Comrade Obama?

By Capt. Fogg


I must disagree with Bill Maher that Rick Santorum thinks of gay sex more than a dildo salesman but only because Rick Santorum doesn't actually think, unless one defines that word very loosely. He doesn't remember things too well either and I say that in all generosity since one might interpret the things he says he remembers as outright lies. They aren't even up to date lies or original lies or good lies, yet there are always enough misinformed, low intelligence dung flingers in fatuously faith based America to believe them and make this country seem like the primate house at the world's largest zoo.

Take Santorum's tired repetition of John McCain's 2001 attempt to sell the embarrassingly ridiculous notion that President Obama wants to redistribute the nation's wealth in some Socialistic way, a bit like Jed Clampett arriving at the Royal Wedding in his beat up old truck . Coming from a Republican, whose party has engineered what might be one of the largest upward redistribution of wealth, that's already laughable but Mr. Rick seems to be the last man standing who is still driving that rusty jalopy -- the idea that Our president, beset by critics calling him a corporate whore and a sell-out to Wall Street is a radical socialist and perhaps a communist to boot. What Santorum claims to remember is that Obama supported a constitutional amendment to give your money to the poor ( read black people) when what the president really said in a 2001 interview was that the

"Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent, as radical as I think people tried to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution. . .”

Essential constraints -- it sounds very little like a man who is deploring those constraints. Indeed when Obama said the court had limited itself to insuring that he could eat at a lunch counter as long as he could afford to pay for his lunch, only a stupid man who thinks other people are even more stupid would interpret, or should I say twist, this as a quote from the Communist Manifesto.

"In the interview, Obama went into extensive detail to explain why the courts should not get into that business of ‘redistributing’ wealth. Obama’s point — and what he called a tragedy — was that legal victories in the civil rights led too many people to rely on the courts to change society for the better. That view is shared by conservative judges and legal scholars across the country."

said Obama spokesman Bill Burton during the 2008 campaign. Certainly no development since then has given credibility to McCain's sad attempt or justification for Santorum's calumnies.

I'm finding it difficult, even without the waves of nausea and loathing, to accept that any candidate could have got as far as Santorum has without being laughed out of town as a cheap, incompetent liar and unscrupulous scoundrel. I can only blame the media ringmasters who continue to provide this charlatan with his own ring in this sad and tawdry circus we call a campaign. Have we forgotten that the purpose of news reporting is to sort truth from rumor, slander and lies? Perhaps we have and it's certainly been a long time since the news was anything but a way for big news corporations and their sponsors to make money. Perhaps we should stop making them richer by occupying Wall Street and start occupying CNN and Fox and the rest instead.


(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Francisco Franco is still dead, and Mitt Romney is still a lying liar

By Richard K. Barry 

How big was it again, Mitt?

Well, we can't say that Romney didn't warn us. We can't say that he didn't tell us that he would try to lie his way to the White House. But I'm a little surprised by this one, if only by its magnitude.

The man is so desperate to secure the Republican presidential nomination that he is now engaging in Glenn Beck levels of hysterics. Exhibit A is a speech by Romney delivered in New Hampshire last night, and posted earlier today by Steve Benen at Washington Monthly. Here's what Mitt had to say:

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing — the government.

The truth is that everyone may get the same rewards, but virtually everyone will be worse off.

Here's Jon Chait's take on Romney's turn towards the dark side, although I suspect Romney has always had this kind of bullshit in him.

This isn't just a casual line. In eight sentences, Romney asserts over and over again that Obama wants to create "equal outcomes" and give everybody the "same rewards." This is nuts, Glenn Beck–level insane. Restoring Clinton-era taxes is not a plan to equalize outcomes, or even close. It's not even a plan to stop rising inequality. Obama's America will continue to be the most unequal society in the advanced world — only slightly less so. The alternative proposals accelerate inequality even further.

Steve Benen makes a point, though, that I would like to emphasize, which is that anyone who has even a passing interest in reality or civil discourse needs to be outraged by Romney's statement. If those who imagine themselves in leadership roles in their respective parties aren't even going to make a passing effort at integrity, where does that leave us?

