Operation "RoundUp Patriots": FOX News, Glenn Beck, and 9/12 CoIntelPro Op

[chris jones]

It's actually a bit deeper.

Beck had the Gadsen Flag on his website, this is a Rupert Murdoch propaganda campaign to cause a rebellion and give them an excuse to call for martial law.

Your hitting on it.....and lazershadow, good one.

Nazi tactics.

[TheGoodFight1984]

I sent that MIAC report over to a friend in St. Louis and he thought it was kinda amusing, told me some story about.. well this..

"Ha!  Glad you sent me this.  Maybe I should take my Ron Paul bumper sticker off my car.  ehh... probably not.  Typical of Missouri law enforcement in general.  A number of years back there was a traveling bike circus - can't remember their name - but they were riding all the way from the pacific Northwest to Washington D.C. as a sort of mobile protest against the war in Iraq.  When they rode through St. Louis, the police had been "tipped off" about a rolling bike gang full of communists and trouble makers who planned on protesting and tearing shit up.  On their way in town, they were riding through Tower Grove park - very near to us - and the cops showed up in a paddy wagon, arrested everyone and confiscated all their bikes.  They asked for their "bike licenses" - which technically you're supposed to have, but it's a law buried deep in the books that NO ONE had ever been punished for because everyone knew it was ridiculous.  So, none of them had licenses, and further none of them could "proove" that they owned the bikes they were riding, like they didn't have sales receipts.  They riders were like, "We f**king built these bikes you moron, we didn't buy them from anyone."  So, the cops then tried to bust them for stealing bikes.  Long story short - they got stuck in St. Louis for a while, then upon their court date the judge was like, "... bike licenses?  No one gives this law any creedence, and this is sort of a misinterpretation based on an older law, blah blah blah and the police were harassing you."  The case was tossed out and I believe the bikes were eventually returned to some of the riders.
This is what happens when people have too much power over others.  Little things become "exciting" in the boring St. Louis police world and hippie bike circuses become "roving, communist, terrorizing bike gangs who must be stopped at all costs!"    ...sigh... "

[TheGoodFight1984]

oh, and glen beck's 'truth movement' can get to f**k

go away and cry some more over your sucky career, glenda.

[lazyhorse]

The American Liberty League was funded by JP Morgan, Rockefeller and DuPont's...

illogical captain!

How about you do some research on it before posting a little picture.

misunderstanding here.
probably due to brevity, so here is the long version...

i am surprised by the irony of the factual historical observations you have made, which i do not dispute, and would like to express humour at the illogical absurdity of a freedom movement being created by the money elite.


ah... what's the use...

[Elvis]

Whatever you do...do not upload copies of the Obama deception to Youtube with titles like "Project 912".

.... oh yeah ...

[Artmic]

Not sure what to make of Chuck...

He is all over the place, not yet well educated in the "Movement"...... feels like of like an attention whore for his future political interests.

Oh well.

As for Beck, all i can say is, F U .

[Dig]

Not sure what to make of Chuck...

He is all over the place, not yet well educated in the "Movement"...... feels like of like an attention whore for his future political interests.

Oh well.

As for Beck, all i can say is, F U .

AJ intervewed Chuck a few days ago.  Listen to the interview it should clarify things.  Basically everything was Glenn's idea (and I think Chuck's wife too).

[mike E. dangerously]

Chuck Noris is far to visible to be a real agent provocateur to me,y'all I would take a closer look at the people behind him.As for Glenn Beck's little sting operation,anyone who thinks that guy is on our side is gonna be sadly mistaken.    

[mike E. dangerously]

AJ intervewed Chuck a few days ago.  Listen to the interview it should clarify things.  Basically everything was Glenn's idea (and I think Chuck's wife too).

Ah,a new name for Chuck: the black belt sock puppet. 

[Dig]

Get ready to piss in your pants:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Video: Shepard Smith goofs on Glenn Beck
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/13/video-shepard-smith-goofs-on-glenn-beck/
posted at 7:12 pm on March 13, 2009 by Allahpundit


Good-natured ribbing — or is it? The segment ends cordially enough, with the two sharing a laugh, but Shep’s never had much patience for right-wing alarmism and Beck, after all, is the current gold standard in it. Is there more to this needling than meets the eye? I’m intrigued that even Wallace feels compelled to call him out.

To Beck’s credit, at least he’s got a sense of humor about it. Click the image to watch.

[Hawkwind]

^catch the little aspartame plug at the end of that clip?

[Captain Obvious]

Hey I just realized that it's not the "9/12 Project" but the "9-12 Project." The 9 and 12 come from the 9 principles and 12 values, not from the day after 9/11 (although one can speculate if they aren't making some veiled reference).

[Dig]

Hey I just realized that it's not the "9/12 Project" but the "9-12 Project." The 9 and 12 come from the 9 principles and 12 values, not from the day after 9/11 (although one can speculate if they aren't making some veiled reference).

Wow!

You are right!

Must just be a complete coincidence!

[Kain]

Hey I just realized that it's not the "9/12 Project" but the "9-12 Project." The 9 and 12 come from the 9 principles and 12 values, not from the day after 9/11 (although one can speculate if they aren't making some veiled reference).

It's not veiled. Watch the Glenn Beck "We Surround Them" videos. He states that 9/12 is 'the day after' 9/11, when we all move forward as a nation, basically. He made the 9 principles and 12 values fit. That's why it's not 8 principles and 10 values, or whatever.

[tattoo8118]

Here is a blog by a woman that worked very hard in Nevada to get Ron Paul elected.  She tells it like it is.  Thought I would pass the link along, it is short but a good read in reference to the 9/12 project by old becky.

http://www.jenspen.com/

[Kain]

Here is a blog by a woman that worked very hard in Nevada to get Ron Paul elected.  She tells it like it is.  Thought I would pass the link along, it is short but a good read in reference to the 9/12 project by old becky.

http://www.jenspen.com/

This is too good not to post.

Sunday, March 15, 2009
There is a new phenomenon sweeping across the political landscape. It’s the new “revolution” complete with meet-up groups and tea parties. It’s full of the usual rhetoric about the out-of-control politicians in Washington. What’s strange is that this “movement” is full of new faces that were nowhere to be seen during the Ron Paul Revolution. This new “movement” is being promoted by the Republican party, and neo-con hacks like Glenn Beck - who all did their absolute utmost to slander, squelch, and stop the Ron Paul Revolution.

Hmmmm . . . it makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Now that there’s no chance of electing Ron Paul for President and getting REAL change; now that we have safely installed our new boss Obama that is so like the old boss Bush and working so harmoniously with the controlled opposition candidate McCain; now that Republicans have someone they can safely criticize and still be “in” with their party cronies; now that it is “safe” to say you support the Constitution and the Founding Fathers (because now “safe” people like Glenn Beck are saying it); now the timid hordes of controlled, mind-numbed Republicans are once again being herded into a controlled opposition movement.

Because that’s what this movement is. The “establishment” or the “new world order” or whatever you want to call them, were frightened by the Ron Paul movement. There were a lot of us; and, for the most part, we were dedicated, passionate, and educated about freedom, which was very much a threat to the establishment. We were breaking through the “left-right paradigm” that has been used so successfully for so many years to control the people of this country.

So the establishment realized that they had a problem. And they realized that the Ron Paul candidacy had to be stopped. So they stopped it. They had the money and the power to do so. Not enough people became educated and stood up with the Ron Paul revolution. There were a lot of us, but there weren’t enough of us. The Republican Party treated Ron Paul and his followers shamefully around the country. What happened in Nevada was a case in point.

So now they’re going to let us have our little revolution, apparently, to make us feel better. Now, apparently, the Republicans feel it’s safe to jump on the fun bandwagon of meet-up groups and tea parties, now that the Republic has been sold down the river.

To all of you people now joining this “movement”, I would like to ask: where were you when our Republic really needed you? Why didn’t you have the guts to stand up and be counted when it could have really made a difference? Have you seen how McCain has followed Mr. Obama so docilely down the road to hell? Have you seen now how you were betrayed and controlled? Are you seeing that you were all played for fools and suckers?

And now that it’s safe; now that it’s blessed by the Republican party; now that the controlled media has sanctioned it; now you jump on board and say you want a revolution! Your efforts now are terribly, terribly late. Too bad you didn’t come along with the Revolution when it could have made a real difference.

[Cywar]

Here is a blog by a woman that worked very hard in Nevada to get Ron Paul elected.  She tells it like it is.  Thought I would pass the link along, it is short but a good read in reference to the 9/12 project by old becky.

http://www.jenspen.com/

Very nice find!     Thanks for sharing it with us Tattoo.

[twitterbell]

I have made it to the top of page 2 on google for search term 912project among serveral other  9 12 project terms . I am getting lots of Obama Deception movie views like crazy   SCORE!

This is what is visable on Google search:

912project’s Blog
All supporters of Glenn Beck’s www.912project.com MUST see this film. It is a hard hitting documentary that exposes the power and plans behind Obama. ...
912project.wordpress.com/ - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

[Dig]

Sun Tzu: Use their weapons against them

[twitterbell]

Thanks sane- I even put the FEMA camps proof for Beck piece  that Alex did on there. It is getting a lot of hits too. lololololol

[Dig]

BTW - two die hard Glenn Beck fans just saw The Obama Deception with me...


EYES WIDE OPEN!


They will never look at Glenn Beck the same way again. I could see the mind control slowly being removed. 

[twitterbell]

Way to go! They are waking up.

 If you read below the video in part 2 or 3 in the Fema video ALex did that I have posted, you can see them start to talk about Glenn. That is being viewed almost as much as TOD on my site.  I have noticed as few bringing it up on Glenns 912 site yesterday under vent. Today the vent section is empty.

[bigron]

Teabagging & Fake Grassroots: Fury Over Conservative Con-Job Allegations


A recent article showing the ties of right-wing funders to tea parties brought out the right-wing trolls.


By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2009, Printed on April 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/137255/

Last Wednesday, angry conservatives took to the streets to protest taxes by draping themselves in tea bags and wielding a variety of terrifying (some borderline racist) signs.

The so-called tea parties were packaged as an outpouring of populist rage. But, as many liberal writers delighted in pointing out (almost as much as they enjoyed making teabagging jokes), the ostensibly grassroots, spontanous demonstrations were in fact launched by the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks, nurtured by Republican operatives, then blasted out through the Fox News propaganda machine.

In an article recently published on AlterNet, Mark Ames, Yasha Levine and Alexander Zaitchik note that the tea parties are mere Astroturf -- fake grassroots. They go on to highlight the real movement growing against corporate greed and government malfeasance.

Not so, argued a bunch of conservative trolls who came onto AlterNet’s comment boards to argue about the article.

Sports Warrior Casey Jones starts the comment boards troll party on a violent note:

 ... gun control must be ABOLISHED COMPLETELY!  Because you see, Big Brother is gonna be f**king with us all. Better to have a shotgun ready to shoot those motherf**king drones down.

Further proving that they should be heavily armed, Sports Warrior goes on to argue:

What's wrong with a TeaBag Party? Better yet, us NRA members would be happy to join the crowds! Because you know what? We're gonna need our guns when we're done getting our asses robbed by the f**kers in Washington!

only_me also has some alarming findings to share:

The same people that are for Obama have no idea what the real agenda is. I'm sure half the people have no idea that mass graves are being dug up, FEMA camps are being built and a "bird flu" epidemic is on the horizon.

snowhound, though not going so far as to accuse the Obama administration of digging mass graves, is also concerned about the so-called attack on American liberties represented by our government's sinister plan to continue our system of taxation:

The main role of the federal government is to preserve liberty. The current liberal ideology of social programs is unsustainable. The current conservative ideology of the imperial empire is unsustainable. This will all end in the economic collapse of our nation because we didn't follow our founders written document, the Constitution.

