Report Finds Acorn Broke No Laws.

Fox News, Michelle Malkin, and the other right wing loons should be embarrassed and mortified by this latest report, but they won't be:

The controversial community organizing group Acorn has not broken any laws in the last five years, according to a Congressional Research Service report released Tuesday evening.

The report, requested by Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, said that federal agencies, mainly the Departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development, have awarded money to the group 48 times since 2005. But, in none of those instances did Acorn violate the terms of their funding, the report said.

Since the 2008 elections, the group, which works primarily to expand voter registration and affordable housing, has become a key Republican target. A series of scandals brought to light by conservative activists led to multiple Congressional hearings and repeated attempts to deny it taxpayer funding.

Acorn has been the subject of scores of investigations—a total of 46 inquiries by federal, state, and local agencies, including the FBI and the Treasury Department, and five by Congress as of October 2009, according to the report.

The report found no evidence that voters attempting to cast ballots at the polls had been improperly registered by Acorn, a chief Republican accusation.

They simply won't report that their claims have been found to be utterly wrong and they'll still use the word Acorn as a synonym for all that is wrong with leftist thinking.

They really are a shameless bunch. And the truth matters not a jot to them.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Acorn, Fox News, Malkin, Hannity

Humble Obama accepts Nobel prize.

Obama turned up at Oslo yesterday to collect his Nobel peace prize, setting off the expected cacophony of hate from the usual right wing quarters:

In honor of President Barack Obama’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think we should declare today Happy National Post-Achievement Day.

What award or honor don’t you deserve? Claim it.

What unearned prize for unmet aspirations would you like to give yourself? Declare it.

Of course, Malkin is ignoring the fact that Obama did not claim or declare his right to this honour. Quite the opposite. He admitted that the award had been "controversial", and that it had been awarded to him very early in his presidency.

"I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the considerable controversy that your generous decision has generated," he said, to laughter.

The 108th recipient of the prize expressed humility, saying he could not be compared with giants of history such as Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela who had received the prize. He said too that he was only at the start of his labours on the world stage, not the end.

Of course, the Malkins and other haters are ignoring the entire history of the Nobel peace award. It is not merely given to those who have brought about peace, it is also given to encourage those who seek a fairer world, often before their efforts have secured success.

It was for this reason that the Nobel committee threw it's protective arm around Archbishop Desmond Tutu, long before he had succeeded, along with Mandela, in ending Apartheid.

And Obama's acceptance speech, given by a man whose nation is currently fighting two wars, was certainly one of the most interesting that I have ever heard. It's unusual to hear someone accepting a Nobel peace prize whilst explaining the concept of noble wars.

By turns historical and philosophical and theological, Obama spoke about subjects such as reconciling the desire for peace with the need sometimes to wage war, the importance of nonviolence as well as its shortcomings and failures, and other Really Big Questions. Admirably, I thought, he did not give either this left-ish European audience or the American audience back home exactly what it wanted to hear. It was a complicated speech, maybe even hard to follow for some people. I love nuance myself, but it's not the kind of thing that makes the masses go ga-ga.

"My accomplishments are slight," Obama quickly acknowledged, before offering the second and more important acknowledgement that everyone was waiting for. Yes, he said, I am the head of state of a nation that is now enmeshed in two wars – one winding down (he noted hopefully), and one not of our choosing (an assessment with which many in that audience might have not agreed).

What could have followed was a series of self-justifying bromides regarding the planned build-up in Afghanistan. Not that George Bush ever would have received a Nobel prize, but that's the sort of thing Bush would have done, the kind of thing we heard so often over eight years – one-sided, sophistic and intellectually flimsy justifications, delivered with more than a soupçon of defensiveness against those evil liberal elites (rhetoric of which conservatives never tire).

Nothing he could have done or said would have pleased those who have already decided that he is a Jimmy Carter figure, Hell bent on destroying the United States. But, to the rest of us, it was a minefield which he made his way through deftly.

