Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies. A native of California's High Sierra, she spent 20 years in Silicon Valley before moving to Vancouver, BC in 2004. She currently is pursuing an MS in Futures Studies at the University of Houston. You can reach her at srobinson@enginesofmischief.com.
None Dare Call It Sedition Tuesday, April 06, 2010 -- by Sara
Sedition: Crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction -- Brittanica Concise Dictionary
Well, finally. It's high time somebody had the guts to say the S-word -- sedition -- right out loud.
When the indictments against the Hutaree were unsealed last week, the S-word was right there, front and center, in Count One. The Justice Department accused them of "seditious conspiracy," charging that the defendants "did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and other persons known and unknown...to levy war against the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force the execution of any United States law."
This is very serious stuff. But the Hutaree are getting nailed for sedition only because they crossed the line with inches to spare. They're by no means the only ones. Advocating, encouraging, and sanctioning sedition is the new norm on the conservative side.
We saw it again last Thursday, when the Guardians of the Free Republics -- a Sovereign Citizen group that believes that the oath of office taken by state governors is invalid under their twisted Bizarroland interpretation of the Constitution -- sent letters to most or all sitting state governors telling them to either a) take what they consider to be a legitimate oath of office; b) stand down; or c) or be removed "non-violently" within three days. The FBI, rightly, regards this as a potentially seditious threat against the governors.
These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
This long assault has gone into overdrive since Obama's inauguration, as the rhetoric has ratcheted up from overheated to perfervid. We've reached the point where you can't go a week without hearing some prominent right wing leader calling for outright sedition -- an immediate and defiant populist uprising against some legitimate form of government authority.
Moderates and liberals are responding to this rising threat with feckless calls for "a return to civility," as if all that's needed to put things right again is a stern talking-to from Miss Manners. Though that couldn't hurt, the sad fact is that we're well past the point where it's just a matter of conservatives behaving like tantrum-throwing spoiled brats (which they are). When a mob is surrounding your house with torches and telling you they intend to burn it down, "civility" really isn't the issue any more.
At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is.
What is Sedition? Before we start throwing around inflammatory terms like "sedition," it's essential that we understand the strict definition of the word -- and use it carefully and precisely, lest it lose all meaning.
(That's what happened with the word "fascism," which has been distorted into meaninglessness by hyperbolic overuse on the left and willful redefinition on the right. Once a word is abused and distorted this way, it's very hard to recapture it and restore its original meaning. And that's no small thing, because losing the word makes it functionally impossible to even discuss the political idea the word represents. Worse: as Orwell told us, when we no longer have the language to describe what we're dealing with, we also lose our ability to deal effectively with fascism at all. That's a real danger with loaded words -- so, please, let's be extremely careful about how we brandish this one.)
Here's the defining line we need to hold on to. People who promote subversive ideas, no matter how dangerous those ideas might seem, are completely protected under the First Amendment. Even calling for the overthrow of the government is protected (though not benign, as we'll see later, because it creates justification, permission, and incitement to seditious acts). That's why the conservatives have been safe -- so far.
It's only when those people start actively planning and implementing a government rebellion that it turns into criminal sedition. In this case: the weird rantings on the Hutaree website -- not seditious. The group's allegedly operational plans to assassinate a police officer, ambush the resulting funeral, and thus bring on a national militia uprising -- absolutely seditious, if the charges stick.
This bright-line distinction, which has been part of American sedition law for the past 50 years, parallels closely the line drawn by terrorism analysts in sussing out which groups are benign and which ones are headed for trouble. As I've noted before, one of the cardinal signs these experts watch and listen for is a fundamental shift in rhetoric. In the early stages of dissent, groups establish the lines of conflict by obsessively focusing on their enemies and loudly denouncing their essential evilness. You hear this kind of talk in politics all the time these days. It's always ugly, but not inherently dangerous.
But in the latter stage, the talk turns overtly eliminationist, and the group starts expressing its clear desire and intention to eradicate specific enemies. When they shift to that second stage, it's a sign that they've made the mental commitment to violent action -- and are more likely to be acquiring arms, selecting targets, and getting ready to act in the near future. When a group starts actively planning an attack on government offices or officials, it's officially crossed the line into sedition.
Sedition on The Right Openly advocating acts of sedition has become the conservatives' main political stock in trade over the past year. (The SPLC offers a strong summary here.) You hear it everywhere from Rush to Glenn to Michelle Malkin to Michelle Bachman. Everybody on the right is now roundly convinced that the fairly-elected President of the United States isn't even a citizen. He's a Muslim, and thus in treasonous league with terrorists. The main goal of his administration is to turn the country over to the One World Government. He's a socialist. He's a fascist. All of these are direct attacks on Obama's fundamental legitimacy and authority to lead the country -- and thus a deliberate incitement to revolt against his administration.
These narratives are coupled with a rising us-versus-them blaming of progressives for all the problems of the country. These days, the screeds sound eerily like free-market fundamentalists freebasing Hitler: they're clouded over with the typical eliminationist vitriol that reduces liberals to subhuman vermin that must be violently exterminated from the body politic in order to restore the virtue of the country. (For those who groove on that sort of thing, there's even a slight dash of anti-Semitism in the mix.) This is dangerous stuff. And in the context of the conservatives' longstanding effort to delegitimize the government, it's also an open invitation to sedition.
