Special Comment: Shirley Sherrod, the Assassins of the Right, and the Enablers of the Left
Keith decided to come back in from vacation to weigh in on the Shirley Sherrod incident in tonight's Special Comment. I agree completely with what he said at the end about Ms. Sherrod.
Olbermann: Only one of us in all of this, from the mountebanks to the presidential advisers to the unchallenging reporters, only one of us in all this, has done her job correctly.
You, Ms. Sherrod, know what "decisive action" is… and "how to respond… in this atmosphere."
And thank God somebody does.
Ain't that the truth? The lady is a class act. I'm glad the administration has realized the error of their ways but they threw Vilsack under the bus instead of admitting they had something to do with the firing; not that it excuses him allowing it or that it excuses the actions of USAD official Cheryl Cook who was the one that made Sherrod resign over the phone from the side of the road.
Rather than worry too much about what the White House did or did not do though, I'm glad to see the tactics of Andrew Breitbart and Fox exposed for once and the rest of the media being forced to take a closer look at how they do business. It's really ugly. It really needs to stop and we really need to push back against their divisive tactics. The administration didn't respond well, but then neither did the NAACP. People make mistakes and I'm sure they're all fully aware now of just how badly they screwed this up. And as Karoli noted the rest of the media that jumped on this quickly owes her an apology as well. As Keith notes in this comment, there's lots of blame to go around on this one.
The bigger problem that needs to be addressed is what do we do to push back against the Breitbarts of the world and against Fox's propaganda machine? Because as Rachel reminded us last night, they will do this again as long as they believe their tactics are going to work. This should mean that Breitbart is completely discredited, but I have very little faith in our media organizations to do the right thing with him. I know Fox won't. They've already proven that, but will other media outlets quit bringing him on the next time he has one of these doctored tapes or will they pay more attention when the next Breitbart comes along?
Keith's comment below the fold.
On the 15th of October, 1894, a fervently patriotic, almost jingoistic French man stepped into the office of the Minister of War, in Paris. He had been told he was simply attending a review and he was still not suspicious even as another man slammed a hand on his shoulder and arrested him for treason. Just 82 days later he was convicted, stripped of his military rank, sentenced to life imprisonment, and sent to a fortress in Guiana.
He was, of course, utterly and totally innocent. All of the evidence against him had been fabricated, some of it literally stitched together, with the parts that would have exonerated him, edited out.
But religious fervor and xenophobia had gripped his country, and his ethnic group was in the minority, at a time when the majority was trying to paint that minority as evil and subversive and bigoted beyond all reason against the majority.
Those in government who knew his innocence stayed silent in a foolish and ill-fated attempt to govern on behalf of all of the people, even the irrational and the hateful and the prejudiced. Those in the press who did not grab at the circulation and the profits, that the hatred and the scapegoating would bring them, were literally chased out of the country.
Thus would it be just under five years before the man was pardoned, nearly eleven before he was fully exonerated and restored to active service.
His name, of course, was Captain Alfred Dreyfus, and the fortress in Guiana was… Devil's Island.
Well we need to congratulate ourselves.
How far we have come!
We can pull a Dreyfus faster than the French could in 1894.
82 days until they sent him to Devil's Island?
We did it to Shirley Sherrod in 48 hours.
We - the howling fools of the far right, the stand-aside pathetic bureaucrats of the Department of Agriculture, the whole of the cowering media, this network included, the whole of the government, this self-defeatingly above-it-all president, included.
It is a merciful by-product of the swiftness with which we can ruin somebody's life, that the real truth will also emerge at nearly the same lightning-speed. But, no matter how much of a stretch it is to compare Shirley Sherrod to Alfred Dreyfus, mistake it not: Shirley Sherrod has been to her own Devil's Island, and thanks to the perpetual fraud machine that is Fox News, and the scum that is this assassin Breitbart, there will be a portion of this country - the mindless, the hateful, the reactionary, the racist - to whom she is forever convicted and ever imprisoned.
I have sat behind this desk for seven years and pushed back at these counterfeit journalists, as a man might stand at the shore and try to push back the tide. I have been branded an ideologue and a profiteer and a mirror of image of that which I assail. I have said it in every way I could think of, and been told I have been over-the-top because I have mocked and shouted and repeated.
And today the proof lies in front of you, bleeding: the reputation of Shirley Sherrod, a woman who 24 years ago saw and overcame the vengeance in her own heart and achieved the kind of true greatness the rest of us can only hope we might express for one moment in the whole of our lives.
Assassinated by Fox News!
Assassinated by that scum Breitbart!
Assassinated by all their meager-brained imitators on other channels and other sites, their limp fellow travelers who never asked questions first, but simply shot, and shot, and shot, and shot… and laughed!
Let me make this utterly clear:
What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist --even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.
What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites… is a manipulation. Not just of a story, not just on behalf of a political philosophy. Manipulation of a society, its intentional redirection from reality and progress, to a paranoid delusion and the fomenting of hatred of Americans by Americans.
And nearly every last word of it is never, in any tangible sense, true.
Ask… Shirley Sherrod.
But this evil has not become institutionalized just because of the hard, soul-less work of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes and the scum Breitbart.
