In an Alternate Universe, mainstream pundits issue apology

Michael Berube offers a dispatch from an alternate universe in which "liberal" pundits learn from their mistakes and apologize for attacking bloggers critical of the Bush administration and/or the Iraq war in language difficult to distinguish from that of the GOP noise machine.

The Christocrat election of '08

From the editors of Free Inquiry

[A]ll the presidential candidates now seem to support President Bush’s faith-based initiatives, which enable federal funds to support religious charities. John McCain has affirmed that he would use federal monies to support faith-based charities, especially in education. (Mike Huckabee established a faith-based office when governor of Arkansas.) Hillary Clinton sees no contradiction between “our constitutional principles” and “faith-based initiatives.” And Barack Obama depicted faith-based programs as a “uniquely powerful way of solving problems,” especially for substance abusers.

The faith-based initiatives were never enacted into law by Congress but rather were created by George W. Bush’s executive order. A new president could end them with the stroke of a pen—but apparently that will not happen.

I remember when I first saw President Bush making a speech about his Faith-Based Initiatives saying that it was common sense (a phrase he often invokes when he is advocating something that is not common sense)* and being flabbergasted. Flabbergasted because faith-based initiatives are unambiguously exactly the sort of thing that the 1st amendment was intended to prohibit. They represent a direct attack on the principle of church/state separation.

And as the editorial notes, President Bush created this program by Executive order when he was unable to get this program through Congress. Not only is the program a violation of the 1st amendment, but its existence represents the President usurping the powers of Congress. Yet none of the remaining candidates with the exception of Ron Paul are openly critical of a program that is a combination of a cynical Karl Rove plot to purchase evangelical votes and Marvin Olasky's Christian Reconstructionist inspired vision of recreating the 19th century religious charity model.

The monarchical concept of a Unitary Executive which has animated this presidency seems like it will be surviving at least in some water-downed form no matter who wins the '08 presidential election. The candidates question the implementation of this program but not the legitimacy of its existence and thus the "center" of American politics takes another shift in the direction of the conservative movement.

This is why I will not give Obama (whom I presume to be the eventual Democratic candidate) a pass for his Christocrat campaigning. Just because the Bush administration has been bad (indeed, possibly the worst ever) we should not forget our principles because we manage to elect someone who will be significantly less bad (i.e. better.)

*This might be a reflection of Bush's education in Luntz speak.

How can anyone possibly take these people seriously?

Link

Link

Those links lead to Michelle Malkin and Pamela Oshry finding a hidden jihadi Islamo-fascist agenda in a Dunkin Donuts ad featuring Rachel Ray wearing a Middle Eastern scarf.

I think this commenter gets it right.

This has to be one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read here. She is wearing a scarf. Do you hate Muslims and Middle Eastern people so much that you can find their hidden agenda even in a doughnut ad? Should we dress like John Wayne and Ma Ingles to make sure everyone knows how American we are?

Update: I also like this response from a commenter at Balloon Juice to Malkin wondering if Dunkin Donuts should be boycotted over the ad.

I, for one, plan to follow Malkin’s lead by boycotting the education system until “Algebra” is renamed “Liberty Math”. I’m also thinking of boycotting ... any brewery and distillery that doesn’t substitute the phrase “Democracy Juice” for “alcohol”.

That will show them.

McCain renounces endorsement of Hagee and Parsely

John McCain has now rejected the endorsements of both of the extremist religious figures that had been associated with his campaign. (See here and here.) But in doing so McCain made the distinction that he had not been a member of their church for 20 years as Barack Obama had been of Jeremiah Wright, which would seem to indicate that the McCain camp intends to make Wright an issue in the election.

Two points:

1. Jeremiah Wright has a blindspot for the extremism of Louis Farrakhan and holds some personally ridiculous beliefs, but nothing, absolutely nothing he has said that had been played non-stop by Fox News and AM radio compares with Hagee's statement regarding Jews and Hitler and other such extremist comments from he and Parsley. (See Gary Kamiya's article putting Wright in perspective.)

McCain is making a false equivalency.

2. McCain accidentally gets to the crux of the issue. McCain did not have a personal relationship with either figure, but he was attempting to forge a political relationship with both. And the theological extremism of both figures was no secret ... McCain's explanation that he was not aware of specific comments is no excuse for having overlooked their openly on display general views in the first place.

Hagee has a doctrinal desire for global armageddon and nuclear holocaust, and Parsley shares Hagee's apocalyptic Manichean worldview, as Sarah Posner has pointed out.

If McCain wants to make an issue out of Wright - who holds no political power within the Democratic Party - he must be expected to answer why it is that he felt the need to insincerely seek out the approval, support, and endorsement of Religious Right extremists whom he had previously identified as agents of intolerance. That answer, of course, being that the Republican Party has to a large extent transformed into "the first religious party in U.S. history."

While our media is busy worrying about how Obama's personal relationship with Wright might somehow translate into policy, mabye they could spend an equal amount of time examining how the Republican Party's political relationship with the Religious Right has already translated into actual policy.

"Pro-Israel"

John McCain has said that he is glad to have the endorsement of Pastor John Hagee (one would think so given McCain sought his endorsement), and although he has repudiated some of Hagee's offensive remarks, specifically his anti-Catholic ones, he has said that he agrees with Haggee's support for Israel.

As I've noted before, "supporting" Israel for Christian zionism has a history of anti-semitism and is not neccesarily about caring about the people of Israel so much as its about seeing that the Rapture occurs. Well, Talk 2 Action has uncovered the mother of all cases in points. Here's Hagee from a sermon in the '90s

"Again he said unto me “Prophesy unto these bones, and say unto them, ‘O you dry bones, hear the word of the LORD!” [Biblical reference: Ezekiel 37, New King James Version, “Dry Bones” prophecy], and he spoke to them and they stood and they became an exceeding great army - meaning they physically came to life. Now how is God going to bring them back to the land? The answer is fishers and hunters. The answer is given in Jeremiah 16, verse 15 and following. God says in Jeremiah 16 - “Behold I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave unto their fathers” - that would be Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - “Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them” - that will be the Jews - “from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust... you can't see that. So think about this - I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Hertzel was? How many of you don't have a clue who he was? WOO... Sweet God! Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said - “this land is our land, God wants us to live there”. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel”. So few went, Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says - Jeremiah righty? - “they shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks”, meaning: there's no place to hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended: I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said, “my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come BACK to the land of Israel”. Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and 8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God going to cause the Jewish people to come SPIRITUALLY alive and say, “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God”?"

Yes, you read that correctly. The Holocaust was the will of God. Adolf Hitler was an agent of the Lord, doing what had to be done because Jews didn't go to Israel like they were supposed to.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Hagee is anti-Semitic (although he most certainly appears to be part of the tradition of anti-Semitic zionism), but it does demonstrate how indifferent he is to mass death and horror if he thinks its helping to make Biblical prophesy a reality. Indeed, if you scroll through the Talk 2 Action link you'll see that Hagee is looking forward to war with Iran and expects that God will kill most Americans living via a nuclear strike.

So here's the thing. This is all rubbish, ok? There is no sky-god that wants a nuclear war to break out in the M.E. But if you think that there is one then that tends to make you support actions that you think are the will of your imaginary genocidal maniac deity, thus making your fantasy beliefs into self-fulfilling prophesy.

And this is the guy whose views on Israel and Iran the person campaigning to be Commander-in-Chief of this nation's armed forces wanted to get the endorsement of. This is a representative of a constituency that McCain wants to have the support of.

So can we now have a media frenzy worrying about how these sort of lunatic beliefs might affect a McCain presidency?

Update: There is no need for qualification. John Hagee is a flat out anti-Semite. I skipped over the Talk 2 Action post, but just now went back and read the whole thing to come across this part

In the following audio sermon, which I have put into a video [and that includes other viciously anti-Jewish statement from John Hagee], Hagee says:

- Jews are not "spiritually alive".I have a copy of John Hagee's "Prophecy Study Bible", which makes quite clear Hagee is talking about all Jews now living - whom Hagee singles out, from among all other non-Christians on Earth, to note that they specifically do not have living souls. Indeed, Hagee says the souls of all Jews now living are dead. Dead souls. McCain endorser John hagee says Jews have dead souls.

So for all you pundits out there like George Stephanopoulos - the next time Sean Hannity or some other brainless partisan noise machine pundit feeds you some smear about Obama and people whose views he has already repudiated perhaps you can think about this and have a Chris Mathews moment.

Quote of the day

"We must seek an intelligible cause for all these phenomena. The moment you fail to find one, you run off to a god like a suppliant to an altar." - Cicero, responding to intelligent design arguments in On The Nature of the Gods (45 BCE)

ACLU launches new blog

Blog of Rights: Because Freedom Can't Blog Itself

I recommend adding it to your bookmarks.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero explains the new blog here

We envision this blog as a marketplace of ideas and discourse on pressing civil liberties issues, from surveillance and extraordinary rendition to religious freedom and the rights of protestors.

...

People who know the importance of defending the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, like the more than 500,000 card-carrying members of the ACLU, don’t just live on the coasts in cities like San Francisco and New York. They are spread all over America, from the Midwest to the Southeast. This blog is a place where everyone concerned about civil liberties can come together.

Whether you’re in San Diego or Salt Lake City, and whether or not you carry an ACLU membership card in your wallet, we hope you’ll be a regular visitor to Blog
of Rights. Please join us in keeping civil liberties at the forefront of public dialogue.

And speaking of the ACLU and civil liberty ... I should finally have my review of Bill of Wrongs, which I received courtesy of the ACLU, up sometime next week.

Quote of the day

"On résiste à l'invasion des armées; on ne résiste pas à l'invasion des idées." (One resists the invasion of armies; one does not resist the invasion of ideas.) - Victor Hugo, The History of A Crime

An example of faux tolerance

"Toleration is not the opposite of intolerance but the counterfeit of it. Both are despotisms: the one assumes to itself the right of withholding liberty of conscience, the other of granting it." - Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man

Can someone please translate this for the Dutch?

Obama's semi-creepy Christocrat campaign flier

Is it possible that we can get a candidate for president who doesn't feel the need to turn the executive office into a matter of theology? We are electing someone whose job is to execute the laws and uphold the Constitution and to be a public servant for the entire American people, we are not electing a Preacher-in-Chief for evangelical Christian Americans.

The Bush presidency should have taught us that being an evangelical Christian is in no way, shape, or form a qualification for becoming president, and I'm sad to see that the Obama campaign feels the need to employ this tactic (though it should still be noted that Obama is explicitly in favor of the separation of church and state.)

I suppose we can consider this a subset of the Cult of the Presidency.

Booklist: Stuff I really want to read but haven't

Ok, these are books that I've highly antcipated reading ever since they first caught my eye, but for one reason or another have put off reading them for at least several years.

Mind: A Brief Introduction by John Searle - A book which looks at the problems relating to the understanding of the mind from a philosophical perspective. And it has Son of Man for the cover.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values by Robert Pirsig - A 17 day motorcyle trip is the framing device for a book featuring philosophical discussions over a range of issues.

Crimes Against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice by Geoffrey Robertson - A history of the development of international human rights law.

A Comprehensive History Of Western Ethics: What Do We Believe? by Warren Ashby - The culmination of nearly 40 years of work by Dr. Ashby.

The Holy Land by Robert Zubrin - A sci-fi satire of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

The Satanic Verses: A Novel by Salman Rushdie - Hard to consider yourself a humanist and not read at some point one of the most famously subversive of religious orthodoxy texts of our lives.

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Examines how ecological factors have often contributed to the failure of societies. This is sitting on my bookshelf; considering that Diamond's previous work - Guns, Germs, and Steel - is one of my favorite non-fiction works it's pretty amazing I haven't managed to find time to read this yet.

Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose - Also on my bookshelf. An extremely comprehensive survey of the math and physics that makes up the universe.

On the Nature of the Gods by Cicero - A skeptical look at the religions of Cicero's day, this is the work that David Hume modeled his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion after.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne - A sequel of sorts to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It's also already on my bookshelf.

Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World by Carl Zimmer - I was sold on this as soon as I saw the title. Nevermind that it's one of my favorite science writers writing about one of my favorite subjects.

In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History by Michael Shermer - A biographical look at the "co-discoverer" of evolution and how his personal history contributed to his subsequent pseudo-scientific beliefs.

The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: A True Medical History by Clifford Pickover - This has to be one of the strangest hoaxes ever perpetuated.

Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas - The sequel to The Three Musketeers, one of the best adventure books I read as a child. An on-line edition is available at the Online Literature Library, and that site also has Ten Years Later, which is the third book in the Musketeers series.

Another example of why I abhor Dinesh D'Souza

I've done this before, but I will continue to do it everytime I come across something like this. D'Souza needs to be haunted for his vile apologetics for the repression of human rights.

"[T]he left is waging an aggressive global campaign to undermine the traditional patriarchal family and to promote secular values in non-Western cultures." - Dinesh D'Souza, explaining why the "cultural left" is responsible for causing 9/11 in the introduction to The Enemies at Home.

In Iraq

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. 'If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her,' he said with no trace of remorse. Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death. Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. 'They are men and know what honour is,' he said.

Yes, how dare we undermine such wholesome "traditional patriarchal family" values. Of course, we, the "cultural left," have given terrorists a legitimate reason to want to kill Americans by trying to put a stop to such practices.

It went down the memory hole

Glenn Greenwald reminds today's war-o-philes that their deified hero Ronald Reagan was a Neville Chamberlain-esque "appeaser", too.

Footage of O'Reilly's Inside Edition producer

China puts the music of Robbie Williams to good use

From 20 Things You Didn't Know About ... Recycling

Meanwhile, in China, more than 1 million unsold copies of British singer-songwriter Robbie Williams’s latest CD will be used to resurface roads.

Caller suggests tyranny, Limbaugh doesn't blink an eye

A caller to Rush Limbaugh's radio show yesterday said that America has foreign and domestic enemies. That America's domestic enemies are liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi who should be locked up in prison.

Limbaugh did not disagree. Indeed, he did not comment at all, as there is nothing remarkable about a caller expressing his desire to see the American government transform into an oppressive one party state which puts political opposition in prison.

I can't remember if that call occurred before or after the segment in which Limbaugh demonized Democrats as "limp-wristed linguini liberals" and "new castrati" aka castrated/homosexual males.

Can we at least get some internal consistency here? Are Democrats sissy girly men or are they dangerous violent thugs?

I guess we can't all be as tough as a fat draft-dodging chickenhawk radio jock. Really, how f'ing delusional does this guy have to be to consider himself more manly than, say, combat veteran Jim Webb (who is "liberal" by Limbaugh's definition.)

Chris Mathews explains it to a noise machine idiot

Thank you. Is that so hard? Can our pundit class do this more often when some parrot recites the latest moronic GOP propaganda? (h/t The Vanity Press)

Hillary Clinton's conservative populism

Jonathan Chait, author of the excellent The Big Con (which I'll have a review of sometime next week), explains how Clinton's dismissal of criticism from economists makes sense only if you view it as part of the Clinton strategy of triangulation.

The dying days of the Hillary Clinton campaign have brought the breathtaking spectacle of a candidate lashing out at every element of public life that has nourished her career. The über-wonk has disparaged economists and expertise. The staunch ally of black America has attacked her opponent for lacking support of "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans." People who thought they knew Hillary Clinton have gazed in astonishment: What has she become? The answer is, a conservative populist.

Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

...

Hillary Clinton's embrace of the gas tax holiday is a miniature example of the same pattern. Her plan, which rests upon the political principle that high gasoline prices are unacceptable and that the federal gas tax is a burden on hard-pressed Americans, is highly congenial to the interests of oil companies. Yet she presents it as an assault on Big Oil, much as Bush presented his tax cuts as a way to force the rich to pay a higher share of the burden of government.

This is another reason why I do not want Clinton to be the nominee (the biggest problem I have being this). If you continue to "triangulate" partisans who are reactionary ideologues with a Manichean worldview then the "center" of American politics will continue to shift in the direction of the ideologues. That's because they define themselves in opposition to their political opponents - if Bill Clinton runs as centrist new Democrat (which comes out looking something like an Eisenhower Republican) then Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and then Karl Rove and everyone else now define that as being the "far left" of American politics (E.g. the conservative Democrat Howard Dean was the "left-wing" of the Democratic Party in the '04 election according to the Republican noise machine.)

I understand that Bill Clinton was able to accomplish much that he would not have been able to do without co-opting Republican narratives. But America has gone so far off course that it is time to start building a new consensus that rejects the extremism of the conservative movement and its front organization, i.e. the Republican Party while better reflecting the views of majority of Americans who already reject the policy positions of the conservative movement (poll after poll reveals this to be the case.)*

It's time to be partisan for principles. Principles that are at the core of America's democratic Enlightenment traditions. Principles that for too long now have been defined as "far left" or "radical."

*See Why We're Liberals for an extended examination of this topic.

Brilliant

The case for impeachment continues to grow

This is why. We have a president who believes that he can quite literally create and modify law in secret with secret reasoning at his discretion. This is absolutely bewildering. We have a president who has zero understanding of how our government is supposed to work, of what the role, purpose and limitations of his office are - a President who believes that he has the powers of an authoritarian despot.

And yet this will continue to be a blip in the media, drowned out by a signal to noise ratio that ensures as a culture we know whether or not Britney Spears retains custody of her children but remain largely in the dark about a President who has been busy dismantling American democracy.

If global warming is real then why is the next decade predicted to experience cooling?

Flip on the AM radio and you'll hear that question asked over and over again. Here is the answer: because you stupid fools have once again taken someone's research and read into it what you wanted to hear. Which is why you all have managed to miss this part of the paper you're citing as evidence that global warming is a hoax.

[T]he results were just the initial findings from a new computer model of how the oceans behave over decades and it would be wholly misleading to infer that global warming, in the sense of the enhanced greenhouse effect from increased carbon emissions, had gone away.

Gristmill explains further. Meanwhile, Real Climate challenges the accuracy of this forecast in the first place. (See here and here.)

My notebook is a graveyard for posts

I have in my notes (both on paper and on my laptop) notes for numerous posts that I never got around to writing. One such post that died in my notebook is one where I was planning to examine the way that Bill O'Reilly's hypothetical future inauguration speech from a "S-P" president at the start of Culture Warrior transmits and reflects extremist ideas to a mainstream audience.

Well, I was just taking a look at Jeffrey Feldman's Frameshop which I've newly discovered today and see that Feldman has already written something along those lines.

In his imaginary future, the election of a Latina represents the downfall of 'traditional' America and a total loss of the culture 'war' that O'Reilly describes in the rest of the book. In O'Reilly's twisted vision, the final outcome of liberal love for abortion, sexual depravity, seizure of private assets, elimination of educational standards, and abrogation of independent U.S. government--is a Latina being elected president. "Gloria Hernandez," the reader easily concludes, is not just the opposite of everything "traditional" in O'Reilly's vision of America, she is the terrible outcome that will come to pass if O'Reilly's readers do not dedicate themselves to winning the culture 'war.'

And the following seems especially relevant given the recently surfaced footage of O'Reilly behaving as a deranged mad-man

O'Reilly's role as a key right-wing pundit is rooted largely in his strategic use of three kinds of rhetorical violence.

First, O'Reilly blurs the line separating verbal and physical confrontation during his interviews. Anyone who has seen The Factor has witnessed O'Reilly using this technique, and the video linked above is a perfect example. When we watch O'Reilly, his physical persona creates a particular kind of violent tension. As his voice rises and his body leans into his guests personal space, the threat of an actual physical outburst seems imminent. It is a calculated tension.

Second, O'Reilly couches his punditry in a self-stylzed image of a street fighter. Culture Warrior, for example, is as much a call to cultural arms as it is O'Reilly's attempt to describe himself as some kind of hair-trigger street fighter and inheritor of an Irish warrior spirit. But the idea that his work is 'war,' is one that O'Reilly constantly brings to the fore of his commentary and writing.

Third, O'Reilly uses a vast majority of his political commentary to frame liberals as a dangerous threat to American citizens. To achieve this, O'Reilly does much more than simply describe readers of liberal websites as 'Nazis.' He renames them 'Secular-Progressives' or 'S-Ps' and then proceeds to equate these terms with supposed guerrilla programs to seize control of the United States.

I've observed myself that O'Reilly's bullying is step away from a fight.

After watching Bill O'Reilly two nights ago start hollering and shaking with rage at one of his guests while charging the man with being an apologist for murder when he tried to offer the background information that Chris Benoit's son had a rare condition in order to dispel the caricature O'Reilly had painted of Benoit as some madman who had been injecting his son with human growth hormone for no reason, I myself became livid at O'Reilly.

Why? Because that kind of yelling and threatening demeanor is an act of intimidation. It is confrontational, and watching it, the antagonism of such an act is visceral. How is a guest supposed to respond? O'Reilly obviously believes that by yelling and shaking with rage at a guest that he is putting them in their place, but what if the guest were to respond in kind? Would the person who yelled the loudest be correct? No, because the escalated yelling tends to be followed by physical confrontation. I've witnessed many many fights break out over the years and this is an essential pattern. Every time O'Reilly does his yelling routine, on a primal level there is an implicit hidden threat of force, which I've remarked, has only once that I know of become explicit (when he told Jeremy Glick he didn't know what he'd do to him if he saw him off camera in the studio.)

And of course I've already noted that O'Reilly directs laundered extremist hate at "S-Ps".

Feldman had written his post in response to Hillary Clinton having sat down for an interview with O'Reilly recently. He concludes with some advice that I think should be generalized out to anyone invited onto the Factor

Bill O'Reilly is a key voice of a cohort of right-wing pundits who use violent-rhetoric to undermine American political debate, the result of which is a weakening of our Democracy.

Democratic candidates for President should denounce him and explain why, not walk into his studio and sit down.

Radio Rush

Via Crooks and Liars, I came across this thoughtful essay by Jeffrey Feldman, who I had not heard of before, but whose book Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy I now will be sure to read. In the essay, Feldman examines the rhetoric of Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" and compares and contrasts it to the way Radio Rwanda was used to incite Hutu genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

Feldman notes the difference in that Limbaugh is not calling for direct violence as did Radio Rwanda, but that he is intead hoping to create the conditions that lead to violence. Another key difference is that although the ultimate goal shared by the RR propagandists and Limbaugh is political violence, in the case of Limbaugh he is hoping for Democrats to perpetrate violence against other Democrats.

Now we get to the core of Limbaugh's purpose: to demonize Democrats as violent thugs who are a threat to the nation. In this respect, Limbaugh is acting very much as did Radio Rwanda

Namely, while Limbaugh defines the American Left as a clear, violent threat to the well being of his listeners. The broadcasts, in other words, are framed as an effort to incite violence amongst the Left as a larger strategy for preventing that so-called Left from committing acts of violence on his listeners (emphasis mine):

We don't burn our cars. We don't burn down our houses. We don't kill our children. We don't do half the things the American left does. We need the American left -- and this is another great thing about Operation Chaos; nothing to do with my ego. We need as many ignorant Americans to wake up and find out exactly who the modern-day Democrat Party is as dominated by the far left in this country. We need that to be seen. Now, I am not inspiring or inciting riots. I'm dreaming. (singing to the tune of White Christmas) "I'm dreaming of riots in Denver." Remember 1968? And which party did that? It was the radicals in that party, the anti-war radicals, the same bunch of clowns that are running around defining the Democrat Party today.
(from "Screw the World! Riot in Denver!")

The violence in Limbaugh's broadcasts, in other words, is not just the attempt to incite riots, but also a way of defining the Left as destructive murderers of children--as a violent threat to the American people.

In Rwanda, the radio broadcasts did not just invoke Hutu to kill Tutsi's, but did so by claiming falsely that Tutsi's had killed large numbers of Hutu and that, therefore, Hutu must form self-defense groups to prevent Tutsi from killing again. Defining Tutsi as murderers, in other words, was a crucial part of violent Hutu broadcasts that led to the genocide of Tutsi.

Finally, Feldman touches upon the nationalism of Limbaugh's Civil War rhetoric and how he "suggests that Liberal ideas have led to the destruction of American institutions and mass starvation--an situation his listener might naturally interpret as a pretext for civil war."

I would add that Feldman has not even mentioned that Limbaugh has equated Democrats with al Qaeda (see here and here), which has implications that are fairly obvious. Namely, if we're at war with al Qaeda, then we're at war with Democrats. Of course, Limbaugh again uses a Radio Rwanda tactic: I've never heard him say that Republicans are at war with Democrats, but I have heard him say that Democrats are at war with America. Again, presumably his listeners will find in this justification to defend America from the Democrats - Democrats whom Limbaugh has fantasized about deporting. And then there is Limbaugh equating "liberals" with cockroaches, which is the same way that the Hutu thought of the Tutsi.

But who am I kidding? There is no need to presume the reaction of Limbaugh's audience. We already know that some of them - at least those who write letters to critics of Limbaugh - think that "liberals" are traitorous enemies of America who may need to be dealt with violently.

Feldman ends his essay by stating plainly that he is not calling for censorship of Limbaugh. What he does expect, however, is for journalists to take seriously and examine Limbaugh's rhetoric. I must say that I find it perverse and disturbing that an individual such as Limbaugh who is such a disgusting propagandist, who says things that are demonstrably false on a literally sentence to sentence basis and who holds views that if can't be described as racist can certainly be described as absolutely disgusting can maintain such a place of high esteem in our political discourse.

Key members of our political class, including the Vice President, routinely appear on his program. Brian Williams is an admirer of his. Katie Couric made sure Limbaugh was one of the first guests she had on when she took over the evening news at CBS. There is something profoundly wrong here. Limbaugh's career is based on promoting hatred of "liberals" which parallels traditional sectarian and ethnic forms of hate-mongering.

His right to speak should be respected. But the content of said speech deserves no such respect. Our "fair and balanced" news class needs to recognize this distinction.

Uh ....

Yes, he is insane. (h/t Think Progress)



Update: As Think Progress notes, CBS has ordered YouTube to take down the video clip. It can still be viewed (at the moment at least) here. I really recommend watching this while it is still available, as it has to be seen to be believed. I had thought O'Reilly's eruption at Geraldo Rivera was bad, but this is far beyond even that. He really does appear to need some serious therapy or something ... In case this goes down again I'll sum it:

O'Reilly is reading from a teleprompter when he begins having difficulty reading it. At this point he starts getting angry - very angry. After stating that there are no words on it for him to read (by point he is shouting) he ask shouts "what does that mean, play us out?" and has to be told it means to end the show. So he begins another take, botches it and appears to snort a deep breath of pure rage. He tries another take and at then transforms into a raving lunatic screaming that he can't do it, he'll do it live - "FUCK IT - DO IT LIVE!!!!", he'll write it himself and do it live. "THIS FUCKING THING SUCKS!!!!!"

Next, he manages to pull himself together for approximately 20 seconds to actually do the take. Now the sound cuts out, but you can see O'Reilly rip off his coat and storm off while still screaming at someone. It is just bizzarre how furious he becomes over something so trivial.

I have to wonder how often O'Reilly explodes like this off screen. There is no way in hell I would work for or with anyone screaming like that. I'm surprised his heart hasn't exploded yet.

Update II: Crooks and Liars has it, too.

Al Gore caused the global food crisis

That's the latest dirty rotten smear from the transparently stupid Sean Hannity - who apparently has some kind of pathological inability to be intellectually honest. It is bewildering that someone so lacking in moral fiber can get rich being such a dishonest jackass while working for a network that calls his relentless efforts to demonize Democrats "news".

Hannity said that Gore caused the global food crisis because of the push to use biofuels as an alternative to C02 releasing fuels that contribute to global warming. During the segment Hannity featured a quote from Gore from 1998 about supporting a tax exemption for corn ethanol. But guess what the dimwit forgot to mention? That Gore no longer supports corn ethanol and favors the development of cellosic ethanol or that there are other factors besides corn ethanol which have contributed to the food crisis. He also fails to mention that the corn lobby which is currently lobbying politicians who are not Al Gore might have something to do with the current corn ethanol policies which Gore does not himself support.

See, for instance, the Fresh Air discussion we were just talking about. At 25 minutes into the discussion Terry Gross asks Gore about ethanol and the global food crisis and if there were policies that he watched being created that contributed to the problem. Gore answers that corn ethanol is at best a transition fuel, that the nature of the global food crisis is complex, and that some biofuels are good, some are bad yet we should continue to attempt to develop workable fuel alternatives.

Hannity followed up the "Gore caused the food crisis" segment* with the lie that Gore said global warming caused Cyclone Nargis.

*A google search shows that this meme is one of the latest never-ending stream of anti-Gore bullshit that circulates the conservative movement media circuit. What is particularly sickening is that Hannity is essentially saying that the very act of working towards sustainable biofuels is causing a food crisis - just what the oil industry wants the world to think. In reality, global warming is also a threat to the world's food supply.

Update: To give you an example of what a hypocritical bullshitter Sean Hannity is.

President Bush on Friday defended his emphasis on ethanol to help the nation meet its energy needs even though increased production of the corn-based biofuel has been blamed for contributing to sharp increases in food prices.

"As you know, I'm a ethanol person," he said, explaining his belief that it can help reduce U.S. dependence on oil. "It makes sense for America to be growing energy."

I won't hold my breath waiting until Hannity does a segment saying that George W. Bush caused a food crisis.

Quote of the day

"Die warheit ist untödlich " (Truth is immortal.) - Balthasar Hubmaier

Hubmaier, advocate of religious liberty (including that of atheists*) and author of Concerning Heretics and Those Who Burn Them (1524), was executed by burning in 1528.

*"[N]o one may injure the atheist who wishes nothing for himself other than to forsake the gospel."

"Climatologists" dispute Al Gore

Friday on the Fox-bots morning progam Fox and Friends, Steve Doocy said that "climatologists" disagree with statements from Al Gore on NPR (about 27 minutes into the discussion) that there is an emerging consensus among climate scientists that although any specific event can't be attributed to global warming we can expect that AGW will contribute to increased frequency of higher intensity storms such as that of Nargis.* So who did they have on to support this claim? William Gray, a meteorologist out of touch with modern climate science, whose beliefs are at odds with the scientific literature and the bulk of expert opinion when it comes to AGW. This is also the same William Gray who has previously stated that "Gore believe[s] in global warming almost as much as Hitler believed there was something wrong with the Jews," which gives you some indication of the objectivity of Gray as a reliable source on this topic.

But at Fox News, Gray gets presented without challenge as the scientific authority on the matter. This is complete intellectual dishonesty; if Fox wanted to promote the discredited views of Gray it could at least inform the audience that his views are at odds with the bulk of scientific opinion on this matter.

Up is down in Fox News bizarro world.

*Gore's precise statement that set off global warming denialists is that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming." By consequences Gore means melting glaciers and ice (and possibly he also meant increasing frequency of high intensity storms), yet the denialists took that to mean Gore stated that Nargis is the fault of global warming even though he pointed out that you can't link individual storms to warming.

Post script: As I was getting ready to publish this post I did a quick search to see if I could get a clip of Doocy and Gray distorting reality, and saw that Wonk Room had caught another level to their dishonesty that I overlooked: that Gore's comments had actually been spliced to make him say something he didn't.

Update: Another liar at Fox reads from the anti-Gore script.

"Headline News"

One might think that a network titled "CNN Headline News" would cover headline news. You would be wrong, however. CNN HN is of little more substance than Entertainment Tonight, it provides the sort of "news" coverage one might expect from the E! network.

As it becomes clearer and clearer that the citizens of this nation were the victims of a massive covert domestic propaganda campaign foisted upon them by their government, CNN HN found time to devote a significant portion of its programming today to live coverage of the reckless driving hearing of Hulk Hogan's son. They followed this "headline news" with coverage of the R Kelly trial.

What's that you say, Juvenal? Bread and circuses?

Over 100,000 dead

Cyclone Nargis has had a catastrophic effect, and yet the goverment of Burma doesn't want to let aid workers in. Instead of dealing with this humanitarian crisis, the military junta is interested in going forward on a sham referendum in order to increase military control of the nation.

Sickening.

Baleful quote of the day

"[S]cience leads to killing people." - Ben Stein

Ok. How about construction leads to killing people? Constuction workers must have built the Nazi death camps, so this is obvious logic, right?

Or how about: transportation leads to killing people. Trains transported people to the camps, so trains are a slippery slope to the Holocaust.

Edit - And since Nazis shot people with guns, I no longer believe Newtonian physics is valid science. Instead, we should teach Intelligent Motion theory.

Update: Kenneth Miller reviews Expelled (h/t Lippard Blog)

[B]y far the film's most outlandish misrepresentation is its linkage of Darwin with the Holocaust. A concentration camp tour guide tells Stein that th