This seditious intent is obvious in the increasingly overt firearms displays at right-wing events. The media took to their fainting couches, aghast, when a small handful of people showed up packing heat at last summer's Tea Party disruptions. Now, we've advanced the point where not one, but two, 100% gun-toting marches on Washington, DC are planned for this coming April 19. Their organizers are hoping the marches will draw tens of thousands of armed protestors. Get used to seeing guns in the streets wherever the law allows -- because the conservatives have told their base explicitly that they need to be "exercising their rights" on this front to the fullest extent. Carrying guns in public is now an essential symbol of how the the right defines freedom. It also expresses just how afraid they are, and what they're planning to do about that fear.
These escalating armed demonstrations, accompanied by belligerent sloganeering, are a clear signal that these folks are done talking -- and, worse, have already decided that democracy is futile, and taking up arms is the only appropriate response to the threats we now face. They're carrying weapons to scare us weak-kneed girly libs into submission, and to show us they mean business. Growing up in gun country, I was taught at my daddy's knee that when someone says they're going to shoot you, it's always smart to take them at their word and handle yourself accordingly. Right now, I think that's good advice for anybody in America who considers themselves a member of the reality-based community.
But it's not just armed individuals. They're also busily forming armed groups, which are gearing up for a fight. For the past five years, armed Minutemen have been usurping the job of the US Border Patrol. And within the past year, according to the SPLC, the number of right-wing militias has more than doubled to over 500, many of which present themselves as alternative law-enforcement posses that are adjunct to the ones staffed by the county sheriffs.
What these groups are telling us is that they no longer recognize the government's sole franchise on the use of force; and they're actively organizing to seize and exercise at least some of that power for themselves.
Most alarming of all: some of these right-wing warriors have advanced to the point of actual target acquisition. This should worry us, because law enforcement and terrorism experts know that when groups like this get to where they're settling on specific targets, they've reached the final stages of gearing up for violent confrontation.
When Bernard Goldberg wrote a book listing the "100 people who are destroying America" -- which included some government officials -- he was writing a target list with seditious intent. (And at least one guy took him up on it, in his own deranged way.)
When the "spiritual warriors" of the Transformations movement proudly announce that they've mapped every town in America -- literally creating target maps of "demonic activity" that pinpoint government offices, non-Evangelical houses of worship, clinics, theaters, Indian mounds and sites; or even just households with Muslims, neo-pagans, Goth-baby teenagers, or Obama stickers on their cars -- they're putting us on notice that they've identified the specific people and places that need to be "cleansed" in order to purify their communities. According to researchers Rachel Tabachnik and Bruce Wilson, these "transformation" attempts have already become government-level issues in New Jersey, Arizona, Texas, and Hawaii.
At present, they claim that they're only mapping their neighborhoods so they can pray over us all; and their attempts to take over local government are being done by purely democratic means. But, as has often happened before (yes, the Nazis started out just this way), the day may come when they'll decide that mere prayer and organizing is not enough. Like any street gang, they've taken proprietary responsibility for a piece of turf; and they believe God is holding them accountable for everything that happens there. The resulting performance pressure is a perfect setup to justify more aggressive cleansing tactics if they can't convert the town by peaceful means.
And some of these groups have already effectively crossed the line, in spirit if not in prosecutable fact. When the Christian dominionists train up "Joel's Army" by sending their sons to the US armed services so they can get the combat experience they'll need to set up a worldwide theocracy, that's evidence of an active plan to effect an armed government takeover. When senior US military officers put their commitment to Jesus ahead of their commitment to uphold the Constitution and regard the military as God's force in the world, we should be very afraid.
For years now, we've dismissed all of this as crazy talk, the rantings of a loony fringe that will never get enough traction to become a material threat to our democracy. But we're well past the point where it's no longer quaint and funny, or an embarrassing breach of democratic etiquette that polite people should just ignore.
It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that lowers their base's inhibitions around violence -- and irresponsibly eggs on the handful of sociopaths in their midst who are already primed to kill. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.
We'd be idiots not to regard this as an overt threat. Especially when they keep telling us, very explicitly, that they mean it to be. When somebody says they're going to shoot you, believe them.
We need to start talking about this for what it is, and calling it out whenever it happens. Leonard Zeskind points out that the feds have never been able to make a sedition charge stick against a right-wing group (if the Hutaree are convicted, it'll be a first); but the first step in stopping sedition is making sure everybody knows exactly what it is when they see it. And that means calling out the S-word every time we see the conservatives defiantly flinging their hands and feet out over that line to score a few cheap political points.
If this is just political grandstanding to energize the base, they're playing with fire, and they need to bring this incendiary campaign to a screeching halt. Right now. This Mickey Mouse pussyfooting around, play-acting at sedition is criminally dangerous chickenshit politics that puts the short-term needs of the Republican party ahead of the long-term viability of the American democracy they've sworn to uphold. In case the party leaders haven't noticed, their base has taken them as seriously as a heart attack -- and they're genuinely making ready for armed revolt.
On the other hand, if they're actually serious about seditious rebellion against the US government, then let them stand up, follow through, and face the charges. They're either Americans, committed to working in good faith within the democratic process to create our common future; or else they're seditionists in intention or fact -- and thus enemies of the state, plain and simple.
