President Obama gave the commencement speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor today. In the course of his remarks he addressed “today’s poisonous political climate” and his prescription for “a vibrant and thriving news business.” It was a refreshing alternative to the adversarial ravings that dominate contemporary media. The President was characteristically fair and balanced. He began by relating his experience with mail he received from a kindergarten class in Virginia:
“The student asked, ‘Are people being nice?’ Well, if you turn on the news today – particularly one of the cable channels – you can see why even a kindergartner would ask this question. We’ve got politicians calling each other all sorts of unflattering names. Pundits and talking heads shout at each other. The media tends to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story – which means anyone interested in getting coverage feels compelled to make the most outrageous comments.”
I have nothing to add to that. The President’s remarks perfectly frame a serious deficiency in today’s press. Here are some more excerpts that speak to some of the most divisive elements of the media, and particularly the cable news sector that is so riven with rancor and falsehoods.
“Throwing around phrases like ‘socialist’ and ‘Soviet-style takeover’‘fascist’ and ‘right-wing nut’ may grab headlines, but it also has the effect of comparing our government, or our political opponents, to authoritarian, and even murderous regimes.”
“…this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning – since after all, why should we listen to a ‘fascist’ or ‘socialist’ or ‘right wing nut?’ It makes it nearly impossible for people who have legitimate but bridgeable differences to sit down at the same table and hash things out. It robs us of a rational and serious debate that we need to have about the very real and very big challenges facing this nation. It coarsens our culture, and at its worst, it can send signals to the most extreme elements of our society that perhaps violence is a justifiable response.”
On this point, Obama may need to reflect on what he considers a “bridgeable difference.” The people calling him a fascist and a socialist are not behaving rationally and have no intention of hashing things out. They are devoted to disseminating their brand of dishonest extremism and are well aware of the potentially violent signals they are sending. This is a blind spot for the President who still believes that he can orchestrate a post-partisan political environment. As he continues he returns to more solid footing and unveils his advice for smoothing America’s ruffled feathers.
“Today’s twenty-four seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before.”
“Still, if you’re someone who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website.”
The interesting thing about that last quote is that while the President was able to make a contrasting comparison newspaper to newspaper (New York Times to Wall Street Journal), he was unable to do the same for the radio/TV personalities, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. He had to resort to naming a web site (Huffington Post) for contrast. That illustrates a fundamental ideological imbalance in broadcast media.
In addition to that imbalance, it is also notable that readers of the New York Times are far more likely to have a broader and more diverse range of news sources than Beck and Limbaugh fans. So the president’s advice to expand one’s range of news sources is less necessary for liberals because they probably already have exposure to conservative media. And the advice is less effective for conservatives because they aren’t likely to step out of their right-wing news bubble anyway. There was ample evidence of that in a recent study that showed that 63% of Tea Baggers rely on Fox News as their primary news source, compared to 23% of the population at large. That’s a pretty narrow scope of vision. By the way, Fox News, as it often does, chose not to broadcast Obama’s speech.
Finally, Obama touched on one of the aspects of the hostility in public debate that has long been a big concern for me:
“I understand that one effect of today’s poisonous political climate is to push people away from participation in public life. […] That’s when power is abused. That’s when the most extreme voices in our society fill the void that we leave. That’s when powerful interests and their lobbyists are most able to buy access and influence in the corridors of Washington.”
What Obama left out is that that’s one of the intentions of poisoning the political climate. Most people think that that sort of negativity is just an attempt to shape an argument, albeit a clumsy and distasteful attempt. But in reality the purpose is to turn people off and dissuade them from participating. From a strategic standpoint you can have greater influence (at less cost) if you can shrink the pool of people you are trying to manipulate. Remember that the next time you see a negative campaign ad.
In a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, the ephemeral nature of the Tea Party movement is once again revealed. When asked for their opinion of Tea Parties, respondents were decidedly unenthusiastic.