But AlterNet commentor Bliss Doubt responded:

"... no idea of the definition of Liberty."

I've been reading about the protest movement that will take place today.

The participants' definition of liberty includes privatizing Social Security and privatizing the Internet. It includes nothing about repealing the Patriot Act, you know, that law that turned our Constitution into toilet paper and turned the great legacy of our nation's founders into an antiquated notion. To me it just looks like more support of corporate welfare at the expense of the working class.

It would seem that the word liberty is open to wide ranging interpretation.

Ky Lake Dave also presents a strange version of "liberty":

Finally, at the age of 47, I am getting to do the hippie thing and protest against our unfair government and President Obama. Obama is attempting to toss out the Constitution. He is firing private citizens. Taking over the banking industry. Taking over the auto industry. He wants to take over the health care. The Democrats are pursuing a "Fairness Doctrine" to censor the press and opposing views. President Obama and this unfair government attempting to toss aside capitalism in favor of socialism. He is spending my great-grandchildren's money! This presidency after less than 100 days is inching closer and closer to a dictatorship.

...

I wonder what we should wear?

I don't fit in my bell bottoms anymore.

2010 we will rein him in. I like that. Maybe that will be on my sign.

Anyone else like the ring of that?

Isnamther responds, pointing to the hypocrisy of conservative anti-government sentiment:

I am also 47 years old, and if this is the first time you've found something to protest your government about, with all of the shit that has gone down in this country over the past 30 years, it speaks volumes about where your head is. Endless wars, no problem; U.S. Empire, no problem; racial inequalities, no problem; gender inequalities, no problem; ruination of the environment, no problem; But a stimulus package trying to bail out this country's economic crisis, thoroughly caused by right-wing policies (including Clinton's right-wing policies); BIG PROBLEM .. for right-wingers who are NO LONGER IN POWER.

Derek Maddox argues that the tea parties do in fact have a populist feel, regardless of their origins:

There may have been a few "rich goons" in the crowd, but they were far outnumbered by the ordinary, middle class, working men and women. Regular citizens who are sick and tired of government taking over private industry by throwing them a few dollars and then making up silly rules.

While Derek Maddox's point did not have the fevered, paranoid feel of other conservative trolls' posts, AlterNet commenters nevertheless stripped down his assumption -- and that of other conservatives in the comments -- that taxation is an infringement of liberty.

Seazen takes on all teabaggers, pointing out that few would willingly give up the services paid for by taxes:

While you are out there with your self-righteous, narrow-minded, "Patriots," why don't you get them to really stand up for what they believe. Print the following Teabaggers Pledge and have them all sign it!!

Because Obama is turning the country into a Socialist State with the most recent Stimulus package, I hereby pledge that neither I, nor any member of my family, will ever accept any of the money or benefits contained within the stimulus package to include, but not limited to:

1. Extended unemployment benefits

2. Tuition benefits

3. Jobs associated with the package

4. Tax reductions or other benefits included therein

5. Other Socialist programs, including public school education, police and fire protection, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, VA benefits, etc.

6. Any other benefits not listed

Purple Girl agrees:

What are you willing to do or give up to avoid taxes? Chase down armed bank robbers? Go into burning buildings to look for trapped people? Serve in the mandatory military? Repair roads and bridges on weekends? Learn advanced physics and calculus so your kids can be taught?

What part of civilization are you willing to give up? Because one way or another -- you will be paying for it ... No such Thing as a Free Lunch.

Tax cuts is the mantra of the self-aborbed and greedy. Let's be honest, given a tax cut most will not be buying books for the schools -- they'll be out buying a big-screen TV -- hell of an investment in your children's ability to compete in the future (long after that flat screen goes black).

So, all those screaming about tax cuts are actually the ones committing generational theft. They've been doing this for decades -- reason why gym and music is no longer taught in schools (unless you pay privately). Reason the Minnesota bridge collapsed & [New Orleans] levies broke (no $$ for inspectors or refortification).

Instead of screaming about tax cuts, scream about profit margins. Why not be yelling about the skyrocketing cost of food? Why not be outraged by Exxon's $45 BILLION profits when we were paying $4 a gallon? Taxes aren't killing us or robbing us blind -- it's profit margins, which don't save or create jobs, invest in innovation or safety, or contribute to the community in any real way. What corporation is paying your police department? Oh they'll kick down for a ballpark -- but not for a school.

rare points out that the teabaggers -- concerned as they are with personal liberty -- were oddly missing the past eight years:

So your protest is about "the steady encroachment of the federal government into our daily lives?"

Did you protest over the last eight years? You know, when the previous administration decided to illegally spy on us?

How about when he [President Bush] lied us into a war? Didn't that encroach on us by spending our tax dollars and killing our troops?

How about when they said Bush was above the Constitution? Did you march in the streets then?

How about when Bush pushed through the first TARP and refused to allow any legislation that would have called for the corporations to be held accountable and that it all had to be done transparently? Did you protest then?

Did you protest when Bush gave corporations HUGE tax breaks by allowing them to bring in all their offshore money at a 5 percent tax rate? Did you go to D.C. and tell him that you were tired of the corporations paying a lower tax rate than you do?

Did you organize the masses when BushCo continued to give HUGE tax breaks to the oil companies all while they were making record-setting profits?

You people are so disengenuous. This has nothing to do with what is going on at this moment and everything to do with your party not being in power. You're afraid of Democrats for irrational reasons and are afraid of trying anything new (look up the definition of conservative), so you feel helpless and now see bogeymen around every corner. That, and being you're so uninformed that you think that the big corporations behind your "teabagging" parties actually give a crap about you.

They don't, and you are being used.


Tana Ganeva is an assistant editor at AlterNet.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/137255/

[bigron]

Fox News' Unhinged, Irrational Obama Attacks Stir up Violent Right-Wing Militants

Paranoid anti-government radicals used to have to rely on crude, inefficient methods of communication. Now they have Fox News.


By Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America
Posted on April 22, 2009, Printed on April 22, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/137738/

Imagine if Fox News had been on the air back on February 28, 1993, just months into the new Democratic president's first term, when agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms attempted to serve warrants on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound, located on the outskirts of Waco, Texas. Agents arrived because federal authorities got a tip that Koresh and the followers of the misguided messiah were stockpiling weapons.

The authorities were right. Outgunned, ATF agents quickly met resistance from the Davidians, who had a .50-caliber rifle, machine guns, and more than a million rounds of ammunition at their disposal. The shootout lasted hours and became the longest in American law-enforcement history. In the end, four ATF agents were killed, and 16 were wounded. Inside the compound, five Davidians were killed and scores more injured, including Koresh, who was shot in the hip and the wrist. The gunbattle signaled the start of a 51-day standoff between Koresh and federal authorities.

Rupert Murdoch's all-news channel didn't debut in America until October 1996, but it's chilling to consider the what-ifs of how today's Fox News lineup of doomsday, anti-government prophets would have reacted to controversial and defining news events in the early 1990s -- like Waco.

As news of the failed Waco raid broke, would Fox News' notoriously weepy and apocalyptic host Glenn Beck have broken down on the air and wept for the tyranny that he saw unfolding in the government's raid? While FBI negotiators tried to win the release of Koresh's followers, would Beck have warned viewers that the president would "take your gun away one way or another"?

Amidst the 51-day siege, would Beck have warned against the creeping "totalitarian state" inside America? Would the host have gravely announced that we'd "come to a very dangerous point in our country's long, storied history"?

Would Beck have routinely vilified President Clinton as a fascist? Would he have told viewers that he wanted to debunk the militia-movement conspiracy theory that the federal government was building prison camps, but that he just couldn't knock the story down -- and that, at first glance, it appeared to be "half true"?

And can you even imagine Beck's on-air reaction when the FBI's final, failed assault on the Waco compound unfolded on live TV on April 19, 1993? As the horrific images of the compound going up in flames and the grim realization spread that Koresh's followers were not coming out -- that they had staged a mass suicide (and in some cases, executions), rather than surrendering to federal officers -- would Beck have claimed that the scene of destruction reminded him of the "early days of Adolf Hitler"?

Would he have invited self-styled militiamen onto his show to game out how the pending civil war against the Clinton-led tyranny was likely to play out and to ponder whether members of the U.S. military would fire on American citizens when the blood began to flow in the streets? And setting aside all decency, would Beck -- post-Waco -- have pretended to douse a Fox News colleague in gasoline and, lamenting how the government was disenfranchising its citizens, then urged Clinton to just "set us on fire," or pleaded that it would be better if Clinton had just shot Beck "in the head"? (That's how Koresh died inside the Waco compound: from a bullet to the head.)

Based on the paranoid, anti-government rhetoric that Fox News has embraced since President Obama's inauguration, it's no leap to suspect that if Murdoch's outlet were broadcasting in the early 1990s -- and if it were broadcasting the same fringe message it's echoing today -- that the militia movement would have found a friend in Fox News during the Waco era and throughout Clinton's first term, when the conspiratorial patriot movements flourished.

And that's the chilling significance of what's now unfolding. Last week, I wrote about the inherent dangers and irresponsibility of Fox News consciously shaping itself into a kind of militia news outlet and how it's impossible to ignore the anti-government message some viewers such as Richard Poplawski, the man accused of shooting and killing three Pittsburgh police officers, might be taking from Fox News.

But let's take a step back and see just how extraordinary Fox News' latest lurch to the revolutionary right really is. And let's clearly understand how Fox News is actively trying to mainstream fringe allegations, how Murdoch's outlet functions as a crucial bridge -- a transmitter -- between the radical and the everyday.

What Fox News, and specifically Beck, is doing in early 2009 is giving a voice -- a national platform -- to the same deranged, hard-core haters who hounded the new, young Democratic president in the early 1990s in the wake of Waco (i.e. the Clinton Chronicles crowd). What Fox News is doing today is embracing the same kind of hate rhetoric and doomsday conspiratorial talk that flourished during the '90s, and Fox News is now dumping all that rancid stuff into the mainstream. It's legitimizing accusatory hate speech in a way no other television outlet in America ever has before.

Today's unhinged, militia-flavored attacks from the right against Obama are clearly reminiscent of 1993 and 1994 and the kind of tribal reaction conservatives had to the Democratic White House. What's different this time around is that that it's being adopted and broadcast nationally by Fox News, as it proudly mainstreams and validates the fringe.

Back in the early 1990s, marginal critics, militiamen, and so-called "Patriots" had to rely on somewhat crude methods of communications to spread their conspiratorial distrust of government. They used grassroots fax networks, the very early days of online bulletin boards, and even passed around copies of The Turner Diaries. At the top of their media pyramid were right-wing talk-radio hosts as well as the writers on The Washington Times' and The Wall Street Journal's editorial pages, who eagerly disseminated the culture of partisan paranoia.

But in terms of television, the most influential mass medium in America, nowhere on the TV landscape in the early 1990s were rabid government haters able to hear their message of fear amplified on a nightly or weekly basis the way Obama haters are able to today via Fox News. Even Rush Limbaugh, who from 1992 to 1996 hosted a syndicated television show, didn't go there. Limbaugh's purely partisan television program avoided describing the new Democratic administration with the same doomsday language that's now casually thrown out about Obama: that he's a Marxist or a fascist, or that totalitarian rule remains a real and imminent threat. Even Limbaugh (or his producers) thought that kind of rhetoric was too much for American television.

Fast-forward two administrations, and that kind of talk has become Fox News' signature.

