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Well, apparently one good way to make sure your music video gets lots of airtime is to mention Bill O'Reilly flatteringly. Mr. Falafel Head will be sure to bring you on for a talk segment, as he did with Ray Stevens on Monday night.

Nevermind, of course, that Stevens' hit "Tea Party anthem" features a lyric about euthanizing Grandma, which he heard about "from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh". O'Reilly replayed that part for us approvingly again.

But then he launched into a discussion with Stevens about his lame old 1962 hit novelty record, "Ahab the Arab," the video for which O'Reilly also played. And then he whined about how it's so politically incorrect to say that stuff now:

O’REILLY: So 48 years ago — 48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs. … We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?

STEVENS: I think we’ve gone overboard with the political correctness just like so many other people think the same way about that. And I don’t know. We’ve got to come out of that, I think.

Yeah, it's just tragic. As Adam Serwer observes:

The subtext of this lament is O'Reilly mourning the demise of what he refers to as the "white Christian male power structure." It's not really that you "can't" make racist jokes anymore; it's that you when you make them, you can't expect everyone to remain silent as you assert your cultural or racial superiority through humor.

Still, while we're clearly a country where simply "making fun of Arabs" is seen in most circles as inappropriate, we are a country where it's not as taboo to whine about no longer being able to make fun of Arabs. Meanwhile there's also a bipartisan consensus that anti-Arab racism can be government policy.

But hey, what's racial profiling, indefinite detention, and unprecedented levels of warrantless surveillance when white guys can't publicly tell racist jokes? I think we know who the real victims are here.

Transcript via Think Progress.

Priscilla at NewsHounds has more.

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(h/t Media Matters)

Conservative teabaggers couldn't contain themselves, as I predicted, unfortunately, because I figured they would complain that Obama acted quickly in a time of a real catastrophe. They are lapping up the Haitian disaster not because they are worried about the thousands of people that have been killed and are suffering there as we speak, but lapping it up to see how they can harm the president. Really, when will the media start treating them exactly like the disgusting lunatics they really are?

Think Progress:

Limbaugh said the White House thinks it can use the disaster to boost its credibility with the “light-skinned and dark-skinned black community” in the U.S. Defending his comments, Limbaugh attacked Obama for speaking publicly about Haiti sooner than he had the failed Christmas Day terror attack. Today on his radio show, Fox News host Glenn Beck jumped on the bandwagon:

BECK: I also believe this is dividing the nation…to where the nation sees him react so rapidly on Haiti and yet he couldn’t react rapidly on Afghanistan. He couldn’t react rapidly on Ft. Hood. He couldn’t react rapidly on our own airplanes with an underwear bomber…it doesn’t make sense. [...] Three different events and Haiti is the only one. I think personally that it deepens he divide to see him react this rapidly to Haiti.

The teabagging talkers are all lying about how America feels President Obama is handling terrorism. His poll numbers are actually improving, but that doesn't matter.

I challenge Howard Kurtz to stop playing the false equivalency games and be very succinct in his critiques of the right wing media's performance during the earthquake in Haiti on his Reliable Sources Sunday show. If he needs help and he can seearch C&L or any other credible blog for some facts and he can check out Jamison Foser's rundown: The right-wing media react to Haiti

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Well, Sarah Palin's "death panels" may have been named "Lie of the Year," but they live on in Tea Party movement legend.

Ray Stevens -- noted for such novelty songs as "The Streak" and "Ahab the Arab" -- has a music video out that's being hailed as "the Anthem of the Tea Party movement" titled "We the People":

“We the People” is about Obamacare and the health-care reform bills that have passed both houses of Congress.

The lyrics express a comic, but pointed warning to members of Congress: “You vote Obamacare, we’re going to vote you out of there. We the People have awakened to your tricks. You vote to let this pass, you’re going to be out on your (sound of foghorn).”

They also feature a noteworthy lyric:

We've heard from Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh
What you got in mind for Grandma

[Video: Nurse putting chloroformed cloth over elderly woman's face]

Yeah, now that you mention it, we have heard that from those three -- and a number of others. And we also know that IT'S A FREAKING LIE.