We have all come to expect this kind of thing from Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and even Palin, but from the guy who bills himself as the sober voice of Republican reason?

I know I shouldn't expect any better, but if the general election ahead ends up being full of this kind of rhetoric, this kind of lying, it will be a very dark time for democracy in America.

Hey, PolitiFact, this is what a real fucking lie looks like. And the year isn't even over, so maybe it's not too late to change your mind.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Amerika Über Alles

By Capt. Fogg

Mitt Romney is hard to figure out, partly because his most salient feature is the love of ingratiating himself dishonestly with any group he thinks is worth ingratiating himself to. So I have to wonder if he really thinks the United States is the nation chosen of God to lead the world as he told cadets at the Citadel yesterday or whether he just assumes that people embarking upon a military career are dreaming of imperial glory. I have no way of knowing whether these cadets have Napoleonic dreams or are attracted to arms because of some sense of personal weakness and humiliation, but I'd hesitate to bet that many really think that US history isn't filled with mistakes at home and abroad or that we aren't a better, more moral nation than once we were. Of course I don't mean to say we shouldn't strive to be a good influence in the world, but being a good influence doesn't mean command, doesn't mean control, doesn't mean we're the infallible and mighty hand of some invented Lord as Romney would be implying if there were any implications beyond opportunism in anything he has ever said in public.

But as I say, you never know what Romney thinks, particularly if your assessment is derived from listening to the man. You certainly can know that he's willing to put some strange interpretations on events to bolster his imperial and messianic aspirations whether or not he believes them. President Obama's "apology tour" for instance; Mitt would like to make the psychorabble feel important and loved by associating honesty with apology and apology with weakness and weakness with Jonah-like abdication of a divine mission. Of course Obama never went on an apology tour, but what black man has ever not been in danger from Godly Americans when someone accuses him of winking at a white girl. Where there's smoke, there's fire, we say, forgetting that where there's smoke there may be a smokescreen and there may be arson.

That Obama portrayed American history in a poor light by admitting that we have sometimes been guilty of arrogance and have sometimes made mistakes is a big fish to swallow, to invert the metaphor and it clashes with Romney's carefully crafted humble demeanor. There's nothing humble about him and there's something disturbing about the belief in divinely ordained male control of family life his religion seems to demand, at least to an outsider like me.

"An eloquently justified surrender of world leadership is still surrender"

said the man who is more frightening for his benign smile. To me there is no one more dangerous than a man who can call upon a sufficiently established god to justify world domination and I don't think I need to offer examples. No one more dangerous unless, of course, we add the photogenic charm and the forked tongue. What Mitt really is saying is that America is chosen to be the priest and caretaker of the planet and what he is implying is that by being its ordained leader, he's God's agent on Earth. Where and when have we heard this before? Certainly not from the founders of our Republic who took up arms against God's own chosen King.

I've often been told that Obama "went over there and apologized to them" by Fox News victims totally ignorant of where there is or who said what. It's a lie of course and a big one but it isn't going away even if Romney never says another word about it or is magically transported to another world for him to rule, as apparently he thinks he will be. Lies, like cancer cells, are all but immortal. Truth and decency and the hope for a world not run by pompous and powerful thugs in expensive suits and plastic hair are as fragile as a dream.


(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Fox News has learned. . .

No they haven't.

By Capt. Fogg

Alex Jones' Prison Planet website is the kind of place you expect to find very right wing viewpoints and so when I find agreement that Fox News lies, I feel good about it. It gives me a defense when people behind the Fox curtain accuse me of being a far-left Commie/Liberal liar, which seems to be the best they can do, considering all the evidence that Fox is indeed a lie factory and propaganda machine -- more than just simply being affiliated with and a sponsor of the GOP.

"The latest example comes from Fox News, who completely manufactured the claim that Gaddafi was using western journalists as human shields to prevent fighter jets from bombing his compound,"

writes blog editor Paul Joseph Watson today.