To be accurate, there was one person with a national television audience back then who did regularly promote outlandish conspiratorial claims about Clinton: the Rev. Jerry Falwell. He actively pushed the now-infamous Clinton Chronicles documentary on his Old Time Gospel Hour television show. The Clinton Chronicles, which was produced by Citizens for Honest Government, which in turn paid off key Clinton critics who cooperated with the house-of-mirrors film, claimed that the new president had accumulated a long criminal record while governor of Arkansas and continued his lawbreaking ways as president, that the Clintons were associated with drug-running, prostitution, murder, adultery, money laundering, and obstruction of justice, just to name a few.

Playing that hypothetical card again today, is there anyone who doubts that if Beck were broadcasting on Fox News back in 1994 that Citizens for Honest Government reps would have been ushered onto his program to discuss Clinton's alleged depravities? I don't doubt it, simply because Beck has, at times, become the voice of the militia this year -- and the militia devoured The Clinton Chronicles. As author David Neiwert, an expert on the right wing, reported, "The militia movement provided most of the early audience for The Clinton Chronicles; large stacks of the books and videos sold well at Patriot gatherings."

What's so startling today is that the unhinged, irrational attacks being leveled against Obama sound so similar to the unhinged, irrational attacks leveled against Clinton more than a decade ago. For instance, here's a line from the introduction to The Clinton Chronicles: "The hijacking of America was under way, and its impact on future generations would be incalculable."

That claim would sound familiar to any casual viewer who has tuned into Fox News since Obama's inauguration.

Here's what Neiwert highlighted in 2003:

Had you gone to any militia gathering -- held usually in small town halls or county fairgrounds, sometimes under the guise of "preparedness expos," "patriotic meetings" or even gun shows -- you could always find a wealth of material aimed at proving Clinton the worst kind of treasonous villain imaginable. Bill and Hillary Clinton, after all, occupy a central position in Patriots' "New World Order" paranoiac fantasy.

You'll note that Obama today occupies the same central position in the Patriots' Fox News-fed paranoiac fantasies.

And media critics Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon wrote this more than a decade ago:

"Patriots" rail against Bill Clinton and the plot toward global government known as the "New World Order"; they see gun control as a Big Brother conspiracy.

Again, that type of rhetoric has become synonymous with Beck, who recently claimed the Second Amendment is "under fire" and that the "Big Brother" government will soon dictate what its citizens can eat, what temperature their house can be, and what kind of cars they're allowed to drive.

Hearing the attacks on Obama, it's déjà vu all over again. The key difference this time around the right-wing hate track is that Fox News has signed on as a TV partner and has agreed to embrace -- and air to a national audience -- the militia-like allegations about Obama. Fox News has agreed to descend into the right-wing conspiracist subculture in order to portray the new president as the worst kind of villain imaginable: somebody who's plotting take away guns and who's not above employing fascism to obtain his goals.

On the two-year anniversary of the Waco inferno, militia admirer Timothy McVeigh, feeding off his hatred for the government, drove his rented 20-foot Ryder truck and parked it across the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City. At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, the truck's three-ton ammonium nitrate bomb detonated and sheared the north side off the Murrah Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.

McVeigh later wrote, "I reached the decision to go on the offensive -- to put a check on government abuse of power." McVeigh wanted to "send a message to a government" by "bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government."

The Oklahoma City bombing story broke 18 months before Fox News made its cable-news debut. But if Murdoch's team maintains its current course -- if Beck and company insist on irresponsibly fanning the militia-type flames of distrust -- there's the danger Fox News might soon have to cover other episodic gestures of anti-government payback.



© 2009 Media Matters for America All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/137738/

[bigron]

Of Tea Parties and Teleprompters


By David Michael Green

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22492.htm

April 25, 2009 "Information Clearing House" --- Is it possible that the regressive right has, given its electoral unraveling of late, decided to swap the whole politics thing for vaudeville?

‘Cause if it hasn't, I'm really having a hell of a hard time explaining what's going on with these guys.

I mean, I've seen circus acts that were less hilarious. So I'm assuming that the right has simply decided to become a sort of public service provider in this most depressing at times. Presumably, they got together and concluded that if they couldn't win elections, at least they could make themselves useful by treating the public to a hearty laugh. Or six.

What else can you make of last week's tea party hysteria, for example? I suppose you could find a less spontaneous, less authentic expression of public sentiment if you looked really hard - perhaps by going to the latest Hannah Montana movie, for example - but I don't think it would be very easy. Fox (Hardly Any) News literally ran about a hundred segments on the tea parties in advance of the magical date, a promotional tsunami masquerading as news reporting that would've made any Soviet minister of propaganda blush.

I suppose you could also find political elements more incoherent and less grounded in reality if you tried really hard - perhaps by attending services at some new age mega-church, for example - but that would also be pretty difficult. If the low rent, low IQ, low on laundry detergent (non) masses attending these events looked familiar, it was because we saw them on the campaign trail last year, angrily spouting utter fabrications and fulminating their vaguely anti-government screeds at Sarah Palin rallies. What they lack in quality dental care or concern about the health effects of obesity, they fully make up for in sheer gullibility and lumpen selfishness masquerading as vulgar capitalism.

My favorite bit from the coverage of the tea parties was the inadvertent reality intrusion episode, where some smart-ass got up at one of the rallies, got the crowd all excited about taxes and deficits, and then asked them to applaud Barack Obama for cutting their taxes. That little bit of cognitive dissonance produced a long, pregnant, troubled pause, and you could almost hear the rusty gears in their brains jamming into one another, screeching like a subway train, and ultimately shattering from sheer lack of prior use, as the attendees decided to stick with their advance programming after all, booing the mention of the shifty Negro in the White House despite the fact that he is cutting their taxes, just like they claim to want him to.

On the other hand, perhaps the most amazing sight of all was the Republican governor of Texas, successor to George W. Bush, and would-be successor again in Washington, not so vaguely hinting at the possibility that Texas might secede from the union, and falsely claiming that the state had a special legal right to do so. Golly, I thought we had settled that matter a century and a half ago, but then I'm one of those odd people who always thought Lincoln got it wrong. He should have let the backward, racist, theist, regressive South go its own way.

Of course, only if deceit happens to be a moral problem need one worry about the hypocrisy of all these red states bitching about taxes and the oppressive federal government while simultaneously receiving far more dollars from Washington than they kick in. But if they do check out, I only hope that Obama doesn't make the same mistake Lincoln did. Imagine the last several decades without names like Bush, DeLay, Gingrich, McConnell, Armey, Lott and other fine specimens of Southern hospitality running the country into the ground. Let them have their little experiment in trying to form a more perfect union within their breakaway Confederacy. Maybe they'll put Bobby Jindal in charge. You want to have a good laugh? Come back a generation later and see what it looks like. My guess is something like a crystal meth theme park, with nice colored folk to clean up after the revival meetings. "LeeLand", perhaps?

You know who else showed up at tea parties, besides Rick Perry, the sesesh governor of Texas? That's right! Joe the Plumber! And, just to make sure that no political sophistication of any sort whatsoever inadvertently crept into the crowd, Ted Nugent came as well. With head-liners like this, it's hard to figure how these guys aren't winning elections, eh? On the other hand, I can name at least one guy more clownish and more scary who was president of the United States and leader of the Free World for eight years running. And just recently too. Ironically, the explanation for the odd fact that the exact same stuff that seemed so great to Americans in 2002 seemed so awful in 2008 was of course George W. Bush himself. Yep, politics is truly weird sometimes, but it's on the right were the weird absolutely turn professional.

All of this is emblematic, of course, of a political movement in utter free fall, and completely lacking any sense whatsoever of what to do about it. This week it was tea parties. Before that, he was Obama bowing to the Saudi king. Before that, it was the president giving the Queen of England an iPod. Or was it the fact that he uses Teleprompters when he speaks? Or was it the connection to Rod Blagojevich that was sure to be exposed any minute now?

Seriously, though. Where's the outrage? Is there a surer mark of the end of Western civilization than that the American public is indifferent about the fact that its president - like every modern president - uses a Teleprompter when he gives speeches? Remember the burning anger on the right, when Ronald Reagan would use his ubiquitous 3 x 5 note cards at every meeting or event, even for small talk about the weather, and sometimes absentmindedly using the wrong set of cards for the wrong gathering of people? Talk about your Armageddon! It's weird, though. I guess I need to lay off the drugs for a while, because I don't remember any conservative umbrage about any of that. You'd almost think they were being ridiculously hypocritical in attacking Obama for using a Teleprompter, given what Reagan did...

And how about that business with the Saudi king? Doesn't that represent Obama selling out America? Or apologizing for something United States did? He probably didn't even have a flag pin in his lapel when he bowed to the king. He probably didn't even thank Jesus for his falafel, before breaking bread with the monarch. Not George Bush, though. He would never do that. His family would never have close relations with the House of Saud, that's for sure. He would never be photographed, say, holding hands with the old man, ‘cause that would disrespectful to America. And kinda gay, too. And, for sure, Bush would never inform Prince Bandar, lifetime buddy and Saudi ambassador to the US at the time, that the United States was invading Iraq, before he informed his own Secretary of State. And you know why? Because the right wing in America would be outraged if that ever happened. You can take that one to the bank.

Except, of course, that we don't really have much in the way of banks anymore, after the right wing's deregulatory religion got through with them. Which I guess explains why all those things did happen, and the same people who are now foaming at the mouth over Obama's simple gesture of courtesy were completely silent during the Bush years.

These antics only prove how deeply sunk into it regressivism now is. I assure you, if the right had a better way to attack Democrats and the Obama administration then this pathetic garbage, you'd be seeing it. These guys aren't exactly famous for playing to lose. What we're seeing, instead, is a political movement that is utterly bankrupt, literally and figuratively, and is desperately searching for any sort of remotely plausible line of attack, but only managing to make itself look absurd in the process, at least outside of Appalachia.

Today's conservatives remind me of nothing so much as an elderly lab chicken, used in countless undergrad psychology experiments, but now abandoned in its dotage. Over and over again, it keeps pecking the red bar, even though the last time a food pellet actually appeared was in 2004. Peck! Let's play the race card! Peck! Let's play the taxes card! Peck! Let's play the deficits card! Peck! Let's play the gay card! Peck! Let's play the foreign bogeyman card! Peck! Peck! Peck!

Shit! No food pellets! The red bar is in tatters, the chicken's beak is worn down to a nub, but still it pecks, and still no food pellets.

The frustration and anger you see among regressive politicians and their cheerleaders comes from fifty years of operant conditioning all of a sudden gone massively awry. It's like they fell into some parallel universe or something. Every step forward leaves them two steps backward. Up is down, down is up. White is black, and black is now president. What the hell is going on?

Poor regressives. For half a century they got an entire country full of people to suspend disbelief, and nod their heads in all the right places whenever they were poked with the appropriate stimulus. For half a century, they continued to win elections by fooling people into voting against their own interests. For half a century, they could turn lead into gold. But the alchemy no longer works. Suddenly, precipitously, none of the responses appear anymore when all the old stimuli are trotted out. And it all disappeared so fast. In 2003 they could sell any kind of bullshit imaginable. Three years later, they were handing over control of both houses of Congress to the evil, socialist Democrats.

The great news is that, as bad as it now is, these are still the golden days of the regressive movement. It's gonna get a lot worse from here. As they continue their antics, they only look more and more foolish, while President Obama looks more and more statesmanlike, less and less like his predecessor, and better and better in the polls.

The logical move for the Republican Party would be to abandon the insanity of the last three decades and returned to the days of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller, when people like Ronald Reagan were rightly (very rightly) considered to be the lunatic fringe. But this is impossible today. Indeed, the GOP will be lucky if it is able to even stay where it is ideologically, as opposed to being pulled even further to the hysterical right.