For the good of the country, we cannot continue to let them have it both ways. They need to choose whose side they're on: America's, or their own.
11:20 AMSpotlight
An Expat's Guide to the Vancouver Olympics Friday, February 12, 2010 by Sara
Hello, world. We've been expecting you. It's good to see you here, milling around Robson Street in your uniforms and badges, whooshing here and there in what must be a million Official Olympic GM-donated cars, making guesses as to where in town they've hidden the fire tower for the Olympic Torch (it's still a big secret, but the local news station thinks they may have found it last night), and generally making it impossible for locals to get a restaurant reservation or cross a bridge. Still, we've got you to thank for the new convention center and Seabus ferry, the Canada Line subway that finally(!!) directly connects the airport to downtown, and that shiny new four-lane freeway that's taken half an hour off what used to be a treacherous winding trip two-lane up to Whistler.
So, y'no, thanks.
I got here a little ahead of you -- six years ahead, in fact, as a native California transplant who was looking for something a bit more like freedom back in 2003. This city has been preparing for this week almost exactly as long as I've been here. And I arrived already knowing what Vancouver was in for, because this isn't my first Games. I'm an Olympics veteran who did her time as a full-time paid staff writer for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics back in 1984. So the energy gathering around town right now is very familiar, mostly in a sweet, good way.
But Vancouver is a peculiar place (even by LA standards, which is saying something). It does things its own strange and subtle ways -- ways that the media hordes will only begin to be noticing, and will have no chance in hell of figuring out, by the time these Games are over. There's going to be plenty of coverage of the sports events, but I'm wagering you won't see or hear much on how these Games look on the ground to those of us who are going about our daily lives around and amid the party -- not least because so much about Vancouver outright defies so many American assumptions about life, the universe, and everything. That's the piece I'll be reporting on, with daily (or nearly-daily) dispatches on assorted facets of life in Olympicsland.
To kick this off, let me start by telling you a bit about my city.
Somewhere in your mind's eye, you're already conjuring totem poles and eagles, cruise ships and orcas, grizzlies and Mounties, and the misty interplay between mountains and sea and endless dark woods that makes our landscape the stuff of the North American frontier mythos. British Columbia is twice the size of California, with a population that's about the size of Washington State's. Over half the population lives in the Lower Mainland, as we call Greater Vancouver. In the American imagination, BC is the last outpost, the edge of the continent, the end of the West, and the beginning of everything that lies Out There, beyond the boundaries of civilization.
You probably know already that Vancouver routinely ranks at the top of everybody's "most liveable cities on earth" lists (Vienna and Melbourne are our chief rivals). You may have heard that we're an incredibly green city -- heavy on transit, light on freeways, an electrical grid that's almost entirely hydro-powered, and a food supply that's uniquely dependent on local sources. You may even know that we're one of the most densely urban and cosmopolitan cities in North America, with huge populations of Chinese, South Asians, Koreans, South Africans, Iranians, and...well, you name it. (The French, who give everybody in eastern Canada such political fits, are simply lost in the mix here. You want to get along, you learn Cantonese, which is the mother tongue of fully one-quarter of the city.)
Vancouver is the place where laconic, easy-going West Coast style meets hyperpolite Anglo-Canadian discipline meets an almost thoughtlessly casual multiculturalism meets a completely un-self-conscious, not-the-least-bit-ironic obsession with the common good. It's lush English gardens, savory Asian food, cautious Scots bankers, impeccable Mountie law enforcement, and gentle but effective First Nations justice.
And it's a vast landscape of contradictions. Alongside its legendary green ethos, you find forests clear-cut by the mile and salmon farms that breed parasites that are destroying the wild salmon stocks. Alongside its social progressivism, you sometimes find incredible official foot-dragging when it comes to domestic crimes against women and children. Alongside its strong First Nations culture -- perhaps the most vibrant surviving native communities still extant in North America -- you find odd moments of inexplicable racism. Alongside its extreme pacifism, there's hockey.
Still, the thing I love best about my Canadian neighbors is that they try very seriously to do the right thing by each other -- more seriously than Americans have for a long, long time. I'd like to hope some of that comes through your TV screen over the next two and a half weeks, because it's something we could stand to relearn from our friendly neighbors to the north (along with how to run a sound banking system). I'll do my part here each day to help the message along.
And if there's something you see during the next couple weeks of saturation coverage that you find weird, wonderful, disturbing, or simply curious, drop me a comment or a note, and I'll see what I can do to shed some light on the subject.
Speaking of light: the Olympic torch is moving through my neighborhood this morning, just a few streets over. I'll be wandering over later to see it. A group of drummers from the Skwxwú7mesh (just say "Squamish"; nobody really knows how you pronounce that seven thing) tribe has set up over in the village square downhill from the house; I can hear their drums and songs filtering up through the tall trees as I write this. More about the torch tomorrow.
---------------------------------------- Fun Vancouver Fact: Stanley Park is one of the largest urban parks in North America, about 10% larger than New York's Central Park. It was dedicated in 1888 by (and named for) Lord Stanley, who also gifted Canadian hockey with the Stanley Cup.
Crossposted from Alternet. Originally published Wednesday evening.
