Fox Talker Cal Thomas: Pelosi Walking Past Tea Partiers Was Like Neo-Nazis Marching In Skokie

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The right-wing media -- particularly Fox -- are stumbling all over themselves to castigate anyone who dares suggest that the ugly rhetoric that's been unleashed in the wake of the passage of health-care reform is anything but a bipartisan affair. Indeed, this has been the standard talking point on Fox for the better part of the past several days.

It continued Saturday on Fox News Watch, when Jon Scott's assembled panel -- Judith Miller, James Pinkerton, Ellis Henican and Cal Thomas -- chewed over why the librul media are so intent on making the threats out to be a right-wing affair. Miller, to her credit, tried to inject some sanity into the discussion, but she was knocked down by a lying (par for the course) Pinkerton:

Scott: Back to the issue of those threats, though, Judy, the broadcast networks led with the stories of threats against, you know, Democrat supporters of the health-care bill. It seemed like it was very much driven, you know, from the Democratic side of the equation.

Miller: Well, because most of the threats seemed to come the Right. I mean, the bullet through the window, which now turns out to be somehow unrelated to any anger, an accident, that was a --

Pinkerton: Now, Judy, you're a skilled reporter. Just think of the two things you said, that the threat -- the bullet through Eric Cantor, a Republican's window, seems to be unrelated. But most of the threats seem to come against -- to be made by Republicans, neither of which you can prove, and your saying them is helping to feed the narrative, which is that Republicans are the bad guys again.

Bzzzzt!!!! Sorry, Jim, but just like you did when you tried to claim you had nothing to do with the Willie Horton ads, you're lying. Because Miller's claims are both easily proven, and you know it:

A: Local police have declared that the shot that hit Cantor's window was "random gunfire" -- it was, in fact, a spent round falling to earth, which means it could not have been intentionally fired through Cantor's window.

B: Any kind of tally will demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of threat and actual violence are being directed at Democrats by angry right-wingers. Besides the well-reported threats against Bart Stupak and Louise Slaughter, probably the most prominent instance of this involved Alabama ex-militiaman Mike Vanderboegh's call for angry Tea Partiers to smash Democratic Party office windows -- after which there was a spate of such smashings.

But that story, in fact, has never been reported on Fox.

Cal Thomas, however, came up with the most novel attack on Democrats for having let themselves be the subject of such violent rhetoric and behavior -- essentially a variation on Glenn Beck's theory that Obama and the Democrats are intentionally trying to provoke a violent response from the extremist right:

Thomas: Look, when Nancy Pelosi walked through those Tea Partiers, it was like -- what should analogize this to? Ah, the march through Skokie, Illinois, by the Nazis? It was deliberately provocative! They wanted a reaction!

Lessee ... Pelosi and the Democrats were making what was a normal, everyday trek from the floor of the House to their offices, and were confronted by angry Tea Party protesters. Imagine if they had turned back and found another route to their offices; then Cal Thomas would be declaring that they were "running and hiding" from the protesters, wouldn't he?

Instead, they're just like nasty neo-Nazis trying to provoke a crowd.

Sigh. These people simply occupy a Bizarro Universe full-time now.

Chatting With Laura Flanders: Why Violent Eliminationist Rhetoric Is Becoming A Real Concern

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I've been a popular guy this week; been doing a lot of radio interviews. I also was on GritTV earlier this week, chatting with Laura Flanders about the wellsprings of the extremist rhetoric that is unleashing all this unhinged behavior from sore-loser Tea Partiers.

I'm still recovering from my jet lag and I look like crap, but I think I was at least reasonably coherent.

If not, let's talk about it here.

Eric Cantor Blames Democrats' Concerns About Violence For Shot Fired At His Office. Except There Wasn't.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

All of Fox News was atwitter yesterday morning with the big break news that someone had taken a shot at the office of Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Minority whip. Cantor himself went on TV and pronounced:

Just recently I have been directly threatened. A bullet was shot through the window of my campaign office in Richmond this week.

Moreover, he blamed all of this violent behavior breaking out everywhere on the Democratic congressmen who are standing up and calling it out:

It's reckless to use these incidents as media vehicles for political gain. That is why I have deep concerns that some - DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen and DNC Chairman Tim Cain, in particular - are dangerously fanning the flames by suggesting that these incidents be used as a political weapon.

But then the whole story came out:

In a news release Thursday, police said the bullet struck at about 1 a.m. on Tuesday. The preliminary investigation showed that "a bullet was fired into the air and struck the window in a downward direction, landing on the floor about a foot from the window. The round struck with enough force to break the windowpane but did not penetrate the window blinds. There was no other damage to the room, which is used occasionally for meetings by the congressman."

The building, which has several tenants including an office used by Cantor, was unoccupied at the time, the news release said.

Richmond police spokesman Gene Lepley told CNN Friday that it was the result of "random gunfire."

Gee, sounds awfully familiar. This is just like Lou Dobbs' attempts to gain martyrdom.

Meanwhile, none of the right-wing bloggers who raced to get this story up -- folks like RedState, Gateway Pundit, Schmuck of Spades, and Daily Caller -- have bothered to update their posts and correct the record for their readers.

Which means, of course, that you have a broad swath of wingnuts who really believe Eric Cantor's office was shot at too.

Yet another addition to the already ridiculously long list of provably untrue things right-wingers believe.

Beck Clarifies His Theory: If Violence Breaks Out From The Right, It Will Have Been Intentionally Provoked By Obama

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Just in case there was any doubt about what he was implying the day before, Glenn Beck yesterday cleared things up and removed all doubt about the meaning of his garbled rant about administration radicals who advocated violence:

Beck: You see, what they've done is they've radicalized The Man. These people are in the center, but who's down here? They know that these people always lose -- because they experienced it. The crazy teabaggers in the streets.

Why would a government continue to poke you, and poke you, and poke you, and poke you? Why would they say these things? Why have these people said these things about good Americans? Because they need to separate these people from these people.

They know exactly how you feel when the president of the United States says that. ... These guys remember. When these guys said, 'These crazy dope-smoking hippies,' they knew how it felt. They knew and it drove them nuts, and it drove some of them -- it drove this guy and this guy -- to start throwing bombs!

They're counting on it. The Man made them do it. And they learned that once they threw a bomb, they were done. Martin Luther King changed the world without a single act of violence. Gandhi was right in many ways.

This might be the most dangerous monologue I've ever done, because I am telling you now: They need you to be violent. They are begging for it! You are being set up! Do not give them what they want.

The rest of the rant is an ass-covering plea for non-violence -- a lame attempt to cover the fact that he's spent the past year using violent rhetoric to whip people into a state of hysterical paranoia.

And best of all, what Beck's doing here is providing right-wingers with a ready-made excuse for the violence when it does break out: Why, this was what the liberals were planning all along! It's their fault! Even if they are the victims of it.

Beck Goes Nuts Over HCR, Concludes Evil Progressives Are Trying To Provoke An Armed Revolution

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Glenn Beck long ago went around the bend and over the cliff rhetorically. Indeed, he has gone around several bends in the past year. So it was no big surprise that his big defeat with the passage of health-care reform sent him at warp speed round yet another.

This time, it seems he went around the penultimate bend: At the end of two days' worth of ranting, he evidently concluded that the Obama administration and the cadre of evil "progressives" in government are intentionally taking up immigration reform in the wake of the health-care vote because they hope to provoke an armed insurrection.

That's not quite justifying armed revolution, but it sure is nuzzling right up next to it by giving it an excuse.

This conclusion was one he built up over two days, beginning Monday with the usual deprecations about the motives of the people who supported health-care reform:

"You always thought the bad guys always lost in the end."

"All of the pressure and the bribes went to the dirty congressmen on the left, on the Democrats."

"They [Democrats] have finally been toppled, forced to submit."

"They sold their souls for this vote."

"Well, what they've become is ruthless, amoral, ends-justify-the-means, Saul Alinskyites who will do anything, including eat their own to get what they want."

Oh, and lest anyone forget: Michael Moore is fat.

"Because the average Democrat is not the California hippie Marxist Socialist Communist Progressive, sticking flowers in the barrel, sitting around smokin' dope all day during college and talkin' about how they can destroy the evil American empire."

"America changed for me this weekend. I don't see it anymore as this television set used to show me. I mean, I never thought I would see the kind of corruption, the backroom deals, the bribes, the out and out ... scumminess ... that got us to this health-care vote."

Beck again compared it to Pearl Harbor -- and then added the St. Valentine's Day Massacre "when the Mob came in and cleaned things up"), Chamberlain meeting with Hitler, and tossed in Jimmy Carter's election (huh?) and the burning of the Hindenburg (which he said is a picture of Medicare and Medicaid). He finished:

It will be remembered as a black spot in our nation's history, it will be. It will be -- ah well, depending on who wins the war. Because those are the people that will write the history books.

What's that? War? What war would that be? We're not sure at first, but he drops a few hints later, after disparaging his opposition as Marxists, professors, dupes, and leeches:

I got news for you, gang: The game is on. We're going to win. They might win a few battles. We'll win the war. Because we'll never give in. Never.

This part you can believe. Because that's been obvious since the day Barack Obama was elected -- Beck and his fellow conservatives would never concede the results of the election, would never respect the outcome politically, and would never stop fighting by whatever means necessary to stop any progressive agenda.

The next day, he began by calling upon his audience to respond to the passage of health-care reform the same way an earlier generation responded to the attack on Pearl Harbor:

"This is the biggest thing we have ever faced. This is our Pearl Harbor, our Normandy, our Custer's Last Stand."

(Eh? Not sure what the most one-sided and foolishly led massacre in American military history has to do with Normandy, but whatever.) But what is the real cause for alarm?

Beck: Just after winning the contentious, unpopular, rip-us-apart health-care-bill battle by jamming it down the throats of the American people, by hook or by crook, they're now talking about comprehensive immigration reform. This week!

Yeah, who could have imagined they'd be talking about it after a crowd at least twice as large as your much-hyped "9/12 March on Washingonton turned out at the National Mall to demand it? Of course, Beck's audience wouldn't know about that, since Fox did almost no reportage on it whatsoever -- in stark contrast to the wall-to-wall coverage for the 9/12 event.

At this point, Beck indulged in some really bizarre paranoia:

Holy cow! You've broken three commandments, three of them! Three of them, all in one principle. That's amazing. And for those of you in the administration who are coming after me on this one, I mean, remember, you've broken three, let's not make it four: 'Thou shalt not kill.'

Yes, Beck must keep an eye on his back at all times to watch for the evil Obama administration evildoers who are plotting to kill him. Oy.

But all this leads to his final conclusions:

Beck: Why would the president take up immigration right away, after he's just punched you in the face with health care?

Beck then compared health-care reform to spanking, saying that loving parents hug their kids after they spank them, and that's not what the Obama administration did:

Beck: So what happened, what happened this week? Haven't we just been spanked? Hasn't most the country -- doesn't most the country feel like they've been spanked?

[Um, actually, Glenn, no. Most of the country is glad it passed.]

Beck: If you loved us, what would you do? You would hug us. But they're not. They're going for illegal immigration, which almost tore us apart just a few years ago. Why would you do that?

Hmmm. That's a really hard one to figure out. Why exactly would the people who have been demonized as "cancer" out to "destroy America" on a daily basis by people like Glenn Beck and his adoring followers want to lift a single finger on their behalf? Why would anyone love people who make careers out of sliming and smearing them? Eh? Simple answer: Nobody loves you.

Why are the Tea Parties always being labeled as terrorist? Why is it? "They're extremists, they're terrorists, they're hatemongers, they're dangerous!"

What is it that these revolutionaries want? You'd pick up a gun? You ever thought of that? These people have. Because possibly, maybe the question should be asked: Maybe they're tired of evolution, and they are waiting for revolution.

Beck's clearly implying that the administration is deliberately trying to anger the Tea Partiers so much that they take up arms and start a "revolution."

In other words, if violence breaks out, it'll be because the Obama administration deliberately provoked it.

Which means the black helicopters are about to come take Glenn Beck away.

Yes, The Health-Care Reform Bill Is Now Law. Read It And Weep, Republicans

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

President Obama wasted no time this morning signing the health-care reform bill into law:

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama capped a yearlong political drama Tuesday, signing into law a landmark health care reform bill that had been seen as impossible just two months ago.

The president said the law "will set into motion what a generation of Americans have fought for."

He said he was confident the Senate would make fixes to the legislation "swiftly."

The president praised those House members who had "taken their lumps" during the overhaul debate. Shouted one lawmaker in the audience to laughter, "Yes we did!"

This wasn't just a major victory for Obama. This was a resounding defeat for the increasingly marginalized Republican Party and its controlling and now thoroughly repudiated conservative movement.

Make no mistake: Conservatives opposed this bill tooth and nail not because of its contents, but because they knew that success breeds success, and that the field is now much clearer for progressives to advance their agenda and heal the damage wrought by eight years of conservative rule. And the voters will continue to reward that success.

They fought this because they feared their own inconsequence. And in the process, they only made themselves even more so.

Just ask Russell King at TPM.

And if you needed any better evidence, check out the scene from today's pre-signing press conference by the GOP:



Talk about irrelevant.

The Ominous Side Of The Tea Partiers' Defeat: They Really Believe Their Own Outlandish Rhetoric

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I got to witness a little bit of history Sunday night in Washington, sitting in the gallery of the House of Representatives as the vote was tallied for final confirmation of the health-care reconciliation package. It was a pleasure seeing the beaming faces of Democrats (and there was no small bit of schadenfreude in seeing Republicans' scowls), especially people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who looked fresh and energized despite probably having had no sleep for 72 hours or more, and my own representative, Jim McDermott, who has fought consistently for health-care reform for several decades now.

Of course, I only sort of witnessed the final vote. You see, security was rotating groups of about 18 people in and out of the seats every 15 minutes, because demand was so high; and my group's time ran out just as the count reached 200. I returned quickly to the item-return room (you had to leave behind your cell phones), where a big screen ran the tallies on C-SPAN; when the vote hit 216, a loud cheer erupted among the 30 or so of us gathered to watch.

Not all of us cheered, of course. A sizable portion of the crowd forming those long lines, in fact, comprised Tea Partiers who had spent the day outside the Capitol protesting, "Kill the Bill!" And they scowled and booed while the rest of us cheered.

I had, in fact, spent a portion of my day among these Tea Party protesters, wandering among them with a video camera in the hours before that afternoon's massive March For America. (And it has to be mentioned that this crowd, of several hundred at best, was utterly dwarfed by the crowd of immigration-reform activists behind them, estimated to be 200,000 strong, a contrast that must -- or should -- have struck some of them as a wee bit ominous for their Beckian claim that "We Surround Them".)

As you can see, some of the leaders of the chants were not above some ugliness in the process. A woman reporter from the local ABC affiliate was mercilessly harassed by one of the bullhorn holders, as you can see. And there was no shortage of kooky signs, including:

I DID NOT SERVE SO THAT DICTATORS COULD RULE
Obama
Take Your Flight
Now And Don't Ever
Come Back
We'll Manage!

A brief exchange of insults occurred when a middle-aged man in a blue soccer shirt made clear he adamantly supported health care, and a man in Michigan Militia T-shirt said, "F--k you," to which the older man responded in kind. Someone in the crowd (the guy holding the "Take Your Flight Now" sign, in fact) called out, "Commie!"

(And yes, the incessant chant of "Kill the Bill!" did start to remind one, after awhile, of the crowd of zombies chanting "Im-ho-tep!" in The Mummy.)

Media Matters spent all day among them and produced some even more disturbing clips.

Dave Weigel at the Windy also found some prime violent wingnuttery:

As a Democratic victory looked more and more likely, Tea Partiers got more ornery about the liberals who’d showed up to cheer for reform and take commemorative photos of what, to them, looked like the end of a year of agenda-slowing right-wing activism.
“Look at that idiot!” said Linda Cocsy, a New Yorker who’d spent the weekend in Washington for the protests, pointing at one of the young Democrats who’d infiltrated the protest, holding up a pro-reform sign provided by a pro-choice Catholic group. “This one, here with the stupid grin on his face! He looks likes he’s brainless. You look at these people and, they really look like jerks. You look at the other people, with the Don’t Tread on Me [flags], and they look like real people!” Cocsy stared off at another protester, waving a sign he’d picked up from a pro-immigration reform protest that had broken up around the time that Stupak announced his flip. “I just wanna kill them!” said Cocsy.

Meanwhile, the NY Daily News reports that one right-wing blogger called for Obama to be shot:

Solomon "Solly" Forell tweeted: "ASSASSINATION! America, we survived the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy. We'll surely get over a bullet 2 Barack Obama's head."

The crazy talk isn't just coming from the rank and file. Some of the Tea Partiers' favorite congressmen are saying similarly nutty things, such as Rep. Steve King's call for secession (via Amanda Terkel) as a response to HCR, following up on his earlier call for an armed revolution.

So it was very interesting listening and observing their responses that evening as we all crowded together into a line to watch the House vote -- Tea Partiers and reform supporters together, required to remain quiet and civil with each other, upon pain of being immediately removed by security.

For the longest time, it seemed, there were about a hundred of us lined up along the long corridors leading to the House gallery, where we had to run a gauntlet of security checks. I was right behind as group of middle-aged Tea Partiers who were dead set against reform and talked among themselves with the usual talking points: "It's just too much government control," "We're talking about one-sixth of the economy", etc. etc., all straight out of Fox News.

But directly behind me was a boisterous young man from Tulsa who was an ardent supporter of health-care reform, and he made his feelings known as well, talking loudly about the vote count as it trickled in on the preliminary vote to advance the measure -- which, had it failed, would have ended the counting for the night. When it passed, he and others in the line cheered loudly.

One of the Tea Partiers ahead of me said to his fellows: "I can't believe all these people want health care."

Because I was being quiet and civil, I refrained from saying: "Yeah, who'da thunk?"

About the same time, a group of people who had been watching in the gallery and whose time had expired began filing past us, some of them beaming. The young Oklahoman began high-fiving them and cheering. But one middle-aged woman refused:

"It's the night America died!" she said.

Finally, we made our way through the last security gate and took our seats, just as the votes came in on Republicans' last-gasp delaying attempt came in, and then we watched as the counting began on final confirmation. Just as the vote count in favor reached 200, the security men came and escorted us out, leading to our final hurrah at the item-return station.

I caught the last Metro back to the condo where I was staying (thanks again, Darcy!) and sat alone near the door. There were only about six of us in the entire car, but right behind me was as glum-faced middle-aged couple. Their expressions alone made clear they had been among the Tea Partiers, as did their conversation on the way back.

"I have to wonder, when we wake up in the morning, whether this will still be a free country or not," said the husband.

"I know," said his wife. "It's so sad."

Again, self-restraint (and fatigue) were all that kept me from standing up and saying to them:

"Good God, people, get a grip! Do you still have freedom of speech? Freedom of association? The right to vote? To choose your religion? To live where you want, choose your own occupation, decide what kind of family you want to have? Because those are real freedoms. You haven't lost any of that! It's still the freest country on earth, you loons! If you think that paying taxes means a loss of freedom, you're wrong -- it just means you're living up to your end of the social contract. Are you part of that, or not?"

Well, those were the words in my head, anyway. And I realized then that, for all these people who have been watching Glenn Beck and Fox News and listening to Limbaugh and Palin and Hannity lo these many moons, that really is their stark reality now: Sunday night was "the night America died."

And that's really a dangerous prospect. Because it means the American Right has come completely unhinged. And unhinged people begin not just saying unhinged things, but doing them.

There's a reason John Amato and I have just finished up work on our new book, Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (which you can pre-order at Amazon, though it won't be out till June 1, and no, that's not our final cover, and the foreword is by Digby, not Rick Perlstein).

It's becoming more timely by the day.

My Chat With Numbers USA's Roy Beck: Those 200,000 Immigration Marchers Are All 'Thieves'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Here, as promised, is my interview with Roy Beck of NumbersUSA, at yesterday's March For America in D.C. Judge for yourself how the exchange went.

A couple of the more interesting exchanges:

Beck: But the fact is, is that the amnesty that's being promoted here allows the people to steal the thing they came to steal. People come here illegally --

Me: So you're calling them thieves.

Beck: They are thieves.

Me: [Laughter]

Beck: Of course they're thieves. No look. What is a thief? A thief is somebody who takes something that does not belong to them. They come here and take jobs that do not belong to them. They take wages from the most vulnerable members of the society.
So the thing is -- I'm not saying -- I think most of them are probably good people. I think most of them don't even think of themselves as thieves. They've been taught since they've been young that that border isn't really that important. I don't blame them, I blame our government. But the fact is, those are people who came to steal a job, and what everybody's lobbying for today is to keep the job that they stole.

This, from a guy who leads off the "About Us" section of the NumbersUSA website proclaiming: "No to Immigrant Bashing."

Dunno about you, but calling 200,000 people -- no, make that 12 million -- "thieves" sure sounds like immigrant-bashing to me.

Also, I got a kick out of this exchange:

Me: Do you guys think you could get 100,000 people out here to rally against amnesty?

Beck: No. See, the trouble is, there's no amassed money to be made from bringing immigration back down to traditional levels. The uh -- I mean, the kind of money it takes to put on one of these things is just gigantic.

There's so many people making money off of high immigration, they can afford to do that. Our people are just unemployed people all up and down the line. And they would have to pay for it all themselves. Now they could get here, but they couldn't do this kind of -- this kind of expensive thing.

Yeah, because those 100,000 and more are drawn from all over the country just because their costs get covered.

March For America: Over 100,000 Gather In D.C. To Demand Immigration Reform

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It's been an insanely busy day here in Washington today. All the news folks have been focused on health care reform, and there are Tea Partiers up at the Capitol chanting, "Kill the Bill!" I'll have video from them tomorrow -- hell of a day for my laptop to up and die on me, isn't it? And I'll be trying to cover the vote from the House floor tonight too.

But all this was a tiny scene compared to what was really happening on the National Mall today: the massive crowd of over 100,000 people who showed up today to demand comprehensive immigration reform.

Let there be no doubt about this: Once health-care reform is accomplished, immigration reform is going to be the next big issue on the national plate. The huge crowd -- one estimate placed it at 500,000 -- sent a powerful signal that they will not be content to let Congress shuffle off this massive responsibility for yet another year, as we're already hearing that many of them want to do.

There was an impressive array of speakers -- I managed to catch snippets from Jesse Jackson and Geraldo Rivera here, and you can go to America's Voice for a fuller lineup (I spent a lot of time observing some of the nutcases who showed up; I'll have that video tomorrow too). You can see for yourself just how massive it was.

Indeed, this crowd was significantly larger than the much-promoted "9/12 March on Washington" last September, even though that event was endlessly promoted for over a month by Fox News (I know, I know; they like to claim they had 1.2 million people there, but the reality was that it was actually about 70,000).

Yet, strangely enough, there was only ONE Fox News crew on hand to cover the immigration march today. I spoke with the reporter for this crew, and he told me Fox News had several other crews on hand today -- but they were all up covering the Tea Partiers and the health-care vote.

And in case you're wondering, there were exactly ZERO stories on Fox News reporting on this march in advance. ZERO. I couldn't find any at CNN or MSNBC either.

But then, when people genuinely care about real issues that affect real lives, instead of imaginary descents into "socialism," they don't have to be ginned up by right-wing propaganda organs.

WorldNetDaily's Peterson Unleashes Nutty Rant: Obama Is 'Destroying America Based On Lies'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've known for some time that the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson -- the WorldNetDaily's favorite black columnist -- is a Real Piece of Work. On Sean Hannity's Fox News show last night, he demonstrated it once again with this rant about health-care reform:

Peterson: But to be honest with you, this whole thing is -- I remember, George Washington built America based on truth. Barack Obama is destroying America based on lies.

This thing is about the redistribution of wealth, it's about Black Liberation Theology. Obama lied on the primaries, he's been lying ever since. And the sad thing about it, some Americans -- most Americans are starting to see it, but they don't realize that they've been seduced by this man, and he doesn't care about what is right.

We see what he's doing, bowing down to everybody around the country --

Hannity: Around the world.

Peterson: And around the world. Look what's happening in Israel right now, he's never really supported Israel. This guy is not on our side.

He's -- Obama, in all honesty, is the Congressional Black Caucus, he is Louis Farrakhan, he is Rev. Wright, his minister, he is all of them wrapped up in one -- and he's gonna take -- if we allow this health-care thing to happen, he's gonna turn America into Detroit.

And we cannot let this happen.

Gee, this has a familiar ring to it. Maybe because it's just a recycled version of an earlier Peterson rant:

Barack Obama hates white people -- especially white men. Sorry folks, but the truth will set you free!

Why else would Obama falsely accuse Sgt. James Crowley and other Cambridge Police officers of "racial profiling" and claim they "acted stupidly" -- creating a national racial controversy?

For months, I have said that Barack Obama was elected as a result of white fear (guilt) and black racism. Whites voted for him because of guilt and the fear of being called "racist." And the 96 percent of blacks who voted for the "Messiah" did so because of his race and his "spread the wealth" notions.

[...]

Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus! He embodies the aspirations of every left-wing black group that wants to tear down this country and take power away from the "oppressive" white man. He's not an obvious race hustler like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson; but Obama is a smooth pathological liar -- with a wicked heart.

That was published in WorldNetDaily -- you know, the folks who brought you the Birther Conspiracy Factory. The same magazine that speculated that Obama was the anti-Christ. The same fine rag that published Jerome Corsi's theory that Obama was building concentration camps for rounding up conservatives -- along with a whole menu of similar far-right anti-Obama fever dreams.

The only question is: Why are we getting this far-right extremism broadcast into our living rooms by a supposedly "mainstream" cable-news operation?