Our society has not bought into the premise of this 24-hour parade of feces dressed up as news just because of a clever marketing plan.
The assassins of the Right have been enabled on the Left.
The legitimate media didn't first look at the whole videotape. We didn't first ask if the doctored clip perverted by the scum Breitbart didn't seem to be leading up to a "however."
We didn't, even today, when even this network let this pornographer of propaganda Breitbart come on and spew his lies and his venom and his fraudulent self-defense like a quack doctor attending a life-or-death surgery, we didn't once…consider the source.
"We are appalled by her actions" said the head of the NAACP. "She mistreated a white farmer in need of assistance because of his race."
Benjamin Jealous didn't first look at the whole videotape, didn't first ask the farmer if, as proved true, Ms. Sherrod had saved his farm.
"We have been working to turn the page on the sordid civil rights record at USDA," said the Secretary of Agriculture. "This controversy could make it more difficult to move forward on correcting injustices."
Tom Vilsack didn't first look at the whole videotape, didn't first ask if the event took place when Ms. Sherrod worked for USDA, and not 24 years ago.
"We could have waited all day, we could have had a media circus," said the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House. "But we took decisive action and it's a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."
Jim Messina didn't first look at the whole videotape, didn't first ask if the "decisive action" might not have really been like sending Dreyfus to Devil's Island.
"It's a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."
This… atmosphere.
This atmosphere exists because the people around him have let this president be dumbed down.
The question used to be "fired up?" - and the answer: "Ready to go!"
The question now is "fired up?" - the answer now is: "Not ready, because we cannot afford the impression of not looking sufficiently presidential and neutral and inviting a media circus in this atmosphere."
To paraphrase President Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt -- Mr. Messina, and Mr. Emanuel, and everybody else in this White House who is gradually remodeling this President into something generic and safe and electable in 2012 by the slimmest of margins on the strength of being as media-circus-free and better suited to "this atmosphere" as possible…
Let Obama be Obama!
And that advice must be heeded by one man above all others.
"Can you give us some, specifically, some things that he said that would help us?," Mr. Gibbs was asked at this afternoon's press briefing.
"Well again," Mr. Gibbs replied, "I think he, he talked about the fact that, that, that a disservice had been done here and an injustice had happened."
He was quoting you Mr. President.
Fired up!?
"A disservice has been done."
Fired up!?
"An injustice had happened."
Mr. President, it is beyond admirable that in your position, and at this time of fearful division in this country, that you view yourself as President of everyone, not -- as your predecessor did -- only as President just of those who voted for you.
But you must, at long last, Sir, come to terms with the fact that while you have spent these first 18 months and one day of your presidency bending over backwards for those others, they have spent this time insisting you are not actually president, or you are a communist, or you are bent on destroying whatever is starring this week in the paranoid fantasies churned out by Fox News and the farcical Breitbart.
If only for the arrogance of the irony - that this Crusade to prove you a foreign influence is led by an Australian named Murdoch and his sons who pretend to be British, and his second largest shareholder Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud of Saudi Arabia -- you, Sir, must stand up to this attack on you, and on this nation.
Their game-plan is transparent:
They can strand together all the forces of anti-black racism in this country, direct them at you and all for which you and this nation stand, and convince the great unwashed and unthinking out there that not only are they not racists, but you, you Barack Obama, and Van Jones, and Shirley Sherrod, you are the real racists, and so in opposing you they are not expressing the worst vestige of our past, but are actually standing up against it.
As you stay silent and neutral and everybody's President, they are gradually convincing racists that they are civil rights leaders and you are Police Chief Bull Connor.
And then some idiot at Fox news barks, and your people throw an honorable public servant under the nearest bus, just for the sake of 'decisive action' and the correct way to respond in this atmosphere.
Mr. President, please stop trying to act, every minute, like some noble, neutral figure, chairing a government of equal and dispassionate minds, and contemplative scholars. It is a freaking war out here, and the imagined consensus you seek is years in the future, if ever it is to be re-discovered.
This false consensus has gotten us only the crucifixion of Van Jones, and a racist gold-shilling buffoon speaking from the Lincoln Memorial on the 47th Anniversary of Dr. King's speech, and now it has gotten us… Shirley Sherrod.
And your answer is to note a "disservice" and an "injustice."
Sir, get a copy of the Michael Douglas movie "The American President." When you get to the line where he says "I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job" -- hit the rewind button. Twenty times.
"Fired up?"
"Fired up?"
Anybody?
Anybody?
Lastly.
Ms. Sherrod?
I've got no business speaking on behalf of the people of the United States, that's the President's job. But frankly I don't know why he hasn't done this yet, so I'm going to.
We all would like to apologize to you, and ask you to return to work. Or if they want to make you Secretary of Agriculture, or especially White House Deputy Chief of Staff. The President could use somebody like you in there. Tonight!
But mostly I want to thank you for being, honorably, quietly, and until these last few days, anonymously, such an outstanding American. Long ago, there was harm done to you and you responded as nearly all of us would. And one day, 24 years ago, you realized that you were not ending that harm, you were just passing it along through vengeance and blindness. And you stopped. You stopped not with fanfare nor with self-aggrandizing tears nor in publicized rehab nor on a political stage.