Arlen Specter will provide the archetypical case for the Republican conundrum as he runs for reelection to his Pennsylvania US Senate seat this year and next. As an established, long-standing moderate figure from a swing state, normally someone like Specter should have no problem as an incumbent retaining his seat. In fact, the opposite is now the case. Specter is being challenged from his right in the primary election, and there is no indication that the Republican establishment will come to his aid, while every indication suggests that he's in deep trouble. One recent poll had him fourteen points down among Republican voters behind his primary challenger. Specter will have to tack to the hard right to have a prayer of obtaining the nomination. But even if that make-over can possibly succeed, he will then be stuck in the general election trying to defend the monster he became during the primary in order to placate his party's voters, in a state that is trending the other direction.

Watch and see if the few remaining moderate Republicans don't learn from this experience, and abandon the party. This will leave the GOP in excellent position to succeed everywhere that Jefferson Davis remains a hero, and pretty much nowhere else. Even the governor of Utah, arguably the reddest of red states, has come out in support of gay marriage.

If Republicans want to form themselves into a permanent minority at the national level, I suppose that's just fine with me. But even that isn't terribly sustainable. Situations like these tend toward becoming self-reinforcing cycles, in this case far more virtuous than vicious. Over time, a party that cannot compete at the national level will not attract voters or candidates even within its stronghold. And a party that cannot bring home the bacon because it has been relegated to a permanent minority status in Congress will also drive away voters. A party that is unable to change its stripes because of the viciousness and narrow-mindedness of its base is also a party unable to change its electoral fortunes.

When you see the supporters of the GOP saying, as they often do, that they would rather stick to principle than win elections, they're not kidding. And when you see them describe the likes of George W. Bush as insufficiently conservative, they're not kidding either.

Rather, they're on a suicide mission.

All I can say is: "Hey, works for me!"

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (mailto:dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.

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Fox News Continues to Hallucinate About a Socialist/Fascist Menace -- And It's Causing Real Damage

Fox news' insane rants about the impending onset of socialism/fascism has trickled into mainstream media. This is extremely dangerous.


By Timothy Karr, Huffington Post
Posted on April 30, 2009, Printed on April 30, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/139040/

Last week, conservative factions within the Republican National Committee circulated an e-mail urging party leadership to brand as a "socialist" anyone who advocates even moderate changes to the government's role in society.

It's clear that the overlords at Fox News Channel already got that memo and decided to ratchet the volume up a notch -- to 11.

According to Politico, RNC member James Bopp Jr. proposed a resolution that would acknowledge that President Obama wants "to restructure American society along socialist ideals" and call upon the Democratic Party to rename itself the "Democrat Socialist Party."

"Just as President Reagan's identification of the Soviet Union as the 'evil empire' galvanized opposition to communism," Bopp wrote, "we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism."


Red-Baiting Redux

And indeed, this has been a season of red-baiting the likes of which we haven't seen since the reign of a certain senator from Wisconsin. The week before Bopp's memo, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) insisted that "some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists." Bachus says he has already counted 17 of them but that there may be more.

Also keeping a list is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who in the final days of the 2008 election season questioned then-candidate Obama's patriotism and called for an investigation of Democratic members of Congress for "anti-American views."

Bachmann didn't rest there. During an appearance late last month with Fox News Channel's Sean Hannity, she reiterated her call for a revolution against the tyranny of President Obama and congressional leadership.

"This is economic Marxism," Bachmann said of their economic stimulus plan. "[Obama] is moving the United States away from free-market capitalism and instead he's imprinting socialism deep into our centralized economic planning."

Like most of Bachmann's ranting in the media and on the Hill, these allegations make zero sense. But reality hasn't stopped her from assembling a political career out of comments that fan the flames of fear among the most militantly conservative.

When Socialism Isn't Bad Enough

Bachmann is by no means America's sole demagogue. That she's been given a national stage to insult our collective intelligence, though, is cause for notice.

Bopp, Bachus and Bachmann's rhetoric has been taken up by the tele-pundits of the right -- especially those prophets of doom who have made Fox News Channel their base of operations. But these knuckle-draggers aren't satisfied with fighting mere socialism.

"We're into socialism now. That's not our final destination," Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck said during his radio broadcast. "Our final destination is happy-faced fascism." In another segment on his cable program, Beck repeated this charge over a video backdrop of marching Nazis.

The 'Fox Effect'

This Beck-Hannity obsession has triggered the "Fox Effect," a media phenomenon whereby the repetitive news framing of one 24-hour cable network seeps into the coverage of other outlets -- and, frighteningly, into the political discourse of society as a whole.

Before long, the cable talent at CNN, CNBC and MSNBC had fallen into step, booking right-wing guests intent on pressing the Marxist fear button.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough has suggested that the Obama administration favors "European-styled socialism." CNBC's Larry Kudlow has made our "march to socialism" a centerpiece of several interviews on his evening program.

For its part, CNN dedicated several news shows to sage analysis of America's political shift, including a segment in which Quinn Hillyer, the editor and columnist of the conservative Washington Examiner and American Spectator, compared Obama's actions in his first hundred days to those of Mussolini in fascist Italy.

Missing from all the crowing is any meaningful reporting that provides context for our current economic situation, or analysis of changing public attitudes about increased government oversight of businesses like the banking sector.

Journalism: the Cause or the Cure?

All of this cable news hyperventilating comes at a moment when journalism is in deep crisis. The migration of news audiences to a free-flowing Internet has led to declines in circulation, subscription and advertising revenues for traditional media.

Falling revenues translate directly into budget cuts, which in turn mean more layoffs. More layoffs mean fewer journalists, and a lower-quality product as evidenced by the torrent of fear-mongering above.

Newsgathering institutions may die off or evolve over time, but one thing must endure: We need to sustain a corps of qualified working reporters who can earn a living delivering the real news and information that is the lifeblood of a healthy American democracy.

That's right, I said "American democracy."

If the so-called journalists of cable news really want to protect us against totalitarianism, real or imagined, they'd do well to follow the examples of better reporting that are a part of our long history of newsgathering -- instead of simply aping the latest scare tactics at Fox News Channel.


Timothy Karr is the author of MediaCitizen, a weblog about the future of America's media. He is the campaign director of Free Press. From September 2003 through February 2005, Karr was executive director of MediaChannel.org and Media for Democracy.

© 2009 Huffington Post All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/139040/

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Inside Story on Town Hall Riots: Right-Wing Shock Troops Do Corporate America's Dirty Work



How the health-care industry, the GOP and one media mogul made common cause with the anti-government fringe.


By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on August 10, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141860/

Visit site for dozens of links on this important story !


The recent spate of town hall dustups may look like an overnight sensation, but they've been years, even decades, in the making.

Since the days in the late 1970s, when the New Right began its takeover of the Republican Party, it has cultivated a militia of white people armed with a grudge against those who brought forth the social changes of the '60s.

These malcontents have been promised their day of retribution, a day for which they are more than ready. Few seem to understand that they are merely dupes for a corporate agenda that will only worsen the conditions in which they live.

Why, you may ask, would men of power and fame shake the rough, unmanicured hands of gun enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, gay-haters, misogynists and racists?

Because somebody's got to do the dirty work. Magnates don't like to soil their French cuffs, and it's hard for a bunch of rich guys to garner sympathy for threats to their bottom lines. It's the classic inside-outside game that the right wing of the GOP has played for the last two decades.

The Health-Care Industry Executive

Imagine you're an executive at a pharmaceutical company. Your U.S. operations are your cash cow; they earn you wild net profits because, unlike in other industrialized nations, you do not experience the price controls of a government-administered program in which the government negotiates for the best price on prescription drugs and devices.

Along comes a government plan for health-insurance reform that includes a public, government-financed plan. The public option, they call it. As part of the plan, you will be required to negotiate with the government for the price of medications and devices to be distributed within the plan.

Now that could really screw up your massive profit margins. Private plans might then insist on prices more like those the government is getting.

Instead of increasing your profit by double digits in the worst year the economy has seen since the Great Depression, as did an outfit called The Medicines Co., your shareholders may have to settle for profits more in line with the overall growth of the economy. And wouldn't that just stink?

Meanwhile, polls show a clear majority of Americans -- you know, regular Americans, the kind who don't want to own an AK-47, or who do accept the president's citizenship status -- favor the public option. In fact, in June, CBS News found that majority to be 72 percent.

So, whaddaya do? Well, if your lobbying firm counts former Rep. Dick Armey, R-Texas, as its senior policy adviser, you don't have do much. Dick will take care of the rest through FreedomWorks, the ostensibly grassroots, nonprofit organization of anti-taxers, cold warriors and affirmative-action opponents, which he chairs.

Need to make it look like regular Americans oppose the health-insurance reform bills now being considered by Congress? Make sure a handful of those angry white people turn up at the town hall meetings now being conducted by members of Congress throughout the country. Make sure they disrupt the meeting and rattle the congressperson.

Capture it all on amateur video and put it up on a faux, amateur-looking Web site, and try to kid the media into thinking there's a widespread rebellion happening. After all, the media are gonna want that dramatic footage.

The Republican Member of Congress

Now, suppose you're a Republican member of Congress. Your party got totally throttled in the 2008 election, and if you don't derail this health care thing, it's going to be a big win for your Democratic opponents, as millions of underinsured and uninsured Americans finally have some health care coverage -- one bright spot in a largely dismal economy.

Meanwhile, you get a lot of your campaign cash from health-care-related industries and from the Wall Street bankers and brokers who want to keep those profits soaring.

A public option is going to stink for you, too. So, while Armey's army of taxphobes is useful to you, it would be great to get some really hard-core types to further stoke the fires -- especially if marshaled by guys who know how to really tar Democrats with racist imagery and slurs of unpatriotic behavior.

That's where Grassfire.org and its brother networking site, ResistNet, come in. Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., who promised to make health-care reform President Obama's "Waterloo," is a big fan. Says so right there on the Grassfire Web site. ResistNet is yet another right-wing hub for organizing the disruption of health-care town hall meetings.

The Media Mogul

Okay, now put on the hat of a media mogul, one who rails against the minimal restrictions the U.S. has on multi-outlet ownership, and one for whom the bottom line is everything. In fact, you actually own the Wall Street Journal.

If you can nip this health care thing in the bud, you could stand in the way of a president who wants to rein in Wall Street's worse excesses and who may depress the profit margins of health-care companies in which your readers invest with his dastardly public option. What's a mogul to do?

Why not hire a guy known for riling the discontented to host a show on your cable news channel, and empower him as an organizer? Let him create a little project pegged to fear and nationalism -- something, say, like 9/11 -- through which he mobilizes bands of those aggrieved by the fact of a black president to disrupt town hall meetings.

That's exactly what Rupert Murdoch did when he hired Glenn Beck to host a Fox News Channel show and to put together a little organizing site called The 9-12 Project.

Although Beck's stated goal is to bring America back to where it was on Sept. 12, 2001 -- a nation pulled together in the wake of the terrorist attacks the day before -- he draws together only those who embrace the goals of the right.

But his project site is shaped like a social-networking tool, and activists in Florida credit the Tampa 9-12 chapter as turning them out to a town hall they helped turn into a ruckus.

Put these three scenarios together, and you have the phenomenon that has become the summer of the town-hall scuff, a heated season of right-wing disruptions of civic fora.

Add to that an oppressed-white-people narrative that has its roots in the origins of what used to be called the New Right, and you have a confluence of interests ready to elevate to prime-time status a disgruntled and paranoid minority with a penchant for misplaced blame.

FreedomWorks and the K Street Lobbyist

In Washington's K Street corridor, Dick Armey is a very important man -- so important, in fact, that he was scooped up, upon his retirement from Congress, by the lobbying firm DLA Piper.