April
January
Strongly Support
12%
15%
Moderately Support
15%
20%
Moderately Oppose
6%
8%
Strongly Oppose
21%
11%
Don’t Know Enough
45%
45%
While the total numbers for support and opposition are tied at 27%, the support numbers have declined since January and those strongly opposed have doubled. A mere 4% reported having attended a Tea Party rally or meeting. And, although little attention is usually paid to the “Don’t Know” response, 45 is a pretty high figure. Nearly half the country has no opinion at all about the Tea Party.
These numbers confirm previous polling that shows the Tea Party to be a much smaller phenomenon than the impression given to it by the media. It incorporates a tiny percentage of the population and is widely disliked. This disparity between the reality and the press coverage is something I detailed in two previous reports: The Tea Party Delusion and The Phony Populism Of The Tea Crusades
The Tea Bag sag coincides with the plummeting popularity of the Tea Bag Hag, Sarah Palin. The CNN poll showed Palin’s favorability rating at 39% (55% unfavorable). 69% of respondents said that she is not qualified to be president. She came in third in preference rankings following Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. And while Obama beats all three in head-to-head match-ups, Palin fares the worst losing 55% to 42%. This confirms the findings of a Fox News poll in January that had Obama over Palin 55/31.
The facts notwithstanding, many in the media will continue to push the Myth of the Bagged Teasers as if it were a credible force in contemporary politics. They will saturate the air with coverage of tomorrow’s tax day Tea Bagging and pretend that this fringe (and often vulgar and violent) group deserves recognition. And Fox News will, once again lead the parade with its top anchors dispatched around the country to herald the phony movement that they helped to invent.
It’s particularly telling that Fox, and their partners in talk radio, have invested so much time and money in the Tea Crusades and have so little to show for it: 4% participation and overwhelming unfavorability. By any measure, that’s a lousy return on investment.
[Addendum]CBS also released a poll that asks Tea Partiers about themselves. The short story: They are old, white, Republican, Fox News junkies who believe that Obama is a foreign-born socialist. Surprise!
The way you can tell if a protest is effective is when the target of the action can’t stop complaining about it. For two days in a row, Glenn Beck has devoted valuable airtime to castigating the proponents of an advertiser boycott that began last year in response to Beck calling President Obama a racist with “a deep-seated hatred of white people.”
For Beck to divert so much time from fabricating paranoid conspiracy theories to fabricating smears on his perceived enemies is revealing. His anxiety could not be more apparent, even as he pretends that the efforts directed against him are making him happy:
“The fact is, I haven’t felt this good and positive in a long time. Why? Because the boycott attempts are the most transparent AstroTurf attacks I have ever seen or ever heard of.”
Ever? The truth is that the boycotts were initiated by a very small group that most people (including me) had never heard of. Color of Change began the effort with a small email list and a campaign to communicate with Beck’s advertisers. This shoestring effort produced surprising results, getting more than 100 advertisers to refuse to permit their commercials on Beck’s show. [Note: StopBeck later joined the effort further enhancing its effectiveness]
Beck spent the majority of his rebuttal inventing a plot that went all the way up to the White House. The first brick thrown by Beck was at his perennial nemesis, Van Jones. However, while Jones was a co-founder of Color Of Change, he left the organization two years prior to the Beck boycott. That didn’t stop Beck from building his cloud castle of hate.
He then tied Jones to Rev. Jim Wallis of the Sojourners. However, Wallis had nothing to do with the advertiser boycott, then or now. Wallis entered the picture after Beck took an astonishingly stupid stand against social justice and advised his listeners to “run” from any church that advocated it. Wallis responded by calling for Christians who believe in the venerable Christian practice of social justice to run from Glenn Beck.
And of course, Beck had to inject his distaste for working Americans by slandering unions. So he tethered Andy Stern to the boycott effort, although Stern and his SEIU had no part in the year-old boycott until about two weeks ago when they signed on with a new push by MoveOn.org.
After this hallucinatory construction of a widespread cabal attacking him, Beck capped it off with a wild accusation that it was a high level plot that the President was “coordinating from the Oval Office”:
“Is it possible, maybe, that pointing out every night that there are radicals, Marxists, and communists, in the White House, maybe that struck a nerve? Has someone decided that they must destroy my career and silence me because we’ve stumbled onto something? […] Has there ever been a case in American history…where an American president administration tried to destroy the livelihood of a private citizen with whom they disagree. Can’t think of any.”
