Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1109)

PLAYS: (3801)

Glenn Beck says the rest of the media -- what he calls "the fringe media," which makes sense only if you live on Planet Beck -- should be covering what he's covering: Which is to say, his thesis that the Obama White House is a secret conspiracy to overthrow American capitalism and replace it with communism.

It's a refrain we're hearing from Fox a lot these days. They've been running ads attacking the other networks for not covering "the ACORN scandal" that they largely created out of whole cloth. There is, of course, a perfectly good reason they haven't: the shoddy journalistic standards Fox has adopted in these stories, ably limned by Joe Conason and Media Matters.

With Beck the problem is even more obvious: His entire "Tree of Revolution" is the kind of guilt-by-association conspiracist wingnuttery that heretofore had been almost solely the province of John Birch Society filmstrips. Now this kind of extremism is being broadcast daily to an audience of millions.

I mean, look at the thing. Right at its root, he has Woodrow Wilson -- one of the more authoritarian presidents in our history. In fact, he was most noted for his implementation of the Sedition Act of 1918, which was later repealed after Wilson-era abuses.

What was the purpose of the Sedition Act? Why, to outlaw revolutionaries and put them in jail.

That's some root of the "Tree of Revolution" there.

But then, there's nothing particularly coherent about Beck's guilt-by-association game here. It's just whatever names he can throw up around Barack Obama's name to make the president appear like he's surrounded by a bunch of communist radicals, rather than the Wall Street Establishmentarians he in reality is surrounded by.

Only on Planet Beck.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (55)

PLAYS: (271)

Dick Morris once again lives up to his name on Fox News. Somehow in Morris' pea brain, Louise Slaughter not wanting to put up with Birchers and birthers and tea baggers at these town halls where the astroturfers have gotten the wingnuts whipped up in to a frenzy is just like the "old Southern politician" who doesn't want to deal with the African Americans in his district. Yeah... that's just the same Dick. How come I didn't make that connection after hearing what she said? Project much?

He makes sure he gets in some more death panel, the government is going to kill grandma fear mongering before it's over as well. Republicans... now the great defenders of Medicare. That's rich.

MACCALLUM: Well, not every member of Congress thinks that facing down voters at town halls as part of their job creation -- job description, I should say. Democratic congresswoman Louise Slaughter is one of those. Listen to what Louise had to say.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

REP. LOUISE SLAUGHTER (D), NEW YORK: I'm not doing town meetings. I'm -- I'm not going to give those people a forum. I went through it with the Clinton health care bill, with the John Birch Society, where we had to have police around and people were hysterically crying. I'm not -- and frankly, to tell you the truth, Ron, my own dignity and the dignity of the office I hold is important to me. And I know what that is. It's not a spontaneous uprising of my constituents. I've got the best relationship with my constituents anybody could ever even imagine.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: All right, Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, I should say. Dick Morris joins me now. He's the author of the book "Catastrophe." Dick, what do you make of that? She's saying, you know, Look, I have a great relationship with my constituents. It's beneath the dignity of the congresswoman, she says, and the dignity of her office to subject herself to the folks like we just saw in Waco, Texas, who have something to say.

DICK MORRIS, DICKMORRIS.COM: She reminds me very much of the old Southern politicians, who were racists, who used to say, Oh, I have a great relationship with people in my district, the black people in my district. And they didn't call them black. And if only the outside agitators would leave them alone, I'd have such great relationship with them.

The point is that -- that the -- Ms. Slaughter's constituents want to speak to her. And how else are they going to do it? This bill is going to go through the House without debate, probably be everybody'll be given two minutes to debate the bill. It'll probably pass in a week's time. The committees didn't hold hearings on it. There have been no public hearings on the issue. And then they're probably going to try to jam it through the Senate not only without debate but without even permitting debate by getting it through on a reconciliation with 50 votes.

So how are people supposed to speak out?

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 221

PLAYS: 21

(H.L. Hunt - Richest Man in America . .and the furthest right - Booga-Booga!)

For people who think the wave of extreme right wing media is a new phenomenon, it's been with us forever. Going back to the 1930's with the likes of Father Coughlin, there have been a steady stream of pundits, alarmists, hate advocates and wingnuts ever since.

During the 1950's and 1960's one of the biggest practitioners of right wing alarmist radio and TV came in the person of H.L. Hunt.

Rings no bells? Probably not. H.L. Hunt maintained a very low profile in his funding of weekly radio and TV broadcasts that fed a steady stream of fear, hate and paranoia for many years. So low in fact, that funding for his programs came out of his advertising Agency.

