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Jan 14 2013 3 cmnts

He’s Baaack! James O’Keefe’s Latest Exercise In Lame: The Gun Free Episode

Posted by: Mark @ 4:48 am

James O'Keefe Remember this guy: James O’Keefe, a self-styled citizen journalist whose shenanigans have been financed by the likes of Andrew Breitbart. O’Keefe is best known for producing videos that have been deliberately edited to smear his victims and deceive his audience.

Among his most notorious adventures were: His attacks on ACORN, an organization that was later proven to have done nothing unlawful; His attempt to seduce a CNN reporter aboard his “Love Boat” that blew up in his face when his accomplice exposed him; His unlawful trespassing into a Senator’s office disguised as a telephone repairman, which resulted in his conviction for that criminal activity; His effort to demonstrate the existence of voter fraud wherein the only evidence of any fraud was that he engaged in himself; His misrepresentation of NPR officials that was so bad that Glenn Beck’s web site debunked and denounced him; And let’s not forget his alleged drugging and harassment of a female colleague who claims to have been held against her will at a barn in his New Jersey home.

Now choirboy O’Keefe is teasing his latest deception, a project he promises will make journalists angry. Of course, actual journalists have always been angered by charlatans who disgrace their profession. O’Keefe’s current publisher, the conspiracy web rag WorldNetDaily (has Breitbart ditched him?), has more details:

O’Keefe’s crew asked journalists working for CNN, MSNBC and others whether they would put a sign in their lawn that says “Citizens Against Senseless Violence. THIS HOME IS PROUDLY GUN FREE!”

“No journalist wanted the sign,” he says. “Many journalists had armed guards.”

“We also showed up at Eric Holder’s house,” O’Keefe added. “Authorities came to protect him.”

What O’Keefe is trying to prove is completely unfathomable. It makes no sense that a public person like a journalist would ever consider advertising private information like their home address or security arrangements. Journalists often work under circumstances that put themselves at great risk. There is no rational scenario in which their private life is analogous to that of ordinary citizens. Consequently, the revelation that a journalist would decline the absurd offer to post such a sign should be of no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain.

The obvious intent of O’Keefe is to fabricate a situation in which he can attempt to embarrass the target of his childish scheme. It has nothing to do with journalism, and everything to do with the politics of gun worship. What’s more, it completely misrepresents the concept of gun-free zones, which are not efforts to brag about the absence of firearms, but are intended to alert law-abiding citizens that such weapons are not permitted and that bringing them into the designated area would subject them to criminal prosecution.

The gun worshiping crowd is fond of whining that regulations are ineffective because criminals would simply ignore them. However that would also apply to any law, including rape and murder. So their argument is that no laws prohibiting anything should ever be enacted. Clearly that would be insane. Laws do deter people from engaging in the behavior they are intended to inhibit. And for those who are not deterred, laws provide a mechanism to punish the offender. No one has ever suggested that the mere presence of a law would eliminate crime, but any sane person knows that laws are an essential part of the justice system and that they have a legitimate purpose and a demonstrable effect.

O’Keefe has promised that his videos of journalists declining to accommodate his prank will be released soon. If history is any guide they will be severely mangled in the editing room to give the most disparaging possible impression of the subject. But the good news is that, at this point, his reputation has been so shattered that he has been relegated to aligning himself with the bozos at WorldNetDaily, as if Breitbart wasn’t already low enough. Thus, fewer people will be exposed to his dishonest and puerile antics, and this charade will dissolve away without much notice. Because if there’s one thing the world needs less of, it’s O’Keefe’s smug mug heralding more deceitful excursions into pseudo-journalism.

Mar 20 2012 89 cmnts

General, Propaganda

BIRTHERS GONE WILD: New Obama Conspiracy Theory Tests The Limits Of Idiocy

Posted by: Mark @ 1:42 pm

If you thought that the psychotic lunacy of those who still believe that President Obama is not an American citizen had reached its peak, you have obviously underestimated just how severely demented this crowd is. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, these acutely fixated cretins cling to their fables and even expand on them ad absurdum.