Beck’s paranoia led to this declaration that nothing like this had ever happened before. He then immediately contradicted himself by comparing it to Richard Nixon’s famous “enemies list.” The only problem with that comparison is that Nixon’s list was documented and Beck’s delusions still only exist in his twisted cranium. What’s more, Nixon sought to use the power of the government against his opponents, but the Beck boycott relies entirely on the efforts of individual citizens engaging in free expression. Nevertheless, Beck elevates this to an absurd altitude wherein he literally compares himself with victims of Nazi atrocities:
“Where’s the media? Do the rest of you in this business think it’s gonna stop with me? Really? Once they get me what happens to you? Is there absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might be a target at some point in the future? What is that poem…First they came for the Jews and I stayed silent…”
Now they are coming for Glenn Beck. It is so like Beck to manifest his Messianic complex in this fashion. He is the persecuted one that suffers for his congregation. And his stylings are getting more televengelical and Apocalyptic by the day. Witness this fire and brimstone sermon:
It is a bizarre world. It is an upside down, inside out, quantum physics world. […] It is the eve of destruction in America.
I believe in God. I believe rights come from man, and this Constitution, and the founding of this nation, were divinely inspired. These are God’s rights and God’s freedoms.
If we appreciate those rights, if we do the right thing […] we are going to have to pay the consequence for our living and mistreating these rights. But in the end, have no fear, because nothing will thwart Him. Because these are His rights. This was His Constitution. This was His country for His purposes, not ours. And nothing…nothing…will thwart Him in the end.
Hallelujah. This may be the first time I have heard anyone declare that the Constitution was “divinely inspired.” To my knowledge, it has not been included in any version of the Bible. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison have not been beatified, nor is George Washington a saint. But in Beck’s mind a new holy doctrine has been proclaimed. One that permitted human slavery and denied women the right to vote. If the Constitution was divinely inspired, then what right did later generations have to amend it? Were they also the servants of God? And if so, did God screw up when he ratified Prohibition or the right to levy income taxes?
I have said this before, and it is all too apparent that it must be repeated: I genuinely hope that the people who care for Glenn Beck get him the help that he so obviously requires. It is way too tempting for his family and his producers and his hangers on, to hold back and revel in the riches he generates for them. But they will surely regret it when he self-destructs and splatters them all with the blood of their greed.
Now I’m sounding a little Biblical. And so I speaketh not further for the time is at hand for me to shuteth up. For now…..
If there’s one topic of study for which Rush Limbaugh can be regarded as an expert it’s character assassination. He has spent his career contriving dishonest assaults on his enemies that take the most vile form.
With regard to Barack Obama, Limbaugh started early by hoping that he would fail. Limbaugh expanded on that to accuse the President of being a socialist, a Marxist, and worse. He repeatedly asserts that Obama has an explicit desire to destroy America, the Constitution, and the values of faith and family that the nation embodies. If that isn’t character assassination, then I don’t know what is. Yet it is Limbaugh who is now whining to Politico about being the victim of the President’s wrath. In a CBS interview, Obama told Harry Smith that the vitriol of opponents like Limbaugh was troublesome. That seems to be a rather restrained description, but Limbaugh took great offense to what he portrayed as “constant attempts at character assassination.”
The funny thing is that Limbaugh should regard being considered troublesome by the President as a compliment. Isn’t it his intent to cause trouble for this administration? But he somehow has turned it into an insult. Even funnier is this bit of self-denial:
“I think the president is trying to distract me, to get me talking about ME on my show instead of talking about him and the regime’s agenda. But it won’t work. I’m wise to their tactics.”
But it did work. Limbaugh IS talking about himself. And if Obama wants to get Limbaugh to talk about himself he only needs to remember this one thing: The secret to getting Limbaugh to talk about himself is to just let him talk (preferably with a microphone nearby). Limbaugh spends a majority of his airtime talking about himself. He even continued doing it in his comments to Politico, describing himself as being “on the top of the mountain” of opposition to the administration. He can’t stop talking about himself, and the last thing he needs is provocation from the President.
