"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." - John Kenneth Galbraith.
God, he hits all the right notes. This is a "perversion of journalism". Breitbart is "scum".
"Words crashed together never to inform, only to inflame."
"It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent and to convict the benevolent as racist."
"It's intentional redirection from reality and progress to a paranoid delusion and the fomenting of hatred of Americans by Americans. And nearly every last word of it is never, in any tangible sense, true."
That's the worst thing about all of this. It was intentional. There was a deliberate attempt to correct what the right saw as a wrong, and - to this end - they were prepared to edit a video so that it changed utterly the truth of what we were looking at.
All this talk of taking their country back makes me wonder; from who? It's so lazy to accuse people of being racist that I have long held back from doing so, but Tancredo's speech didn't play with racist notions, it positively bathed itself in them.
And, as Olbermann says, it's so very rare to attend any political event and find that every single person in attendance looks just like you.
Normally political events are attended by every race and every religion. Why is the tea party movement so exceptionally Caucasian?
And when the opening speaker at their rally calls for literacy tests before people are allowed to vote, we are no longer even communicating in code. All of us know the history of that particular test and what it's intention was.
The Anti Defamation League has stated that Glenn Beck creates "an intersection between the mainstream and the extreme".
HUFFINGTON: It is frightening. Well, I would say the fearmonger-in-chief title should still be reserved for Dick Cheney, even in retirement. But barring that, there is something that we need to really pay attention to with Glenn Beck. We cannot just dismiss him. Because the truth of the matter is that there is a good reason why we have an exemption to the free speech protection by the first amendment when we say you cannot shout fire in a crowded theater.
And he's doing that every night. He's basically using images of violence to bring together with all that he's accusing the Obama administration of, which varies from racism to communism, Nazism and everything else in between. So, all that has definitely an impact. I believe words matter, language matters and he's using it in incredibly irresponsible ways night after night.
Personally, I think the man is an utter moron who doesn't understand the difference between Fascism, Communism and Socialism, but that doesn't matter, because his audience don't either.
He shouldn't be dismissed. He's selling hate and Murdoch is broadcasting it and that audience are swallowing this shit whole.
Olbermann goes after Wilson with a Special Comment:
"This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President's remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill," you hurriedly said last night as a nation caved in on you, and your own party's leadership coerced you into saying something. "While I disagree with the President's statements, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the President for this lack of civility."
For the lack of civility, Congressman?
Is that what you think this is about?
Of course your comments were inappropriate and regrettable -- you are a Republican trying to de-legitimize the elected president of the United States -- that's all you do, and that's all you've got.
Of course you let your emotions get the best of you. At a figure of $435,296 in campaign donations from the Health Sector, of course your emotions would take over when your gravy train was threatened.
It isn't about "inappropriate and regrettable," Sir!
Your comments were inappropriate and regrettable and.... **wrong**!
You got up in front of the world, embarrassed your district, embarrassed your state, embarrassed your party, embarrassed your nation, shouted at the President like he was a referee at a ballgame and you were a drunk in the stands, and you were wrong.
House Bill 3200 specifically says, Sir, in language made precise and binding -- in section 246 -- under the heading, quote:
"NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS"
Look, Congressman!
All capital letters!
For the benefit of the factually-challenged!
"Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States."
You got it wrong!
There is no ambiguity, Sir. There is no disagreement!
Of course, Wilson continues to argue that he is right, no matter how many times his factual error is pointed out to him.
It is... this week, evident... that the greatest threat to the nation... is not terrorism... nor the economy... nor H1/N1... nor even bad health care.
It is rank, willful stupidity.
When did we come to extol stupidity ahead of information, and rely on voo-doo, superstition, and prejudice ahead of education?
How many Republicans believe in Death Panels... and Brownies and Elves?
When did we start to listen to -- to elect -- the impregnably dense? I was almost too fearful of using the word "impregnably" because of the prospect that Governor Palin would go after me the way she went after Letterman.
Here, Olbermann lands right on the money. It's no longer an argument between two sides who both believe in different things. It's an argument between one side trying to argue with the facts and another who will literally say or do anything in order to stop their opponents.
I have no idea whether the Republicans believe the nonsense which they are spouting, I have no idea whether it is cynicism or profound stupidity which causes them to say so many things which are factually incorrect.
But, perhaps it is because they are playing to their ever more narrow base, that they really do begin to look as if they are "impregnably dense". Either that, or they simply are.
Last November’s election so wounded the GOP that the nation is now suffering collateral damage. The Republicans who were punished at the polls for the failures of the Bush years were those in the most evenly contested districts, which meant they tended to be relatively moderate. Those who represent solidly Republican districts were safe, and their greatest fear isn’t being defeated by a Democrat next fall but being challenged by a primary opponent who’s even more of a right-wing yahoo.
There are quite a few Democratic pragmatists in Congress—which is why health care reform is being worked over so thoroughly by the Blue Dogs. In the Republican ranks, especially in the House, pragmatists are few and ideologues are legion. Many of them probably believe the nonsense they spout about creeping socialism and an urgent threat to America As We Know It. But it’s still nonsense. The ideologues’ sincerity just makes this toxic, rejectionist rhetoric more dangerous.