It's been widely reported that Piper lobbies on behalf of health-care industry interests, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, but its top health-care-industry client, according to OpenSecrets.org, is The Medicines Co., a small, below-the-radar firm that has paid Armey's lobbying firm nearly $2.4 million since the beginning of 2008 -- nearly 15 percent of DLA Piper's overall lobbying income for the period.

I called The Medicines Co., requesting an interview with someone on staff who could spell out the company's position on the pending health care bills, and I got back a rather empty, generic statement via e-mail from the company's public relations firm, FD:

The Medicines Co., a small biotech company, was founded on and continues to follow our mission of saving lives, improving patient outcomes and reducing health care costs. Any suggestion that the Medicines Co. has opposed or retained anyone to oppose the pending health care reform bills is entirely mistaken.

I sent an e-mail back, asking for the company's position on the health-care bills what it spent $2.4 million to lobby for, and received no response by press time.

The Medicines Co. operates so below the radar that it is not even listed as a member on the Web site of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturer's Association (PhRMA), which opposes the House bill because it empowers a non-elected panel of experts to oversee cost-containment in public programs.

PhRMA also claims the House plan will raise premiums on senior citizens enrolled in the Medicare prescription drug plan, a plan, as currently construed, largely seen as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical companies.

Last year, The Medicines Co. saw net earnings on its major product, the anti-coagulant Angiomax, increase 17 percent over the course of a single year.

Because of The Medicines Co.'s tight lips, we may never know whether it feels it's getting its $2.4 million worth out of Piper, or its senior policy analyst, Armey, in his effort to derail health care through the FreedomWorks astroturf site.

Go to the site, and you'll find a Health Care Action Kit (PDF), complete with talking points and Armey's "ObamaCare translator" of key terms in the health care discussion, laced with Armey's own witticisms. There's even a mock "ObamaCare insurance card" (PDF) you can print out and pass around at town halls. It promises, among other things on a bulletted list, "Rationed health care" and "Anxiety, pain, risk of death."

At the risk of mixing messages (a big public-relations no-no), Armey also advises health-care protesters to raise their opposition to the energy-reform provision called "cap and trade" in the health-care town halls.

Coincidentally, DLA Piper's lobbying portfolio includes a number of oil and energy companies.

Then, there are the actual members of FreedomWorks, who leave the most enlightening comments on the Web site:

This, from Constantine Ivanov:

June 27, 2009 -- 3:40pm
The problem is that no matter how passionately we are here condemning the socialized (better to say "Socialistisized") Medicine, "die eisernen Stiefel" (the iron jackboots) of Obamistas are methodically and systematicly destroying the very core of our country.

And I recall German troops who at a steady gait moved as close as 10 miles to Moscow in 1941.

Or, this, from Joe Massana:

June 27, 2009 -- 4:00pm
[Obama] and his socilist party are ruining this country ... I know that if I was a black man right now, I would be able to get help from the government with my construction business and household bills.

If an entity providing 15 percent of the lobbying income at Armey's day job took objection to any of this, do you think Armey would be overseeing the FreedomWorks outfit?

DLA Piper also earned $300,000 since early last year lobbying on behalf of the American Council of Life Insurers, which opposes the long-term care provisions in the House bill, which it sees as competition.

Grassfire and ResistNet

The FreedomWorks commenters are tame by comparison with those found on ResistNet, a project of Grassfire.org. Using a social-networking platform, Grassfire claims some 400,000 members who are dedicated to "resisting" the "Democratic agenda," which, by their lights, includes "open borders" and "taxpayer-funded abortions."

A 501(c)(4) nonprofit, Grassfire has been named as a "stealth political action committee" by Public Citizen. Its founder and president, Steve Elliott, has held up MoveOn.org as a model for where he would like to take his organization.

ResistNet, has become a major hub for turning out hard-core right-wingers to health-care town hall meetings. The organization took in $1.5 million in 2007 (the most recent year for which information is publicly available).

It's difficult to find out much of anything about Elliott; he manages to keep a very low profile. But SourceWatch and Public Citizen report that Grassfire is represented by the Washington public relations firm Shirley & Bannister, whose principal is Craig Shirley, the man who gave us the Willie Horton ad of the 1988 presidential election.

Shirley promoted the movie, Stolen Honor, a Swiftboat-style smear piece made about 2004 presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Today, Shirley's clients, according to the Shirley & Bannister Web site, include the National Rifle Association, author Ann Coulter, religious right co-founder Richard Viguerie, and other religious right figures.

But Shirley & Bannister retains ties to GOP establishment figures; its Web site bears an endorsement from William Kristol, who served in the administration of the first George Bush, who happens to be the candidate whose campaign reaped some of its victory from Shirley's Horton ad.

The firm also promotes the books of former Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., (now of MSNBC) and former George H.W. Bush speechwriter Peggy Noonan (who promised us a "kinder, gentler nation") -- books published by Rupert Murdoch's HarperCollins.

The site also lists several other major publishers as clients for the promotion of books by right-wing authors.

I called Shirley & Bannister on Friday morning, asking if Grassfire/ResistNet was its client, since it is not listed on the Web site. I was told that Amy Haas, the person who could answer my question, was on the phone, and would get back to me. She did not.

On its introductory page, Grassfire.org complimentary words from Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., and Sen. DeMint.

"Grassfire has done a great job and has done a great service to the American people," reads the DeMint quote.

Grassfire makes the point often that it will show the president respect and refrain from personal attacks, as ResistNet, which touts a "no tolerance policy" (they can't say "zero tolerance," since "Zero" is the nickname by which many of their members call Obama -- a play on the first letter of his last name) for "personal attacks, lewd or profane language, or militancy against Barack Obama or others."

Yet a boxed statement on the opening page of the ResistNet site offers this: Welcome to the online community for patriotic citizens who are opposing the Obama-led socialist agenda …"

ResistNet is full of comments and blog posts that violate its purported "no tolerance" policy, including those calling for social insurrection and even the death of Obama. It promises that such comments will be removed by a moderator, and yet they live on the site for months.

Here's a comment that appears below a letter one ResistNet member named Joel wrote to his congresswoman:

Comment by RBJ 1 day ago
Joel, I hate to be the one to tell you this, you remember the old saying about "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me."

Well that is all that we are doing here, just throwing words at the crowd of Socialist in D.C., aka "D.C.Terrorist"…

As we all know, when words fail, reach over and get a 2 X 4 and get after it. Words don't hurt, but a good solid A$$ Whooping will get there attention everytime!

Once you have their attention, then you can talk.

Or check out this one, posted by George and Pat Wilkins on Aug. 6, in which they close a long post warning that "the statists will pass socialized medicine in September" by wishing for the death of the president:

Waiting lines will be long, those waiting will find operable conditions be found to be inoperable, Hospice and palliation for comfort will be their fate. Others will die. Why is this being done? back door reparations. I pray that God will strike Obama dead, and all who stand with him they are evil.

And those just two recent examples. Posted on July 2, and still living on the ResistNet site as I write is a video by the Rev. James David Manning, who warns that "white folks are gonna riot in the streets, and I'm gonna join them." Throughout the video, Manning, an African American, refers to Obama as a "half-breed Mack Daddy" -- slang for a kind of megapimp.

Then there's this charming bit of propaganda, Obama = Hitler (which you can view at the bottom of this story), which dubs video of Obama delivering a speech with the voice of Adolf Hitler, and interposes swastikas and Obama's campaign logo; Obama is shown wearing a swastika armband; Hitler is shown with the Obama logo as a belt buckle.

Footage of Obama supporters, most of them African American, is run side-by-side with Hitler's adoring crowds. As Obama waves and moves his mouth, the dub is Hitler yelling, "Sieg Heil!"

The ResistNet site is also peppered with posts touting the birther conspiracy, and other right-wing favorites. After Thursday's scuffle at the Tampa, Fla., health care town hall, Eric Erikson (cross-posting from RedState) blamed the violence on "SEIU thugs," an emerging right-wing theme reported earlier by Steve Benen.

I tried to contact Grassfire President Steve Elliott to ask him about the conflict between ResistNet's "no tolerance" policy and the vitriol I found on his site. I also wanted to find out if there are health-care interests among his donors. Elliott, said Tina, the woman who answered the phone, was traveling, and his spokesman, Ron DeJong, was on vacation. She promised to text Elliott with my contact information, but I never heard back.

Glenn Beck and the 9-12 Project

Which brings us to Glenn Beck. There's little I can add to what's been reported (click here for AlterNet's Tana Ganeva writing on Beck's racism), except that when I went to the Web site of Beck's 9-12 Project, another hub of organizing for disrupters of health-care town hall meetings, I found that the comments section had been shut down.

The message left by someone named "Editor" bore no time stamp, only a date: August 6, the date of the infamous Tampa brouhaha at which anti-health-care protesters, according to the St. Petersburg Times, said they had been inspired by Beck and his project.

Each of these organizations have this in common: They're all promoting a march on Washington for Sept. 12. Others in the mix include TeaPartyExpress.org, and the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, which was founded by Howard Kaloogian in the heat of the presidential campaign.

Kaloogian was the chairman of the "Recall Gray Davis Committee," which succeeded in unseating the Democratic governor of California. Our Country Deserves Better ran the "Stop Obama" bus tour during the 2008 presidential election, and was faulted by Fact Check.org for airing misleading anti-Obama advertising.

The Inside-Outside Game

The right wing of the GOP has long played this kind of inside-outside game, from the earliest days of the founding of the religious right by Richard Viguerie, Howard Phillips and the late Paul Weyrich. All were veterans of the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, and all had experience within the establishment Republican Party.

Viguerie, following a model pioneered by Morris Dees for the 1972 Democratic primary campaign of Sen. George McGovern, D-S.D., harnessed the power of direct-mail solicitations to land Ronald Reagan in the White House. Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation, which became a fax-generating spin and policy factory for the Reagan administration.

Phillips took the game outside, organizing on-the-ground misanthropes, and eventually founding his own political party, the U.S. Taxpayer's Party (now the Constitution Party) to exert pressure on the GOP from the outside.

The strategy firmly established the right's foothold in the GOP, leading to the party's takeover. Any remnant of the old establishment of the Republican Party was crushed in 1996, when defeated presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan, now a MSNBC commentator, threatened to walk the delegates he had won in his primary war against Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, out of the Republican National Convention and into the arms of Phillips' U.S. Taxpayer Party if the GOP platform did not firmly enough oppose abortion. He also insisted the platform incorporate a host of other right-wing demands, such as a condemnation of the United Nations.

The GOP forked over the writing of its platform to Phyllis Schlafly (another veteran of the Goldwater campaign) and Buchanan's sister, Bay, and the takeover was complete. The right wing became the Republican establishment.

All of the narratives today embraced by the ResistNet, FreedomWorks and the Glenn Beck crowd find their legs in the one-man clearinghouse that is Howard Phillips.

Through his Conservative Caucus, Phillips disseminated the "birther" theory that Obama is not an American citizen, gave right-wing operative Cliff Kincaid an award for researching Obama's alleged socialist roots, and for years has railed against "socialized medicine" -- even arguing that Medicare is unconstitutional and warning darkly of a time when the government might determine who shall live and who shall die.

"[W]hen the supply of medical care is controlled by politicians and bureaucrats," Phillips told a 1997 gathering of his Conservative Caucus Foundation, "and the demand for that care exceeds the supply, then individual human beings created in God's image become price factors in the eyes of medical gatekeepers -- they're not even medical, they're bureaucratic gatekeepers -- who determine medical decisions not on the basis of medical needs, but on the basis of bureaucratic priorities."

