right wing

President Obama has put out a statement honoring the start of Kawanza:

Michelle and I send our warmest wishes to all those celebrating Kwanzaa this holiday season.

Today marks the beginning of the week-long celebration honoring African American heritage and culture through the seven principles of Kwanzaa -- unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith.

We celebrate Kwanzaa at a time when many African Americans and all Americans reflect on our many blessings and memories over the past year and our aspirations for the year to come.

You can continue reading the statement here.

Of course with this comes the right trying to tell African Americans what they can and can't celebrate. One right wing blog, Weasel Zippers has this to say:

Just because Kwanzaa was made up by a racist black nationalist who was convicted of torturing two women who were part of his group “United Slaves,” because he thought they were hiding nonexistent “crystals” of poison meant to kill him doesn’t mean it’s not a legitimate holiday, right? Or how about the fact that actual Africans have never heard of Kwanzaa? I could go on and on but I’m preaching to the choir.

Then you have Tea Party hate monger Tammy Bruce with this tweet:

You got to give it to Media Matters. These guys can catch anything. Today it was this chart on Fox News:

Notice something there?

It's funny how on a graph 8.6% is somehow higher than 8.8%.

I know. I deal with charts and numbers all the time being a computer guy. I make charting software so websites can track visitor analytics and all kinds of nerdy, geeky type data. But this is the simplest form of charting there is - a basic line/area chart. Now Media Matters showed the actual baselines on a mockup they did, but I decided to put this in actual chart form so everyone can see what it would look like.

Notice that big dip at the end? Well so did FOX and they couldn't have that! Instead they played with the software to make it look like the unemployment numbers have been rather stagnant.

I guess they really do understand their viewers - people who can't read or comprehend but only look at pictures and go "ohhhh that bad".

I know many will say "oh yeah MSNBC does the same thing", so I do want to put this warning out right now. If you are going to make that claim, back it up with proof! There are many right wing news watch organizations out there that would have this proof, if it exists. But please don't come here thinking you can make that claim and then not prove it. I don't roll like that.

And if you do provide verifiable proof, I will gladly post it right here on this blog calling them out on it too.

Maybe the media should think twice about considering Matt Drudge some sort of news source. Appearing on the Drudge Report this morning was this link:

There's a big problem with that. Government Motors is the right wing meme for General Motors because of the bailout they received. But look at the actual article Drudge was linking to. You don't even have to read it, just look at the headline:

Ford to pay workers $6,000 bonus in new contract

Ford - not GM! Ford didn't take a bailout. As matter of fact Ford refused government money. Shouldn't this be a cause for celebration, especially from the free market right? You would think so, but not in the world of Matt Drudge.

During Netroots Nation, a conservative blogger was arrested for harrassing a couple of women because they were wearing Muslim hijabs (headscarves). From Minnesota Public Radio:

A St. Paul blogger faces misdemeanor charges after he allegedly harassed two Muslim women last week in downtown Minneapolis.

Minneapolis police say John Hugh Gilmore, 52, who writes a blog called Minnesota Conservatives, caused a scene Thursday night on Nicollet Mall. Sgt. Bill Palmer, a police spokesman, said Gilmore appeared to be drunk when he confronted the two women wearing the Muslim headscarf known as the hijab.

"Mr. Gilmore made some comments that he didn't believe the women should be in the United States, and that he thought that they were ruining America," Palmer said.

One of the women, University of Minnesota student Jamila Boudlali, said she's lived in Minnesota her entire life and has never been hassled about her religion.

John Aravosis, who was at the convention, has a great rundown, including this response from the prominent right-wing PJ TV:

Suddenly, a man from "PJ TV" stuck a microphone in front of the lead woman and started to question her. He got increasingly upset, and basically charged her, and me, with lying about the incident with the GOP blogger the other night, simply beacuse the woman couldn't recall the name of the GOP blogger who had been arrested. You can watch the beginning of the woman's statement, and the GOP "reporter" getting more and more upset with the woman, and with me.

Wisconsin State Journal reports:

State election officials have cleared the way for three more GOP state senators to face recall elections, meaning six senators will almost certainly have to defend their seats.

Republicans had challenged recall petitions against Sens. Robert Cowles, Alberta Darling and Sheila Harsdorf. On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board tossed out most of the challenges.

This brings the total number of Republicans facing recall in the cheese state to six. I bet they are glad they stuck by Scott Walker and his radical, right-wing agenda.

The right wing media is in a frenzy today over the plan to send homeland security and disaster alerts to your cellphone. Listen to Limbaugh going off on the “regimes” plan today:

I really hope that Limbaugh is talking about the Bush regime. This plan was authored by Tea Party poster boy, Jim DeMint in 2006 and passed by Congress and also supported by an executive order signed by President Bush. In 2006 the GOP controlled all of Congress and the White House. This is a GOP plan, not a Democratic one.

Of course the apologists will start claiming that we are “blaming Bush” again, despite the fact that this plan was when President Obama was still Senator Obama – not even candidate Obama. Facts are a really hard thing for these people to stomach.

Yesterday the right-wing blogosphere erupted with posts of the greatest scandal of the 21st century:

Last Thursday evening at Montclair State University, with a video camera rolling, Bill Ayers volunteered that yes indeed he had written the acclaimed Barack Obama memoir, Dreams from My Father.

Unprompted, Ayers also noted that while Dreams deserves its praise, Obama's second opus, Audacity of Hope, is "more of a political hack book."

Not surprisingly, Ayers retreated into irony as he ended the session. "Yeah, yeah," he said after confirming again that he wrote Dreams, "And if you help me prove it, I'll split the royalties with you. Thank you very much."

This has been on ongoing conspiracy of the right for years, so it isn’t shocking that they would jump on this like kids to the tree on Christmas morning. As matter of fact, you can check this thread out on Memeorandum and see how many of the right wing blogs posted this with absolute giddiness.

But here’s the problem. If you watch the video, you see that Ayers is obviously giving a sarcastic response. I would have done the same thing if I were in his position. You get hammered day after day by some crapspiracy theory, you finally just say “fuck it” and play along. But that didn’t stop the right from eating this up as some big got ya against Obama. Well except for a few, which I must give credit to, like Dan Riehl.