Obviously, I want Obama to proceed with the public option, but I still think Keith is pushing the boat out too far when he states that Obama would face a primary challenge if he doesn't deliver a public option.
Olbermann asked Robinson, "What good does it profit a man to win a bill and lose the base of his party?" Robinson warned that Obama should tread carefully on health care reform and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because "you don't want to see the progressive caucus in a foul mood."
Olbermann agreed, adding that "He's compromised on everything so far and as self-defeating as it may be, the progressive caucus and progressives would abandon him if necessary, if this was to be the policy of this administration into 2012. If it's necessary to find somebody else to run against him, I think they'd do it, no matter how destructive that may seem at face value."
I want Obama to use his control of both houses to aggressively push forward the agenda he was elected on. He was elected to bring about big change and he is, so far, moving far too slowly for the liking of many people.
But the notion that he will face a primary challenge strikes me as an empty threat. I'd love to know who would be moronic enough to be that stalking horse.
Olbermann takes on the kind of nonsense which certain Republican nutcases have been indulging in. He begins with the ridiculous statement by Sarah Palin:
You shouted "fire" in a crowded theater -- a hot one -- and then today tried to roll it back with "no, no, sorry, not fire, I meant flashlights."
Too little, too late, too obvious.
Madam, you are a clear and present danger to the safety and security of this nation.
Whether the 'death panel' is something you dreamed, or something you dreamed-up, whether it is the product of a low intellect and a fevered imagination, or the product of a high intelligence and a sober ability to exploit people, you should be ashamed of yourself for having introduced it into the public discourse, and it should debar you, for all time, from any position of responsibility or trust in the governance of this nation or any of its states or municipalities.
Then he brings up the fact that Palin, despite complaining that her children had been used for political target practice, has herself used her child as a political weapon.
He then turns on Glenn Beck, and takes apart this stupid man's rhetoric.
She is in fact a relative newcomer to the orgy of fantasized violence and imagined revolution, whose fires have been stoked, for weeks, for months, for years, by Conservatives -- but more often by mere mercenaries, men and women who believe nothing, who are in it for the game, or the profit, or the sheer kick of bending masses to their will.
Glenn Beck, who recoils when somebody actually readies for an attack on one of the "FEMA internment camps" he so cavalierly invented, who so cowers at the thought that he might get blamed, or might lose his precious and well-earned gold, that he actually has to plead with his viewers not to become new Timothy McVeighs…
Glenn Beck, says that… and then comes back three days later and jokes about -- poisoning the Speaker of the House. It is irresistible to you, isn't it?
It's the same thrill of irresponsibility, of caveman thought, of the drug addict who suddenly and joyously cares nothing about self-restraint.
He gets them both spot on, but the people they are talking to don't want to hear common sense and logic. In their paranoid fantasies they see only plots which "they" are hatching and which Palin and Beck and others are bravely pointing out.
Their disciples are moronic. Which is why Beck and Palin are their guiding lights.
He then discusses the birthers and the way that all right wing discourse has descended into madness.
O'Reilly claims here that Lou Dobbs' wife and children were "brutally personally attacked" by Keith Olbermann. He then wonders how long "this barbaric display" will be allowed before the owners of MSNBC intervene.
Let's look at what Keith said:
A man who during the week makes millions attacking immigrants, and especially Hispanics, even though his wife and kids are Hispanic.
How is that an attack on Dobbs' wife and kids? Olbermann has stated a fact. Lou Dobbs' wife is an Hispanic. Indeed, Dobbs himself often quotes this fact as proof that he does not suffer from Hispanophobia.
Others have accused him of Hispanophobia, a charge he deniesand one which he has said offends him deeply, as his wife Debi Segura is a Mexican-American.
On what planet is pointing out a fact - a fact which Dobbs often cites in his own defence - a brutal personal attack?
It would now appear that, in O'Reilly's world, even mentioning someone's wife and kids is akin to "brutally attacking" them.
One could argue that a person's wife and children should never be brought into any argument, but that's not the case which Bill is making. Bill goes much further, claiming that a brutal attack has taken place and is wondering how long "this barbaric display" is going to be allowed to continue.
I can't even see where this "attack" has taken place.
Olbermann is simply brilliant here. He catches the hypocrisy of Republicans, the very people who campaign to ban abortion, the party which intervened in the Terry Schiavo case, now complaining that the government ought to get out of the way of the relationship between patients and their doctors. The sheer scale of that hypocrisy simply hadn't occurred to me until Olbermann pointed it out.
He also rounds on the Blue Dog Democrats, those pseudo progressives doing everything they can to stop the public option. As Keith says, "We do not need to call the Democrats holding this up: Blue Dogs. That one word: "Dogs" is perfectly sufficient." He goes as far as to call them, "the prostitutes of our system".