Phillips' disdain for feminists is palpable, and his language about LGBT people, routinely labeled on his Web site as "perverts," "homos" and "sodomites" is contemptible. He refers to Planned Parenthood as "Murder Incorporated."

I called Phillips for comment on this article, but he was en route to Mexico where he has convened a press conference to protest the nonexistent North American Union, another right-wing conspiracy theory. (Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is an invited speaker.)

Phillips advanced the career of Randall Terry, founder of the militant anti-aborton group Operation Rescue. At one point, it seemed that his U.S. Taxpayer's Party was to Operation Rescue what Sinn Fein is to the Irish Republican Army -- the political wing of a movement steeped in violence. (In Terry's case, the violence was in rhetoric and obstruction designed to incite others to act.)

Conspiracy of Silence

On Aug. 4, Terry, who is seeking to make a comeback with his new organization, Operation Rescue Insurrecta Nex, sent out an e-mail blast urging followers to attend health care town halls convened by members of Congress.

Trotting out the trope the that health-care reform bills provide for taxpayer-funded abortions, he urges his followers:

 

Stir up some dust!

Be "unreasonable!"

In fact, you might want to be a little noisier and a little more intense than you might normally be.

I put it this way: If you were in danger of being murdered, and I could possibly save you at a town hall meeting, how would you want people to behave in a town hall meeting?

At a July press conference, Terry warned of "random acts of violence" that would occur if the health-care bill passed. There would be violent "reprisals against those deemed guilty," he said.

Think Terry's too out on the fringe to matter? Think again. When AlterNet reported that the Supreme Court nomination hearing of Judge Sonia Sotomayor was being disrupted by Terry's followers, not one Republican senator condemned him by name.

When Terry staged a demonstration outside the White House featuring men in Obama masks "whipping" him, not a distancing word was placed between him and the GOP establishment.

And now he is promulgating the false Republican claim that health-care reform will mean socialized euthanasia for the aged.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin also has links to Phillips; for seven years, her husband, Todd, claimed membership in the Alaska affiliate of the Constitution Party -- the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, whose convention Palin addressed last year via video.

Every other day, it seems, I receive an e-mail from one right-wing organization or another, warning of the grave consequences of health-insurance reform.

The subject line in an e-mail from Human Events magazine screams at me "Grandmas and babies exterminated by Obama 'health' plan," even as another of its e-mails asks, "Obama birth certificate destroyed?" The anti-gay American Family Association warns: "Liberals seek to silence and demonize those who oppose their socialism."

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council sent a plea for money to finance a television ad that features an elderly couple complaining of the government's denial of surgery for the man while financing abortion with taxpayer dollars.

Think these organizations are not the Republican establishment? Consider that the annual Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council's PAC will feature former "moderate" GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney as a keynote speaker.

In the corridors of Washington's K Street lobbying offices, in the district offices of Republican members of Congress, and in the executive suite of one singular mogul, the men of power must be well-pleased with themselves, watching YouTube videos of the mayhem they have unleashed on the rest of us. But they may just get their pound of flesh.

Watch :

Obama = Hitler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS2rJP-udUs&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ealternet%2Eorg%2Frights%2F141860%2Finside%5Fstory%5Fon%5Ftown%5Fhall%5Friots%253A%5Fright%2Dwing%5Fshock%5Ftroops%5Fdo%5Fcorporate%5Famerica%2527s%5Fdirty%5F&feature=player_embedded


Adele M. Stan AlterNet's acting Washington bureau chief.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141860/

[Unintelligable Name]

Alternet is such a ridiculous website... oh man it never ceases to amaze me.

[bigron]

The 'Me-First, Screw You Crowd' Are No Longer Hiding Their Antics


Finally, there's no pretense. The ugliest traits of this despicable movement are there for all to behold.

By David Sirota, Creators Syndicate
Posted on August 10, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141821/

I know I should be mortified by the lobbyist-organized mobs of angry Brooks Brothers mannequins who are now making headlines by shutting down congressional town hall meetings. I know I should be despondent during this, the Khaki Pants Offensive in the Great American Health Care and Tax War. And yet, I'm euphorically repeating one word over and over again with a big grin on my face.

Finally.

Finally, there's no pretense. Finally, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd's ugliest traits are there for all to behold.

The group's core gripe is summarized in a letter I received that denounces a proposed surtax on the wealthy and corporations to pay for universal health care:

"Until recently, my family was in the top 3 percent of wage earners," the affluent businessperson fumed in response to my July column on taxes. "We are in the group that pays close to 60 percent of this nation's taxes ... Think for a second how you would feel if you built a business and contributed more than your share to this country only to be treated like a pariah."

This sob story about the persecuted rich fuels today's "Tea Parties" -- and I'm sure you've heard some version of it in your community.

I'm also fairly certain that when many of you run into the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd, you don't feel like confronting the faux outrage. But on the off chance you do muster the masochistic impulse to engage, here's a guide to navigating the conversation:

What They Will Scream: We can't raise business taxes, because American businesses already pay excessively high taxes!

What You Should Say: Here's the smallest violin in the world playing for the businesses. The Government Accountability Office reports that most U.S. corporations pay zero federal income tax. Additionally, as even the Bush Treasury Department admitted, America's effective corporate tax rate is the third lowest in the industrialized world.

What They Will Scream: But the rich still "pay close to 60 percent of this nation's taxes!"

What You Should Say: Such statistics refer only to the federal income tax. When considering all of "this nation's taxes" including payroll, state and local levies, the top 5 percent pay just 38.5 percent of the taxes.

What They Will Scream: But 38.5 percent is disproportionately high! See? You've proved that the rich "contribute more than their share" of taxes!

What You Should Say: Actually, they are paying almost exactly "their share." According to the data, the wealthiest 5 percent of America pays 38.5 percent of the total taxes precisely because they make just about that share -- a whopping 36.5 percent! -- of total national income. Asking these folks to pay slightly more in taxes -- and still less than they did during the go-go 1990s -- is hardly extreme.

Stripped of facts, your conversation partner will soon turn to unscientific terrain, claiming it is immoral to "steal" and "redistribute" income via taxes. Of course, he will be specifically railing on "stealing" for stuff like health care, which he insists gets "redistributed" only to the undeserving and the "lazy" (a classic codeword for "minorities"). But he will also say it's OK that government sent trillions of dollars to Wall Streeters.

And that's when you should stop wasting your breath.

What you've discovered is that the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd isn't interested in fairness, empiricism or morality.

With 22,000 of their fellow countrymen dying annually for lack of health insurance and with Warren Buffett paying a lower effective tax rate than his secretary, the Me-First, Screw-Everyone-Else Crowd is merely using the argot of fairness, empiricism and morality to hide its real motive: selfish greed.

No argument, however rational, is going to cure these narcissists of that grotesque disease.


David Sirota is a best-selling author whose newest book, "The Uprising," was just released this month. He is a fellow at the Campaign for America's Future and a board member of the Progressive States Network -- both nonpartisan organizations. His blog is at www.credoaction.com/sirota.

© 2009 Creators Syndicate All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141821/

[Unintelligable Name]

Lobbyist organized mobs... oh god turn it off! Turn it off! I can read any more of their mind numbing propaganda!

[bigron]

Union Faces Threats as Mob Mentality Deepens on Right

In fact, SEIU seems to have quickly become the new focus of far-right activists.

By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on August 7, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/141859/

The raucous event in Tampa last night was hosted by two Democratic policymakers and the Service Employees International Union. The event in St. Louis, which led to six arrests, also had SEIU members in attendance to support reform.

Given the toxic environment, I suppose this was a predictable reaction from the far-right.

An official with SEIU, which has been sending members to town halls to counterbalance the Tea Party brigade, sends over this audio of a phone call the union received on its central voicemail system, threatening to teach union officials a thing or two about "the Second Amendment."

The call seems to refer to reports today to scuffles in St. Louis between SEIU members and town hall rowdies.

"I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens, and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights," the caller says. "That, or y'all are gonna come up against the Second Amendment."

You stay classy, conservative activists.

In fact, SEIU seems to have quickly become the new focus of far-right activists.



A reform opponent in New Mexico, for example, has been using Twitter to encourage conservatives to consider violence. In one message, he wrote, "If ACORN/SEIU attends these townhalls for disruption, stop being peaceful, and hurt them. Badly." What's more, there's at least one right-wing protest scheduled for an SEIU headquarters -- and Rush Limbaugh has been reading the address of the headquarters on the air.

It's part of a growing effort to encourage physical, if not outright violent, confrontations. When a caller to Lou Dobbs' radio show threatened to "brawl" with reform supporters, Dobbs stuck up for him. Glenn Beck suggested today that a caller should show up at policymakers' homes. Michael Savage said he'd like to see anti-reform protests include "violent motorcycle groups."

I continue to think mainstream America -- the families who've been hoping to see meaningful health care reform for decades -- will see and hear about these tactics and run in the other direction. Right-wing mobs may think they're proving that there's a sizable group of Americans who are siding with the corporate interests who've made reform necessary. In reality, they're proving how crazy and borderline-dangerous the far-right base has become.


Steve Benen is "blogger in chief" of the popular Washington Monthly online blog, Political Animal. His background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR's "Talk of the Nation," MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow Show," Air America Radio's "Sam Seder Show," and XM Radio's "POTUS '08."

© 2009 Washington Monthly All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/141859/

[Unintelligable Name]

Now you've done it:

[bigron]

Published on Sunday, August 9, 2009 by OurFuture.org


Fascist America: Are We There Yet?


by Sara Robinson


All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?
And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History [1], Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

What is fascism?
The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further as

"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

.
Jonah Goldberg aside, that's a basic definition most legitimate scholars in the field can agree on, and the one I'll be referring to here.

From proto-fascism to the tipping point
According to Paxton, fascism unfolds in five stages. The first two are pretty solidly behind us -- and the third should be of particular interest to progressives right now.

In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Paxton suggests that the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction, may in fact be the first authentically fascist movement in modern times. Almost every major country in Europe sprouted a proto-fascist movement in the wretched years following WWI (when the Klan enjoyed a major resurgence here as well) -- but most of them stalled either at this first stage, or the next one.

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."

That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the hardcore remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.

When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.

The third stage: being there
All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement [2] was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans [3]. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual [4] that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.

The fail-safe point
According to Paxton, the forging of this third-stage alliance is the make-or-break moment -- and the worst part of it is that by the time you've arrived at that point, it's probably too late to stop it. From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names. [5]

Where's the danger line? Paxton offers three quick questions that point us straight at it:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?

2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

By my reckoning, we're three for three. That's too close. Way too close.

The Road Ahead
History tells us that once this alliance catalyzes and makes a successful bid for power, there's no way off this ride. As Dave Neiwert wrote in his recent book, The Eliminationists [6], "if we can only identify fascism in its mature form—the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies—then it will be far too late to stop it." Paxton (who presciently warned that "An authentic popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black") agrees that if a corporate/brownshirt alliance gets a toehold -- as ours is now scrambling to do -- it can very quickly rise to power and destroy the last vestiges of democratic government. Once they start racking up wins, the country will be doomed to take the whole ugly trip through the last two stages, with no turnoffs or pit stops between now and the end.

What awaits us? In stage four, as the duo assumes full control of the country, power struggles emerge between the brownshirt-bred party faithful and the institutions of the conservative elites -- church, military, professions, and business. The character of the regime is determined by who gets the upper hand. If the party members (who gained power through street thuggery) win, an authoritarian police state may well follow. If the conservatives can get them back under control, a more traditional theocracy, corporatocracy, or military regime can re-emerge over time. But in neither case will the results resemble the democracy that this alliance overthrew.