You just stopped and you re-joined the righteous who occupy every corner of our great nation, and indeed every corner of our politics. And even in this hour of undeserved trial and abuse, in your 'Devil's Island of the mind,' you have maintained your dignity and your honor.
Only one of us in all of this, from the mountebanks to the presidential advisors to the unchallenging reporters, only one of us in all this, has done her job correctly.
You, Ms. Sherrod, know what "decisive action" is… and "how to respond… in this atmosphere."
And thank God somebody does.
Good night, and good luck.
...racial matters is the soulless artful dodging President's Achilles heel. Obama fears dealing with race and the Right wing bigots know it.
Some official demanding that Sherrod pull over to the side of the road and sending in her resignation via blackberry before the story hits the glen dreck show.
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
by Glen Beck? Things are worse than I ever thought possible.
It breaks my heart to admit it, but our once wonderful hero has immense feet of clay. And unless he listens to the few progressives who have been screaming at the top of their lungs....and to prominent liberal media people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz......he WILL be a one term president and will have failed all those of us who worked our butts off to get him elected and, I don't know about you, but on the day he was inaugurated, I wept in my living room while watching the historic event. And here's my advice (plea) for President Obama:
"President Obama.....you MUST listen to Olbermann....and, quite frankly, I agree with Phoenix Justice....DUMP RHAM EMANUEL. He IS your Achilles Heel. Or, if he is not, then I am more disappointed and crushed about YOU than I could have ever imagined I could be. Unless you can show us the fire and determination we saw in your campaign, and that you promised us would be present in your presidency, you will go down in history as the biggest waste of God-given talent in the history of this country.
I, and the millions of people who voted for you and worked to help you achieve one of the most important political victories in American history, BEG you to open your eyes and see what is happening.....YOU ARE BEING EMASCULATED AND DESTROYED BY THE RIGHT WING MACHINE!! They want you gone---they may even want you dead. But whatever their wishes, WE want a saviour...and you are letting us down. WAKE UP!! It's not too late. Lead and we will follow. Our country is in peril and you must lead us out of the wilderness. DO IT NOW!"
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
knows too much. He has Barry by the sack.
just as you do.
Maybe the worst thing he did was to take on the clinton and bush operatives.
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
The worst thing he did was put Clinton operatives in charge of his staff.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
to the White House. We'll see how committed they are to listening to the people who elected them.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
Of course Obama has feet of clay in matters of race. What other option is there when most whites want to deal with people of color they view as 'non-threatening.'
Now keep in mind that a person of color (and African-Americans males in particular) are often viewed as threatening to many whites if they: Get angry and raise their voices, look at a white person, walk in the general proximity of a white person, etc.
There is no way that Obama would be president in today's America if he did not in a general sense occupy a non-existent high ground. In fact, that's probably the reason he won the Presidency (other than he wasn't George Bush, that is), namely he's not only a person of color, but he's a relatively nonthreatening (and that's the key here) person of color.
Do you actually think Obama believes that the Tea Party are not, at heart, racist? I doubt it, since the evidence to the contrary is fairly obvious.
So why can't Obama just come out and say that? Because he has to rise above.
Yet that's the irony: By doing so he only allows those truly racist types to trumpet their own twisted agendas.
To the detriment of us all.
when I e-mailed it to the White House:
I suggested he follow Alan Grayson's lead and be a President with Guts because the right wing hates him and wants to see him gone.
You think he will take my advice?
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
No
But I've planted the seed.......
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
No one will read your email, and no one will respond.
You are not a corporation. You do not matter.
I feel much better now.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
they'll just monitor what your doing and thinking via your computer.
It's a shame, but, you're absolutely correct Rich. They will monitor everything we do. However, unless we are a corporation, they will not act on our behalf.
They'll be pretty bored. I read C & L, Think Progress, some others; look for a job; e-mail my kids and grandkids and buy books on Amazon. Big F*ckin'Deal.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
and fill him in on a few of those lessons a mother can't teach a son.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I sadly agree.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I hope she sues Andy Brushbag for the slanderous crap he put out. Nice court case would help discover if Andrew did the edit hack-job or if another was involved. It would also trap a few others who likely helped in cutting the film to make it fit on Fox.
Get it all out in the light, follow up her lawsuit with a filing the next day by ACORN and watch the maggots squirm.
What's odd is that there wasn't this much backtracking by those involved during the ACORN pimp dust-up.
.
These are the same people who destroyed ACORN, using preey much the same tactics that they used this time, doctored video clips.
After ACORN announced they were closing down, the ruling came from California that ACORN had not done anything wrong but were made to appear that way through the edited tapes.
Breitbart and Fox and the right wingers acheived their desired result, and even though it later became clear that they had purposefully deceived the public, there were no consequences and so they've continued on with that tactic.
Until they pay a price, a really serious price for their fraud, the fraud will continue, and there will be more and more of it, and they will continue to control the political discourse in the US.
FoxNews thinks they are protecting America, but America's freedoms cannot survive a press that manipulates the public. What we have now is what existed in the late 1800s when the press (Hearst) marched the country into the Spanish-American War for their own profits.
they have only one intent - to fuck up the minds in this country so people will do all the work it takes to destroy this country while blaming the destruction of this country on those they have targeted for their hatreds.