In a piece entitled, EXCLUSIVE: Libyans Use Journalists as Human Shields, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin & Justin Fishel wrote, says Watson:

“An attack on the compound of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi on Sunday had to be curtailed because of journalists nearby, Fox News has learned.”

But there’s a problem, he says. One of the CNN journalists supposedly used by Gaddafi as a human shield subsequently appeared on CNN and labeled the claim,

“Outrageous and absolutely hypocritical. The idea that we were some kind of human shields is nuts,” CNN international correspondent Nic Robertson told Wolf Blitzer.

"Fox News has proven itself to be a complete tool of the US military-industrial complex. Nothing it now reports about the attack on Libya can ever be trusted."

says Prison Planet, QED -- and who can dispute it?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Glenn Beck admits to being a terrorist

By Capt. Fogg

Not that he admits to having admitted it.

We've all had e-mails insisting that some event hasn't been reported by "the media" because the media is so biased. every week brings news of stories the "liberal media doesn't want you to know." I recall one that proved the "liberal" media was biased in favor of, or at least opposed to revealing the criminal nature of Black people. I've had others insisting there was some cover up of the fact that Jews, Gay people, black people and others were trying to take over or already controlling things in some secret and sinister matter. Most of them these days have to do with covering up the essentially evil nature of Muslims as Muslims.

Many of these alleged omissions share a great deal with the lack of coverage of the invasion from planet Mongo in that there is no truth to them and many simply represent that age-old gambit of taking over by insisting someone else is taking over; lying, cheating and stealing by insisting someone else is lying, cheating or stealing.

You can't get away from the fact that Glenn Beck and his employers have become rich by creating the feeling that the United States is in great danger, often from things they recently denied could even be a danger, like the National Debt and international terrorism, for instance - even things hard to seriously criticize like meat inspection.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the real media usually cowers and rarely challenges the absurd claims of the Right, for after all they're also owned and controlled by corporate interests of their owners and advertisers. When they do speak up, they often get beat down and portrayed as clowns or traitors, so I have to admire the courage of Fareed Zakaria in calling on Beck to stand behind his absurd lies. It's about goddamn time.

Beck the Bigot for hire, claims that nearly ten percent of the world's Muslims are terrorists. That, says Zakaria would make for 157 million of them -- a large number to keep hidden, even for a liberal entity like CNN, obviously out to support the violent overthrow of the US.

"Well, Glenn, again, maybe because it just isn't true," Zakaria noted on his CNN program yesterday. "I can't find any poll or study or shred of data that suggests that 1.5 million Americans, which is what that number would work out to, want to violently overthrow their government."

Backpeddling like an abashed PeeWee Herman on his Schwinn, Becks' mouthpieces, having done the math, fell back to saying that well, perhaps that many support terrorism, thoughtcrimewise even if they're not shooting at us because they are angry at the US government -- which makes them terrorists. Bad move, that was.

"Does supporting such anger against the American government make one a terrorist?" he asked in a check-mate moment.

Well if it does then what do we call Mr. Beck? What else is he? What do we call the guy who spends all his time railing about the wickedness of Mr. Obama, the evils of social justice, about the need for regime change, the need to override the election process in favor of some magic substitute for free elections, the need to take action before it's too late?

We make it up, you decide

By Capt. Fogg

Keep saying it until it's true - that's Fox's other motto, the one you'll only hear in the board room, but you'll see it in action every day. President Obama is a far left socialist, repeats Roger Ailes to the Daily Beast. That's why his trade mission to the far East was an abject failure -- he's just too socialist for China.

"He just has a different belief system than most Americans”

said Ailes to Howard Kurtz. He's different, he's extreme, he's foreign. That's why he was elected by a majority of Americans, I guess. That's why his ratings are higher than Reagan's at the same point. He's the same, he's a conservative corporatist influenced by big business, he's no different. That's what so many liberal and non-liberal Americans are saying about him. Sorry Roger, you can lie report all you want, but we've decided.