Paxton characterizes stage five as "radicalization or entropy." Radicalization is likely if the new regime scores a big military victory, which consolidates its power and whets its appetite for expansion and large-scale social engineering. (See: Germany) In the absence of a radicalizing event, entropy may set in, as the state gets lost in its own purposes and degenerates into incoherence. (See: Italy)

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

How do we pull back? That's my next post.

Tip o' the hat to Chip Berlet and Steven Martin for their research help and encouragement.


© 2009 OurFuture.org
--Sara Robinson
[7]


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-5

[bigron]

Published on Sunday, August 9, 2009 by the McClatchy Newspapers


This Country Needs an Outburst of Common Sense


by the McClatchy Newspapers
by Joseph L. Galloway

If ever there were a time for comprehensive health care reform, it's now, and yet the forces of darkness are lining up against this urgent need, buttressed by lies, mobs inflamed by those lies and millions of dollars changing hands and changing votes in Washington, D.C.
The idea that doing nothing and going on without changing the way this country's health care is delivered works to the benefit only of the insurance companies, the giant health care providers and the big pharmaceutical companies.

That industry is now pouring $1.4 million A DAY into lobbying — read that buying or renting members of Congress — to water down or delay or preferably kill health care reform and hope it goes away for another 20 years or so.

Part of that high-dollar industry budget is going to the low end of Washington's K Street lobbying corridor, the firms and the folks who specialize in dirty tricks, panicking the uninformed and most vulnerable citizens, financing the creation and spread of lies written, spoken and spread like viruses by robot dialing machines.

The Republican Party, on life support itself, somehow sees an opportunity in encouraging and participating in this flim-flam operation. It ought to, and should, seal the GOP's fate.

Each night for the past week, we've been treated to the sight of mobs screaming and ranting and shouting down town hall meetings where congressional representatives had come to answer their constituents' questions.

No questions got answered. No information got provided. No one left more informed than he or she was when he or she arrived.

That's because they and their organizers were following online playbooks that are telling them where to go, where to sit, how to make it appear as if there are more of them than there are and, above all, to stop the program and allow no discussion of this issue.

They scream that any government-run health care is socialism or Communism. But look at them; look at their gray hair and thickened waists. At least half of them probably depend entirely on Medicare, a government-run program and a damned good one, for their own health care.

They scream that the bills still being written and amended in Congress will deny vital treatments for older Americans and doom them to an early and unnecessary death. Some dare call it euthanasia.

What utter, unadulterated BS.

The only outfits in America that have the right to refuse you treatment for an illness or deny you an organ transplant are the health care corporations, if you're unlucky enough to have to depend on that wonderful private insurance the right wingnuts are so loudly praising and defending.

This is the same wonderful health coverage that's driven hundreds of thousands of American families into bankruptcy because their private insurers refused to pay for urgently needed surgery or cancer treatment, or simply cancelled their coverage.

Why is that?

It's because those same corporations have, in just one decade, driven their profits and overhead (hiring those lobbyists and buying those congressional critters and building their fleets of private jets) from 5 percent to nearly 20 percent.

In other words, the corporate bite has gone from 5 cents of every dollar paid in premiums to 20 cents of every premium dollar.

It's good old unregulated American greed of the same stripe that drove this country into its current economic meltdown. Wall Street loves these guys.

We desperately need a government-run health care program that can, by good old American competition, force private health insurers to get off their pirate ships and back in the real world. The 46 million or so uninsured Americans need somewhere to get their health needs tended. The millions more in dire danger of losing their jobs and their private insurance need some alternative immediately available.

All of us need some people in Congress who haven't been bought or rented by the pirates, liars and thieves to speak out in favor of filling those real needs.

Wonder how much Big Pharma donated to the key committee members who amended the health care legislation to prohibit any government-run health program from negotiating lower drug prices with the price-gouging drug companies of, you guessed it, Big Pharma?

What we need right now is a huge outburst of common sense and enlightened self-interest.

Those gray-haired Medicare recipients who're playing angry mob need to stop screaming and start listening and reading, separating fact from fiction and learning who’s manipulating them and why.

Follow the money trail back to the pirates and thieves and their handmaidens, the greasy liar lobbyists and those in Congress who're slurping at their troughs.

© 2009 McClatchy Newspapers
Joseph L. Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, is the co-author, with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young [1]," a story of the first large-scale ground battle of the Vietnam War.



Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-3

[bigron]

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Enflame Scary Right-Wing Rage

The conservative playbook has been laid bare, and it's ugly. How long until their overheated rhetoric spills over into violence?

By John V. Santore, Media Matters for America
Posted on August 11, 2009, Printed on August 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141865/


It was an ugly week, and a telling one.

"Global warming is no different than health care, is no different than cap and trade," Rush Limbaugh explained on Monday. "It is simply another branch of liberalism, statism, that is designed to expand government control over individuals and their liberty and their freedom and their income."

"And if this plays out right ... you can do some great damage, culturally, to liberalism," he concluded.

The next five days showed how seriously the right wing is taking those words and how far it is willing to go to confuse and manipulate the public, and to capitalize on the ensuing fear and rage. The goals: the complete delegitimization of Obama and the wholesale destruction of the progressive movement he leads.

Glenn Beck Is Anti-Violence, Pro-Poison

On Monday, Glenn Beck made clear that he does not support violence in the name of political causes. Sure, he's advocating civil disobedience if need be. Maybe 70 million people voted for Barack Obama less than a year ago, but who cares? "It is time to go to Washington!" he preached on Wednesday. "It is time to stand or sit in the middle of the street if you have to!" But remember: no violence.

Then on Thursday, he poisoned the speaker of the House. Not literally, of course -- just in effigy. On live television. What's the problem? Can't you liberals take a joke?

It was a perfect example of the game conservatives in the media are playing: pouring gasoline on the fire, and then, once they are criticized, saying that they were only kidding. But what does Beck expect his viewers to take away from his broadcasts? After a week of increasingly violent protests at town halls around the country, including one such event at which protesters reportedly mentioned Beck by name when explaining what inspired them, he cannot seriously contend that his rhetoric isn't having an impact, isn't stirring up the rage and confusion that is defining opposition to Democratic reforms. How many times can Beck portray Obama as a traitor who is destroying our national sovereignty, or compare the president's health care proposals to those of the Nazis, before the anger spills over? He calls for calm, and then describes the Obama-led "brownshirts" who are silencing dissent and the "enemies list" the White House is compiling of those who dare to voice their opinions. Meanwhile, it is the Democrats, we are told, who are the irresponsible ones. It is Democrats who are using the language of "pure hate," as Frank Luntz told Beck, to describe the brave patriots who are shouting down members of Congress in defense of liberty. Why are they doing it? Beck's answer? They want to create "more problems" so "they can use the iron fist and crush people." In the meantime, Beck urged his supporters to continue pressuring their members of Congress, even if they have to "hold a meeting ... in front of their house."

There was a hint of accountability this week after several of Beck's advertisers canceled their contracts with his show in the wake of his accusation that Obama hates white people. But the provocation continued. "When will someone stand up and say, "Traitor'?" Beck ranted on August 5. "When will someone stand up and say, 'Thieves'? ... The American way of life is being systematically dismantled and destroyed! The republic is in danger!"

Beck is right. If he gets his way, it is in danger. Reason will have been replaced by rage.

With Obama in office, Lou Dobbs Claims To Be an Independent No More

Lou Dobbs took aim at everyone this week -- and CNN still has his back.

In spite of fresh criticism from sources as diverse as the NAACP and Don Imus, CNN alone among the major cable channels decided that it would refuse to run the ad Media Matters put out calling for the network to address Dobbs' promotion of the "birther" conspiracy theory. Predictably, Dobbs tried to make the entire issue about Media Matters itself, saying the ad "really reveals a lot about" who we are. He continued the theme throughout the week, portraying Media Matters as one of the White House's "attack dogs" and asking Obama to call us off, something Ann Coulter agreed with when she was a guest on his radio show.

It was actually a banner week for Lou. In fact, he officially abandoned his stance as "Mr. Independent," using his radio show to inform Obama (a regular listener, to be sure) that he was "moving from being an independent, sir, to being absolutely opposed to ... any policy you can conceive of!" Dobbs celebrated his newfound opposition by spreading misinformation on health care reform (it's socialism, by the way, because Obama's a socialist), hosting a Michelle Malkin lovefest, defending Limbaugh, raising the specter of incipient fascism, and repeatedly attacking Keith Olbermann, whom he described as a "cretin" and a "psycho" who was "psychologically scarred" from beatings by "girls" that he supposedly suffered as a child. No wonder, then, that Olbermann works at MSNBC, the network Dobbs called a "coven of thugs."

And not to be left behind by his fellow right-wing media celebrities, Dobbs offered support to a caller who threatened to "brawl" with health care reform advocates at a town hall, encouraging others like him to make their "voice heard."

But whatever you do, don't say "birther" on his show.

Rush Limbaugh Hates Nazis, Which Is Why He Hates Nancy Pelosi

It's hard to imagine, but in certain ways, Rush was actually the most reasonable of the conservative heavy hitters this week ... except for his repeated comparisons of the Democratic leadership to the Nazi high command. Whoops -- never mind.

With the precision the right-wing echo chamber provides on a daily basis, Rush reiterated his heartfelt belief that if Democrats have their way, senior citizens -- the very same group that benefits exclusively from that evil government-run program known as Medicare -- will spend their last days on a "Statist Farm," where they will be unable to see a doctor and suffer at the hands of heartless bureaucrats whose job it will be to "make sure certain people die." On the other hand, if you were a loyal Obama supporter, you know, like an HIV patient, you might get special treatment. Limbaugh also mocked the voice of Kathleen Sebelius (he sure hates it when women talk) and described her work promoting reform as a "campaign of pure fraud and deceit." And he had a warning for some of the crooks in D.C.: "You Blue Dogs are about to see your last days if you vote for this bill." At least he's giving them one more chance to get it right.

Predictably, Limbaugh decried the idea that anti-reform town hall protests were anything other than the work of self-informed citizens. "It's not ginned up, it's genuine. It's real," he explained. Sure, there isn't a single shard of evidence that any well-funded conservative organization has spent a single second spreading lies and advocating aggressive tactics in the hope of furthering the disruptions.

"There is no manufactured anger," Limbaugh said the next day. "The anger is legitimate and real and it is boiling over."

There's that idea again: The anger is boiling over.

In order to truly manipulate people, you need to convince them that they are fighting pure evil. And on Thursday, Rush finally got down to business.

"[T]he Obama health care logo is damn close to a Nazi swastika logo," he said on air. He went on to explain "the similarities between the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in Germany." Key among them: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." On Friday, he did it again, but blamed Nancy Pelosi for "starting it" because she had pointed out that one conservative protester had made a sign featuring a swastika. There was plenty of photographic evidence to back her up, but Limbaugh still called her "deranged."

Sounding the same call as Beck and Dobbs, Limbaugh explained that Obama's "brownshirts" were coming, sure to make use of the "snitch website" he had set up. He warned of "union thugs" who had "roughed up" a protester -- "Mussolini-type stuff." He accused a St. Louis SEIU local of violence, and then gave out the office's address.

He even latched onto a recent fad in conservative circles: comparing Obama to the Joker, the sociopathic anarchist from the most recent Batman movie. "His goal was to undermine the whole system," Limbaugh said of the character, while actually explaining himself.

He wasn't kidding. The conservative playbook has been laid bare, and it is ugly. In the face of this summer of hate, progressives must persevere. And in so doing, they must be driven not by anger at the thought of who they are fighting against, but by devotion to who they are fighting for: everyone the conservative movement is so content to leave behind.