Sarah Palin stakes out the Tea Party's right-wing populism: 'This movement is about the people' Monday, February 08, 2010
-- by Dave
Sarah Palin's followers no doubt thought she gave a great speech at the National Tea Party Convention last night. Actually, it was pretty much cookie-cutter stuff, sprinkled with the requisite cheap shots at President Obama. If red meat is your thing, there was plenty. But as always with Palin, there was no substance, and the delivery was pretty close to fingernails clawing their way down a blackboard.
Mostly, she staked out the core political position of the Tea Party movement as the right-wing populism we've already recognized it as. But she repeated that the movement was about "the people," and indeed wrapped it up with an incoherent bit of babble featuring "the people."
There was the requisite nod to the ah, "revolutionary" component of the movement:
Palin: And I am a big supporter of this movement, I believe in this movement. Got lots of friends and family in the Lower 48 who attend these events and across the country, just knowing that this is the movement, and America is ready for another revolution, and you are a part of this.
Of course, the Tea Partiers like to insist that this is a non-violent revolution. But the way they keep packing guns around at public gathering as demonstrations of their constitutional rights, the rest of us aren't feeling all that assured.
Palin also made an interesting remark about Tea Party candidates taking out regular Republican candidates:
Palin: A lot of great common-sense conservative candidates -- they're gonna put it all on the line in 2010, and this year, there are gonna be some tough primaries. And I think that's good. Competition in these primaries is good, competition makes us work harder and be more efficient, and produce more. And I hope you'll get out there and work hard for the candidates who reflect your values, your priorities, because, despite what the pundits want you to think, contested primaries aren't civil war. They're democracy at work, and that's beautiful.
Yeah, we bet John McCain thinks it's just beautiful that he's facing a tough primary challenge from Tea Party favorite J.D. Hayworth this year. Palin later told the audience how proud she was to run with McCain on his ticket, but she seemed to be encouraging candidates like Hayworth. Sounds like some serious cognitive dissonance going on there.
Mostly, Palin spent a lot of time slagging Obama:
Palin: This is about the people, and it's bigger than any king or queen of a Tea Party. And it's a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.
Palin also ranked on at length about Obama's supposed weakness in the "war on terrorism," particularly in the case of the Underwear Bomber, who she believes should not have been allowed to "lawyer up." These attacks brought her some of her longest applause. Palin, like a lot of right wingers, seems to believe that the Constitution applies only to American citizens -- even though the Constitution itself is quite clear that it applies to anyone under U.S. jurisdiction.
And then they tell us that they're all about preserving constitutional values. Right.
Of course, the whole line of argument on the Underwear Bomber was really just an excuse to deliver cute lines slagging Obama:
Palin: Treating this like a mere law-enforcement matter places our country at grave risk. Because that's not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this -- they know we're at war! And to win that war, we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern!
There was also the requisite hypocrisy:
Palin: Today, in the words of Congressman Paul Ryan, the $700 billion TARP has morphed into "crony capitalism at its worst," and it's becoming a slush fund for the Treasury Department favorite big players, just as we had been warned about.
Also noteworthy: Palin applauded Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak for screwing up health-care reform. Sounds about right. Way to go, Bart. Hope you're proud.
Palin wrapped up by defending the movement from critics (like us) who paint it as extremist. Why, Sarah can personally vouch that everyone she met in the movement is just folks.
And that gave her the launching pad for her populist wrapup:
Palin: This movement is about the people. Who can argue, a movement that is about the people and for the people -- remember, all political power is inherent in the people, and government is supposed to be working for the people. That is what this movement is about!
Palin may be right that "this isn't about parties," but there's no doubt that it is about ideology -- right-wing conservative ideology. And in its populist guise, it isn't fooling anyone.
What Bill O'Reilly edited out of his interviews with Jon Stewart: Total evisceration! Sunday, February 07, 2010
-- by Dave
If you thought, after watching the twosegments of Jon Stewart's interview with Bill O'Reilly this week, that Stewart landed some telling observations, but he seemed to pull his punches a bit -- or at least they seemed to have been pulled for him -- you were right.
If you also noticed, as I did while making the clip, that the segments were pretty hamhandedly edited -- the continuity, especially in terms of Stewart's demeanor, was jarring -- it turns out you were also right.
John Cook at Gawker (with the help of a couple of interns) got ahold of the full interview first, and provides a nice dissection that you should read (and watch) in full.
We've clipped some of the highlights for our own video, above.
If nothing else, the unedited video will be long remembered for the following quip:
I know what this is. I come from Jersey—it's the same thing: "I'm not saying your mother's a whore. I'm just saying she has sex for money. With people." [F]ox News used to be all about, you don't criticize a president during wartime. It's unacceptable, it's treasonous, it gives aid and comfort to the enemy. All of a sudden, for some reason you can run out there and say, "Barack Obama is destroying the fabric of this country."
Though I also thought this exchange was perhaps the most telling:
Stewart: But let's go into this. Because all I hear on your network is, this guy is -- it's tyranny, and socialism.
O'Reilly: That's what he believes.
Stewart: So, how is Barack Obama a socialist? As far as I can see, the majority of the billions of dollars he's given, he's given to banks. So if he is a socialist, he's dyslexic! Because when you redistribute the wealth, it's supposed to be going to --
O'Reilly: But he does believe in redistribution of income.
Stewart: Well, he's redistributed it to the banks.