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
FOX (Fokker News) Emergency STAFF Meeting over Oberman's comment.
http://js-kit.com/blob/_ulfyvbyhE015m5nxSUMcU...
sellent
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
I think Secretary Vilsack got a call from Rahm and that's all it took. The firing has Rahm's finger prints all over it. President Obama needs to dump him as his chief of staff, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.
Election 2012: Be Educated! Be Active! Vote!
www.PhoenixJustice.com
The firing has Rahm's finger prints all over it.
You are correct. You've learned well, young Jedi.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Not sure how young I am (41), but I will accept the compliment! :-)
Election 2012: Be Educated! Be Active! Vote!
www.PhoenixJustice.com
I have corns older than most of the posters in C&L.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
and his Zionist buddies will dump Barry. So be it.
The American Christian Exceptionalists (Obama, Clinton .. to name only 2) are deep in bed with the Israeli Zionist Exceptionalists.
The ONLY two nations on THIS PLANET actually protected by GOD.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Rahm is the final arbiter of what is brought to the President's attention.
"Courtesy is owed. Respect is earned. Love is given." --Unknown author, found in Guide to Texas Etiquette by Kinky Friedman
it blew up.
!!!!!!
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
...he's a corporately owned tool. It wouldn't have taken a whole lot of pressure from
RasputinEmanuel to get him to throw Sherrod under the bus.I think he used a Jedi mind trick.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
the Rasputin comparison,fits.
....the fools do not realize,a population that can ,..... not paticipate .............in the 'economy'...,can not keep it viable!..........."we are listening,.......and we're not blind.,......this is your life....this is your time."
It's true enough, but in American politics, that is something that is implied simply by the fact that he, or anyone else, has won the nomination of his party, or at least, it should be.
Without corporate approval, you're lucky if you're even allowed to play the game. And there's almost no chance that you'll win.
Kerry - who served in the military & won medals - laughed at and humiliated with Purple Bandages, while Bush - the real dodger - gets hyped as the strong military muscular man.
Shirley Sherrod - who overcame her own racism - painted as the racist, by the racists!
DO WE DETECT A PATTERN HERE?
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Crazy isn't it? Although I'm not a McCain supporter, Bush supporters actually used McCain's military service and POW experience against him in the 2000 Republican nomination campaign. Completely shameless. There's not an issue that the extreme right won't twist into something unrecognizable.
And together with "lying" and "manipulation" form the triumvirate of the GOP's modus operandi.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
ailes protege`
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
It's almost comical... I saw a comment on some blog where the commenter said something to the effect of "Of course Bush served his country, otherwise how could he have gotten an honorary discharge! Stop bringing it up!". It doesn't actually make any sense, given the Clan Bush's political power, but it's interesting to see how someone could defend the military's "fair" treatment of Bush, while at the same time claiming that Kerry's purple heart was misplaced.
Affirmative!
Now, let's target them and destroy them.
Obama apologists flooding C&L in 5...4...3...
Even Keith missed the REAL political fallout of this.
The right has now created a division within the Democratic base, right before an election, by creating a situation where a black President has alienated black Democrats. Here are the facts...this Administration fired a black woman for no good reason based on bullshit put out by Fox News. That's the bottom line. A situation has been created where you could wind up with a significant enough percentage of blacks sitting out the election and taking another part of the demographic base out of the mix. The Democratic Party has already significantly pissed off enough of the progressive base, on their own.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
That had occurred to me. Even so, I still wrote a strongly-worded email demanding some sort of apology to Ms Sherrod and the day of the 'apology' (let's face it, in the world of politics that's as good as it is going to get) I wrote another praising them for at least addressing the issue and coming somewhat correct.
I don't think the damage done here is necessarily permanent, but it HAS been done. One of the main thrusts of my complaint to them was dismay that they could fall for such utter crap and for all appearances will continue to do so. I pretty much begged them to pull their heads out of their asses.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
Just a few days ago the USDA announced approximately $1 Billion in claims settlements for black farmers who have been alleging discrimination for decades in their attempts to get assistance from USDA.
Shirley Sherrod actually won one of those claims in a previous round of settlements and was positioned to keep the ball rolling.
Brilliant strategy by the slimeball Republican operatives.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Another C&Ler posted that story the other day. I'd be surprised if there wasn't a direct connection.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
Part of the story here:
.. definitely one of those uppity black women ..
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Conservatives Try To Bash USDA Anti-Racism Suit, Shirley Sherrod
More at link.
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
WOW!
I'd be inclined to believe it is a right wing conspiracy if...
Oh wait! Did I say "right wing"?
Then it is a conspiracy.
And a pretty disgusting one at that.
I so hope Ms Sherrod sue Brainfart; some very juicy details could be exposed in open court.
Brilliant strategy by the slimeball Republican operatives.