© 2009 Media Matters for America All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141865/

[Unintelligable Name]

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs Enflame Scary Right-Wing Rage

The conservative playbook has been laid bare, and it's ugly. How long until their overheated rhetoric spills over into violence? we have to stage a false flag to shut everyone up?

[bigron]

Geico Pulls Its Ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News Show

Advertisers continue to drop Beck.


By Amanda Terkel, Think Progress
Posted on August 11, 2009, Printed on August 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.thinkprogress.org//141919/

Fox News host Glenn Beck has been under fire in recent weeks for his comments that President Obama is a “racist” with “a deep-seated hatred for white people.” Since ColorOfChange called on its members to urge Beck’s advertisers to drop his show, three advertisers have pulled out. Today, ColorOfChange announced that Geico Insurance is joining them:

“On Tuesday, August 4, GEICO instructed its ad buying service to redistribute its inventory of rotational spots on FOX-TV to their other network programs, exclusive of the Glenn Beck program,” said a spokesperson for GEICO Corporate Communications in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “As of August 4, GEICO no longer runs any paid advertising spots during Mr. Beck’s program.“


Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.

© 2009 Think Progress All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.thinkprogress.org//141919/

[bigron]

The Threat Is Real: Why Right-Wing Rage at Townhall Meetings Could Quickly Turn Deadly


The insurance industry has agitated the far right to prevent health reform, but they don't know whom they're messing with.


By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet
Posted on August 12, 2009, Printed on August 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141925/

From the Internet to Sarah Palin this strange claim is being made: Obama wants to kill the elderly and the infirm with his health care plan. Palin even said her Down's Syndrome child would be a target. The claim is being repeated, or rather screamed, by angry groups invading town hall meetings that congresspeople have organized to discuss health care reform. How on earth can the outright lie that health-care reform will lead to the euthanasia of the elderly be accepted by anyone, even by those on the far anti-Obama right?

I happen to have the answer to this question.

Over thirty years ago, my family helped start the myth leading to the present bizarre turn of events. From the mid 1970s to mid 1980s I was an activist on the far right, an evangelical, and a Republican. I quit the movement by the late 1980s. (Disclosure: I'm now a supporter of President Obama and health care reform.) To understand what is happening today in town hall meetings invaded by angry mobs convinced that their representatives are part of a conspiracy to force the elderly to forgo care, you have to understand what we the founders of the pro-life movement set in motion.

In the mid-1970s, Dr. C. Everett Koop (who became Ronald Reagan's Surgeon General), my late evangelical theologian father Dr. Francis Schaeffer and I helped launch what became the Evangelical-led wing of the pro-life movement. Instrumental in the formation of our anti-choice movement was a book written by my father and Dr. Koop. I then translated it into a multi-episode documentary film series called "Whatever Happened To The Human Race?" Stressing the importance of "the sanctity of all human life," the book and film series claimed that abortion is murder and the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade would inevitably lead to legalized infanticide and euthanasia.

As a warning to our audience, we talked about what happened in Germany when -- in the 1930s -- and fascist theories about the mentally ill, physically deficient, etc., led to "mercy killings." We drew comparisons with the Supreme Court ruling and said the door was now open, with "the loss of the sanctity of life, in the United States" to the same fate as awaited Germany. Then my dad took it to the next step and wrote a book called "A Christian Manifesto." He discussed the possibility of Christians using force to change the United States government if all else failed to reverse Roe. He made the comparison of America to Hitler's Germany.

We successfully (and as it turned out completely mistakenly) linked legalized abortion to a "slippery slope" that would inexorably lead to the equivalent of an American Holocaust against the elderly and infirm. The antiabortion argument thus became two arguments: not only about abortion itself, but also what abortion would lead to. We attacked pro-choice ideas on both grounds. This then became part of the indelible fabric of the pro-life cause. For instance decades later this was why the Terri Schiavo case became what it did: "proof" that we'd been right all along and that we were proceeding down "the slope."

It is in this context that the cynical cleverness of the lobbying groups, the insurance industry and the far right wing of the Republican Party can be understood. They have borrowed our arguments to frame their anti-health care reform tirade. They have tapped into a ready-made conviction that has been sustained for over thirty years and that has not wavered in the face of the reality that legal abortion did not lead to legal infanticide, let alone to government mandated euthanasia. (Even in Oregon the assisted suicide laws relate to doctor-patient relations in end of life decisions of the terminally ill, not to the "mercy killing" for the convenience of the government that we predicted.)

The people behind the wholly manufactured "grassroots" protests that are being organized to intimidate health care reform advocates at town hall type meetings are using the anti-abortion arguments to advance corporate interests. And something else is going on too: the quest for retroactive we-were-right-all-along vindication. Two linchpins remain from the original pro-life movement that Koop, my father and I helped start: first, our the tactics that we used to intimidate abortion providers -- screaming at doctors, following patients, blocking access to clinics -- and second, our slippery slope argument.

The "what-this-will-lead-to" myth we helped perpetrate also helps to explain why on the fringe of the pro-life community you have people who from time-to-time take the next "logical" step and kill. In their minds they aren't just stopping abortion, they're stopping our "slide" to state-mandated euthanasia and infanticide. Dr. Tiller wasn't shot only because he provided abortions. He was also killed because of years of pro-life leaders and their right wing media sympathizers linking him (and all abortion providers and pro-choice supporters) to the myth of where legal abortion will lead "next." Tiller was routinely linked to the Holocaust, Hitler and the Nazis. By portraying him as a stepping stone to worse yet to come, the act of killing him was condoned by some extreme pro-lifers not just as a good thing -- he couldn't do more abortions -- but as a preventative act against a despotic future.

That is why I take the rhetoric linking President Obama to Hitler that's rife in the far right anti-health reform networks of email, blogging and even on air on talk radio and TV as a real threat. To the uninitiated this linkage sounds unhinged. To me it sounds an alarm bell. I know that it taps into 30 years of slippery slope rhetoric resulting in four abortion doctors being shot and countless acts of violence against clinics. We too began by yelling at people in our marches. In the end our words opened a door to violent actions.

I'm not sure if the insurance industry leaders using lobbyists to stir the pot know what they've just hooked into. Do they know that the comparisons of Obama to Hitler, and the call to break up a wholly imaginary "conspiracy" against the elderly may lead the fringe of the fringe to the next step? Is this fear of mine far-fetched? I don't think so. To most Americans the killing of Dr. Tiller was murder. To many in the pro-life movement it was a courageous act by a patriot.

Whatever one's opinion about abortion, the fact remains that the abortion debate introduced a political polarization that has never been healed and that has turned violent before. The fact that otherwise sane people now believe that United States government is in a conspiracy with the Obama administration to kill our elderly makes sense only when seen in the context of the hysterical, Armageddon-like expectations of the religious right/pro-life movement. When you understand the link between the hate mongers, the lobbying groups carrying water for the insurance industry and the ideology that came out of the pro-life movement then you can you understand what is happening today in town hall meetings that are being disrupted by screaming people. More importantly you can then also see where this may lead.


Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It Back.

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141925/

[bigron]

Published on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 by The Guardian/UK


'Evil and Orwellian' – America's Right Turns Its Fire on NHS


by Andrew Clark

The National Health Service has become the butt of increasingly outlandish political attacks in the US as Republicans [1] and conservative campaigners rail against Britain's "socialist" system as part of a tussle to defeat Barack Obama's proposals for broader government involvement in healthcare.


Growing numbers of patients aged 65 and over are having NHS heart surgery. (Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Top-ranking Republicans have joined bloggers and well-funded free market organisations in scorning the NHS [2] for its waiting lists and for "rationing" the availability of expensive treatments.

As myths and half-truths circulate, British diplomats in the US are treading a delicate line in correcting falsehoods while trying to stay out of a vicious domestic dogfight over the future of American health policy.

Slickly produced television advertisements trumpet the alleged failures of the NHS's 61-year tradition of tax-funded healthcare. To the dismay of British healthcare professionals, US critics have accused the service of putting an "Orwellian" financial cap on the value on human life, of allowing elderly people to die untreated and, in one case, for driving a despairing dental patient to mend his teeth with superglue.

Having seen his approval ratings drop, Obama is seeking to counter this conservative onslaught by taking his message to the public, with a "town hall" meeting yesterday at a school in New Hampshire.

Last week, the most senior Republican on the Senate finance committee, Chuck Grassley, took NHS-baiting to a newly emotive level by claiming that his ailing Democratic colleague, Edward Kennedy, would be left to die untreated from a brain tumour in Britain on the grounds that he would be considered too old to deserve treatment.

"I don't know for sure," said Grassley. "But I've heard several senators say that Ted Kennedy with a brain tumour, being 77 years old as opposed to being 37 years old, if he were in England, would not be treated for his disease, because end of life – when you get to be 77, your life is considered less valuable under those systems."

The degree of misinformation is causing dismay in NHS circles. Andrew Dillon, chief executive of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), pointed out that it was utterly false that Kennedy would be left untreated in Britain: "It is neither true nor is it anything you could extrapolate from anything we've ever recommended to the NHS."

Others in the US have accused Obama of trying to set up "death panels" to decide who should live and who should die, along the lines of Nice, which determines the cost-effectiveness of NHS drugs.

One right-leaning group, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, lists horror stories about British care on its website. An email widely circulated among US voters, of uncertain origin, claims that anyone over 59 in Britain is ineligible for treatment for heart disease.

The British embassy in Washington is quietly trying to counter inaccuracies. A spokesman said: "We're keeping a close eye on things and where there's a factually wrong statement, we will take the opportunity to correct people in private. That said, we don't want to get involved in a domestic debate."

A $1.2m television advertising campaign bankrolled by the conservative Club for Growth displays images of the union flag and Big Ben while intoning a figure of $22,750. A voiceover says: "In England, government health officials have decided that's how much six months of life is worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck."

The number is based on a ratio of £30,000 a year used by Nice in its assessment of whether drugs provide value for money. Dillon said this was one of many variables in determining cost-effectiveness of medicines. He said of his body's portrayal in the US: "It's very disappointing and it's not, obviously, the way in which Nice describes itself or the way in which we're perceived in the UK even among those who are disappointed or upset by our decisions."

On Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, the conservative commentator Sean Hannity recently alighted upon the case of Gordon Cook, a security manager from Merseyside, who used superglue to stick a loose crown into his gum because he was unable to find an NHS dentist. The cautionary tale, which was based on a Daily Mail report from 2006, prompted Hannity to warn his viewers: "If the Democrats have their way, get your superglue ready."

The broader tone of the US healthcare debate has become increasingly bitter. The former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin last week described president Obama's proposals as "evil", while the radio presenter Rush Limbaugh has compared a logo used for the White House's reform plans to a Nazi swastika. Hecklers have disrupted town hall meetings called to discuss the health reform plans.

David Levinthal, a spokesman for the nonpartisan Centre for Responsive Politics, said the sheer scale of the issue, which will affect the entire trajectory of US medical care, was arousing passions: "It's no surprise you have factions from every political stripe attempting to influence the debate and some of those groups are certainly playing to the deepest fears of Americans. There's been a great deal of documented disinformation propagated throughout the country."Defenders of Britain's system point out that the UK spends less per head on healthcare but has a higher life expectancy than the US. The World Health Organisation ranks Britain's healthcare as 18th in the world, while the US is in 37th place. The British Medical Association said a majority of Britain's doctors have consistently supported public provision of healthcare. A spokeswoman said the association's 140,000 members were sceptical about the US approach to medicine: "Doctors and the public here are appalled that there are so many people on the US who don't have proper access to healthcare. It's something we would find very, very shocking."

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited


Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/11-9

[Damascus]

Come on people, the only thing the bill will help IS the health care industry and Insurance companies. Screw the little guy. Sorry to state the obvious.