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For the second day in a row (Monday's show being so chockful o'wingnuttery that we didn't have time to post on it) Glenn Beck devoted two whole segments to the subject of net neutrality.

And for the second night in a row, the discussion featured a guy named Phil Kerpen from Americans For Prosperity, which has a long history of shilling for whatever right-wing corporate agenda it can suck out money for: tobacco interests, health-insurance companies, corporate polluters have all pitched in money so that AFP can variously promote tobacco, lobby against health-care reform (it was one of the original promoters of the Tea Parties) and push the idea that global warming isn't really happening.

And now he's out pushing the notion that somehow, regulating Internet providers so that they cannot determine or limit public access is the same thing as communism. Or something like that. When you have Glenn Beck as your No. 1 cheerleader, logic doesn't actually have to enter into it.

Especially not facts. Because Beck appears to have no idea at all what Net Neutrality is actually all about.

As Timothy Karr explained on Democracy Now last month:

And net neutrality is really the fundamental openness principle of the internet. Whenever you connect to the internet, net neutrality makes sure that you can connect to everyone else who’s on the internet. And this has been a tremendous engine for free speech, for economic innovation, for equal opportunity. And we are now fighting with some very prominent internet service providers, very powerful companies, to try to preserve that fundamental openness, so that whenever we go online we can choose, as users, where we go and what we do via the internet.

Somehow, Beck is able to transform this into an attack on "freedom of speech" -- when it obviously is precisely the opposite.

To guys like Beck, you see, the only threat to our liberties is from the government. Giant corporations that control our means of information, not so much.

Indeed, his argument boils down to a simple proposition: "Freedom" means letting powerful business interests control the public's access to the internet.

Hm. That's some kinda freedom.

ThinkProgress has more:

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Defending Your Life (1991)

Good morning, my fellow Little Brains. I've spent a lot of time this week thinking about fear, because we seem to be surrounded by so much of it lately: fear of the Other, fear of change, fear of the "ism" of the week--socialism, communism, etc. There are way too many frightened people out there, fearful of some intangible bogeyman keeping them from what they feel is rightfully theirs. I quote Bob Diamond from the movie:

"Fear is like a giant fog. It sits on your brain and blocks everything. Real feelings, true happiness, real joy. They can't get through that fog. But you lift it, and buddy, you are in for the ride of your life."

I don't know that truer words have ever been written. So let's lift that veil of fog for this Sunday, and refuse to accept the fear in which these bobbleheads deal. And fear is definitely on the agenda this week. The issue of Afghanistan--nine years and thousands upon thousands of deaths after our initial invasion--will be discussed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates will be on both This Week and State of the Union to talk Afghanistan, but you can bet there's going to be a little fear-mongering on Iran too. We get both Clintons--Hillary on Face the Nation and Bill on Meet the Press and your basic coterie of Republican politicos: John McCain (yes, again--more on that later), Bob Corker, Lindsey Graham, John Kyl, Kit Bond and might-as-well-be Republicans Evan Bayh and Dianne Feinstein. All of them full of doom and gloom prognostications, no doubt. Is it small of me to say that I suspect that politicians aspire to use 3% of their brain?

ABC's "This Week" - Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Former President Bill Clinton, New York Gov. David Patterson and Sens. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., and Jim Webb, D-Va.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Rick Stengel, Trish Regan, Kathleen Parker and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Topics: How will President Obama address the looming tower of unemployment? Could Democrats lose their majority in the House of Representatives in 2010? Was the anti-Obama venom unavoidable? YES: 6 NO: 6; Has Obama Got Command Back?
YES: 12 No: 0.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Gates, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. and Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - With open arms Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi welcomed home a convicted terrorist. Fareed asks him why, and whether he regrets that move now. Gadhafi speaks out about his controversial UN speech, his meeting this week with families of Lockerbie victims, and why he calls President Obama "my son."

"Fox News Sunday" - Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Kit Bond, R-Mo.; Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell; conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe.