Which Obama are we talking about?

" I literally never heard an Obama speech that didn’t blame Bush.”

says the Fox chairman. I guess I'm not listening carefully, but that's literally a lie and why isn't Bush to blame for what Bush did and why hasn't Obama come out and said it? Who else pissed away the surplus, spent the trillions shocking and awe-ing third world countries and was at the helm during the largest redistribution of wealth in our history? History blames Bush. The facts blame Bush and facts are what's missing in Ailes' endless accusations.

President Obama

“had to be told by the French and the Germans that his socialism was too far left for them to deal with."

What Socialism? The French and Germans are Socialists and Capitalists and they pay enormously higher taxes than we do. Under the current administration our taxes are at historic lows. Trying to reform health care in a manner far less socialist than any other country? Restoring a tax bracket to less that Reagan gave us? Asking for much less TARP money than George Bush, making it more accountable and lending money to Americans that's being repaid with interest? Being too much in cahoots with Wall Street, beholden to corporate interests, giving us a large middle class tax cut? What Socialism, you lying son of a bitch?

Sorry Roger, you're going to have to say it a lot louder and longer if you want to make it true and if you wanted to be something in the same galaxy as honesty, you'd just come out and use the N word. That would be even more of a boost to your oily profits, wouldn't it?

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Newt Gingrich slams Sebelius, distorts reality, descends into madness

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Speaking at the right-wing Values Voters Summit (because, of course, greed and bigotry are values, too*) in Washington yesterday, Newt Gingrich said that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius should be removed from office, with a new Republican Congress "zeroing out her office," for "behaving exactly in the spirit of the Soviet tyranny" and for "represent[ing] left-wing thought police," both with respect to health-care reform.

Of course, she did and is nothing of the kind. What she wrote, in a letter to the insurance industry, is that the federal government "will not tolerate unjustified rate hikes." America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, contends that "Obamacare" is forcing them to raise premiums. In response, Sebelius wrote that that is simply not true, that "any potential premium impact" would be "marginal."

Gingrich, as you might expect, takes the insurance industry at its word. Needless to say, that is a stupid thing to do. The industry wants to maximize its profits and will do and say whatever it takes to do so. But it is also stupid to suggest that Sebelius is acting like a Soviet tyrant (and speaking for some "left-wing thought police" by challenging the very industry that wants to harm consumers by charging them more and blaming Obama. Gingrich is supposed to be a historian, is he not? He is supposed to be one of the smarter conservatives out there -- at least, that is what the media would have us believe, given how much respect and airtime they give him. But he clearly lacks any genuine appreciation for history -- history to him is the just past filtered through his partisan and ideological prisms -- and, once again, we see that neither he nor anything he says should be taken seriously.

Also in his address, Gingrich said that he is "totally opposed to any effort to impose sharia on the United States." But who exactly is talking about imposing fundamentalist Islamic law on America? Where is the evidence? Where is it happening? It isn't. This is fearmongering pure and simple, projected through those partisan and ideological prisms, and just the sort of anti-Muslim bigotry we've come to expect from Gingrich. (While he's talking specifically about sharia, the message is really that Muslims are not to be trusted, that Islam is essentially anti-American, and that all Muslims, backed by liberals/progressives/Democrats, are jihadists seeking to undo the Constitution and take over the country.)

Gingrich is moving further and further away from reality -- and he was never all that close to it to begin with. In his partisan and ideological fervor, he has become a spinner of lies and smears and exaggerations, willing, as ever, to traffic in utter nonsense, running his mouth off without anything to back up what he says, simply to try to score political points by playing on popular ignorance and fear, and to keep himself in the news, where he continues to get the media's attention for saying crazier and crazier things, and to maintain himself as a key player in conservative circles, which cheer harder the crazier and crazier things get. Like the rest of the right side of the political spectrum, he's descending ever more rapidly into madness.