My favourite line was the one he aimed at followers of al Qaeda:

"If you truly believe you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint."

Malkin and the other right wing haters will have ignored the fact that this line could have applied easily to the previous American administration.

I honestly think that this is what they hate most about Obama. He does nuance. And they loathe that. They seek constant certainty of the kind offered by the previous White House incumbent; even if what he was certain about was utterly wrong.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, Nobel peace prize

Charles Johnson: "Why I Parted Ways With The Right".

I've seen this coming for a while now, but it's a further indication of just how alienating the American right wing currently are. Now, Charles Johnson, the man behind Little Green Footballs, a website which has long been considered amongst the most right wing on the web, has finally broken ranks because of the lunacy that he recognises in his counterparts.

He hinted recently about where his mind was:

I don’t think there is an anti-jihadist movement anymore... It’s all a bunch of kooks. I’ve watched some people who I thought were reputable, and who I trusted, hook up with racists and Nazis. I see a lot of them promoting stories and causes that I think are completely nuts.

Now, in a post entitled "Why I Parted Ways With The Right", he lays out exactly why he is deserting this particular sinking ship:

1. Support for fascists, both in America (see: Pat Buchanan, Robert Stacy McCain, etc.) and in Europe (see: Vlaams Belang, BNP, SIOE, Pat Buchanan, etc.)

2. Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)

3. Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)

4. Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)

5. Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)

6. Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)

7. Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)

8. A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)

9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.)

10. Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

Make no mistake, Charles Johnson was a true believer; but it appears that the insane lurch to the right by the Republican party - and the fact that this lurch seems to embrace every lunatic theory that is going - has finally proven too much for Johnson to associate himself with.

I've said since Obama's election that I thought the Republican movement were heading for the kind of splits which happened within the British Labour party after the election of Thatcher. There were many who argued that Labour's problem - myself, I am ashamed to admit, among them - was that they were not left wing enough.

The problem for today's Republican party isn't even that they are making the same kind of argument people like myself were making in the eighties, their problem is that they are engaging in - and embracing - some of the nuttiest shit I have ever heard.

Johnson lays it all out and says this:

The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

I have never been a fan of Johnson or his site, so it's really saying something when the Republican party have lurched too far to the right for even him to embrace.

But I do tip my hat to him for having the honesty to admit that the current Republican party are heading "over the cliff".

The party of Malkin, Bachmann, Palin and Coulter has always been a party of lunatics, now even some of their own are beginning to recognise what has long been apparent to the rest of us.

Click here for Johnson's article.

Tags: Little Green Footballs, Republicans, nutbags

Where There is Victory in Defeat.

As the Glenn Beck supported candidate finally concedes defeat, Michelle Malkin wants us to know that the lunatic wing of the GOP are not about to quieten down.

Malkin:

Here is one of the loudest messages of the 2009 off-off-year elections: Conservatives in America will no longer let their opponents define them out of the mainstream. They will not submit to Democrats. Or to the media. Or to Beltway Republican capitulationists. They will not “rebrand.” They will not sit down. They will not shut up.

No less a Republican figure than Newt Gingrich had begged them to shut up and support the party's candidate, but the tea baggers are not for towing the party line, they want their extremists selected or they are going to find their own candidates to put forward.

But Malkin still thinks this defeat is a cause for celebration:

Hoffman may have lost narrowly, but NY-23 is a much broader victory for conservatives who believe the Republican Party should stand for core limited government principles.

She is insisting that the real message to be taken here is her "my way or the highway" philosophy, despite the fact that the voters did not seem to want Hoffman.

And yet, despite all this attention, Hoffman lost. Voters in the 23rd did not embrace his philosophy. They saw Hoffman as a carpetbagger -- he didn't even live in the district -- who was trying to hijack their district for his own ideological ends.

But this is only the start of the Republican disintegration. The Malkin crowd will continue to insist that only candidates who share their ideological zeal be put forward as electoral candidates.

The task for Republicans after the last election was to regroup and make themselves electable. It was inevitable that there would be some discussion of whether the party should move more to the centre or continue on the insane right wing path of Palin and co.