Yes, but if we play nice, let them make changes to our legislation in the morning, jump ahead on the lunch line in the afternoon, and then bone us up the ass at nite...it will all be wonderful. Unicorns will frolic in the open meadows, and sweet summer air will flow from car tailpipes.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
i bet even the depraved fantasies of the right are sh-sh-shocked just how quickly, how pathetically, how embarrassingly the obama admin and the naacp reacted
sherrod meant nothing to the right--damaging the admin and creating division in the base was the goal. and the obama admin lived up to their scared-of-their-own shadow reputation (again) and gave breitbarts on the right reason to do this again and again
The NAACP took the bait too, ya know.
From CNN:
This could create a situation 180 degrees opposite of what you're thinking.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
brilliant work by the slimeballs
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
So, let's review...over the last 30 years the GOP has maneuvered politically (and with the quiet acquiescence of the Democratic Party) to remove labor and progressives from the Democratic base and now are in the process of removing minorities.
The Democratic response is the brilliant electoral strategy and slogan..."Vote for us, 'cause we suck less."
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
According to LandP:
It's a midterm election. Voting is bound to drop off anyway, and probably more so in the African-American demographic, at least according to one pollster in this WaPo story from 11 days ago:
Now you've got this cynical ploy by Breitbart and Faux that might get those surge voters motivated 3 1/2 months out from the midterms. And it might actually deflate the turnout of the intended audience of the edited tape, older white voters.
Keep an eye on the details in upcoming polls.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
While the administration's response was pathetic (must keep it off the Beck show) this caper may prove a lot more damaging to the GOP and Fox News. I've seen this on NBC Nightly News, Anderson Cooper, and now Olbermann with the most strongly worded comments and it looks like there is some serious blowback from the rest of the media on this. It may serve to marginalize the far right media monkeys and push away people who watch Fox with 1% of their brain cells functioning but who are not fanatical, just easily manipulated. It may also motivate blacks to vote against the GOP.
I just think back to "Bulworth" ....
"What are you going to do, vote Republican?"
...we know.
We know.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
before I make a decision?"
why do you separate them?
________________
common sense matters as much as truth
Don't even go there. Just don't.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
You may be right about that, but you still have to wonder why they are so afraid of Glen Beck and Fox News and avoid taking them on and exposing them for what they are.
Obama should just send the
GOPhers home and ignore anything
they say or do. He should run
this country with just dyed in
the wool democrats.
He should use his Saturday
address to just fire all the
republicans from any position
they still hold.
Purge the filthy SOB's from
our collective lives.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
I would agree. But unfortunately, Harry Reid can't get his balls back from Mitch McConnell's cat long enough to create a process for using "reconciliation" on difficult votes.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Pattern of Deception: Fox News' History of Teaming Up With the Disgraced Andrew Breitbart
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
fox news now knows it has the weak and afraid white house in retreat.
good for them why not take the weak now not the meek but the weak demos for a ride.
here is your choice americans
weak and afraid demos
or selfish and corrupt repubs that will lie and lie and lie.
neither party will help america only themselves.
obama is proving to be a weak president like carter.
the hope guy forgot to tell us he is weak and afraid of the repubs.
after all to be a good demo you must fear the repubs and fox news.
fox news has obama by the you know what. ouch.
but think of it this way five blacks in the white house is driving the racist repubs crazy. pure nuts.
what do you think the underlying reality of the tea party agenda is.
get those blacks out of that white house.
Carter gets a bad rap. He will be remembered for having a far more successful foreign policy than Obama, plus he had the courage to tell Americans the truth about fossil fuels. Carter is a four star general compared to Obama!!
AFTER the presidency. He is one, if not the only, president who went on to be a decent, upstanding citizen and to remain productive as a decent, caring man by helping people in this country and around the world to have a better life---not just to make money and feather his own nest as a grafting, greedy politician--which most modern retired presidents have done. He is a true Christian and decent human being.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
and thus unfit to be a "successful" president. He made the mistake of addressing the American people as if they were adults, and expect them to behave as such. Whereas Ronnie was the fun uncle who told us to screw homework and come down with him to Disneyland for the rest of the month.
Sure, Carter has been a great ex president since he used his position for the good of others. However, Carter, who was himself a moderate conservative, is responsible for starting the momentum turning the Dem platform towards the right. A trend that took the Dems from a unabashed leftist like McGovern all the way to Clinton who ended up being to the right of Nixon in many things. And all in 3 short decades. There were also some fairly bad foreign policy directions enabled by people in the Carter administration too.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
if this country were not a namby pamby country that is ruled by some fantasy guy in the sky who rules our lives, maybe we might have been more left-leaning (like those godless Socialists), but as long as the American people use religion as their crutch, we will always be a centrist to right leaning country what wants to be lead by Big Daddy and kept on the straight and narrow so we avoid being banished to Basement Hell.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
First:
We're far enough removed now that, when we look back at '72, we see it's the anomaly, not the trend.
Decent human being or not, as POTUS he was a micro-manager who had a shitty cabinet.
Don't try to confuse the issue with half-truths and gorilla dust.
I must admit that I am a relatively young, and I don't know at a personal level anything before Reagan.
American politics are fascinating because they are so odd. So I was just amazed on how a party in this country like the Dems could go from fleeting a leftist like McGovern as their candidate, to two hawkish neoliberal presidents like Clinton and Obama. But you are correct, tracing back the Dems indeed McGovern looks like a blip as an exception.