Limbaugh’s pathological unawareness of his self-obsession is manifested in much of his hypocritical rhetoric. He simply cannot correlate his commentary with his own actions. Amidst the widespread reports of escalating hostilities within the fringe conservative community, Limbaugh had a warning for Tea Partiers from whom he says the country is being stolen:
“So you tea party people, I’m sure you know this, but they are trying to get you provoked so that you act in ways similar to the way they’re accusing you. […] They have a morally superior view of their agenda and of themselves. They look at anything that opposes them as evil, and with evil you must do whatever it takes, ends justify the means to wipe it out.”
Isn’t this precisely the view that Limbaugh has toward the administration (which he has lately begun referring to as “the regime”)? Doesn’t he consider his positions to be morally superior and his opponents to be evil? He certainly has expressed an intention to do whatever it takes to defeat the left he hates so fiercely. During the Democratic National Convention in he 2008 he literally said “Screw the World: Riot in Denver!”
“I’m dreaming of riots in Denver. Remember 1968?”
“Riots in Denver at the Democrat convention would see to it we don’t elect Democrats – and that’s the best damn thing could happen for this country as far as anything I can think.”
“I mean, if people say what’s your exit strategery, the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that. That’s the objective here.”
These are unambiguous directives to his listeners, who are not called “dittoheads” for nothing. These are every bit as bad as the Tea Bagger who recently advised his followers to go out and throw bricks through the windows of the offices or homes of Democratic lawmakers, and to engage in other sorts of vandalism and violence. These are the irresponsible edicts of a man who professes to obey the law, but asserts that his opponents do not:
“Something else about the Democrats, deep in their hearts they know that we are law-abiding people. They know that we don’t make messes. That’s why they’re trying to stoke lawbreaking behavior from the tea party people because they know that we obey the law. They don’t.”
Oh really? And inciting people to riot, to burn cars and throw bricks, is lawful behavior? Limbaugh is a despicable provocateur and he knows it. He is using a fabricated argument to project his perverse philosophy onto his perceived enemies. And, as usual, he is encouraging his feeble-minded followers to engage in activities that he himself is too cowardly to consider.
Limbaugh’s hypocrisy is classic, but his depraved licentiousness is completely off the scale of social decency and civility. And this attitude is by no means restricted to Limbaugh. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the Fox News thugs, plus a variety of rabidly right-wing members of congress, are equally as culpable for the rancorous environment in the political atmosphere. No wonder there is so much vitriol wafting up in the steam from those tea cups.
In a fit of psychotic bluster, the folks at Fox Nation have posted an article with a headline that was manufactured from whole cloth. There is nothing in their reporting, or the column to which they linked, that remotely implied the message in this headline:
“IRS Hiring Thousands of Armed Tax Agents to Enforce Obamacare.”
The source for the Fox Nationalists is a column in Tucker Carlson’s right-wing Daily Caller. You might expect that Fox could rely on Carlson to support their hallucinatory journalism. After all, Carlson is a Fox News employee. But the article in the Caller, while misleading on it’s own, doesn’t go anywhere near the Fox misinterpretation.
The Caller’s headline was somewhat less dishonest: “IRS looking to hire thousands of tax agents to enforce health care laws.” It does not make a declaration of fact that agents are actually being hired, only that the IRS is looking into it. But more importantly, there is no mention of these agents being armed. In all likelihood, any new hires are going to be accountants with calculators, not mercenaries with machine guns. That, however, didn’t stop the Caller from posting an accompanying photo of heavily armed soldiers in combat gear who have nothing whatsoever to do with the story. And, of course, Fox Nation re-posted the same photo.
The Caller’s article is filled with falsehoods. Anyone who actually bothers to read the article will notice that there is no substantiation of its claim that Democrats are working with the IRS to hire new agents. The only confirmation comes from Republicans supplying their own speculation as to staffing requirements.