The latest addendum to the Birther Chronicles comes from (where else) Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily. Corsi is the loser whose book “Where’s the Birth Certificate?” was published just days after the White House released the long-form copy of his birth certificate for which the looney right had been clamoring. Corsi begins his WND article by asking…

“Did the parents of former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers help finance Barack Obama’s Harvard education? Did Ayers’ mother believe Obama was a foreign student? And was the young Obama convinced at the time – long before he even entered politics – that he was going to become president of the United States?”

All three of those questions were answered in the affirmative by a retired mail carrier that Corsi interviewed. Allen Hulton, claims to have had the route that serviced the home of Tom and Mary Ayers, the parents of former Weatherman, Bill Ayers. Hulton told Corsi…

“One day, Mary came to the door when I came up to the house with the mail,” he remembers. “After a greeting, she started enthusiastically talking to me about this young black student they were helping out, and she referred to him as a foreign student.”

Hulton went on to say that he recalled Mary telling him the name of the foreign student, which he later forgot, but said that it sounded African. So that pretty much settles it. A mail carrier remembers a customer on his route thirty years ago talking about a student with an African sounding name. If that isn’t conclusive evidence of Obama being supported by the parents of a domestic terrorist, what is?

Setting aside for the moment that none of this can be proven because Mary Ayers is deceased, it also makes little sense from even the most conspiratorial perspective. The implication is that there was some connection between Obama and Bill Ayers’ parents, and that the whole family was part of some anti-American cabal. However, Thomas Ayers, Bill’s father, was not exactly the model of a revolutionary extremist. In fact, he was CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, the largest electric utility in Illinois. Ayers also served on the board of directors of Sears, G.D. Searle, Chicago Pacific Corp., Zenith Corp., Northwest Industries, General Dynamics Corp. of St. Louis, First National Bank of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs, and the Tribune Co. A socialist subversive if there ever was one. Hulton even described him as having “a Marxist viewpoint.” Of course, just like all the other board members of giant, capitalist corporations.

But this conspiracy theory is just getting started. Corsi continued his tale with an allegation that Obama had confessed to being complicit in a plot to usurp the presidency. When Hulton asked the student about his plans for the future, he was taken aback by the response:

“He looked right at me and told me he was going to be president of the United States,” Hulton says. “There was a little bit of a grin on his face when he said it – he sounded sure of himself, but not arrogant. I know how people will say things because they have an ambition, but it did not come across that way,” Hulton says. “It came across as if this young black male was telling me he was going to be president, almost as if it were the statement of a scientific fact that had already been determined, as if his being president had been already pre-arranged.”

Indeed. Who could dispute that account straight from the horse’s mouth? And it surely is not suspicious that Hulton is claiming that Obama casually disclosed the treasonous scheme of which he was an integral part. It is perfectly reasonable that Obama would spill the details of this conspiracy to a complete stranger. All of the attempts to overthrow the American government that I have clandestinely participated in always encouraged us to tell people we had never met before exactly what we were planning. (Oops. I may have said too much).

The Birther conspiracy has always been an exercise in idiocy. Despite having never had any basis in fact, it required its adherents to believe that the whole thing began as a plot to usurp the presidency of the United States. And now the Manchurian part of the scheme has been articulated out loud. They really do believe that Obama was created in a Kenyan petri dish, grown to adulthood in a communist laboratory funded by George Soros, handed a fictional resume and a pre-programmed Teleprompter, and escorted to the White House by some alien power that had the ability to hypnotize a majority of the American voters.

Seriously, these numbskulls are certifiable. I suppose the First Amendment protects their right to say astonishingly stupid things, but out of concern for public safety, they should not be allowed to operate heavy machinery, drive cars, or otherwise engage in activities that could bring harm to themselves and others. If they can’t be committed, I hope at least that they get the medical and pharmaceutical treatment they so desperately need.

[Update:] A follow up at WND, with no byline, was posted alleging that there is now a “full-blown media cover-up” of this ludicrous story. As evidence they cite this article, so get ready for some incoherent rightist rhetoric in the comments (they’ve already begun).

WND chief, Joseph Farah writes that this story was “deliberately spiked” by the mainstream media and even that “Big time talk-radio was tipped off on the story, as well – in advance. They didn’t bite, either.” Gee, I wonder why. Could it be because it’s insane? Farah, however, consoles himself with the fantasy that…

“…millions got the first-person, eyewitness evidence that Barack Obama was helped through Harvard by the family of domestic terrorist Bill Ayers back in the late 1980s.”

Farah obviously has a very low threshold for what constitutes evidence. In this case it’s a thirty year old memory of a brief and trivial conversation that is uncorroborated and didn’t even affirm what the source alleges. But that’s enough for the dimwits that read WND.

Feb 15 2012 1 cmnts

General

Fox Nation Stirs Up White House Press Breifing Controversy Over Loony Lester Kinsolving

Posted by: Mark @ 4:21 pm

It must be a slow day over Fox Nation. Ordinarily the Fox Nationalists are up in arms about some new socialist plot by the President or a conspiracy by George Soros to fund the Muppets’ latest effort to indoctrinate children into gay marriages. But today they have had to resort to this: WH Reporter Upset at Carney’s Continual Snubbing.

The White House reporter in question is Lester Kinsolving of WorldNetDaily, an uber-conservative blog that is still championing the cause of proving that President Obama was not born in the United States. For a brief background on the sort of questions that America is missing out on when Kinsolving is snubbed, take a look at this abridged list:

Does the commander-in-chief approve or disapprove of bestiality in our armed forces?
Could you specify which trip President Bush ever took which cost $200 million a day?
Why did the Democrat proposal to break up partisan seating at the State of the Union come only this year after the Democrats became such a distinct minority in the House?
Presuming the President supports the Transportation Safety Administration’s pat-down searches of airline passengers and that he believes they will never have male security personnel patting down female passengers, what if any of these male security personnel are not heterosexual?
Could you tell us whether the President, as Commander-in-Chief, asked guests to watch with him the Army-Navy game?
Is the President grateful for the statement, “We consider health reform to have been an important battle and a success of Obama’s government,” as made by Fidel Castro?
Why is the President meeting today in the White House with the racially segregated Congressional Black Caucus?
Does the President believe it is right for Harvard to have [...] no memorial at all to 71 Harvard alumni who died in the Confederate Army?
Why can’t the President respond to the petition to requests of 400,000 American citizens by releasing a certified copy of his long-form birth certificate?
Will the President pardon [Roman] Polanski? Will he, or not? Does he believe pedophiles should not be prosecuted?

Kinsolving is universally viewed as a crackpot, and his resume bears that out. It’s amazing that he can even get press passes to attend the White House briefings. I think part of the reason is that he’s been doing it for decades and I think some of the press corps regard him as something of a mascot. If nothing else, he serves as comic relief. Reading the transcripts of the briefings, the most common parenthetical reference is the word “laughter” pretty much every time he is recognized.

Now Fox Nation has embraced this loony and taken up his cause. At the same time they are treating WorldNutDaily as if it were a credible news organization. I guess Fox and WND have something in common in that regard.

Jul 15 2011 6 cmnts

General, Humor

Victoria Jackson: The Greatest Comedy Hoax Ever

Posted by: Mark @ 12:29 pm

OK…I’m convinced. The recent ravings of former Saturday Night Live resident ditzy blond, Victoria Jackson, have to be part of the most deviously complex comedy hoax ever. Somewhere in a secret bunker Andy Kaufman is obviously plotting this whole thing out. Here is what she writes in her latest column for WorldNetDaily:

“Hitler, like Obama, was a “socialist” who came from a dysfunctional family, had a communist father who abused alcohol, womanized and sired several children from different mothers, had a white mother, suffered child abuse and neglect, moved often, lied about his birth and heritage, changed his name, was a narcissist, rose to power with the help of disreputable men, had the Rothschilds as financial backers, stirred up racial conflict and class warfare, wrote a biography about race at age 35, followed up with another book used to launch a political career, supported infanticide (partial-birth abortion), gave big speeches in stadiums, promised change and a new social order, had youth groups singing his praises, used propaganda, used voter fraud and intimidation, controlled the media, created “crises,” used a poor economy, hated Jews (Israel), pretended to be “Christian,” advocated population control and euthanasia, socialized medicine, formed a private army and then … killed his political opposition with his private army.

Well, I am Obama’s political opposition. That’s why I am concerned.”

That’s right. Victoria Jackson thinks Obama is going to kill her with his private army. BRAVO! That is some righteous comedy. I hope. Oh God, I hope.

Apr 17 2011 8 cmnts

Election, General

It’s Official! Donald Trump Is Dumber Than A Tree Stump

Posted by: Mark @ 2:59 pm

As he pursues his egomaniacal quest for attention and comb-over-exposure, Donald Trump is conclusively demonstrating that you can be a billionaire and an idiot at the same time. Like Henry Ford, who revolutionized manufacturing while supporting Hitler, Trump might be able to get an office building erected, but he can’t think past a third grade level on politics or social affairs.

It was recently revealed that Trump’s Birther obsession has been fueled by the wackiest wingnut publisher on the Internet, WorldNetDaily. WND’s editor-in-chief, Joseph Farah, says that he talks with The Donald “quite a bit.” That’s painfully obvious in that Trump has now adopted one of the most ludicrous, and easily debunked, schizoid rumors that WND has been promoting for years.

WND’s conspiracy nutjob, Jack Cashill, has been asserting for almost three years that Barack Obama’s book, “Dreams From My Father,” was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers. He concluded this by conducting a hare-brained study on the style of language used in the book. Unfortunately, even researchers he contacted would not endorse this nonsense.

Nevertheless, Trump paid a visit to the Hannity program on Fox News and announced that he believes the Cashill ghostwriting fable:

Trump: I heard he [Obama] had terrible marks, and he ends up in Harvard. He wrote a book that was better than Ernest Hemingway, but the second book was written by an average person.
Hannity: You suspect Bill Ayers?
Trump: I said, Bill Ayers wrote the book. [...] He was best friends with Bill Ayers. Bill Ayers was a super-genius. And a lot of people have said he wrote the book. Well recently, as you know last week, Bill Ayers came out and said he did write the book.

Where to begin? There is so much about this that is just plain moronic. Let’s begin with the fact that Trump has no idea what Obama’s grades were, and he even admits it by saying it was something he “heard” (voices in his head?). The truth is that Obama earned an academic scholarship to Harvard and, while there, proved his worthiness by becoming the editor of the Harvard Law Review and graduating with honors.

Next, Trump’s assertion that Obama and Ayers were “best friends” is contrary to every factual account of their relationship which has always been at most an acquaintanceship.

Then Trump says that Ayers admitted to writing the book. Can Trump really be this monumentally stupid? He is referring to a speech Ayers gave wherein he was obviously mocking claims in the conservative press that he was the author. Ayers joked that it was true and therefore he wanted his share of the royalties. The audience got it and laughed appropriately. Trump is just regurgitating the take that WND had at the time.

So with no evidence whatsoever, Trump jumped aboard another runaway conspiracy train engineered by WorldNetDaily. He is embracing delusions that some of the most insane stalwarts of the right have rejected. For a supposedly serious GOP candidate to align himself with the crackpottery of WND says a lot about how seriously we can take today’s Republican Party.

Even Glenn Beck has gotten sick of the Birther craze saying “Stop With The Damn Birth Certificate!” [Note: As is typical with Beck's proclivity for hypocrisy, last night he told an audience in Albany that "I don't know where [Obama is from] I don’t think he’s from where they issue birth certificates – I think he’s from Hell.” So Beck has gone even further by asserting that Obama is from a place even worse than Kenya].

Perhaps the mind-numbingly idiotic moment of the Hannity interview was when Trump said this:

“Look, he was born ‘Barry Soetero.’ Somewhere along the line, he changed his name.”

Not exactly, Donald. Obama was the son of, and namesake to, Barack Obama Sr. His step-father Lolo Soetoro married Obama’s mother when Obama was four years old. Is Trump’s derangement so severe that he has completely lost his grasp of reality?

Some recent polls have shown Trump rising in popularity. It should be noted that these are polls of Republican primary voters, not the general public. This shows how frighteningly extremist the GOP base has become. They just adore paranoid conspiracies and mutilated facts. And they are oblivious to coherent arguments and objective truths. They happily ignore the fact that Trump once supported universal health care and was an advocate of gay rights. And imagine the rash of head explosions if the Tea Party crowd ever got wind of this quote from Trump’s book:

“I would impose a one-time, 14.25% tax on individuals and trusts with a net worth over $10 million. For individuals, net worth would be calculated minus the value of their principal residence. That would raise $5.7 trillion in new revenue, which we would use to pay off the entire national debt. [...] Some will say that my plan is unfair to the extremely wealthy. I say it is only reasonable to shift the burden to those most able to pay. The wealthy actually would not suffer severe repercussions.”

Needless to say, Trump disavows these positions today in favor of Tea Party propaganda. He now believes that we should appropriate billions of dollars from other countries to pay down our debt (he doesn’t say how). He believes we should just take the oil from Libya and Iraq. And he favors military action against Iran and North Korea. And the Tea Party Republicans just love this guy.

Me too. I am now completely behind the Trump candidacy for the GOP nomination. I don’t think there could be any better nominee – for the Democrats. While Palin, Huckabee, or Gingrich, would lose to Obama by historic margins, Trump would not only lose, but he would so embarrass anyone from admitting an affinity for the Republican Party that it would ensure a Democratic majority for a couple of generations. So…..

Go Trump/Bachmann 2012!

Apr 16 2011 10 cmnts

General, Wankery

Donald Trump Gets His Birther Material From WorldNetDaily

Posted by: Mark @ 10:10 am

The next time you hear Donald Trump spouting off nonsense about President Obama’s citizenship you should know from where he is acquiring his information.

Kendra Marr of Politico reports that Joseph Farah has been “on the phone with Donald Trump every day this week.” Farah is the publisher of WorldNetDaily, a fantastical compendium of demented disinformation and conspiracy theories. They are major sponsors of the Birther movement. They believe that Obama’s biography was ghostwritten by Bill Ayers. If there is a crazy story that reflects poorly on the President you can bet that WND is behind it. And if you question their journalistic credentials Farah will forthrightly declare that…

“Admittedly, we publish some misinformation by columnists, as does your publication and every other journal that contains opinion.”

Nice of him to be so honest. He is actually right about the fact that many news organizations publish opinions that are not factually vetted. However, most publications do not regard misinformation as an acceptable part of the news business, and the reputable ones will endeavor to make necessary corrections.

Farah seems to think it’s just business as usual. In his defense, if he had to correct every mistake or lie that appears on his site he wouldn’t have time to invent any new ones.

Trump is rapidly rising in my GOP presidential hopes primary. I have been rooting for a Palin/Steele ticket for quite a while, but now I think that Trump deserves some serious consideration.

Apr 14 2010 NO cmnts

General

WorldNetDaily Sues To Attend Press Party

Posted by: Mark @ 11:44 am

WorldNetDaily, the rabidly right-wing Internet site most famous for its obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate, is suing the White House Correspondents Association. WND asserts that they’ve been insulted because the press group has agreed to allocate only one table at their annual party to WND, rather than the three tables they requested. Where WND got the impression that that they had a right to as many tables as they want is a mystery. But an even bigger mystery is why they care so much at all.

WND is a fierce critic of the President and all things liberal. They exhibit overt disdain for the press which they frequently castigate in the most disparaging terms. Last year, one of their columnists, David Limbaugh, described the WHCA as engaging in…

“…behavior no one can rationally dispute as hateful at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.”

Yet this is the organization whose party they are now so desperate to crash that they will resort to a lawsuit because they didn’t get enough tickets. And furthermore, it is not just a snub by the press association, it is an assault on the Constitution, because WND blames the the White House for pressuring the WHCA into denying the additional seats. As usual, WND offers no evidence whatsoever of White House involvement in the guest list for the private press club.

WND asserts in their suit that they will be materially damaged as a result of not being permitted to attend in the numbers they would like. Their complaint says that they have been “shut out” (which is false), and as a result will lose credibility in the news business. First of all, that would suggest that they had any credibility to begin with. Secondly, it is curious as to how not attending an event crammed with people you regard as disreputable would harm your public image. And finally, if it is detrimental to not be in attendance, then most of the media has been harmed, because the majority of journalists don’t make it to the party.

What we have here is the petulant behavior of a childish malcontent who, although he hates the other kids in school, is still pissed off that he isn’t going to the prom. It is a sad and pathetic gesture that will probably be laughed out of court – literally.

Feb 02 2010 3 cmnts

General, Humor, Propaganda, Wankery

Has It Really Come To This: Boob Bombs?

Posted by: Mark @ 3:39 pm

Boob Bombs The Fox family of propagandists has long been a partner of the world’s terrorists. They vigorously strive to exacerbate anxieties about security, mostly sensationalized and irrational, via their many media platforms. This promotion of dread is the stuff upon which terrorism relies to be effective. Al Qaeda owes Fox News a debt.

Today on Fox Nation, the war to produce evermore trepidation escalated with a featured link to an article on WorldNetDaily warning that the British spy agency, MI5 is “Hunting Breast Implants of Death.”

“Agents for Britain’s MI5 intelligence service have discovered that Muslim doctors trained at some of Britain’s leading teaching hospitals have returned to their own countries to fit surgical implants filled with explosives. [...] Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery.”

WND is not reporting this as hypothetical, but as a plot already in progress with armed breasts at the ready. And all of this is according to…well, the subscription-only bulletin of WND’s own editor, Joseph Farah. In fact, there are five solicitations for his $10.00/month G2 bulletin in the brief excerpt posted on WND.

Were we to take these warnings seriously, it would require some adjustment to our transportation security procedures. We would need to start including Scarlett Johansson in our profiling criteria. And because the same explosive devices could be inserted in the buttocks, Jennifer Lopez would have to be added to the no-fly list. New guidelines will have to be written for airport screeners. If you look anything like Johansson or Lopez, you better allow extra time for boarding (and groping).

I, for one, am pretty upset about this. It’s one thing to be nervous about young Middle-Eastern guy with a long beard in the seat next to me. But if I have to be afraid of sitting next to a hot chick with an awesome rack, I don’t think I want to fly anymore. And who’s to say these well-endowed suicide bombers won’t also show up in shopping malls or sporting events? I think I may have spotted more than a few potential terrorists at the Grammys a couple of days ago.

The consequences of this new threat will weigh heavily on the bosom of the national security infrastructure. What new measures will they need to bust the terror plotters who embrace this tactic? And as we jiggle with our defense strategies, will the terrorists just play a game of tit-for-tat? The whole scenario is udderly unpredictable. There will be those who will attempt to knock down these warnings, but the knockers must not be allowed to cleave our resolve. The only way to respond may be to nip it in the bud. But one thing is for sure, we will need keep abreast of the new developments.

Thanks to Fox Nation for opening our eyes to the naked truth (and my apologies for the foregoing).