The Republicans, thanks to the actions of Beck, Malkin, and the other loons have just lost a seat which they have held for 120 years. Malkin sees this as victory.

I've said it before about the Republicans, but the lunatics really are taking over that particular asylum. It really looks as if all out war is now about to take place in that party.

UPDATE:



Here, Hoffman tells Glenn Beck that he is his mentor.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Hoffman, Malkin, Glenn Beck

Scarborough: Voters see Limbaugh cheering Olympic bid defeat and say, "My God, the Republicans have gone off the deep-end".

The fault lines on the American right are becoming clearer by the day with Scarborough distancing himself from the kind of comments Limbaugh and Beck made once Chicago failed to win the right to host the Olympics.

It's now too much for even O'Reilly to stomach and that's saying something about just how far out there Limbaugh and Beck currently are.



Hat tip to Media Matters.

Tags: Republicans, Olympics, Scarborough, O'Reilly

Conservatives Celebrate America's Loss.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

I remember my delight the day London won it's bid to host the Olympics. I just felt really pleased that the city I live in had been successful against so many other fine cities. And yes, I thought that perhaps I might even get to go along and see the opening ceremony.

So the reaction of the American right to Chicago failing to win the right to host the games I find utterly shocking.

They delight in Chicago's failure because they equate that with a failure for Obama. It's the proof that Limbaugh really meant it when he said that he wanted Obama to fail.

I am sure these same people would have applauded as Bush proposed Chicago to host the games, but now that the Democrats are in power they literally want the US to go to Hell in a handcart.

Aren't these the same f#ckwits that used to accuse others of lacking patriotism? If there's anything less patriotic than delighting in your own country's failure, then I'd love to know what that thing is.

Tags: Republicans, Olympics

Malkin's venom knows no bounds: Obama 'doesn't like this country very much,' is the 'Groveler in Chief'.

Obama earned round after round of applause at the United Nations, where a grateful world applauded the fact that the dreadful years of George W Bush were over and a new sensible American president was speaking a language which the entire world understands and shares.

Cue head explosions over at Faux News.

Malkin has gone as far as to say that Obama has proven that he doesn't like the United States very much.

Malkin: He doesn't like this country very much. And I think you did a great video tour there of all of his wonderful hits on his "We Suck '09" tour, ah, so far. And this latest speech before the United Nations and its cast of villainous characters -- it was really a Legion of Doom parade that he dignified with his presence -- and he solidified his place in the international view as the Great Appeaser and the Groveler in Chief!

What they actually can't bear is that Obama is admitting in public what the entire world already knows: George Bush - and the style of leadership supplied by the neo-cons - made the US more despised around the globe than at any time since the Vietnam war. That is simply a fact.

But listen to what it is that they actually find most offensive. Hannity bemoans the fact that "Obama was saying we're not going to force our values on you." Malkin is horrified that Obama has offered "a rejection of American exceptionalism."

I mean seriously, is Malkin actually insane enough to believe in such an abstract concept as American exceptionalism? That it's okay if the US does things which it condemns others for doing because the US is innately good? Does Hannity seriously believe that it's a good thing to force your values on to other people and other cultures?

Those are rhetorical questions. Of course they believe that. They really are that insane. However, even by their insane standards, Malkin reached new levels of nuttiness:

Malkin: With this speech, and over the last eight months with his policies of retreat and surrender, he has solidified his place as the weakest of weak leaders of modern American history. There's no question about it! They laugh at us! He is a laughingstock.

Yes, that's why the world applauded. Applause must be the new form of laughter.

This produces the exact same reaction in me as I had to yesterday's conversation between Glenn Beck and John Bolton: these people are so out of touch with where the world currently find itself that the only thing which they are emphasising is their own irrelevance.

They have nothing of value to offer, so they are simply left spluttering with rage on the sidelines spitting venom at passers-by. They are yesterday's people, and there's something about the bile which they are spewing which tells me that, deep down, they know this.