It is fair to assume that expanding efforts to collect revenue would require additional personnel. However, the article notes that the new hiring is aimed at collecting taxes unrelated to the health care bill. So are Republicans and the Fox Nationalists taking the position that tax cheats should not be pursued or held accountable? Should law abiding Americans have to shoulder the burden for these deadbeats? Yes, that’s exactly their position. Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee even issued a report that criticized the administration for proposing $8 billion to fund tax compliance measures. It seems to me that an $8 billion allocation to recover an estimated $300 billion in delinquent taxes is a pretty good return on investment and an effective way to reduce budget deficits.
The content of the article in the Caller is misleading in many respects, but the Fox Nation version is delusional. It states flatly that the IRS is hiring “armed” tax agents. It states flatly that these new agents will be dispatched to “enforce Obamacare.” Neither of those statements are substantiated and they aren’t even in the linked article. Yet the Fox Nationalists post the photo of soldiers in combat attire, weapons at the ready, deployed in a search and destroy posture.
The obvious intent of Fox is to frighten their congregation of Psycho-chicken Littles into believing that the “revenuers” are advancing on them to take their money and send them to FEMA camps where they will be forced to have abortions and marry gay socialists.
After struggling for fourteen months to derail the President’s agenda, and failing, Fox is upping the ante. They want people to be so afraid that they will fortify their bunkers, stockpile weapons, hoard rations, buy gold (brought to you by Glenn Beck), and prepare for Armageddon. And the way they advance that goal is by disseminating lies like this story from the scare-meisters at Fox Nation.
Update: Fox News continues to pour on the fear mongering. They are now reprising a story originally posted at Fox Nation almost two months: Boob Bombs!Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes.
Back in February the story was sourced to the ultra-wingnut WorldNetDaily web site. This time Fox is sourcing it to The Sun, Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid, but, hilariously, the article quotes “terrorist expert Joseph Farah.” In fact, Farah is no terrorist expert, he is the publisher of WorldNetDaily. The propaganda comes full circle.
It seems that they are just going to repeat this story every few months until either people are sufficiently terrified of titties, or until Al Qaeda decides to give it a try. I maintain my position that this could have a devastating impact on air travel. As I said in February:
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.
Update II: All of this is reminiscent of the hysteria Glenn Beck tried to trump up over what he said was a civilian national security force that Obama was supposedly amassing to assault him and his congregation. As it turns out it was just an initiative to expand the peace corps and similar organizations.
[Also…] FactChect.org debunked the claim of IRS hiring thousands of agents.
President Obama signed the Senate health care bill into law this morning. While it is not the bill I would have written, it was still an historic moment that achieved something that 18 previous presidents failed to achieve.
But for much of the media, led by Fox News, the hot topic of the event was that VP Joe Biden whispered a congratulatory remark in the President’s ear:
“This is a big fucking deal.”
The President’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, reacted quickly to the growing hysteria in a tweet saying, “And yes Mr. Vice President, you’re right…” But this brewing scandal may yet overtake the frenzy surrounding the health care bill itself. I wonder if the President’s critics were just as incensed when then-VP Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leahy to “Go fuck yourself.” right on the Senate floor?
And let’s not forget the time that Cheney pointed to a New York Times reporter at a campaign rally and whispered to George Bush “There’s Adam Clymer — major league asshole.” To which Bush responded, “Yeah, big time.”
For someone who has called the President a racist, fantasized about choking Michael Moore to death, and described Hurricane Katrina victims as scumbags, it is hard to imagine how he could descend to even lower depths of depravity. But Glenn Beck, wouldn’t you know, would find a way to do it:
In this repulsive venture into psychoanalysis, Beck attempts to explain Barack Obama’s alleged radicalism. Of course, Beck has no training in psychology and no insight either. His lunatic ravings are not only entirely unconnected to Obama’s life and motivation, they are factually incorrect and utterly illogical. But then the mangling of facts and logic are Glenn Beck’s foremost qualities.
Beck starts out with an appeal to sympathy for poor Barack:
“Here’s the sad thing that I don’t think anybody will ever really say about Barack Obama, because it sounds mean and I don’t mean it to be mean. This is a truly sad, tragic story. But the only way to understand, first of all, all the people around him, his thinking. I don’t think he’s an evil man. I don’t think he’s trying to do evil things intentionally. He really does believe that Marxism is the way – is the answer. It is the future. He believes that.”