**********

* Tweeted our good friend (and Reaction editor) Carol Gee yesterday, on the VVS: "Reminder: Repubs can have no exclusive claim to be 'values voters.' Dem voters value ideas like creativity, diversity, veracity, lucidity." Exactly.

And so it ends

By Capt. Fogg

The United States of America is doomed; at least in any form that can honestly be called a Democracy. Of course it may remain for a while as a pseudo Democracy where government and business are intertwined to the extent that no likely coalition of individual citizens has enough power to elect representatives who are not owned by some powerful entity, as any coalition that emerges is likely to be organized around fictitious causes and motivated by delusion provided by powerful, corporate interests.

Yes, the Citizens United decision was another step in the destruction of Democracy and the reduction of the power of the private citizen, but the real leash around our neck is Rupert Murdoch's lie machine.

I got an irate e-mail today with a link to a hysterical Fox news diatribe. To the casual viewer, it would seem that a town in New York State had decided to give Hispanic voters 6 votes as opposed to the one vote everyone else has. That would, they say, allow non-citizens, the unregistered voters and the otherwise ineligible Hispanics to outvote that traditionally disadvantaged bloc: White Christians.

There must be a better word than lie for this deceitful passion play, but lie will have to suffice and lie it is because what has been portrayed as a breach of constitutional law, the creation of an activist Obama court ( even though the decision was made under the Bush administration) and an affront to democracy, is simply the time honored practice of cumulative voting. Port Chester New York, has a voter base that is about 46% Hispanic. That being less than a majority, it's unlikely that the Village Board of Trustees would include a single member of Hispanic origin. That's the sort of exclusive majority rule Righties like and to allow a voter to give one vote to each of the candidates or to give more than one to a lesser number of candidates makes it possible to have a representational board of representatives. That's the kind of Democracy Righties hate, because it allows representation to those who are by virtue of race: inferior and dangerous.

Enter the Fox. The hysterical minstrel show leads the viewer to believe that any Hispanic, whether eligible to vote or not will be given 6 votes and everyone else will have only one. Branching out from that bald faced lie, are all sorts of accusations and misrepresentations and characterizations all designed to show how under the Democrats and Liberals and Elitists, the country is going to hell and the constitution ignored.

As I said, there should be a better word than 'lie' and perhaps there is: Libel, subversion, treason and if I had a thesaurus, I could come up with a dozen, but what matters is that we have an internal enemy who has already conquered and infected the minds and souls of America and is progressing further toward supporting insurrection day by day. I'm only illustrating one of countless assaults on truth, reason, decency, democracy and the dignity of mankind, but it's enough.

Is there any hope? Not on my part and my vision of the future is the jaws of the Fox around the throat of America, forever.



(Cross posted from Human Voices)

It's all opinion

By Capt. Fogg

And thus spake Fox:

"The Ninth Circuit court as a record of being overturned" said one voice at the table.

"Obviously it deserves to be" said another. "This judge just doesn't understand the situation."

"Well she's famous for making rulings based on her opinion. What we need are decisions based on law!"

Of course, like most clubs, mine has a policy discouraging political talk at the dinner table, but in practice, that means "Liberals shut up, Fox is talking here."

Wednesday evening at the would have been a good time to start a diet, my appetite fading as my gorge rose. Yet I said nothing. Nothing would have mattered or could have stood up to the wave of regurgitated Fox propaganda. None of those present had any background in constitutional law and like virtually all Americans have a very hazy view of what it says: indeed a hazy view of the entire Arizona Immigration law in general. But they have opinions to support any inchoate anger -- the anger and the opinions furnished by Fox News and all it costs is your freedom.

Opinion? What is a judicial decision but an opinion of what the law says? Yes, of course Article 1 section 8, clause 4 of the constitution gives all power over naturalization to the US congress, but does that grant exclusive power to regulate immigration? Perhaps there is a valid discrimination to be made, but if so, the conservative one would be that the Constitution does give the Federal Government sole power to determine who will require a visa, have a visa and what the terms thereof shall be and so it's reserved to the Federal Government to enforce those rules and no to some small town Sheriff or small minded Arizona governor buying votes from the hysterical mob.