And you'll notice that Bill O'Reilly played this very snippet the other night, quite approvingly, and made no attempt to correct the record. This is how the Fox propagandists keep spreading the lies.

But then, if there were some nugget of news on Fox that were actually true, these nimrods would never believe it.

Newt was the darling of the right just a few moments ago, it seemed, but now he's in a battle with the lunatic fringe of his own party.

Rush Limbaugh zeroed in on Newtie today and took out his rage against Gingrich and the "party bosses" because he supported a moderate conservative over the Palin-Beck-Limbaugh teabagger nominee named Doug Hoffman and Hoffman lost. Sarah Palin has as much egg on her face as the rest of them do. When a district like NY-23 comes up for election, a Republican always wins. Their purity test helped lose them a guaranteed seat. Pretty awesome.

LIMBAUGH: Here is -- these are my thoughts on New York-23. In the first place, I'll have to double check this, but I'm reasonably sure that this was the highest percentage of the vote ever won on the Conservative Party line by a House or Senate candidate. I think Hoffman had a higher percentage of the vote than even James Buckley, who won his U.S. Senate race on the -- against or against this Gooddell guy, Charles Gooddell, in the '70s. So, that's one thing.

But, the right message; we cannot forget how this whole thing happened in the first place. There was not a primary. The right message here would indict the way party bosses, Republican Party bosses and these big thinkers like Newt screwed the whole thing up from the get go.

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show yesterday, via Media Matters:

You -- In 2008, in our presidential election, we had a, a, a war veteran, Vietnam War veteran, John McCain, against an elitist, five-minute career senator of a hundred and fifty days. That senator was running as a Democrat, and had actively sought the defeat of the U.S. military in Iraq -- had actively sought to undermine General Petraeus, who was the author of the surge that led to a turnaround in Iraq and a victory. And now that same man is dithering in Afghanistan while American soldiers -- not Bush soldiers, not Obama soldiers, American soldiers -- are dying. At record numbers.

The threat that people in this country who want to be free face is now within our own borders. That's the stark reality. We'll be back.

Obama and the liberals are, in the land of the Limbaughst, the True Enemies of America.

If only Limbaugh really were "just an entertainer." Then we could dismiss him as a clown. But "entertainers" don't have audiences of "dittohead" acolytes who absorb their every word as gospel truth. "Entertainers" don't make condemnations of half the country as being the "enemy within" and actually stand -- and actually stand a chance of the other half nodding its head in agreement.

This, of course, is how you whip up violence: You scapegoat, you demonize, you dehumanize, and most of all, you paint a target on people's backs and say they're they Enemy. And you can't help but suspect Limbaugh is perfectly aware of this.

I devote a fair amount of space in The Eliminationists to Limbaugh. For a lot of reasons. Obviously, he's been doing this for awhile. But he's also stepping it up quite bit.

PROMOTIONAL NOTE: I'll be speaking tonight in Mount Vernon, Wash., at the Lincoln Theater at 7 pm. I'll be discussing my book as well as the recent visit to the city by Glenn Beck.

No Comment: CIA efforts to keep torture secrets suffer a key loss in British high court.

Amygdala: An epic tour of Afghanistan, part 1.

We Are Respectable Negroes: Crack, Limbaugh and Hitler.

Alicublog: Right-bloggers defend Rush with an NFL boycott.

The Hunting of the Snark: More Logic Fail by McArdle.

Guest post by Batocchio. BG takes over for Mike tomorrow; send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail

Rush Limbaugh, the man who got fired from ESPN for, let's face it, being a racist, now wants so buy the St. Louis Rams. I feel bad for the coach because his defensive schemes helped my NY Giants upset Tom Brady and the Patriots in the 2007 Super Bowl. Steve Spagnuolo now has to rebuild a horrible team and if Rush gets in there then he'll probably have to make sure he NEVER uses a black quarterback.