So, what's catching your eye this morning?

h/t ThoughtProfiles's:

A juxtaposition of the past and current use of McCarthyism.

A must watch. They did an excellent job with this mash up. Maybe someone could get George Will to watch it.

h/t dday and MBH

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Keith Olbermann blasts Glenn Beck for his tin-foil hat wearing rant about Rockefeller Center and MSNBC and their "communist, fascist, progressive building".

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(Sen. Claude Pepper - withstood many attempts at mud-slinging)

It's always interesting (and sometimes gratifying) to hear Sunday Morning talk shows from the past, just as a way of reminding yourself things were never as bad as they are now with mainstream media.

Case in point is certainly Meet The Press. Originally begun in 1946 as a feature on the Mutual Broadcast System Radio Network before switching to NBC in 1947, it was the brainchild of Martha Rountree and Lawrence Spivak and produced in association with American Mercury Magazine (of which Spivak was Publisher), Meet The Press pulled no punches and offered some serious grilling to whatever guest happened to be invited on. It prided itself in not asking canned questions and sometimes the results were newsworthy in themselves.

This episode, from November 27, 1947 features Senator Claude Pepper (D-Florida), himself an outspoken FDR Democrat, talking about our Post-war foreign aid policy and what needed to be done about it in view of the increasing presence of Communism in Eastern Europe.

Sen. Claude Pepper: “I’m in favor of spreading democracy in every part of the world. But there are many ways to spread democracy. You can’t cram democracy down the throats of people. And you can’t buy them off from Communism. We haven’t got enough money to buy the people of the world off from Communism. The best way, in my opinion, to spread democracy is to establish democracy so firmly here, that we’ll be able to propagate it to all nations and peoples of the world, we’ll be able to help them, we’ll set them a good example and the like . . not to buy them or cram it down their throats. . .

Lawrence Spivak: “ . . but certainly Senator we oughtn’t help those who are spreading totalitarianism . . or should we?

Pepper: Mister Spivak, we and the Communists have been living in this world a good many years together. Karl Marx started talking about Communism as you know in the last century. And it seems to me that unless we are willing to be blown to some other world to get away from a world where communism exists, we’ve got to live in a world with Communism. And they’ve got to live in a world with Capitalism. And the sensible thing to do is to learn to live together. We’ve got to live together whether we like it or not.”

Needless to say, Pepper didn't endear himself to the right wing fear mongers in the Senate, who nicknamed him "Red Pepper" and repeatedly attempted to smear him during the 1950's.

Times have changed - so have the people and so have the politicians.

The fear just doesn't stop, and it didn't stop in 1961. Before he was governor, Ronald Reagan was busy stirring up fears of Socialized Medicine, terrifying people into believing any sort of Public Health Care was a direct product of communism and government meddling.

And so, when the Medicare debate began during its first incarnation in 1961 (the bill was defeated owing to just these scare tactics and the influence of the Dixiecrats - the precursor to our Blue Dogs), people like Ronald Reagan flocked to the cause of the Insurance lobby, big Pharma and the AMA with the sole intent of scaring the living crap out of every human being within the United States.

And so the fear in 1961, as now is a misguided attempt at keeping the status quo pure by stamping out any thought an alternative may exist.

Ain't it all grand?

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(It seemed like a great idea at the time)

Twenty years ago this month, hot on the heels of Glasnost and Perestroika within the Soviet Union, Chinese students tried for the same thing - a reform of government, an idealogical shift from hardline Mao-styled Communism to a more democratic approach, a relaxing of rigid policies and a free exchange of ideas and enterprise.

It was a little like a movement in the former Czechoslovakia twenty years before that. Prague Spring in 1968 and the liberal experiment of Alexander Dubcek. The climate in the Soviet Union was different that time, and the movement was quickly extinguished.

But it was thought since the mood had changed so much in the Soviet Union in those twenty years, why couldn't the mood change in China as well?

