energize black voters and turn off moderates broadly by elevating a buffoonish figure questioning the president’s legitimacy? Because it’s good box office. (To be sure, other nonpartisan outlets, including POLITICO, not to mention Romney himself, did their share of enabling Trump).

“It’s like a weird version of identity politics for people who like trash culture and reality TV,” said Douthat of Trump.

This same financial-political tension also arose two years ago in one of the most high-profile GOP Senate primaries in the country between Grayson and Rand Paul. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, worried that his hand-picked candidate wasn’t getting equal time on Fox to make his case, called Fox President Roger Ailes to ask that Grayson get similar treatment as the oft-interviewed Paul, according to a source familiar with the call. Ailes, who consulted on McConnell’s first Senate race, had tough news for his old friend: Paul was just a better draw.

Some younger conservatives worry that the effects of cocoonism are just as evident after the race as before — and not only in the disbelief that Obama won. The knee-jerk reaction by some on the right to Romney’s poor performance with Hispanics has been to simply say that all will be well with the party if they pass an immigration bill and elevate Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

But to many next-generation Republicans, this smacks of tokenism and is more than a tad patronizing.

“They just want to put a sombrero on the Republican elephant,” said one Latino GOP operative, who didn’t want to be identified discussing such a sensitive topic.

Similarly, Haynes fretted that “the mistake Republicans are going to make is thinking this is a demographic and political problem and not a social and cultural problem. You can’t fix this with Orca (the Romney campaign’s ill-fated GOTV software) or iPad apps or to some extent even running Hispanic candidates.”

To young Republican strategists and writers, a fundamental shift of how the party communicates is required. That doesn’t mean delegitimizing hugely popular and powerful outlets on the right, but rather transcending them.

“Communicating to the country’s changing demographics and outside of the Fox News echo chamber is a strategic imperative,” said GOP operative Phil Musser, 40.

“The rise of conservative media has been one of the best things to ever happen to the conservative movement. It has helped us reach new voters, has helped with voter persuasion and even motivation,” said GOP strategist Todd Harris, 41. “But with all the positives, there is this fact: If all you did was watch and read the conservative media, you were probably pretty shocked at what happened Tuesday. There’s a huge and ever-growing segment of the vote that Republicans just aren’t talking to and in some cases didn’t even know existed.”

The good news, say the young Republicans, is that there’s hope for them to appeal more widely. They look no further than to 2004, when liberals were in disbelief that America had reelected George W. Bush. “Jesusland” was the name of the famous map of the country showing where Bush had won.

But instead of inveighing against the purported theocracy the country had become, Obama and his aides began to plot how they could appeal to a broad coalition of voters.

Younger Republicans are confident that they, too, will take over the party and reorient it to accommodate a more tolerant country.

“I expect that in the years to come, a class of young and up-and-coming Republican practitioners will exert a greater degree of influence on how the party’s outreach to key groups is handled and ensure that the tone and tenor of our message is reflective of today’s society,” said Jon Downs, 35, a Republican media consultant.

But these Republicans know a degree of self-examination is required.

“In some communities, like with African-Americans, it’s simply unacceptable to be a Republican. This is a cultural phenomenon,” said Haynes. “Who do you go to church with, who do you send your kids to school with? Are enough Republicans socially and culturally engaged with folks who don’t look like themselves?”

Or, as Domenech put it: “Conservatives may be content to stay in a bubble and yell about Benghazi, but it doesn’t help the cause in the long term.”

What’s needed, he said, is to develop new institutions that will engage conservatives on the issues that the broader country is focused on.

He cited the much-buzzed-about piece in The Atlantic earlier this year about whether women can have successful careers and devote ample attention to child-rearing as a conversation conservatives should have gotten in on.

“We need to play the long game on how people engage in culture and society,” Domenech said. “Conservatives and the right generally have a lot to say, but it’s going to require more than a place to discuss the latest campaign or the New Black Panthers.”

Ben Stein: 'I hate to say this on Fox, but'...

Hey, I hate to say this on my blog, but... Ben Stein's a shithead.  

Seriously though, droning, nasally-voiced Ben Stein, one of those guys you scratch your head and wonder why he's still on TV and then think, "Oh, yeah, it's because he's on FoxNews," went and said something that pissed off FoxNews, seriously biting the hand that feeds him.  

The utterly revealing and pathetic thing about Stein's statement was that he a) acknowledged Fox's clear right-wing bias that is apparent to anyone over the age of 12, and, at the same time, b) he apologized profusely to FoxNews's overlords for saying what anybody who knows basic arithmetic figured out a long time ago.

For those sins, he will probably be banished to Doocy's Dungeon for the next six months.  ... Hey, that gives me an idea for a great show, "Fox Purgatory and Friends."  

Ben Stein's fame just goes to show that even a Mr. Burns-type villain could appear sort-of likable if Jimmy Kimmel was given the green light to mercilessly take the piss out of him every day on TV.

Ben Stein Tells Incredulous Fox & Friends Hosts Taxes Are Too Damn Low

By Neetzan Zimmerman

October 18, 2012 | Gawker

Former Republican speechwriter and game show host Ben Stein likely won't be invited back on Fox & Friends any time soon after the conservative economist dropped a megaton truth bomb in the studio earlier this morning.

Asked by Gretchen Carlson what needs to be done in order to fix the economy, Stein said unequivocally that taxes need to be increased for upper-echelon earners.

"I hate to say this on Fox, and I hope I'll be allowed to leave here alive, but I don't think there is anyway we can cut spending enough to make a meaningful difference," Stein said. "We going to have to raise taxes on very rich people, people with incomes of like say, 2, 3 million a year and up, and then slowly move it down."

Thinking he may have misheard the Ferris Bueller star, Steve Doocy asked Stein if he doesn't think "Washington just has a spending problem."

"I do not think they just have a spending problem," Stein replied. "I think they also have a too-low taxes problem. And while all due respect to Fox, whom I love like brothers and sisters, the taxes are too low."

Huffington Post notes that Stein clearly had a change of heart at some point, as just two years ago he called raising taxes on the very rich a "punishment."