So one of the things hard for me to understand is how the Dems ended up as the "liberal" party, or at least with a perception of more "populist" leanings. Where in reality the recent crop of neoliberalism a la DLC is nothing that foreign to the traditional Dem platform.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38352760/ns/us_ne... Do you have the slightest shred of evidence that "they threw Vilsack under the bus instead of admitting they had something to do with the firing;" or is that just telepathic powers at work ?
Hasa Diga Eebowai
A good place to start would be to roll it all together as in the term "the discredited media personality, Fox's Andrew Breitbart."
If Fox is going to use these biased goofballs for their reporting, they should hang with them. Anyone remember the blood-letting over Dan Rather, a reporter who was sacked after a career of memorable reporting? How come Breitbart EVER gets to come back?
The person who defines Reality wins.
Because only those who tell the truth get relegated to HDNet and MSNBC.
Election 2012: Be Educated! Be Active! Vote!
www.PhoenixJustice.com
Once again he hits the nail on the head. I only hope Obama's handlers allowed him to view it.
....hope(wish) in one hand and crap in the other and see which one gets filled first".
:(
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
from the movie Bad Santa...
Go, Olbermann!
Give them in a kick in the ass.
All of them.
Yes, he yells. he is over the top. He cries. But man that was an awesome special comment last night. Obama needs to have his ass kicked. Olbermann is not holding back!
with Alan Grayson. Just sayin'...
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
For a while, I didn't like Olbermann. Not because he was being unfairly cruel or over the top..
But I was wondering to myself.. how many times can Obama do the exact OPPOSITE- not even a variation of- the exact opposite, of what Olbermann suggests in his heartfelt special comments before Olbermann finally starts to notice that Obama isn't on his side, and never was.
Took a long time, but he got there in the end.
the Obama apologists cat scratch only Fox and give Barry a walk. He fell victim to their Fox's BS and he deserves to pay. Thank you Barry for all your spineless leadership and not so much "hope and change". By the way, are you on top of the Gulf situation or are you hoping that will go away just like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and the unemployed, and the second wave of the financial screw-up after the commercial property defaults? Lets see if your Financial Reform Bill handles that one.
President Milquetoast. He's so preoccupied with passing the illusion of reform (with some actual reforms stapled on) that we forget that Washington is stuffed with so many lobbyist driven Senators and Representatives that no "real reform" will ever pass.
1) Single payer never had a shot, even though it's a wildly popular idea which would meet all of Republican and Democratic criteria for a "success" except for the Norquistian ideal of "drowning [government] in a bathtub".
2) The wars aren't popular. Military/industrial complex spending isn't really very popular either, but we never see it really threatened in any way.
3) "We can't roll back the clock [on Glass-Steagall]." Seriously. We blew up the world's financial markets because we ripped the heart out of the regulations we had put in place to prevent such a disaster (fuck you very much Phil Gramm). We'll just keep pumping money into the economy through the "tertiary economy" through funding banks and pray that no one realizes that the "primary economy" only makes up 10% (or less) of our GDP. Nope, nothing to see here, see, I fixed it all!
4) Trying to be something you're not. Look, if you support something, support it. Don't dump a minister because some jackass doesn't like his sermons, and don't dump federal employees because of a 24-year old tape which had to be *cut up* to appear incriminating.
You had the opportunity to be another FDR or pass civil rights-level legislation like LBJ, but you're looking like another Jimmy Carter, at the moment.
Reverend Wright (black). Van Jones (black). ACORN (predominantly black). Shirley Sherrod (black).
This is absolutely disgusting. Our nation is devolving before our very eyes.
I'm not sure what is worse; the fact that some folks on the right will do just about anything to promote the faulty notion that Barack Obama and all his black associates hate white people, or that Barack Obama, the NAACP, the "liberal" media, and numerous so-called progressives jumped on the anti-Shirley Sherrod bandwagon immediately in order to cover their own backsides and prove that they aren't racists, even if that meant throwing a colleague to the wolves.
"Oh, you think she is a racist? Well, um...okay. Sure." ::points at defenseless woman:: "Racist! But, uh, you surely know that I'm not a racist, right? After all, I just condemned the person you condemned. So we're both not racists, right?"
Why does it feel like we're trapped in the 19th century?
some stuff changes real slow .. when it changes at all .
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
That they didn't listen to those who rage against Breitbart and Fox, and the others does not mean that this kick in the face from the weasels will not open them to the reality. We shall see.
One of my friends had a bumper sticker which said:
"Republicans: Our Bridge to the 11th Century"
Evidently FOX and Glenn Beck are governing now. The White House is in utter terror of them. What a pity. Next time the progressives get behind a candidate, lets get one with some backbone. We made a mistake, Hillary would have been the better choice.
...to vote for PrezzO, but indeed I also voted for Hills in the primary. I voted for proven experience and serious balls. I had a fantasy of Obama being Veep, getting some seasoning, the Dems holding the WH for 16 years...ah well.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
I have dreams of living on a quiet farm in the midwest, living off the land, reading my bible and banging my 16 year old wife.
The way things are going, my dream will become a reality.