And Limbaugh never disappoints in being a blathering buffoon by saying this about the NBA:

LIMBAUGH: It's not reasonable that you should understand the insanity that local and state and federal bureaucracies are doing. It's perfectly normal and understandable that none of what they do would make sense to you. My question -- OK, a 1 cent sales tax to fight gang violence. What do you spend the money on to fight gang violence? Afterschool program -- don't we already have afterschool programs? Don't we already have -- what do you call it, extracurricular events? Midnight basketball -- I mean, we've done it all. We've taken the favorite sport of gangs, and we put it at midnight to get them on the basketball court. We had 100,000 new cops with Clinton -- we've done it all. And the problem still is out of control. Liberalism doesn't work.

Dead Spin sez:

Much like softball is the favorite sport of lesbians and soccer the preferred choice for illegal immigrants, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh declares basketball "the favorite sport of gangs." I thought it was dominoes?

Adam Best has a great post up called: 10 Changes Rush Limbaugh Would Make To The Rams

(audio courtesy of Media Matters)

Rush Limbaugh has never hidden his bigoted beliefs, and on Tuesday he went on a racist rant about a highly disturbing incident on a school bus where a black student attacked a white student while other children cheered on. As Ben Frumin at TPM puts it, Limbaugh acts as though this is all the fault of President Obama:

Rush Limbaugh weighed in today on this video of a 17-year-old white Illinois student beaten up by two black classmates. Shockingly, his analysis doesn't reveal an even-handed understanding of our country's complicated racial history. In fact, not only does Limbaugh imply that this high school scuffle is racially-motivated -- but that somehow, it's the fault of President Obama.

"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, 'Yay, right on, right on, right on, right on," Limbaugh said. I wonder if Obama's going to come to come to the defense of the assailants the way he did his friend Skip Gates up there at Harvard." Read on...

At some point, the hatred coming from the right and their mouthpieces on the radio will hit critical mass in this country. I'm all for free speech, but entertainers like Rush and Glenn Beck are walking perilously close to "yelling fire in a movie theater."

Our Future: The mugging of the common good

Dusty Rice: Wingers have trouble counting

Connecting.the.Dots: Uncovering the race card

Mike Whitney: The real lesson of Lehman's fall

Amygdala: Reagan was a Leninist

Opinions You Should Have: Kanye West interrupts delicate Senate Finance Committee negotiations, scuttles health care bill

Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show today:

Limbaugh: Folks, this is Mussolini-type stuff. This is the President of the United States -- who cannot deal with opposition, there will not be any, he is going to silence it -- sending his union thugs out to physically assault, and in some cases to, in all cases, intimidate average Americans who just want some answers.

Actually, Limbaugh has historical references exactly reversed. "Mussolini-type stuff" involves organizing gangs of thugs on behalf of established business interests to assault and intimidate union organizers. At least, that was what happened when Mussolini did it.

I'll let Robert O. Paxton, in The Anatomy of Fascism (pp.60-64), explain it more precisely:

Above all Mussolini bested D'Annunzio by serving economic and social interests as well as nationalist sentiment. He made his Blackshirts available for action against socialists as well as against the South Slavs of Fiume and Trieste. War veterans had hated the socialists since 1915 for their "antinational" stance during the war. Big planters in the Po Valley, Tuscany, Apulia, and other regions of large estates hated and feared the socialists for their success at the end of the war in organizing the bracianti, or landless laborers, to press for higher wages and better working conditions. Squadrismo was the conjunction of these two hatreds.

Following their victory in the first postwar election (November 1919) the Italian socialists had used their new power in local government to establish de facto control over the agricultural wage-labor market. In the Po Valley in 1920, every farmer who needed workmen for planting or harvesting had to visit the socialist Labor Exchange. The Labor Exchanges made the most of their new leverage. They forced the farmers to hire workers year-round rather than only seasonally, and with better wages and working conditions. The farmers were financially squeezed. They had invested considerable sums in transforming Po Valley marshlands in cultivable farms; their cash crops earned little money in the difficult conditions of the Italian postwar economy. The socialist unions also undermined the farmers' personal status as masters of their domains.

Frightened and humiliated, the Po Valley landowners looked frantically for help. They did not find it in the Italian state. Local officials were either socialists themselves, or little inclined to do battle with them. Prime Minister Giolitti, a true practitioner of laissez-faire liberalism, declined to use national forces to break strikes. The big farmers felt abandoned by the Italian liberal state.

In the absence of help from the public authorities, the large landowners of the Po Valley turned to the Blackshirts for protection. Glad for an excuse to attack their old pacifist enemies, fascist squadristi invaded the city hall in Bologna, where socialist officials had hung up a red banner, on November 21, 1920. Six were killed. From there, the movement quickly spread through the rich agricultural country in the lower Po River delta. Black-shirted squadristi mounted nightly expeditions to sack and burn Labor Exchanges and local socialist offices, and beat and intimidate socialist organizers. Their favorite forms of humiliation were administering uncontainable doses of castor oil and shaving off half of a proud Latin moustache. In the first six months of 1921, the squads destroyed 17 newspapers and printing works, 59 Peoples' Houses (socialist headquarters), 119 Chambers of Labor (socialist employment offices), 107 cooperatives, 83 Peasants' Leagues, 151 socialist clubs, and 151 cultural organizations. Between January 1 and April 7, 1921, 102 people were killed: 25 fascists, 41 socialists, 20 police, and 16 others.

The same pattern adhered with the Brownshirts and the rise of the Nazis in Germany: The SA regularly attacked socialists and union organizers, and did so in the defense of established capitalist interests.

If Rushbo really wants to start drawing the analogies with fascism, he's going to find it's not exactly a winning proposition. Because we're all starting to see just who's looking like the fascists these days.

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Mark Levin is happy now that he's got a bestseller decrying the tyranny certain to descend upon America under liberal rule, which Sean Hannity touted on his Fox News show last night. The appearance produced some plum bon mots fresh from Planet Wingnuttia:

Levin: What's going on in this country is really anti-liberty. The president is -- you know, they just put Bernie Madoff away for life. The president's policies are Bernie Madoff times a thousand. He is taking a wrecking ball to this society.

Levin evidently seems to have conveniently forgotten that Bernie Madoff was an exemplar of the laissez-faire capitalism practiced by Republicans generally and George W. Bush particularly. This is essentially accusing the person in charge of cleaning up after a demolition with having wielded the wrecking ball in the first place.

Levin also keeps referring throughout to Obama and his policies as "something foreign" and claims that he's undermining the Constitution.

Levin also claims that Obama "wants to destroy the health-care system that most of us like."

Oh really? That must be so, if your definition of "most of us" is "less than 15 percent of the population".

I suspect "us" for Levin and Hannity is their little claque of right-wing pundits and wealthy Republicans, as well as Levin's perfervid readers who've been just as eagerly drinking the Limbaugh/Beck Kool Aid.

He wraps up with this classic bit of wingnuttery:

Levin: This president has some very bizarre and alien viewpoints, ah, that were -- that, that were, you know, he was indoctrinated with, and now that I believe that he really believes in, and advances. He is a -- he is about as left wing and about as radical as anybody ever to be in the Oval Office.

Hoo boy. Talk about bizarre and alien. It must be quite the interesting view, out there on Planet Wingnuttia.

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Media Matters has put together a nice pastiche of all the Fox talkers and other assorted right-wing pundits writhing in agony and rolling on the ground holding their heads at the very thought of Senator Al Franken assuming office. It's really something to behold.

Besides the Fox crew, headed up by Brian Kilmeade and Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity waxing wroth over Franken's victory, you also had Limbaugh calling him "a genuine lunatic" (no doubt for having penned Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot). Jim Quinn chimed in that he thought the election was stolen. Mike Barnicle on Morning Joe thought it was "kind of a surprise" that Franken "behaved like a responsible adult".

And Bill O'Reilly -- who has, em, a bit of a history with Franken -- has been on vacation all week, so we haven't heard yet from the Hot-Tempered One. We can hardly wait.

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Sen. Arlen Specter gave a press conference to talk about his decision to become a member of the Democratic Party. He says the Limbaugh National Committee moved too far to the right and the Club For Growth was destroying any form of moderation in his old party. He blames Pat Toomey's old group for the fact that thirty four judges were left on the table for Obama because of them and says they cost the GOP the majority in 2006. He still says he opposes EFCA and doesn't support President Obama's choice of Dawn Johnsen for the OLC.