Lofty expectation but sadly, no. Or not in 1989 anyway.

Here are some clips from May 13-15 1989. As the confrontation wears on into June, I will add those to give some sort of timeline sense to the events that took place.

(AP photo)

Oh Lord, thank you:

A conservative faction of the Republican National Committee is urging the GOP to take a harder line against both Democrats and wayward Republicans, drafting a resolution to rename the opposition the “Democrat Socialist Party” and moving to rebuke the three Republican senators who supported the stimulus package.

In an e-mail sent Wednesday to the 168 voting members of the committee, RNC member James Bopp, Jr. accused President Obama of wanting “to restructure American society along socialist ideals.”

“The proposed resolution acknowledges that and calls upon the Democrats to be truthful and honest with the American people by renaming themselves the Democrat Socialist Party,” wrote Bopp, the Republican committeeman from Indiana. “Just as President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism, we hope that the accurate depiction of the Democrats as a Socialist Party will galvanize opposition to their march to socialism.”

Didn't they already try that during the general election? We can only count our blessings that the members of the RNC want to keep running down the socialism road as a path to their salvation. Since the Republicans constantly attack Hugo Chavez, it's frakkin' hysterical that Republicans are less popular than Venezuela. The more they run down these extremist roads, the lower The Republican Teabagger Party will fall.

Hard to imagine it's been fifty years since Castro assumed power in Cuba. Even harder to imagine travel restrictions have been relaxed after all this time.

Ever since the government of Fulgencio Batista fell and Fidel Castro took over, the subject of Cuba has been a contentious one. In 1959 the Cold War was in full bloom and the almost constant fear of countries coming under the influence of the Soviet Union was on most Americans minds, especially when the countries coming under the influence happened to be in our own hemisphere.

Shortly after Castro assumed power, it was speculated by a number of American news outlets that Cuba was warming to the Soviet Union and that Communism had a definite toehold at our doorstep. Cuba, after all was a mere 90 miles away and it would prove to be a flashpoint in many an east-west showdown in the years following.

In May of 1959 CBS Radio did a documentary called "Is Cuba Going Red", hosted by newsman Stuart Novins. It was contended that Cuba had been overtaken by communist elements and was in the grips of becoming a totalitarian state, so fresh from its independence from the Batista government.

The documentary drew a huge amount of criticism and it forced CBS to run a companion show in order to allow Cuban spokespeople to air their side of the story.

The end result was a discussion that turned into a minor yelling match between Novins and Senator Charles Porter from Oregon.

The first part is the portrayal of Cuba as it was in May of 1959, asking the question if the island had gone Communist. And the second part is a rebuttal argument by the Cuban Ambassador and various officials from the Cuban government.

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Glenn Beck's getting increasingly strident and desperate in his attempt to portray the Obama White House as a den of Communism. Yesterday he opened up with yet another "Comrade Update" that actually depicted visiting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown as a totalitarian simply for having extolled "cooperation."

By that standard, I guess, Sesame Street is a Commie Indoctrination Program. And at this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised to find out the Beck indeed believes that to be the case.

In any event, he followed this smear by immediately having on Sam Webb of the Communist Party USA, claiming that Webb had declared Barack Obama a Communist ally:

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Beck: You said that he was not only a friend, but an ally.

Webb: I don't think I said that. I only said that he is a people's advocate.

Beck: No, you said an ally.

Webb: No, I don't think I did. I made the speech, you didn't.

Actually, if you peruse the speech in question, you'll see that Beck is wrong. Maybe this is the part he's thinking of:

In the meantime, we have some immediate struggles on our hands But the good news is that the broad movement that elected President Obama and larger majorities in the Congress is up and running.

This movement, or if you like, this loose coalition in which labor plays a larger and larger leadership role, can exercise an enormous influence on the political process. Never before has a coalition with such breadth walked on the political stage of our country. It is far larger than the coalition that entered the election process a year ago; it is larger still than the coalition that came out of the Democratic Party convention in August.