O'Reilly: And that is a socialist tenet -- no, he's redistributing it --
Stewart: He's going up. He's dyslexic! It's supposed to be coming down!
O'Reilly: He -- Look. If you don't know that the Obama administration is redistributing income, then I'm gonna have to haul your program away from you. Get you off the air.
Stewart: Let me ask you: What is different about his redistribution of income and all other presidents -- he wants to raise the marginal tax rate back to where it was during the Clinton era. Was Clinton a socialist?
O'Reilly: He has promoted a variety of programs, OK, that --
Stewart: We already have Medicare, right? We have Medicaid. We have Social Security. Are we a socialist country? Do you want to get rid of those three?
O'Reilly: No.
Stewart: So are we a socialist country?
O'Reilly: But I want to moderate them so we don't go bankrupt.
Stewart: OK, but that's different. Now you're talking about fiscal responsibility.
O'Reilly: In a socialist country, the government pays for all of these entitlements -- the Obama administration is down that path.
Stewart: Who pays for Medicare? Who pays for Medicaid?
O'Reilly: The government pays for it.
Stewart: So now we're socialist.
O'Reilly: But now we're on Medicaid and Medicare with steroids, with the new health care bill. That's steroids!
Stewart: Once again, this is like the old joke. "Would you sleep with me for ten dollars?" "No." "Would you sleep with me for a million?" "OK." So now we know what you are, you're just negotiating price. For you guys to stand up --
O'Reilly: Of course, that's the degree of anybody when you describe socialism. There are little socialistic programs and giant socialist programs. OK? And some people believe that Obama is on the huge government creation -- the government dominance. And you yourself said it! You yourself said it! He wants more regulation, he wants to create things, he wants big government.
Stewart: But he's given back so much executive power!
O'Reilly: What?
Stewart: Executive power!
O'Reilly: He hasn't given back anything. He just hasn't handled the Congress. He doesn't know how to handle them yet. That's inexperience. Now --
Stewart: So he's not a tyrant. Because if he's a tyrant, then he's pretty lame for a tyrant.
O'Reilly: I don't object --
Stewart: How many tyrants do you know that really suffer because they can't get cloture? Very few.
Still, you can sure see why O'Reilly's producers edited this stuff out. Lord knows the regular septuagenarian Bold/Fresh audience would have fainted dead away.
Tom Tancredo to the Tea Partiers: Lack of 'civics literacy test' meant illiterates put 'a committed socialist' in White House Saturday, February 06, 2010
-- by Dave
Well, we knew the National Tea Party Convention this week was going to be a real festival of outrageous wingnuttery, but Tom Tancredo's speech to kick things off will already be hard to top:
Tancredo: Every year, the liberal Dems and the RINO Republicans turned up the temperature ever so slightly. It seemed after awhile that we'd all be boiled to death in a cauldron of the nanny state.
And then something really odd happened -- mostly because we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country.
[Applause]
People who cannot even spell the word "vote," or say it in English -- [applause] -- put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. Name is Barack Hussein Obama.
It's hard to say which was more disturbing: Tancredo's apparent call for reinstituting laws that, as John Byrne at Raw Story points out, were a fundamental component of Jim Crow in the post-Reconstruction South, or the massive round of applause he received for saying it. (The New York Daily News has more on the literacy tests.)
Yes, these people really are nuts. Witness, for instance, the applause Tancredo got for saying he was glad McCain lost -- because, after all, McCain was for "amnesty" too:
If McCain had been elected, the neocons would be writing flattering editorials in the Weekly Standard and the Wall Street Journal. Congressman Gutierrez and President McCain would have been posing in the Rose Garden with big smiles as they received accolades from La Raza for having finally passed an amnesty.
Of course, most of the speech was just Tancredo channeling Glenn Beck. (The boiled frog metaphor was the giveaway, along with the "committed socialist ideologue" bit. As well as lines like this:
So the race for America is on, right now. The President and his left-wing allies in Congress are going to look at every opportunity to destroy the Constitution before we have a chance to save it.
But as always with Tancredo -- as with his audience -- the real motivation comes down to defending white culture:
Some things we can deal with in just a political way -- which is, you know, by the votes we cast. Other things will require a commitment to passing on our culture -- and we really do have one, you know, it is based on Judeo-Christian principles whether people like it or they don't!
[Applause]
That's who we are! That is who we are! And if you don't like it, don't come here! And if you're here and you don't like it, go home! Go someplace else!
It is obvious that Beck and Tancredo are trying to push the issue of immigration to the forefront of the tea party movement, something that was explicitly clear during Tancredo’s speech. The acts that followed paled in comparison to Tancredo, who definitely stole the first night spotlight of the three day event.
Indeed. If you thought the Tea Partiers went nuts at those town-hall forums on health care, wait till immigration reform is the issue. It's going to be very ugly.
Tom Tancredo, of course, will be leading the way, pitchfork in hand.
James O'Keefe and the white supremacists: As Breitbart runs screaming for cover, bigger questions loom -- by Dave
James O'Keefe and his boss, Andrew Breitbart, already are having trouble keeping their stories straight on O'Keefe's illegal attempts to access Sen. Mary Landrieu's phone system.
And now that Max Blumenthal has ripped off the facade from O'Keefe's background as a race-baiting right-wing dirty trickster the other day, they're having even more trouble.