Yes, sure, that's an opinion. As I said, any court decision is the opinion of the court and to any intelligent person, the law is open to interpretation and always will be - that's why we have the ninth circuit court in the first place. Should I be impressed that my dining companions are so knowledgeable about the history of that court? Not at all, since their rhetorical unanimity shows them to be a conduit leading from Roger Ailes's rectum to my ears. It's all opinion, but not reasoned opinion based on the law. It's based as Ailes has asserted publicly, about ratings and the sales value of anger.

My nausea having begun to subside, I was formulating a polite reply, but the rush to get home in time to watch Hannity and Beck preempted the effort. I haven't been back.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Lady Blah-Blah

By Capt. Fogg

Contrived extrapolations from the trivial and inconsequential event to gross generalizations, sweeping condemnations and general non sequitur makes up so much of the right wing blather that I'm tempted to say that blissful silence would ensue if it were to stop, and inclined to pray for it.

What kind of "journalist" would pounce upon small children for giving away lemonade because they didn't truly understand the concept of profit? Lady Blah-Blah herself, Terry Savage, of course. Jumping from her car, she writes, she admonished them for not being capitalists and likely scared hell out of them. Of course that only constitutes being rude, self important and nasty and the verbal abuse of children. Yes, that's a prerequisite for being a Republican pundit, but what elevates her to the ranks of the truly despicable, is her blowhardian expose in the Chicago Sun-Times in which she rants about welfare, government subsidies for things other than oil drilling and the decline of America. She tilts at all the usual windmills with all the same old cliche arguments having nothing to do with the innocence of Kindergarteners and the righteousness of profits and all at the expense of some cute little kids who have yet to learn just how nasty, pompous, self-righteous, dishonest, stupid and bad at their jobs Right wing columnists can be.

"If we can't teach our kids the basics of running a lemonade stand, how can we ever teach Congress the basics of economics?"

The government does not exist to make a profit, and if, as you say, unemployment benefits will only impoverish the employed, you owe us an explanation of why your version of capitalism has done exactly that, why no new private sector jobs were created by it in 8 years and why each Republican administration has brought us ever increasing expense and debt and ever decreasing standards of living. Never mind tiny tots and lemonade -- explain that.

Sorry, Terry, perhaps some of the 6 quarts of botox you pump into your aging face every morning has leaked into the parts of your brain concerned with basic human decency and has totally paralyzed any notions of honesty. Yes, Terry, we can teach our children about economics - they're already learning thanks to your having driven us over a cliff. No Terry, these are just babies, and sorry, we all know what a profit is and no we're not having a recession because we try to help struggling Americans and keep them from the Dickensian hell you dream about every night.

We're suffering high unemployment because of your insistence that Giving the very rich a tax break will create new jobs, raise government revenues, reduce the tax burden on the middle and working classes; because of your insistence that businesses will resist cheating and corruption and fraudulent activities if we no longer test their claims, audit their books and make fraud itself legal. We're suffering not because some kid you made cry hasn't been reading Ayn Rand, but because you're still reading it while each and every one of your and her bogus axioms has been proven false over and over and over again. At least the girls you're exploiting are giving away real lemonade instead of the toxic and even lethal witches brew you're giving away.

"The Declaration of Independence promised "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." It didn't promise anything free. Something to think about this July 4th holiday weekend."

Stop me if I'm wrong, but it didn't say anything about subsidizing Oil Drilling or looking the other way while our resources are stolen; while we're sold fraudulent securities by fraudulent corporations, while the government starts wars for profit and gives away billions to friends of the Vice President either. It didn't promise corporate feudalism and it didn't suggest a Randian denial of responsibility or a great many other things you're trying to work into the discussion of a lemonade stand. If that's the best you can do, perhaps it's time to shut the hell up and send the RNC their check back.

A decent human being -- and by that I mean someone other than you -- would simply have given the girls a dollar and told them they would earn some money to replace their stolen bicycle by charging, but no, not you. You made it into a baseless condemnation, a sales pitch for calamity and a caustic attack on the innocence of childhood. You found it more important to bear false witness against your country than to protect the feelings of small children who will doubtless remember the nasty witch screaming NO! from her car for the rest of their lives.

If people like you can call our President Pol Pot and Hitler in the same breath simply for talking to them about making the future a better one, I can certainly call you worse for trying to perpetuate the same twisted economic madness that's brought us to our knees as it did in 1929 and screaming it at our kids. I can call you all kinds of things with a clear conscience but none can be so damning as the name you've made for yourself.


(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Believing is seeing.

By Capt. Fogg

"I'm not in politics, I'm in ratings. We're winning"

-Roger Ailes, Chairman, Fox Television Stations Group -


It's remarkable and a bit sad that media outlets like MSNBC or NPR or the New York Times are so easily dismissed by the very people their job it is to expose as charlatans, liars, thieves, hypocrites and enemies of Democracy. There are so many possibilities to disembowel the people who are in turn disemboweling our values and our history and our nationhood and the very stability of our country, but bundled into a package like bad loans and labeled as Liberally biased, the non-Fox media simply give in, and afraid to do what anyone who knows how to use Youtube can do: they ignore the lies and emulate the deceivers or turn to celebrity gossip.

But of course in a different way, it's just as sad to see people like Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity shown as naked and pathetic as the newly clothed emperor by one of the only news programs with nothing to lose by telling the truth: The Daily Show. I had tears in my eyes Thursday night as the scrolling text of President Obama's Nuclear Position Report was followed by the Foxed up report clothed as a conversation between the very god of hypocrisy and America's own Rasputin. Using someone's own recorded words against him makes it very hard, in theory, to drown out the truth with the usual brass band of Obamahate or to simply continue to lie and deny with the usual brass balls. why sad? because it doesn't matter, because the people who want to believe won't willingly leave their fantasy faith and view the real, sad world and because there are a lot of them and because they're angry as hell that Democracy overturned their perceived entitlement and will to power. As with evolution deniers, no amount of proof is enough even to raise the terrible spectre of doubt. For reasonable people seeing is believing, for Teabaggers, Fox Folk and the vermin who write viral e-mails, it's the other way around.

Yes, indeed, according to the NPR, The United States pledges never to make or threaten a nuclear attack against a non-nuclear enemy save for the provision that a chemical or biological attack could exempt an enemy from that pledge, but within seconds we see Gingrich saying that we're endangered because a chemical or biological attack could not provoke a nuclear response. Within seconds we hear Hannity affirm "yes, that's what he said." Of course, it wasn't and they both knew it. It's always quite an experience to see someone look you in the face and lie when you have proof positive that's just what it is. One feels betrayed, embarrassed, angry: one never wants to trust or listen to that person again. But not if you need that lie. Not if your entire life, your career, your personality revolves around that lie.

Will MSNBC or CNN or the networks address the Fox crew's responsibility to report the truth? Would they risk running such dramatic proof that their competition is no more honest or reliable than the Legendary Iraqi Defense Minister? What will they say about Fox's assertions that our widely radical president will put us all in danger by reducing our huge stockpile of nukes, some over 40 years old, by a third, or by looking forward to a world without them? Will they, like Jon Stewart simply run clips of Ronald Reagan telling the world that he looks forward to a world without nuclear weapons and that we should reduce the count by one third as a first step? No, they won't. Reagan will remain right and Obama will, by being exactly the same be irrevocably wrong -- and a far left radical liberal trying to weaken our defenses. Truth is irrelevant.

According to Newt Gingrich, President Obama believes that words are a substitute for reality: he's referring to words the President never said, or words that the Hero Reagan also said. His smirking riff, only meant to perfume a pointless smear and to deflect notice that this is precisely what Newt is doing: knowingly lying about the President, creating a false substitute for reality and knowingly trying to enrage people against the elected government. As Roger Ailes said, they're about ratings.

Who in the "Liberal Media" is going to expose him as a seditious insurgent? Who on CNN is going to put together clips of McCain calling himself a Maverick and denying he ever called himself a Maverick? Clips of McCain telling us to avoid extremists like Jerry Falwell and then praising Jerry Falwell? McCain espousing views and then calling Obama an extremist for agreeing? Only an entertainment show, a fake news show. You won't often see such stunning journalism on a real news program or in a real paper or magazine, because it's quick, because it doesn't allow the concocted "balance" of dignifying a baseless lie as "another point of view," because you can't speculate and expatiate ad absurdum and flap your jaws hysterically about it all day and all night. That's not what journalism is any more. Truth isn't even what truth is any more and Journalism isn't journalism, it's entertainment, it's ratings and profit. It's a Roman circus and we're not the lions.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Tennessee Tea

By Capt. Fogg

Some people might give them credit for never giving up and of course, like congenital stupidity and genital herpes, the Republicans never really go away.

Yesterday's e-mail viral outbreak flared up with another version of a letter excoriating Barack Obama for such inexcusable acts of treason as not placing a flower at the World Trade Center crater with a sensitive enough wrist action and of course referencing that old groaner, the photo of him singing without his hand on his heart. Both these things and more, insisted the weeping and wailing writer are proof of his Christian hating Islamic faith and his mission to destroy all that is held dear by the pretend conservatives who hang upside down in belfries and eat bugs.

Not that such people actually write these things. Virtually all of the phony celebrity letters libeling and threatening Michael Moore, Hillary Clinton and the Obama family are written by the same, easily recognizable hand, although the attributions change from day to day. The faux outrage and breast beating pretend patriotism are always the same.

The letter I got was attributed to Sherry Hackett, the wife of the famous and raunchy comedian although she didn't write it nor likely did the others it's been "from" in the last 6 months. The person who forwarded it to me was crying for our country or so she says. Actually I think she welcomes any scurrilous and seditious screed that oozes from the Republican cesspool. I think it just hasn't sunk in that far from shoving things down America's throat, democracy has shoved change down theirs.

The desperation seems to call for deliberate denialism and cultivated delusion. If Obama takes off his shoes, that means he's a Muslim and not a Christian was a sentiment presented by a small townTennessee Tea Party organizer along with a picture of a shoeless president. Frankly I wish he were, but even so, it's a statement that could only be applauded by people not likely to be found at a Mensa meeting unless they're simply dishonest exploiters of the traditionally stupid.

For a group whose meetings sometimes draw dozens of people, God willin' and the creek don't rise, it can't be hard to avoid the leaders knowing that it's a tiny minority cult representing a fringe Right element, yet their solution to the problems posed by an electorate that emphatically rejected the Right in the last election is to go further right. The Washington Post quoted David Nance, the founder of the Gibson County Patriots, in Jackson, Tenn as saying

"This effort is to try to get the Republican Party to try to give us more conservative candidates"

and he believes it's working, yet his choice of Stephen Fincher, gospel singer and cotton farmer from Frog Jump, Tennessee for the State's 8th Congressional District seems to have little to do with stated Tea Party goals of reducing the cost of government and eliminating "entitlements" what with Fincher raking in a cool, conservative $200,000.00 per annum in farm subsidies and being financed by others riding the same gravy train. He's pulled down over $2.5 million since 1995. Of course that' just all tea in the harbor and doesn't seem to matter as much as the president with his shoes off or the stories about flag pins and tardy salutes, a too small flag on his campaign jet and the laying down of a flower at the WTC with insufficient wrist action as discussed in the letter Sherry Hackett didn't write.

The shame of it all really is that Barack Obama, with his continuing support of some unpopular Republican policies may be too conservative for Liberals and perhaps even for some centrists while this collection of Beverly Hillbillies wants to tell us he's a Muslim version of Pol Pot while selling a faux populist version of Corporatism.

It's more of a shame we don't seem to have any genuine conservative opinion worth reading these days, and of course if we'd had it earlier, we might not have needed it so badly now.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)