See? Beck doesn’t want to be mean. He doesn’t think Obama is evil on purpose. He just thinks that Obama is a Marxist. He still thinks that Obama is evil, but that it isn’t his fault. For months Beck has waxed idiotic about the supposed Marxists that are fluttering around the White House, but this is the first time that he has stated flatly that Obama is one of them. And Beck even has an explanation for why:
“From the moment he was born he had contact with socialists, communists, Marxists, radicals. His father abandoned him. Why? So he could go off to a Marxist school in New York. Then his father left the country to go try it out. How tragic. What kind of scar does that leave on a boy? Then his mother…I mean this is…you tell me. What scar is left when the mom leaves a son who’s been abandoned by his father for Marxism, leaves the son with his grandparents so she can pursue critical theory, which is Marxism. Both parents leave a boy for Marxism?”
Let’s set side aside the fact that Obama’s father left when he was two years old, hardly enough time to indoctrinate him in the ways of Marx, even for an exceptionally bright child like Barack. And set aside as well the fact that Obama’s father left to attend graduate school at Harvard, not some New York Marxist academy. And never mind the fact that Obama was left in his grandparents’ care because his mother was temporarily unable to care for him, not because her critical theory studies required her full attention. In short, set aside virtually everything Beck says.
Beck’s conclusion is that Obama was so traumatized by abandonment issues related to his parents’ absorption in Marxism that Obama, in retaliation, did what any child would under those circumstances — He became a Marxist. It makes perfect sense. What other choice did he have other than to adopt the philosophy of the thing that allegedly tore his family apart? It is a sad, tragic story, isn’t it?
Perhaps on tomorrow’s show Beck will tell his own sad, tragic story? The one where his mother abandoned him by killing herself. Obama’s mother went away for a while, but she came back and witnessed her son on an historic path to the presidency of the United States of America. For Beck’s mother only death was sufficient to separate her from her demon seed. What kind of scar does that leave on a boy? Well, in Beck’s case it left a scar that led to dropping out of school, to alcoholism, drug abuse, a failed marriage, a career as an AM radio shock jock, and fame as a hate-mongering conspiracy nut who contributes nothing to society but fear and division.
Contrast that with Obama who, while scarred, worked his way through school, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, dedicated himself to helping the disenfranchised, taught law at the University of Chicago, entered public service and politics, and went all the way to the White House. So sad – so tragic.
For Glenn Beck to pretend that he can psychoanalyze anyone is truly sad. And that he gets it so very wrong is tragic. But it’s much worse than that. Beck is capitalizing on the misfortune of the President’s childhood and twisting it into some morbid fantasy that suits his political agenda. He is attacking Obama’s parents who are not alive to defend themselves. He is smearing the President with baseless accusations. And he is couching it all in a syrupy faux-sympathy that is just a facade to mask his overt and deranged hostility.
For someone whose history and family life is such a heinous disaster to plunge sanctimoniously into a dishonest judgment of the President’s psyche and family is reprehensible and is truly a disgusting new low for Glenn Beck. But on the plus side, it is not likely to be the last low that Beck will achieve. His capacity to nauseate seemingly has no lower boundary.
Fox Nation is at it again. Today they featured a story about President Obama’s determination to see health care reform implemented. But in their inimitable way, they twisted the message to reflect negatively on the President. Even worse, they aroused the natural inclinations of their readers to bask in a frenzy of assassination fantasies.
The Fox Nationalists ran with a headline that read: “Obama Invokes His Death in Health Care Talks.” Of course, Obama did no such thing. The article that Fox Nation linked to was an Associated Press piece on Yahoo! News. The sound bite that Fox latches onto was nothing more than a humorous aside:
“Obama joked that the political battle has contributed to the recent rise in his cholesterol…and the president noted how ironic it would be if health care drove him to his grave.”
So Obama did not “invoke” his death as a substantive part of the ongoing talks. But Fox Nation did. And the result was a rush of comments by Fox Nationalists who were only too happy to see the President dead.
“ironic it would be if health care drove him to his grave”.