Blumenthal reported in Salon that O'Keefe was actively involved in helping promote a white-nationalist conference in 2006:
Now an activist organization that monitors hate groups has produced a photo of O'Keefe at a 2006 conference on "Race and Conservatism" that featured leading white nationalists. The photo, first published Jan. 30 on the Web site of the anti-racism group One People's Project, shows O’Keefe at the gathering, which was so controversial even the ultra-right Leadership Institute, which employed O'Keefe at the time, withdrew its backing. But O'Keefe and fellow young conservative provocateur Marcus Epstein soldiered on to give anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism an opportunity to share their grievances and plans to make inroads in the GOP.
According to One People's Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O'Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. O'Keefe's attorney did not respond to a request for comment on his client's role in the conference.
After reporting this, Andrew Breitbart -- O'Keefe's employer, and one of the chief promoters of his lawbreaking brand of "investigative journalism" -- went on the offensive. A writer for his "Big Journalism" site attacked Blumenthal's report as a "lie":
Here is the story they actually have:
James O’Keefe attended a forum years ago that dealt with race and politics. The forum was located at a Georgetown University building (that’s right, a 21-year-old man attended an event on a college campus). The forum had as one of its three speakers a controversial figure, Jared Taylor, with a track record of making racist statements. He was being debated by two other people including Mr. Martin (taking issue with the racist figure). Mr. Taylor has also appeared with Phil Donohue, Queen Latifa and Paula Zahn on their TV shows to debate race. Are the audience members of the Donohue show racist for sitting and watching that debate?
Honestly, that isn’t much of a story. But… you put Mr. O’Keefe at a table full of racist literature and you say that he was manning the table. And you say you have a picture proving it. And you make it sound like he was one of the organizers of this event. And you call the event a “White Supremacist Conference”. Well… now you’ve got a story.
According to an otherwise fact-challenged post on Breitbart, the website that has paid O’Keefe, O’Keefe said that he “attended the event with many of his Leadership Institute co-workers since it was right across the street from their building in Arlington, Va., and it was organized by other LI associates.”
In fact, a photographer who covered the event told me O’Keefe was helping its chief organizer, Marcus Epstein, and was not an innocent bystander, as he has claimed. But more on that later. First, O’Keefe vs. Breitbart…
Andrew Breitbart, who has paid O’Keefe and attempted to defend him by calling my reporting “FALSE,” has been undermined by O’Keefe himself. O’Keefe concedes my report was true — he was at the event. Breitbart has therefore been contradicted by O’Keefe.
First off, you can't say that those who have written about your boy James O'Keefe attending a white racist forum is a lie when you yourself are publishing a story where he admits to going. Secondly, you are not going to make the charge of racism go away when that same article is downplaying a racist idiot like Jared Taylor, an editor of a white supremacist newsletter (who by the way is organizing a conference of white supremacists in Washington DC the same weekend as the Conservative Political Action Conference), as a guy who is just someone "with a track record of making racist statements." Thirdly, you might also want to think twice about pretending that if someone calls him a white supremacist when he is not white, it doesn't mean forum organizer Marcus Epstein (whose claim to fame besides working for Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo is karate-chopping a black woman in the street and calling her the n-word while drunk off his behind) is not a racist that doesn't work with white supremacists.
To put just what Epstein and O'Keefe were doing in context, it's important to understand what guys like Jared Taylor excel at -- namely, lending a respectable sheen to old-fashioned bigotry through a combination of pseudo-social science and pseudo-logical obfuscation. They constitute the self-proclaimed "academic wing" of the white-supremacist movement.
From February 22-24, 2008, Taylor held the eighth biennial American Renaissance conference in Herndon, Virginia. The event, which is named after the print and online white supremacist journal and Website that Taylor runs, brought together various speakers from the United States and Europe to present speeches on race-related topics. Approximately 300 people attended the event, including well-known extremists such as
* Don Black, who runs the white supremacist Website Stormfront.org;
* Gordon Baum, head of the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC), a white supremacist organization that was the successor to the racist, anti-integrationist White Citizens' Councils of the 1950s and 1960s;
* Mark Weber, head of the Institute for Historical Review, a Holocaust denial organization;
* William Regnery, a funder of racist organizations and publications, including The Occidental Quarterly, a racist journal whose articles often focus on race and intelligence.
Speakers at the conference included:
* J. Philippe Rushton, head of the Pioneer Fund, who promotes eugenics and an alleged link between race and intelligence;
* Bruno Gollnisch, a member of the National Front, a far-right French political party, who lamented the existence of the European Union for what he saw as its un-democratic nature and assault on national sovereignty ;
* Jared Taylor, who discussed why the vast majority of whites do not accept “race realism,” the idea that racial differences are real and that it is natural and healthy for groups to segregate along racial lines.
Other talks covered a range of topics, from an “insider” look at Mexicans to “a modest proposal” advocating for a white “racial state.”
...
Jared Taylor calls his views “race realism” and himself a believer in “complete freedom of association.” He advocates voluntary segregation as a “natural” expression of racial solidarity and denies that his views constitute white supremacism or white separatism. Viewing world conflicts and societal problems as derivative of racial, religious, and ethnic diversity, Taylor upholds racial homogeneity as the key to fostering peaceful coexistence. He sees Japan, where he lived until he was 16 years old with his missionary parents, as an exemplar of a racially homogenous society. He views Asians generally as genetically superior in intelligence to whites who he, in turn, sees as genetically superior in intelligence to blacks.
Andrew Breitbart and James O'Keefe may want to run away from his past now. But as Max points out -- considering that his most famous target, ACORN, is best known for its effectiveness at enrolling black voters and empowering the African-American vote, and that the tapes played to the lowest form of racial stereotypes -- it's very much a part of his present.
After Marx’s email, I followed up with Isis. She told me in no uncertain terms that she had witnessed O’Keefe engaged in the “execution” of the white nationalist event of the Robert Taft Club.
“What I told Weigel and what I told him to quote me as saying, is that O’Keefe was involved the same way you would be involved if you went to a party and you put out the cups and stocked the cooler,” Isis told me. “He was helping Marcus Epstein in the execution of the event so I don’t see what the issue is. It was obvious that he was there supporting the event and was involved in its execution.”
Isis added more about her discussion with Weigel. “I told him the same thing I told you,” she remarked to me. “O’Keefe and Luke Pelican and the Leadership guys helped Epstein because they were friends with Marcus [Epstein], and they are friends with him because they agree with his views on the race stuff. And I told him when O’Keefe got there he was helping Marcus set the event up. Nitpicking over where he sat is bullshit. I mean, enough is enough. They were there; they were helping out with the event and they can’t deny that.”
O'Reilly equates liberal blogosphere with the Birthers, claims right-wing extremists hold little sway in GOP Friday, February 05, 2010
-- by Dave
Bill O'Reilly was all worked up last night on his Fox News show about that DailyKos poll revealing the Republican base for the collection of nutcases that it's fast becoming -- thanks in no small part to Fox News.
Apparently the leader of the Kos brigade is writing a book comparing Republicans and conservatives to the Taliban, and so this poll was designed to back up his insane point of view.
The survey says 39 percent of self-identified Republicans believe President Obama should be impeached. Sixty-three percent believe he is a socialist. Only 42 percent of GOPers think the president was actually born in the United States. And 31 percent believe he hates white people.
Now, if you believe that poll, you also believe Nancy Pelosi once dated Dick Cheney. The poll is a fraud, as is the Web site. But what is serious is the hatred that ideological Internet nuts continue to spew out there, and they have enablers on TV and radio, as we all know.
In fact, President Obama himself is very annoyed by the continuing intrusion that cable news has upon his administration. On Wednesday, he said this while addressing Democratic senators:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: If everybody here turned off your CNN, your Fox, your, you know, just turn off the TV, MSNBC, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there, instead of being in this echo chamber where the topic is constantly politics.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Now, "Talking Points" understands the president's pique, but when you consider that the mainstream media has been very friendly to Mr. Obama, his concern about cable TV news rings somewhat hollow. I mean, just about every major urban newspaper in America loves the president, so I don't know why he's so annoyed that there are few verbal snipers on the tube.
What Mr. Obama should be concerned about is the growing acceptance of lies by some Americans on both the left and the right. For example, by investigating the birth announcements in two Honolulu newspapers in August of 1961, "The Factor" has proven that Barack Obama was indeed born in America. It would have been impossible for anyone to get bogus birth announcements into two newspapers. And why would anyone bother unless they knew baby Barack would someday become President Barack? The birther deal is just madness.
On the left, we already told you about the crazy Kos people, but somehow folks like Arianna Huffington are now considered legitimate news sources. That's what the president should be worried about.
It is now very easy to demonize anyone in America, to slander and libel them all day long. There's no question the president has been treated unfairly in some precincts, but the garbage flows both ways, and Mr. Obama should point that out.
That's right, it's not right-wing kookery that Obama should be concerned about -- it's the liberal blogosphere.
Of course, O'Reilly neglects to provide any examples in which the liberal blogs, either DailyKos or HuffingtonPost or for that matter any of the rest of us on the "far left", have actually traded in bizarre conspiracy theories or provably false information. Indeed, what we've all tended to be preoccupied with is the provably false information and bizarre conspiracy theories being peddled on Fox News.
So then he brought on Karl Rove to agree with him:
O'Reilly: Now, the DailyKos -- it's interesting, it's not a real power in America but it does get picked up by powerful people, which is usually the way this game works. These far-out websites on the left, and on the right, a little bit, but not so much, uh, filter their little garbage into the New York Times and other people and then it gets mainstreamed out.
They are presenting a picture of the Republican Party as a bunch of extreme loons. You know, they want Obama impeached, they think he's not born here, or that he's a racist, he hates white people. You know, what I'm trying to get at it is this:
There's no doubt there's an extreme element of the Republican Party in the conservative movement. There's no doubt. They're there. But how much do you think that is?
Rove mostly rambled on about profanity at liberal blogs, blah blah blah, and claims that their methodology was faulty because they simply asked people the same questions they're being asked by Fox News hosts.
But O'Reilly returned to his main point:
O'Reilly: I'm trying to figure out, I'm trying to calibrate, the extreme wing of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Is it 20 percent? Fifteen percent? What would it be?
Gee, we dunno, Bill. According to the Kos poll, nearly two-thirds of Republicans think it's possible or probable that President Obama is a racist who hates white people (31 percent said no, 33 percent said they weren't sure).
Maybe -- since this is a question Glenn Beck has promoted on Fox News -- Fox itself should conduct a poll asking the question. Wanna bet it's significantly different?
Of course, we understand: It's essential for O'Reilly to minimize the insanity of the American right in order to keep peddling his BS on a daily basis. It's his living, and any threat to it will be summarily dispatched.
But most of all, Stewart used his second appearance ever on "The O'Reilly Factor" to levy a robust critique of Fox News and its coverage of President Obama.
"Here's what Fox has done, through their cyclonic perpetual emotional machine that is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week: They have taken reasonable concerns about this president and this economy and turned it into full-fledged panic attack about the next coming of Chairman Mao," the comedian told his host.
"I think some people do that, but most people don't," O'Reilly responded, calling it "the narrative of a couple of guys."
You could tell that O'Reilly was on the defensive: He resorted to a cheap physical-intimidation tactic, shoving his finger at Stewart over the fact that Stewart made fun of Fox for cutting away from President Obama's tete-a-tete with the GOP last week. Stewart had to explain to him that he made fun of Fox because it was funny, not because he had anything against Fox.
Funny that BillO didn't bother to bring up the time that Stewart totally pwned Sean Hannity for showing fake footage. Guess it musta slipped his mind.
Who you gonna believe? Glenn Beck, or your lyin' eyes? Thursday, February 04, 2010
-- by Dave
It's been amusing watching Glenn Beck twist and squirm and try to explain what he meant last October when he proclaimed that President Obama was flying the American airplane right into the trees, "taking you to a place to be slaughtered."
First, he said, "I don't know if I've ever used the word 'slaughtered'." Then, upon discovering that he had indeed used it, still tried to claim he "had never used it on the air," but was only referring to SEIU's Andy Stern. Finally, he settled on the claim that he wasn't speaking "literally" about "slaughter," he was talking about, um, the economy! Yeah, that's the ticket!
That was the rationale he followed yesterday on his Fox News show, smirking and acting as though his rationale would reveal his critics for the fools they were. Of course, what you can really see is what a fool anyone who believes Glenn Beck is.
Here is what he actually said in October:
Beck: I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit -- there's one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!
Most likely, it'll happen sometime after Christmas. You're gonna see this economy come up -- we're already seeing it, and now it's gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they're doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No -- we'll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!
No, Beck contended again and again and again, the whole time he was just talking about "the economy." Barack Obama is going to slaughter the economy. Even though he clearly said "taking you" not "taking the economy."
So, to review the ever-changing explanations: Beck never used the word "slaughter" -- until it was proven that he did. Then he only used it in reference to Mao, Stalin, or Hitler -- until it was proven that this wasn't the case. Then, when he used it, he wasn't referring to the Obama administration, he was referring to Andy Stern. Then he was referring to Obama -- but didn't mean it literally.
Got it? You might need to use Beck's trademark chalkboard to keep track.
A little later in the show, Beck brought on Bill O'Reilly to chew over O'Reilly's segment of the night before in which Joe Klein castigated Beck for his "hateful crap," including "the part where he describes the president as intentionally steering the airplane of state into the ground." Yet Beck claimed Klein can't come up with any examples (and it's true that Klein's mention of the Birthers story was off; Beck has in fact never joined in on that conspiracy theory).
Somehow, the whole "the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees" line doesn't matter because it was just a metaphor. Of course he didn't mean Obama was some kind of pilot, you silly liberals.
That, in essence, is his entire defense: Because these were simply metaphors to illustrate what Obama was doing to the economy, it shouldn't matter that he uses metaphors involving mass death.
Beck may think his audience is stupid, but the rest of us are dumb enough to fall for this. We understand metaphors and rhetoric at least as well as Beck does. The point Huffington raised, and Klein as well, was that this kind of rhetoric, employing violent metaphors, in fact has the effect of inspiring violent responses among its audiences.
People's economic well-being is nearly as vital to them and their families as their physical well-being. When you tell someone that the president is going to drown them economically, or crash the economic engine of the nation, or economically slaughter you, the reaction will be every bit as visceral and violent as if people were being told they were threatened physically.
The crux of the matter was never whether Glenn Beck really believes Barack Obama is planning to actually slaughter Americans. It's the damage being done by the inflammatory rhetoric and imagery he constantly uses. The evoking of "slaughter" and "killing sprees" and a president who "has a deep-seated hatred for white people" is meant to play into the public's legitimate anxiety over the economy -- and fan the flames of fear.
Indeed, even the references to Mao and Stalin and Hitler engaging in genocide were not as untainted at Roger Ailes wanted to claim. Because those references all came in the context of a week's worth of Beck shows attacking the "progressive movement" as a "cancer" and a "virus" that was "sucking the lifeblood" out of the country, and culminating in a pseudo-documentary based on Jonah Goldberg's fraudulent work whose entire thrust was to connect the "progressive movement" as the underlying force behind all of the great genocides of the 20th century.
Moreover, Beck has consistently claimed that Obama is a totalitarian of whatever stripe fits that day's thesis -- a socialist, a communist, a fascist, a Maoist -- and made clear his belief that the current White House is run by "radicals" who intend to "fundamentally transform" America into a totalitarian state. The genocide documentary was unmistakably a component of this thesis.