The ideas and the world views which they have spent the past eight years defending have all been explicitly rejected. And it's driven them nuts.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: Malkin, Hannity, Obama, United Nations, American exceptionalism

Malkin: As Many Attended Tea Bag Rally As Attended Obama's Inauguration.

Michelle Malkin is making the utterly insane claim that more than two million people attended Saturday's teabaggers protest in Washington; which is to claim that more people turned out for this event than turned out for the inauguration of Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush.

Indeed, by her estimate possibly as many people attended on Saturday as turned out to watch the historic inauguration of America's first ever black president.

When you think of it on those terms you get some idea of how bat-shit crazy such claims are.

And, as always appears to be the case with Malkin, she is sticking to her guns even as other news outlets put attendance way below what she claimed.

The New York Times reported that “thousands” of protesters “filled the west lawn of the Capitol and spilled onto the National Mall,” while Fox News wrote that “tens of thousands” marched on Washington. CNN said “reporters at the scene described the massive crowd as reaching the tens of thousands.”

Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, said the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. But the day of the rally, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.

So, let's get this straight, Malkin is sticking by her utterly ridiculous claim whilst even Fox News - who were practically the events sponsor - put their estimate at "tens of thousands".

You really couldn't make up the shit that woman spouts.

Tags: Malkin, Tea Baggers

Bruce Bartlett: Why I Am Anti-Republican.

Bruce Bartlett is often asked why he is no longer a Republican, and the answer he gives is exactly what I thought would happen to real conservatives within that movement during the last election.

I think the party got seriously on the wrong track during the George W. Bush years, as I explained in my Impostor book. In my opinion, it no longer bears any resemblance to the party of Ronald Reagan. I still consider myself to be a Reaganite. But I don’t see any others anywhere in the GOP these days, which is why I consider myself to be an independent. Mindless partisanship has replaced principled conservatism.

[...]

I think the Republican Party is in the same boat the Democrats were in in the early eighties — dominated by extremists unable to see how badly their party was alienating moderates and independents. The party’s adults formed the Democratic Leadership Council to push the party back to the center and it was very successful. But there is no group like that for Republicans. That has left lunatics like Glenn Beck as the party’s de facto leaders. As long as that remains the case, I want nothing to do with the GOP.

I will know that the party is on the path to recovery when someone in a position of influence reaches out to former Republicans like me. We are the most likely group among independents to vote Republican. But I see no effort to do so. All I see is pandering to the party’s crazies like the birthers . In the short run that may be enough to pick up a few congressional seats next year, but I see no way a Republican can retake the White House for the foreseeable future.

In the eighties, every time Labour lost an election to Thatcher or Major, lunatics like myself would argue that the reason we had lost was that we were not left wing enough. It was an act of utter lunacy, to presume that the country had embraced an ideology as right wing as Thatcherism because the alternative was not leftist enough for their tastes.

I was much younger then, or at least that is my excuse.

But I see a similar thing taking place amongst American Republicans, where the people currently representing them as actually as mad as March hares. They embrace the birther movement; they accuse Obama of trying to "indoctrinate" school children; they claim - as Beck does almost daily - that Obama is a Socialist, a Marxist, a Fascist, in way which insinuates that, either Beck has no idea what any of these ideologies actually are, or that he imagines them all to be interchangeable.

In any event, he simply succeeds in making himself look incredibly stupid, as if he is talking about things which he clearly doesn't understand.

And he, as much as Limbaugh, O'Reilly and Steele are the public face of today's Republican party. As long as that is the case, then these people will remain simply unelectable.

Click title for Bartlett's article.

Tags: Bruce Bartlett, Republicans, Becks, Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Steele

Obama's Speech to Kids is Released.

They have released the speech which Obama is due to give to America's school children. It's exactly as most sensible people expected to be; emphasising the need for kids to study hard, not to cut class and to be respectful of their teachers.

He talks of kids who might not have both parents, or who might come from economically challenged backgrounds and says this:

But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying.

Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.

That message is about as American as apple pie, and it only undermines just how paranoid and stupid the right have been in everything they have said about Obama's wish to "indoctrinate" children.

And I think there is something genuinely inspiring in some of the things Obama says:

Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

I think it fantastic to tell kids that failing at something doesn't mean that you are stupid; to remind them that asking for help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

But the fact that the Republican naysayers have been proven utterly wrong on everything they claimed Obama was trying to do by addressing America's youth, won't have any influence at all on their paranoid ramblings.

They'll simply ignore the fact that they have been revealed as partisan paranoiacs and start spouting their latest insane theories. This is, sadly, simply what they do; and it's what the audience at Fox tune in for. They want their prejudices reinforced, which is what the Hannity's, Becks and Malkins of this world do so very well.

Click title for full speech.

Tags: Obama, speech to school kids, Hannity, Malkin

Stunning Display of Douchebaggery: Right-Wing Noise Machine Continues to Say Obama "Indoctrinating" With School Speech.

The level of wingnuttery being devoted to Obama addressing school kids in America is simply awesome.

As usual Michelle Malkin is in a league of her own:

We know that the left has always used kids in public schools as guinea pigs and as junior lobbyists for their social liberal agenda.

Yeah, well as I said, it's not about the text. He'll actually deliver a very innocuous speech, I can guarantee you that. But in these classrooms, which are living laboratories for left wing activism.....

Living laboratories for left wing activism? So that's his plan... He's going to create a new breed of pre-kindergarten quasi socialists? God, he's a sly one isn't he?

And look at the reaction this has elicited from Michael Medved's wife:

My wife Diane seldom gets upset about politics. But President Barack Obama’s recent demonstration of megalomania in insisting on beginning the school year by simultaneously addressing all public school kids in the United States elicited a concise response: “it’s sick.”

Apparently it's "sick" for a US president to talk to US school children. Where were they when this guy was prowling the school rooms? In fact he managed to hang around this particular class for about eleven minutes while the nation was under attack.

They Are Getting Madder By The Day.

So, Beck shows us three clips. The black panthers, Louis Farrakhan and a group of young black men in military attire sort of marching up and down. All of which Beck finds scary.

He then gives himself the pathetic out he always gives himself:

I am not suggesting the President of the United States or anybody in this government have anything to do with the Black Panthers, Louis Farrakhan or this group here.

I'm sorry. If he's not suggesting a connection then why is he even talking about this and Obama in the same sentence?

And I thought these were the very people who rejoiced at teabaggers and people carrying guns to Obama rallies? Oh, but those were white folk. Looking at the clips Beck showed again I can see why he finds these images so scary.

White folks with guns are exercising their second amendment rights, black folks doing the same are suddenly Obama's citizen militia.

This lot are getting more unhinged by the day. Oh, and Beck couldn't find out much about the group of young boys in military gear so he came to this conclusion:

We have been looking for two weeks for connections on this. We can't find any. They have sealed this story down as tight as a drum.

It's a classic example of the way the conspiracy nut brain functions. If he can't find anything to suit his particular bias, it must be because, "they have sealed this down as tight as a drum."

Absence of evidence only makes Beck more suspicious, not less.

Tags: Beck, Malkin, Obama's citizen militia, Fox News

Malkin gone wild.

Malkin is in a tizzy because Josh Marshall has called out the "grassroots" movement she loves so much as the crazy AstroTurf Republican hooligan fest which it actually is:

Talking Points Memo blogger Josh Marshall bemoaned a fiscal conservative activist’s memo offering advice on how to “pack the hall..spread out” and challenge a politician early “to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda.” Horrors! “This amounts to a sort of civic vigilantism,” Marshall fretted.

No, showing up at a congressional town hall and booing a talking points-programmed political hack isn’t “civic vigilantism.”