It's morning in America.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
...what that all meant, but it was funny anyway.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
?
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
Naah. If I was was...I'd have THREE 16 year old wives.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
BTW, I just got a book called "The Lonely Polygamist"....maybe a portent of your future life?
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
LOL. Well, alot more fun than "The Lonely Monogamist".
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
a thousand points of light. And maybe a kindler, gentler machine gun hand.
I think that Hillary would at least be "interesting". You current president is not interesting in the least and totally predictable to caving and watering down his views into ""not much"".
.
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
And Obama will tell you Karl Rove is right.
Dems are gonna kick ass this November.
Watch.
I'm a lot like Ricky Gervais and the Golden Globes: Why?
That you need good independent candidates and hope that the 2 current political party boat anchors go away.
.
I'm a lot like Ricky Gervais and the Golden Globes: Why?
There are more unsung heroes than singing cowards, but singing cowards always get the most attention.
When they make right-wing policy decisions, it's easy to pass it off as sell-outs pushing their corporate donors' agendas. But when they anxiously bow and scrape to people like Glenn Beck, it makes it seem like maybe just don't get it at all.
The right-wing's paid propagandists are going to screech regardless. The right-wing racists will never, ever support a black man. That leaves plain old idiot authoritarians, and they respect strength, period. Caving like this makes them hate you more.
I agree but Obama , his administration and the Dems are just plain wal-nutless and I think it's going to cost them , it's been their main problem all along , they should be mopping up the floor with the Republican party but they are blowing it once again , some things never change .
Insanity , it is what it is , there is no understanding it .
....i think the Repukes play a game so deeply mean and immoral that once would be risking their eternal soul to try and do the same. It really takes a special kind of shit-filled heart to act the way the likes Briebart does.
I have always said that I don't think clowns like Rove and Brietbart are particularly smart; they just don't give a shit.
I'm just superstitious enough to hedge my bets.
either.
The majority of the political platform for the Democratic party could be considered center to center-right. The majority of the GOP's hubris is right-extreme right. So they are different variations of a similar theme.
Basically to me at least it seems both parties are singing the same song. The problem for the soft lipped Dems is that they can barely be heard over the screamfest and fireworks extravaganza coming from the GOP's act.
CTHULHU 2012 "Why vote for a lesser evil?"
And the "emerging third party", if we were to believe the media, is right of the damn Kaiser.
How fucked are we?
Look at Mr. Grayson, he does not take their shit at all. In fact, he challenges them immediately back into their faces. That IS what is needed.
THE "MAINSTREAM" DOESN'T CARE! It will go right on treating Breitbart as if he were a journalist, rather than a propagandist.
He must be destroyed by other means. Nothing less will do.
Gee...I'm shocked.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Well, in TV's defense, it IS more entertaining, (and therefore, more newsworthy) to call someone a racist.
All this... research and.. clarifications. Who wants to see that?
People who research and vet sources are called revisionists. The rightwing media will TELL that the truth is whatever they say it is, no need to vet eternal verities. Those who crave to be TOLD what the truth is will believe no matter what evidence is presented.
albeit one that mommy conceived with her developmentally-disabled prison guard brother, following that little misguided attempt to "rediscover her youth" by smuggling some coke back from a South American "spirit quest"...
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
I really th9ink it is possible that this may be the edn for The scum Breitbart (Except for his association with Fox. They are not normal and they don't care that people don't take them seriously.). I have to believe that no other media outlet will want to begin a story with
No I just don't think CNN are going to have a story like that anymore or that the NY Times will put something in the paper or the Duluth Register will want Breitbart's name in their newspaper.
some amazingly scummy things in the recent past. I'm betting the Duluth Register would have more scruples.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
Their history of less-than-scrupulous behaviour goes way back.
me-oww!
Yeah I guess I should have used a different example but I just have to believe that Breitbart is poison for at least a little while.
n/t.
Otherwise, they're letting Breitbart (the bad guy) win.
knee-jerk weenies? I bet she will get a lot of better offers. Like maybe an adviser on race TO THE NAACP?!!!!
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
Well, the news is that Sherrod is going to turn down the job offer from the Administration, and good for her.
She is much more gracious than I. If it were me, I'd have told them to go pound sand up their ass after what they did.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
Let's not forget people, that when the President attacked FOX early in his Administration as "not a news network"...ALL of the mainstream media rallied around them, including MSNBC.
Let's not forget that they are being decidedly two faced right now, in the interest of ratings.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
and we just live in it.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
we are ALLOWED to live in it.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
The WH?
"Parachutes are allowed in checked or carry-on baggage, but may not be worn in flight."
---Southwest Airlines
The media. The last two days it was all Fox News isn't news.
That's why NONE OF IT is news. What they pass off as news is more like those little soft cover trashy novellas.
Vote GOP and move forward to the 18th Century.
since Walter Cronkite was in charge. It's like A Few Good Men.....WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
All we want is infotainment to feed our 10 minute attention span...I have a dear friend who doesn't want to know any more about what is going on in the world....she is just living in her own nice little world where everything is hunky dory and refuses to discuss or listen to world events because it upsets her tranquility. She says, "What can we do about it, anyway?" Sad.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
they look at you like you're trying to eat soup with your bare hands. Until it actually bites them real hard in their own asses, they just go obliviously onward, don't they?
financially OK. Again, sad.