Here's more:

"I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans," said Specter, who was first elected.

Howie writes that we have another Ben Nelson on our hands.

Although this will be a blow to rightists-- when Franken is finally seated Democrats will now have at least a theoretical filibuster-proof majority-- it won't do much for progressives. Remember, as awful as Ben Nelson (NE), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Blanche Lincoln (AR) have been on core issues-- lately joined by reactionary freshmen Kay Hagen (NC), Mark Begich (AK) and Michael Bennet (CO)-- all of them, except Nelson, are significantly better than Specter. This year Nelson and Specter has each scored a 33.33 on the progressive scale when it comes to tough partisan votes that split the parties. And when it comes to selling out to vested interests...

Rush Limbaugh wants him to take John and Meghan McCain with him.

After briefly downplaying the concerns about swine flu, Rush kicked off today's program by noting that Sen. Arlen Specter will announce today his switch from (R-PA) to (D-PA). Rush counseled Specter to take Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and his daughter, Meghan, with him, and then pondered who else in the Senate should make the switch.

As usual Karl Rove lied and said Arlen suddenly veered left.

Newsweek gives us the GOP party line on Specter: He's a Sell Out

Michael Steele says Specter flipped the bird at Republicans and he's sure his momma didn't raise him this way.

Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe blame conservatives.

Two leading Republicans say Sen. Arlen Specter's decision to become a Democrat highlights the hostility moderates feel from an increasingly conservative GOP.

“You haven't certainly heard warm encouraging words about how [the GOP] views moderates,” said Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of the few remaining moderate Republicans in the Senate.

Specter's insistence on being opposed to the Employee Free Choice Act, which he mentioned prominently -- indicating he would vote against cloture -- is going to be problem for anyone running in the Democratic primary in union-heavy Pennsylvania. Since his current position reflects a reversal already, it may take only a month or two of further polling for Specter to begin to see the light again.

Having seen the polls numbers, all good wingnuts appear to have fled to Planet Bizarro, where they can comfort themselves knowing that their stock portfolios are doing 20%, the Cubs won the World Series and George W. Bush enjoys an 80 percent approval rating. Oh, and John McCain is on his way to winning the White House.

Especially Rush Limbaugh, whose rumbling gut tells us that "Obama campaign workers" have been "throwing off the lid" about the real story inside the campaign, and he's been reading their "inside information" over the airwaves. To wit:

"The Bradley Effect. Do not believe these public polls for a second. I just went over our numbers, found that we have next to no chance --" this is regarding Obama, "-- in the following states: Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada. Ohio leans heavily to McCain but it's too close to call it for him. Virginia, Pennsylvania, Colorado, New Mexico, and Iowa are the true toss-up states. The only two of these the Obama campaign feels confident are Iowa and New Mexico, but now Obama's headed back to Iowa on Monday. The reason for such polling discrepancy is the Bradley Effect, and this is a subject of much discussion in the campaign. In general, we in the Obama campaign tend to take a ten-point percentage in allowing for this, a minus ten-point percentage for allowing this and are not comfortable until the polls give us a spread well over this mark."

She goes on to decry the "demonization" of Sarah Palin and concludes that she won't be voting Obama.

Um, right. And of course, Limbaugh assures us that we can know for certain that this is a real "Obama campaign worker" because ...

Now, you might be saying, "Rush, are you sure this is not a setup?" Well, tell me something. I share this stuff with you. I tell you it comes from the Obama campaign, disaffected female members of the Obama campaign. Does it depress you? Does it inspire you not to vote, or does it do the opposite? What could be in it for Obama to have people going on websites putting this stuff out? I can't think of anything. If you can, let me know.

Gee, I dunno. How about if it were another right-wing dittohead nutcase posing as an "Obama campaign worker" and hoping to spread as much disinformation as possible?

I guess that possibility just never crossed Limbaugh's mind. Gee. I wonder why.