I'm afraid it is if the purpose of showing up is to actively prevent any discussion from taking place. No-one is saying that they shouldn't turn up. No-one is saying that they shouldn't make their views known as clearly and as strongly as they possibly can. But town hall meetings are so representatives can listen and respond. Continually shouting "Just say no!" actually disrupts the very things that town hall meetings are supposed to achieve. There is no exchange of ideas there, rather one side are behaving like a mob and making sure that no opinion other than their own is even heard.

She prattles on:

That is what the anti-war, anti-free trade, anti-Bush mobsters did over the last eight years – and there wasn’t a peep about those brute tactics from Obama’s blogging pals.

Actually, if my memory serves me correctly, most people who wanted to protest during the Bush years were placed in "free speech zones" far from where the president could see them.

Now, no-one is saying that these insane tea baggers aren't allowed to attend, but if their purpose of attending is to disrupt the meeting and make discussion impossible, perhaps they would be better off in one of the "free speech zones" which right wingers had no problem with during the past eight years?

Or is there simply no limit to their hypocrisy?

Tags: Malkin, tea baggers, protest, town hall disruptions

Michelle Malkin Gets Wingnutty On ABC.

Malkin again. This time she's trying to pretend that the tea baggers are actually a counter insurgency and that the Democrats are "vastly underestimating just how grassroots this movement really is."

The notion that this is a genuine grassroots movement is simply laughable:

The lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, which orchestrated the anti-Obama tea parties earlier this year, are now pursuing an aggressive strategy to create an image of mass public opposition to health care and clean energy reform. A leaked memo from Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer with the FreedomWorks website Tea Party Patriots, details how members should be infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

These vile people simply cannot accept the democratic decision of the American people and think that when they stage their foul protests that they are actually representing the majority of Americans. They are not. They are loons talking to themselves. And their protests are no more genuinely "grassroots" than The Brooks Brothers Riot, when Republican thugs used force to stop an electoral recount.

As we saw during the presidency of Bill Clinton, when these people lose power, they go insane almost instantly.

UPDATE:



Here is an example of the kind of thuggery these people wish to indulge in. Note how the last thing they want is to allow any discussion to take place. Intelligent conversation is something which they would probably lose, so they simply set out to give the impression that the public - 76% of whom are actually in favour of having a public option - don't want Obama's health plan.

Tags: Malkin, wingnuts, tea parties

Bill Maher on Insane Malkin.

I wanted to write something about how ridiculous Malkin's new book is, finding rampant corruption and cronyism in an administration that is only six months old, but Maher does it better than I ever could have.

As Maher points out, Bush used to claim it would be hundred years before anyone could really judge his presidency, Malkin has arrived at her conclusion within six months. And, unless she's the fastest writer in the history of journalism, one would have to conclude that - as the book is written, printed and has made it's way to the shops already - that she came to that conclusion almost as soon as Obama was elected.

Tags: Malkin, Maher, corruption, scandal, cronyism

Michelle Malkin: 'Obamacare' Is A Means To 'Amnestizing' 'Border Jumpers'.

Is there no subject that Michelle Malkin can't link to immigration?

Here she laments that universal healthcare is simply a Democratic ruse to guarantee that "illegal lawbreakers, border jumpers, visa over stayers, and deportation fugitives" will become future Democratic voters.

And you thought it was about bringing health care to the uninsured? How naive...

Malkin knows it's all part of a Democratic plan to overrun the nation with illegal immigrants.

Tags: Malkin, wingnuts, universal healthcare, Obama

Michelle Malkin: David Letterman Is A Deranged Coward!

The insane brigade have rounded on Letterman for making jokes about Sarah Palin's daughter. And the most insane of them all, Michelle Malkin, steps up to argue that no jokes of this kind would be acceptable were they to be made about the daughters of the Clinton's or the Obama's.

Perhaps Malkin is forgetting this:

Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno."

-- Sen. John McCain, speaking to a Republican dinner, June 1998.

I don't remember Malkin being outraged at that point. But her outrage shows that the insane brigade still harbour hopes that Sarah Palin might be their next candidate. I do hope they are right.

Nothing would be funnier than that know nothing numb skull representing their party.

Tags: Michelle Malkin, Letterman, Sarah Palin

Shooting of US abortion doctor shocks Obama.

Obama went to Notre Dame recently and asked that both sides try to avoid extremist positions in the abortion debate. He has got his answer from the rabid right wing:

Violence returned to the abortion debate in the United States yesterday when a doctor who has long been the target of right-to-life activists was gunned down and killed in a church in Kansas where he was an usher.

Lawyers for George Tiller, a 67-year-old doctor who has long been one of only a few in the US willing to perform so-called "late-term" abortions, confirmed that he had been killed in the attack, which happened as he walked into the Reformation Lutheran Church in his home town of Wichita.

Last night Obama was said to be "shocked and outraged" over the killing.

When I listen to some of the extremist positions the right occupy, and watch the way that their anger is being fueled by the Limbaugh's and O'Reilly's and Malkins of this world, and listen to them being told by Glenn Beck that they have to "do something" before their country is taken from them, my only surprise is that this kind of thing doesn't happen more often.

There were clips of Sarah Palin's rally audience during the campaign which I found terrifying. Here were a group of people, who were clearly not the brightest of the bunch, being told that the man the Democrats were putting up for president was "palling around with terrorists."

Cries of "Kill him!" and "Terrorist!" became almost routine at these events.

And I know we will now hear from the right that this was done by one unhinged individual and that everyone has to take responsibility for their own actions. But that's sort of my point.

People also have to take responsibility for creating the feeling that the democratic process has resulted in America being taken from it's people and from this constant encouragement that the people need to "do something". Much as I find it gross to watch Glenn Beck constantly weep for what he imagines has been done to US, there are people out there who take that shit seriously.



In this clip Beck talks of the people forming militias because income tax has had to be raised to between 80-95% just to pay for what has already been spent.

One guest warns:

"This is going to be violent, people can't afford it anymore. Look, cities are going to look like Dodge city, they are going to be uncontrollable, you're going to have gangs in control, motorcycle marauders, you're not going to have enough police, just like Mexico, to control the situation."

There has been a strand of thought amongst the right which states that the government is "disenfranchising people over and over again" and, as Beck states here, that some people "know the constitution" but feel that "the government has betrayed the constitution and so they will see themselves as people who are standing up for the constitution".

Beck's guest, when asked how one diffuses such a situation, replies:

"I don't think you'd want to diffuse it Glenn, we've had a forty minute programme so far and all of the problems we have talked about in one way or another are the result of the American government either overspending or overreaching".

"Glenn, the second amendment is about, at base, not about hunting or about a militia, but about resisting tyranny. The founders were very concerned about allowing individual citizens weaponry to defend themselves as a last resort against a tyrannical government. I don't think the founders ever considered that there would be a tyranny of incompetence, but I think that what we are facing. And, ultimately, that the right of an American."

Glenn goes on to state that the government, "are betraying the principles of our founders every day that they are in office."

So, the notion that the people will have to take matters into their own hands is one which people like Beck have been pushing for months now.

And now, one lone nutter has done exactly that. And that is down to that lone nutter alone. But there has been an atmosphere created which has made an action like this seem almost inevitable.

UPDATE:

Via Balloon-juice, here are just some of the comments on Freeper:

2. Tiller has committed outrage after outrage and not only gotten away with it, he has made a fortune! Sooner or later this had to happen.

6. What goes around comes around...

8. One less nazi as far as I am concerned.

10. Hope the guy gets away.

20. Obama is going to take advantage of this murder to sieze even more control over our society.

I would not even put it past them to commit this murder themselves, as an excuse to sieze power. Reichstag Fire, and all that...

That's an appalling amount of anger and paranoia. And some people, rather than attempting to calm it down, have been fueling it to gain nothing more honorable than ratings.