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
How come we can't arrest Fox News and these wingnut extremists villains for constant lying, and promoting hate, fear and violence? They are even accomplice's to murder.
Why can't we at least sue the sh*t out of these evil people?
Thank you, Heather. I am so pissed off about this incident.
I'd love to meet you by the way (I live in Clayton).
I have sent O'reilly and Faux News messages about this.
Richard Doyle
Clayton, MO.
"...Sir, get a copy of the Michael Douglas movie "The American President." When you get to the line where he says "I was so busy keeping my job, I forgot to do my job" -- hit the rewind button. Twenty times.
Lower the retirement age.
I own a copy and have probably seen it a couple dozen times. Now, THAT'S the kind of president we need....
“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,”
When my daughter was two we were in a mall, in the galleria, when she took off running from me. I did not hurry to catch her as I could see a couple of hundred feet and their were maybe 10 people present. She ran,jumped, and sat on the shoe of a 6'4" 275lbs African-American male. When he saw what was happening this pure look of terror came over his face. He began to look nervously around trying to find someone to remove the child from his leg. After removing and apologizing for my daughter's behavior we spoke for a few minutes. He told me about a time 30-40 years earlier when that might have got him killed or beat.
I always realized after that, that racism is a oneway steet and if you can destroy a man, whether it be life, job, health,etc., and not worry about repucussions then you have the power to be a racist, otherwise probably not. If an African-American were to act criminally toward me he would suffer the harshest penalty the law would allow.
"The bigger problem that needs to be addressed is what do we do to push back against the Breitbarts of the world and against Fox's propaganda machine?"
Let me point out that the underlying problem at Fox and all of News Corp. is Rupert Keith Murdoch. He is in charge and responsible for the entire News Corp. Zoo. It is RM's Fox, it's RM's 'Weakly' Standard, it's RM's WSJ, it's RM's Daily Post, it's RM's ETC. Rupert Keith Murdoch is responsible for all the lies and deception doing more damage to "We the People" than anyone else I have ever heard of. Please focus on Rupert instead of Fox! Fox is Rupert's puppet
There is also another major shareholder at News Corp., a Muslim from Saudi Arabia that in some way might be useful in throttling the lies. I'd like to know more about his part in Rupert's anti American schemes.
"We could have waited all day, we could have had a media circus," said the Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House. "But we took decisive action and it's a good example of how to respond in this atmosphere."
Good thing they took decisive action and avoided that media circus. After 9/11 the country's policy was shaped by Bin Laden and now Obama's policy is shaped by terrorists like Glenn Beck.
I hope Sherrod sues the gonads off of Breitbart and Fox News, gets a huge settlement and then uses that money in a way that will totally piss them off.
plead as they did in a Miami lawsuit that they are entertainment, not news and win.
Hell, your supreme court does not even give a shit if people lie to get what they want.
what we are gonna do to fix the problem at the heart of all this that Ms. Sherrod pointed out and got fired for mentioning. That the fight is not black vs. white; it is rich vs. poor. The founders of this country fought a revolution against kings yet our country has turned into one big feudal state. When will that "injustice" be corrected?
It is past time to confront these information terrorists and the media outlets that harbor them.
A perversion of reality where sins become virtues and virtues become sins. It's the thugs and those who serve the thugs who create and manage that transformation. It takes a long and single-minded effort to bring about such a change. And in the end, the thugs and the worst of society become the heroes and patriots, while the true heroes become the villains and the designated victims. One more indication of a failed state.
No free nation can long exist without a legitimately functioning press. By and large we have lost that. Bin Ladin or similar others are not the greatest enemies our nation faces. Rupert Murdock and his organization, and others like him are a far, far larger threat....implacable enemies. And, it's a government that has the authority to correct the pervasive fraud that organizations like FOX, CNN and others practice but which refuses to act.
We are running out of time to get things sorted out and fixed.
is a book about the decade of the 1930's and the descent into totalitarism, repression and chaos that happened in Italy, Germany, Japan, the USSR. I'm reading it now and the parallels are scary. Facism requires systematic manipulation of people using the media and thuggery, and a compliant press. The Disneyworld evolving now has a lot of similarities to the surreal politics back then.
I'll have to read it.
n/t. I have no doubts your nation was truly a facist nation under The $hrub.
He is a dumb and a sociopath as I think the Italian leaders were in the 30's.
Fascism is Corporate controlled Government.
Democracy is people controlled Government.
We are already in the grasp of Fascism...
Easy to fact check, just follow the money.
Fox News was created by Corporate money (Big oil, Bank of America, Saudis, etc.) to guarantee Power, Money and CONTROL over the media, the people and regulation so they could do what they want to continue to control the Power and Money. (Who else would pay Rush Limbaugh 40 million a year, with millions more paid under the table)
The Republican/Conservative Party is 100% financed by Corporate money. Which is why they vomit endless Corporate talking points of Lies, Hate, Fear and Violence. Which is why the GOP bows down to ruthless Rush Limbaugh.
Therefore Republican/Conservationism is in fact Fascism.
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