It also didn't hurt that he was the richest man in America, with a vast fortune starting with oil. By all accounts, he was eccentric at best. Leading a somewhat monastic life (except for the mass of illegitimate children he was reported to have fathered), even to the point of carrying his own brown-bag lunch to work every day.

Something about extreme wealth fostering extreme strange. J. Paul Getty had his phone booth - H.L. Hunt had his brown bag lunch.

Question: "You run a pretty large network of communications that carry forward your own political ideas, starting way back with programs such as “Facts Forum” and “Answers For Americans” I believe was another. Why did you turn to radio and television with your great wealth to put across these ideas? What made you do that?"

Hunt: “Well that was a means of communication. Now . . .public opinion is a powerful factor and public opinion could save our nation if our nation is in danger. But the communication media is owned and controlled by 80 or 85% of the opposition to the constructive philosophy."

Hunt: "I think the line should be drawn between people that love liberty and are for the freedom system. And the society that has made America great. And the newspapers, radio, TV stations and networks are in the hands of, we shall say, the enemy of that system."

Hunt was a huge supporter and board member of the John Birch Society and was convinced Washington was a cesspool of communism. He pops up in all sorts of conspiracy theories. And even though he's been dead since 1974 and there has been ongoing legal battles regarding family members, the Hunt legacy is still shrouded in mystery.

And so it was quite unusual that in 1970, a documentary on Hunt would surface. The recordings I have give no trace as to who did it, who conducted the interviews (there is a lengthy one with Hunt) and how they gained such access.

One suspects, since this was done in 1970 and Nixon was President, a lot of former closeted extreme right wingers came out of the closet and made their presences known.

In any case, it's interesting listening and further evidence the roots of the extreme right wing are many and deep and go back a long way.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (820)

PLAYS: (2122)

Glenn Beck and his leadoff guest yesterday, Phil Kerpen of the corporate-front global-warming-denier outfit Americans for Prosperity (the same folks who brought you the Tea Parties, were not happy at all with the then-imminent passage in the House of a major component of President Obama's climate-change plan.

So they indulged in some sour watermelon:

Beck: You like watermelon?

Kerpen: I love watermelon.

Beck: I think this is a watermelon bill.

[Begins slicing open melon.]

Kerpsen: I think you're exactly right. This bill is green on the outside -- the thinnest green on the outside, and on the inside, it's deep Communist red.

And, you know, Gorbachev actually runs an environmental group now. I don't know if everyone knows that. But this bill has only the thin sheen of environmentalism. Greenpeace said it will do nothing to help pollution. Even the EPA says it might increase greenhouse gas emissions.

This is just an excuse for central planning, central control of our economy.

The spirit of Joe McCarthy and the John Birch Society lives on. Kind of like those bad old zombie movies.

(Just a harmless bunch o'regular folks who happen to hate just about everything.)

So there we were, Amato and I at the Tea Baggers rally in Santa Monica yesterday. More people with cameras than picket signs. More Ron Paul supporters than TEA folk. More "you shoulda been here earlier", than here now (I got there at 3:30 where the crowd had swollen to 40 - by 5:00 it was down to 10).

But there was a guy walking around handing out business cards. The gist was warning America of the plot by NAFTA to take over the country and turn it into one big Mexico and Canada. The card came with an appeal to visit JBS.org and "get the inside story".

I remarked to the guy that I hadn't heard anything about the John Birch Society in years and always wondered what they were up to lately. The guy, a rather ambiguous fellow dressed in personality-matching beige, shook his head emphatically that he knew nothing about the John Birch Society and that he was "just handing out these cards", and quickly melted into the thinning crowd.

Yes, I always wondered what became of The John Birch Society - that epitome of Communist conspiracy paranoiacs. Where did they go? What became of that "million plus" membership I was always hearing about in the 1960's.

True, their ranks thinned out when their founder Robert Welch died, and I thought they went the route of so many flavor-of-the-month extreme groups and just evaporated.

Not so. Seems the JBS is alive and well and kicking up all sort of under-the-radar dust. This time it's not communism but EU World domination and of course government meddling in private lives (read: guns, taxes, far-right ideology and oh yes, massive funding from people like the Koch family). So, you roll all those things together and its the same old Leopard of the 50's and 60's, only with new Millennium spots.

So I stumbled across a news item from 1965, a review of a new film put out by the Society in an effort to drum up support.

Seems after over 50 years of being around, the John Birch Society is still around and paranoid as ever.

(Back in the day when every living breathing thing was suspected of having Communist sympathies)