The task of labor and its allies is to provide energy and leadership to this wide-ranging coalition. Yes, we can bring issues and positions into the political process that go beyond the initiatives of the Obama administration. But we should do this within the framework of the main task of supporting Obama’s program of action.

We can disagree with the Obama administration without being disagreeable. Our tone should be respectful. We now have not simply a friend, but a people's advocate in the White House.

What is in fact most remarkable about Webb's speech is that, unlike conservatives, Communists -- who have clear philosophical differences with Obama and could similarly wish for him to fail -- are more concerned that Obama's plan succeed because it's better for the country.

In other words: A bunch of Commies are more concerned about the nation's economic well-being than Conservatives are.

Beck in any event tries, McCarthylike, to bait Webb into casting Obama in the line of Communist thinkers, like Marx or Lenin -- and Webb refuses.

Webb: He's not a Socialist, he's not a Marxist.

Beck: Why do you push yourself away from Lenin and Marx?

Webb: I don't, myself, but Barack Obama does. He's not a Socialist, he's not a Communist. You know, you bandied that about during the campaign, and now people are bandying it about town, and the answer is no.

Beck at this point interrupts Webb, and spends the next three minutes talking over him and badgering him. At one point he asks: "Why can't you have a real conversation?"

Answer should have been: "Because you keep interrupting, you moron!"

But there you have it, folks. Glenn Beck: A New McCarthy for a New Century!

I know America's "free press" system is far from perfect, but it sure is great to live in a country that doesn't feel the need to censor parts of what is sure to be one of the most important speeches of the past few decades.

AP (via HuffPo):

The official Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech omitted his references to communism and dissent, and a live broadcast on state television Wednesday quickly cut away to the anchor when sensitive topics were mentioned.

The comments by the newly installed U.S. president veered into politically sensitive territory for China's ruling Communist Party, which maintains a tight grip over the Internet and the entirely state-run media. Beijing tolerates little dissent and frequently decries foreign interference in its internal affairs.

Sarah Palin in Des Moines whippin' up fear of communism if heaven forbid Obama gets elected...you betcha'.

Partial transcript courtesy of Sam Stein over at the HuffPo but I thought a bit more of this fear fest was worth sharing than they posted there.

See, under a big government, more tax agenda, what you thought was yours would really start belonging to somebody else, to everybody else. If you thought your income, your property, your inventory, your investments were, were yours, they would really collectively belong to everybody. Obama, Barack Obama has an ideological commitment to higher taxes, and I say this based on his record... Higher taxes, more government, misusing the power to tax leads to government moving into the role of some believing that government then has to take care of us. And government kind of moving into the role as the other half of our family, making decisions for us. Now, they do this in other countries where the people are not free. Let us fight for what is right. John McCain and I, we will put our trust in you.

This is pretty rich coming from someone who had no problem "spreadin' the wealth around" from the oil companies to the citizens in Alaska. Complaints of "big government spenders" ring pretty hollow from someone who left her small town $20 million in debt.

And to make this whole thing all the more lovely, at the 2:38 mark in the video, it sounds like one of her supporters yells out "He's a n**ger".

Please.Make.It.Stop. I've had enough of the fear mongering and the race baiting.

I don't know about anyone else, but to me this whole meme they've latched onto with the "spreading the wealth around" comments, and the latest cries of socialism, or communism, or whatever "ism" of the day they want to try to slap onto Obama ... it all just reeks of racism. The dog whistle they're blowing for the folks this hits home with is this: "Obama wants to give your hard-earned tax dollars to all of the lazy Negroes who want to sit home all day and collect welfare while you white people have to go to work every day to support them."

Of course, this is not what Obama is advocating when he promotes tax breaks for the middle class. I truly hope that most of this country has grown as weary of this type of class warfare as I have.

It's pitting one group of working people against another, and against the poor. Divide and conquer. It's all they have left.