UPDATE II:

Another right winger comments. This one via Crooks and Liars:

You have to wonder if the reason why we have a legal system is in order to steal the oxygen from moral vigilantism. You have to wonder if the legal system breaks down whether vigilantism, when all other options fail, becomes a moral imperative.

Again, the notion that vigilantism has become "a moral imperative", the argument that the people have to take the law into their own hands. It's an argument that certain right wing commentators have been pushing for months now.

Click title for full article.

Tags: George Tiller, abortion, murder, American right wing, O'Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, Beck

Mancow's Waterboarding A HOAX? Mancow Responds!

I spoke yesterday about the madness that Malkin and the right wingers are currently indulging in, claiming that Mancow's waterboarding was, in fact, a hoax.

They make this ludicrous claim despite the fact that - should Mancow have wanted to create a hoax here - wouldn't he have created a hoax which proved that waterboarding was not torture? Why would he have created a hoax which undermined his own argument?

Here Mancow appears with Olbermann to say that he was, indeed, waterboarded.

The argument made by the nutters on the right really shows that they will go to any lengths rather than accept the fact that waterboarding is torture. And, if they have to throw one of their own under the bus rather than accept this simple truth, then they are showing - once again - that they are more than happy to do so.

Mancow: This was me on the radio trying to see what it is about so that I could argue that it was not torture. I failed and now everyone is mad at me. I'm sorry I can't go party line.

Olbermann: And you have taken heat for saying that waterboarding is torture?

Mancow: Oh, c'mon. Land of the Free? I give you the Land of the Lemmings. You say whatever your party tells you to say. Left wing radio says what they are supposed to say, right wing radio follows their talking points, and frankly I am sick of it. How about the truth for God's sakes, man?

Mancow's crime is that he is no longer following the Republican mantra. And he's no longer following it because, unlike Hannity, he had the courage to test his convictions publicly. And he failed. He discovered that something he thought of as simply "water in the face" was actually torture.

And, for that, the right wing loons are rounding on him. They won't accept the truth even when one of their own is waterboarded to prove their own argument but finds that he actually can't do it.

He then instantly becomes some kind of sell out/traitor/hoaxer.

There's a really simple way to prove if that is true. Hannity or one of the other loons can easily subject themselves to the process and prove what a piece of cake it is.

(Tick, tock. Tick, tock..... Tumbleweed blows by...)

Tags: mancow, waterboard, keith olbermann, bush, cheney, torture, waterboarding, gitmo

Mad Malkin and Hoaxes.

Michelle Malkin is almost certifiably insane. She has found proof that lefty blogs have been "punked" and taken in by Mancow's apparent waterboarding, which he admitted - despite previously defending it - that he now felt was torture.

Last week, liberal blogs went ga-ga over radio talk show host Mancow’s waterboarding stunt.

Matthew Yglesias wet his pants. He featured Mancow’s photo and the blaring headline: “Conservative Radio Host Has Himself Waterboard to Prove It’s Not Torture, Realizes He Was Wrong.”

MSNBC and HuffPo embraced him. Ezra Klein at the Washington Post piled on. So did Jonathan Chait: “I think the torture debate would be mighty different if more of the conservatives who scoff at waterboarding would try the same thing.”

And Think Progress. And Andrew Sullivan.

And on and on and on.

Now, there’s a paper trail that suggests the glaringly obvious — that it was all an elaborate hoax, reportedly orchestrated with the help of Jerry Springer’s publicist.

To prove it was, "all a hoax" she includes a statement that Mancow had issued by his publicist.

The statement, which she quotes on her site, says:

I am not a magician. Many news cameras were there!

Obviously, it was on the radio and I wasn’t in prison. I’m also not a radicalized Muslim terrorist. But it was not a hoax! I repeat: NOT A HOAX.

[..]

Sorry, I thought for years it wasn’t torture and now I do. The video is there for all to see.

So, she proves it was all a hoax, by giving a statement from him denying it was a hoax.

You really have to wonder what goes on in that hate addled brain of hers.

Click title for her whole insane posting.

Tags: Malkin, Mancow, hoax, waterboarding