This would be the best thing that could happen to the USA.
wow that’s something that we can only dream about
HEY MR. PREZ. PROMISE TO TELEVISE IT ON YOUR LAME STREAM MEDIA STATIONS,,,,, THE RATINGS WOULD GO THRU THE ROOF,,,
Promise?! Whatever it takes. I’m running out of pins for my nobama chia pet.
Many Americans wish we could grant you your wish
The progressives are so desperate to shove down our throats that which we DO NOT WANT.
They think they are so close, yet IF they pass it, it very well could be the literal de.ath of Obama, for TREASON.
He KNOWS there is NO Constitutional authority for this take-over of healthcare.
Go ahead, Obama, make America’s day.
OBAMA SHOULD KNOW THAT HIS THREAT WOULD ONLY ANSWER OUR PRAYERS….
So go ahead – do America a favor
Frankly I would call it irony if he went to his grave because of health care! Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!
So it is not Obama who invoked his own death, but Fox Nation and its clan. And it isn’t only the bloodthirsty, racist, hate mongering, denizens of Fox’s blogosphere who are expressing their opinions in terms that imply Obama’s demise, it is also members of Congress and rightist pundits:
Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee said the president and House Democratic leaders are asking their colleagues to “hold hands, jump off a cliff and hope Harry Reid catches them.”
In a post on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Journalism website, Frank Ross wrote: “Mark Steyn is always right, whether he’s writing about Andrew Lloyd Webber or, in this case, the suicide-bomber-in-chief, Barack Obama.
Is it any wonder that the FBI has reported more threats against this president than any before him?
These people have way too much free time and far to little anti-paranoia medication.
It seems that Fox News has discovered a scandalette to occupy them until President Obama’s next TelePrompter sighting or Sarah Palin’s next tweet. This one concerns a new administration agency logo that is “scarily” similar to the one Obama used in his campaign:
“The Missile Defense Agency, which is part of the Defense Department, now features a circular red, white and blue logo on its Web site that has been characterized in some reports as “scarily” similar to President Obama’s former campaign symbol. Others have noted that it has a crescent and star design, evoking a common symbol for Islam.”
These alarmists need to make up their minds. Is this a propaganda effort to indoctrinate the mindless masses into blind Obama worship, or is it a signal to Obama’s brothers in Islam that their Manchurian plot is still operative.
The notion that this logo has any meaning other than as a symbol for stationery can only have been hatched in a diseased and fearful brain. First of all, the new logo takes its primary elements from its predecessor. There is a star met by red stripes representing the exhaust trails of a missile. That design was updated and the color scheme was reduced to America’s colors: red, white, and blue. Obviously the work of the enemy. The truth is that any logo could be accused of being inspired by the Obama logo if it contains the visual components of the American flag and is placed in a circle. That’s all the Obama logo is.
But what makes this even more ridiculous is that Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, thoroughly debunked this silliness. He said that not only was there no intention of copying the Obama logo, this logo isn’t even replacing the old one. It will only be used for defined and limited purposes. And the kicker is that this logo was in use prior to the 2008 election, so it couldn’t have anything to do with Obama. And it certainly wasn’t commissioned by his administration which didn’t exist at the time this logo came into being.
None of these facts, however, stopped Fox News from publishing the story, even though they had them and included them in the article. The editors at Fox must have thought that this was just too good an opportunity to start another ludicrous rumor that will shortly arrive at an email inbox near you. This is what passes for news at Fox.
Update: Not surprisingly, Andrew Booger Breitbart weighs in with an article by Frank Gaffney that actually accuses the Obama administration with treason on behalf of Islamic foes:
“Team Obama is behaving in a way that – as the new MDA logo suggests – is all about accommodating that ‘Islamic Republic’ and its ever-more aggressive stance.”
Gaffney also charges Obama with “acts of submission to Shariah” law. Admittedly, I never took these people seriously, but I am beginning to be concerned about their mental health. This is just insane.
Not that it’s anything new, but Glenn Beck has identified yet another plot by Barack Obama and progressives to bring about the destruction of America.
In this instance of mortification, Beck’s unique insight reveals that our nation’s children are the next targets of progressive evil. He declared with a flourish of panic that “the youth of America are being hijacked.”