I am with Jonathan Turley here. Doing nothing would be better than what Holder is proposing. He appears to be accepting the spurious legal justification for torture put forward by the Bush administration and saying that he will only prosecute people who did things that went beyond what the Bush administration said was allowed.
The crimes committed here were committed by the lawyers who, in bad faith, decided that torture was acceptable. The Obama administration are so fearful of prosecuting Bush and Cheney, that they are now proposing the worst of all worlds. Prosecute the grunts on the ground who went too far. Ignore the people who actually came up with this disgusting policy in the first place.
It would be better to do nothing than to do this. This is Lynndie England and Abu Ghraib all over again.
Olbermann calls for a quarantine of Fox News because Bill O'Reilly has facilitated the murder of George Tiller.
Of course, O'Reilly will never accept responsibility for his part in creating the atmosphere in which this murder took place.
Right wingers often berate TV violence as leading to actual violence within the community, but here O'Reilly insists that there can be no link between his calling Tiller a "baby killer" repeatedly on TV and the horrific act which recently took place.
As Olbermann says, it's time to say enough to the hate filled and clearly dangerous rhetoric which certain Fox News commentators have been indulging in.
This just isn't acceptable any more. And O'Reilly is not even showing an ounce of shame for his part in inciting domestic terrorism.
The Bush regime always urged that we should listen to the generals. Well, they should listen themselves to General Sanchez who is now saying that he supports the formation of a truth commission. He seems prepared to allow the chips to fall where they may.
He also states that "soldiers must never be abandoned on the battlefield again, as mine were."
Sanchez' soldiers famously included Lynndie England and Charles Graner who were prosecuted, they say for following orders.
When the General in charge of the entire Iraq operation calls for an investigation into what took place, it really must be becoming impossible for an investigation to be avoided.
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.
It has seemed for weeks now as if the Cheney's - dad Dick and daughter Liz - are on a never ending, "Please don't put my Daddy in Jail" tour, in which they insist that there are secret documents which, if released, would prove that "torture works" and exonerate the old war criminal from his crimes; although I must admit that I never thought the fact that any crime "worked" has ever previously stopped any criminal activity from being a crime.
But now Carl Levin, someone who was privy to the same materials Cheney has been talking about, has stepped up to the plate to say that these documents don't actually say what Cheney and his daughter are claiming that they say.
"Mr. Cheney has also claimed that the release of classified documents would prove his view that the techniques worked. But those classified documents say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of the abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified so that people can judge for themselves what is fact and what is fiction."
Why should we be remotely surprised? The Bush administration lied about WMD, they lied about Saddam's links to al Qaeda, they lied about exposing Valerie Plame, they lied about torture, and now Levin says they are lying about the results which they claim they gained from that torture.
At what point do we stop being surprised that an administration which lied more than almost any other - apart from Nixon's - is caught, once again, lying?
UPDATE:
Rachel Maddow on the same subject, with clips of just how often the Cheney's have made these bogus claims. She then discusses with Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly the significance of Levin's intervention.
Karpinski says that she is "flabbergasted" by Cheney's claim that there is no link between the memos that his team crafted and the actions which took place on the ground.
She says that these soldiers did exactly what the memos said, which is either a extraordinary coincidence or the carrying out of official policy. Cheney would have us believe that it was the former, though only the most committed Republican ideologue could bring themselves to seriously make that argument.
The administration issued the memos outlining the ways in which torture could be carried out, and yet, when that torture does indeed take place, they expect us to believe Cheney's claim that the two factors are in no way linked.
I am with Karpinski when she says that Cheney's objectives now are limited to saving himself.
He is out there defending torture, and I would applaud the Obama regime if they ever had the courage to prosecute this reprehensible old torturer. He knows his neck is on the line here, which is why he is suddenly portraying himself as the defender of the CIA, when we all know he was actually it's harshest critic. He would say literally anything if he thought it could get him off the hook here.
Erich "Mancow" Muller talks to Keith Olbermann about his recent experience with waterboarding, which he undertook to prove that waterboarding was NOT torture, but ended up stating that this was "absolutely torture".
Muller states that he's already had Hannity on the phone to tell him that it's not torture, despite the fact that Hannity has still not taken up the challenge to be waterboarded himself. Maybe we should listen to Hannity on this subject when he has shown the same courage of his convictions which Muller has shown.
So, a right wing radio shock jock agrees to be waterboarded in order to prove that it is NOT torture. He changed his mind INSTANTLY. He now agrees that this is, "absolutely torture, absolutely, that's drowning!"
And, lets not forget, he knew that he could end this process at any time, a luxury which was not afforded to Cheney's victims.
The argument over this subject should now be considered over. Especially as this guy agreed to have this done specifically to prove that it was not torture.
Maybe Cheney can agree to be waterboarded publicly to prove that this process is not torture?
Olbermann responds to Limbaugh's request that MSNBC go for the next thirty days without ever mentioning his name.
It's a ludicrous request. Limbaugh is now asking that he should be allowed to spew the bile which he spews every day and that no-one should call him out on it. Well, Keith just did....
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.