It is an interesting observation from someone who is so markedly childish. His evidence for this comes from an appearance on The View by Sen. John McCain’s daughter, Meghan. The deviously young McCain correctly noted that the overt racism expressed by old fogies like Tom Tancredo at the Tea Party convention, would likely repel those of her generation. Beck’s reaction to this is downright psychotic as he damns a whole generation as commie dupes.
Beck: Lenin had a phrase for people like these. They were called “useful idiots.” I think a lot of our twenty-somethings are becoming useful idiots. One of those useful idiots seems to be Meghan McCain. She is John McCain’s like totally awesome like daughter.
Only Beck could find an association to Lenin in McCain’s words. The sentence fragment that Beck extracted to vent his outrage was when McCain said that “revolutions start with young people.” That sent Beck into a frenzy of mockery. He slipped into his “stupid person” voice (which is indistinguishable from his regular voice) and grumbled sarcastically about what idiots old people are. Of course McCain never came even close to implying that. The whole of her commentary had to do with how the lack of young people in a “movement” like the Tea Crusades would doom it to failure.
After relentlessly deriding McCain for several wasted minutes, Beck eventually came up for air and admitted that she was right after all – revolutions do start with young people. But in Beck’s interpretation it was the young who were exploited by elderly radicals. Perhaps Beck, the historian and fan of Founding Fathers, is referring to doddering old revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson (32 years old in 1775), John Jay (30), James Madison (24), Alexander Hamilton (20), Thomas Paine (38), and that ancient eminence George Washington (43).
The point of Beck’s breakdown seems to have been that Obama and the progressives are trying to turn kids against their parents and undermine the family unit – the foundation of American society. It’s all tied into the battle for the sanctity of marriage and a kind of senior superiority. He belittles the notion that there is anything that adults could learn from their kids. Presumably Crosby, Stills, and Nash were in on this child endangerment plot 40 years ago when they recorded “Teach Your Children” which included a verse aimed at the kids to teach their parents as well.
How sad for Beck and his own kids. I assume they never talk back to him or express (or even form) their own opinions. He appears to advocate a philosophy of parenting that requires children to be obedient and silent. He seems to believe that past generations never had any of the natural tension that accompanies growing up. He regards children as appendages with no inherent value of their own. At one point he reduces the youthful quest for knowledge to nothing more than a lustful obsession and uses himself as an example of how petty and narrow-minded young people are. I’m sure he’s right as regards himself, but he certainly doesn’t have any appreciation for the intellectual curiosity and experiential adventurism that makes youth such a vibrant and fulfilling chapter of life.
Beck played some videos he found on the Organizing for America web site (a DNC project) that showed young folks describing their efforts to get their parents interested in voting. Beck characterized this as an Obama affront to the biblical mandate to honor thy father and thy mother. Those kids should keep their mouths shut and follow their parents’ example. Any exhibition of individuality or free will must be nipped in the bud. And any encouragement of such behavior is, in Beck’s demented eyes, a conspiracy to corrupt the young and produce a generation of socialist drones.
This is yet another Beckian sermon that elevates dogma over free thought. In the name of familial harmony, what Beck is actually promoting is parental tyranny and abuse. This might be a good time to review a bit of Beck’s biographical history. His parents were divorced when he was quite young, thus despoiling the sanctity of his family. He lived with his mother until she committed suicide when he was thirteen. Now, what was that about following your parents example. Glenn?
In a fit of psychotic bluster, the folks at Fox Nation have posted an article with a headline that was manufactured from whole cloth. There is nothing in their reporting, or the column to which they linked, that remotely implied the message in this headline:
Update: Fox News continues to pour on the fear mongering. They are now reprising a story originally posted at Fox Nation almost two months: 
But for much of the media, led by Fox News, the hot topic of the event was that VP Joe Biden whispered a congratulatory remark in the President’s ear:
It seems that Fox News has discovered a scandalette to occupy them until President Obama’s next TelePrompter sighting or Sarah Palin’s next tweet. This one concerns a new administration agency logo that is “scarily” similar to the one Obama used in his campaign: