Right Wing Propaganda

What’s that? Why it is President Nixon bowing before Emperor Hirohito in 1971. And this isn’t Nixon going to Japan to bow, this is Japan coming to America and getting a bow. Wow I didn’t know America ended 38 years ago.

There is still a lot of speculating going on, but the most reasonable sounding thing I have heard so far is this:

His cousin said Maj Hasan had been resisting such a deployment.

"He hired a military attorney to try to have the issue resolved, pay back the government, to get out of the military. He was at the end of trying everything," Nader Hasan told Fox News.

He also said that Nidal Malik Hasan had been battling racial harassment because of his "Middle Eastern ethnicity".

(emphasis added)

Even on The Today Show they were interviewing people who know Maj. Hasan and talked about how much he heard things like “sand nigger” or “terrorist” yelled at him.

While the right is trying to paint Hasan as some Islamic terrorist, just look at the guy. He was American born and just spent countless years going through school to become a Psychiatrist, MD. This wasn’t a man planning on doing something like this, this was a man who snapped.

So our question now is how to fix our relationship with Muslims. The military really needs to take a long, hard inner look at itself and come up with a way to limit incidents like this.

And the fix isn’t limited to the military alone – it also must include society. For example, look at this:

Here we have a guy who went on a rampage, and so far the one of the leading reasons is that he was constantly harassed about his ethnicity and religious beliefs, and then you add in a big voice of the right making wild claims like this. This isn’t a solution – it’s asking for more of the same.

Luckily Maj. Hasan is still alive. Now maybe we can get a better idea of what was going through his mind when he decided this was the route to take. Hopefully we can use that as a teaching moment also and try to instill a better sense of tolerance in both our military and society as a whole.

This could be a make or break moment for President Obama. How he takes the lead on this will really define him not only as our President, but also as a man. We can’t afford any cover-up of what really happened. We need full transparency here and for our Commander in Chief to insure the changes needed to help prevent future events like this from happening. The coming weeks and months should prove to be rather interesting as this story continues to unravel.

The right is on an uproar over the size of the health care bill and the Politico is following suit:

The House health care bill unveiled Thursday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. With an estimated 10-year cost of $894 billion, that comes out to about $2.24 million per word. .

Wow those are some expensive words, but not as bad as $425.9 million per word. That would come from the authorization for the Iraq war (pdf document), which has cost over $925 billion and clocks in at 2,174 words.

The harassment Democratic members of Congress are receiving while trying to explain healthcare now appears to be a well orchestrated move by right wing groups. Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks, two right wing lobbying groups that brought us such hits as the “tea parties” has sent out a memo to supporters which gives pointers such as:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

In the dawn of the Gates controversy I was thinking that perhaps someone should call the police. If yelling in your own house is “disturbing the peace”, then yelling and disrupting an informative meeting on one of the most vital issues facing our nation should also be considered such.

Bob has a nice graph up showing just how much this country has descended into socialism. Talk about scary!!!!

Andrew Sullivan takes Malkin to task on her alarmist tone over the DHS report:

Why, one wonders, would Michelle Malkin read a DHS report on fringe, far-right extremism that could lead to violence or Oklahoma-style domestic terrorism and think ... they're talking about her?

Rightwing nut-jobs have been the number one purveyor of domestic terrorism in this country. Rather it be the abortion clinic bombers or Timothy McVeigh, there is no arguing that the right will take to violence much quicker than the left.

The actions of the right is also messing with operations in our capital:

Local reports indicate that the practice of mailing actual tea bags to legislators has repeatedly raised security concerns, and sometimes forced the evacuation of congressional offices in anthrax-like scares.

Brian Sperry, a spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service, told the Salt Lake (Utah) Tribune that tea bags in the mail "cause us some concern. ... They could pose a problem if the tea bag is mailed in a regular envelope instead of a padded bag."

These tea bags are coming from the same party that spawned Chad Castagana, the right wing follower of people like Malkin and Coulter who resorted to sending fake anthrax letters to notable liberals. Of course their only mention of him was to deny any involvement.

But this brings us back to the same thing we have heard these past 9 years – treating the world in a post 9/11 mentality. We have right wingers out there pushing for action that can easily be confused as terrorism. Even though the intent is innocent, it is wasting resources that should be used to keep our nation safe.

They are protesting government waste by wasting government resources.

Common sense is a rare item when talking about the right. Stories like this are proof of that, and the hypocrisy they show when it comes to waste and nation security must be shown.

That was the advice Joe Scarborough had for his “conservative brethren” this morning.

You think Joe would know that his party has always been the greatest embracers of conspiracy theories. That’s all they have to sell their broken ideology. Off the top of my head, here’s a few we heard over the past several years:

• If we allow gays to marry people will marry their dogs!
• We must torture to stop that guy who is the only way to deactivate that nuclear weapon set to go off tomorrow!
• Saddam has weapons of mass destruction!
• Giving out condoms will make kids have sex!
• Abortion leads to kids having sex!
• Gays are killing marriage!

The worst part is that these are conspiracy theories peddled by leaders of the GOP, including then President Bush and his administration. Could you imagine if Nancy Pelosi said “George Bush was behind 9/11”? That’s a left wing conspiracy theory that has never been embraced by our side.

When you consider it, 90% of the conservative platform is nothing but conspiracy theories. Take for example taxes. They try to say that Democrats will raise taxes to bring us closer to socialism. I don’t know of any Democrats trying to make us a socialistic nation, even though people are more open to the idea now.

Until the Republicans stop embracing hair brained, Hollywood style conspiracies, they can plan on a long future as the minority. That’s not a conspiracy – that’s just fact.

Cavuto is reporting that liberals are working to “infiltrate” the nation tea party next week.

Yes because we have nothing better to do than “infiltrate” your little protest. Sorry but I don’t want to hang out with a bunch of tea baggers.

And it comes from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Suspect in officers' shooting was into conspiracy theories

Talk about stating the obvious. The biggest conspiracy theory he was into was the entire “Obama is going to take away our guns” meme that people like Beck, Malkin, Limbaugh and the rest of the right wing loons have been pushing.

Here’s an interesting thought. For years the left has been chastised over the 9/11 conspiracy theorists. While a vast majority of us don’t believe them, I am now sitting here wondering how many cops these people have killed.

What happens when a commenter on a right wing blog disagrees with the rest of the people there? Easy – they are tagged as some “leftist invader”. Now Andrew Breitbart is on the war path against these “leftist invaders”:

A digital war has broken out, and the conservative movement is losing. Read the comment sections of right-leaning blogs, news sites and social forums, and the evidence is there in ugly abundance. Internet hooligans are spewing their talking points to thwart the dissent of the newly-out-of-power.

We must not let that go unanswered.

Uninvited Democratic activists are on a mission to demoralize the enemy - us. They want to ensure that President Obama is not subject to the same coordinated, facts-be-damned, multimedia takedown they employed over eight long years to destroy the presidency - and the humanity - of George W. Bush.

Political leftists play for keeps. They are willing to lie, perform deceptive acts in a coordinated fashion and do so in a wicked way - all in the pursuit of victory. Moral relativism is alive and well in the land of Hope and Change and its Web-savvy youth brigade expresses its "idealism" in a most cynical fashion.

Two of the biggest righty blogs out there are Hot Air and Michelle Malkin. Head on over to those blogs and try to comment. What? You can’t? That’s because the only way to comment on these sites is to be invited.

Now let’s compare that to one of the major lefty blogs out there, Crooks and Liars, a blog I am intimately familiar with. We allowed anonymous people to comment on the blog until November of last year. Now you must be registered, but anyone can do so. Have we seen our fair share of “righty invaders” there? Sure. But we don’t instantly mark everyone who disagrees with the position as some sort of “invader”. Dissenting opinions are welcome. If they get nasty and try to start flame wars or thread hijacking, well then our site monitors warn and/or ban them. It’s called vigilance, and I spend a great deal of my development time for Crooks and Liars improving the tools we have to deal with problem commenters. As matter of fact a big new upgrade to that system will go into effect this week.

That’s a stark difference from the way right wing blogs do things. Instead they actually welcome such comments, then people like Breitbart jumps on them to paint the entire right wing blogosphere as some sort of victim to a bunch of evil lefties. Just think back to the original challenge I issued in this post; commenting on sites that are by invite only. If you must be invited to comment on these sites, then how are these invaders getting in there? Well duh!!!!

Actually its the right who started using site comments as a weapon in this “war”. Michelle Malkin started it a couple of years ago by picking out comments on the HuffPo. It was when there was a suicide bombing in Afghanistan while Cheney was there and some people said things like “darn they missed”. Instantly she pushed out this story and the media even picked it up.

Well that started something new, and the blogs on our side started watching the righty comments and highlighting the insensitive ones they put out (see here for an example). Of course the righty bloggers instantly claimed that “those aren’t our opinions”. Funny how that applies to them, but not us.

When you got a bunch of dissension among the ranks of invite only blogs, which represent the party in the fastest decline of membership, then you can’t admit the facts. Instead you create a strawman to mislead what is really happening. That’s exactly what Breitbart did in this article.  

So the big talk from the right is this:

Russia could use bases for its strategic bombers on the doorstep of the United States in Cuba and Venezuela to underpin long-distance patrols in the region, a senior air force officer said Saturday.

"This is possible in Cuba," General Anatoly Zhikharev, chief of the Russian air force's strategic aviation staff, told the Interfax-AVN military news agency.

The comments were the latest signal that Moscow intends to project its military capability in far-flung corners of the globe despite a tight defence budget and hardware that experts consider in many respects outdated.

Of course the right is already calling it the “Biden-challenger” for Obama.

My how quickly they forget. I wonder how Bush passed this test? Just last November this was the news:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev plans to travel this month to Cuba and Venezuela, which have increasing military and trade ties with Moscow.

The U.S. has objected to Russia's greater links with the two countries that have antagonistic relations with Washington.

Or how about going back to 2007, when Cuba and Venezuela were actively increasing their military arsenal, compliments of:

President Hugo Chávez is poised to buy at least five submarines from Russia in a £500m deal that will alarm the White House and confirms Venezuela as a growing military power in the region.

Mr Chávez is expected to sign the deal during a trip to Moscow next week. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Venezuela has agreed an initial contract to buy five Project 636 diesel submarines, and four Project 637 Amur submarines at a later date.

Mr Chávez wants to use the submarines to thwart any possible future trade embargo by the US and to defend its oil-rich underwater shelf, the paper reported.

So how new are these latest developments? Well let’s look:

Russia sees no need to set up permanent military bases in Venezuela or Cuba, but could use their military infrastructure, the prime minister said on Thursday.

"There is no need to build permanent bases, although we have such agreements with the Venezuelan leadership. I do not think the Cuban leadership would object either. If necessary, we will be able to use these countries' ports to refuel and replenish supplies for our warships," Vladimir Putin said during a televised question-and-answer session.

That’s from April of last year. So don’t trust the wingnuts, who are acting like this is some “new big thing”. It has been going on for awhile now, but while Bush was in charge. Oh yeah – Bush with his “number one Russian expert” Condi Rice as his head diplomat.

I have spent all 38 years of my live in the greater Cincinnati area. As matter of fact, 36 of those years have been within about a 15 mile radius. We never used to have our power go out, but that has changed. Now it is happening on a constant basis. Last night’s cause was a high wind storm, with gusts over 50mph.

So I was thinking about this. Here in Republicanville, we hear right wingers saying how we don’t need to invest that much in infrastructure. Well then what accounts for these power outages – the weather? If that’s the case, then does that mean these same wingnuts are admitting that we are seeing climate change? I would LOVE to have an answer to this.

The Republicans love talking about how people hated Lincoln. Even Tony Snow can't refuse.

Here is one bombing for today Laura:

U.S. and Iraqi forces staged raids in Baghdad's main Shiite militant stronghold Tuesday as part of politically sensitive forays into areas loyal to the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Southwest of the capital, three American soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb. Meanwhile, police said a car bomb exploded near a park in central Ramadi, killing 18 people; most of the victims were children.

Oh yeah - and just for that one other bombing today. The military just said 3 soldier were killed today in a roadside bomb. Gee - that sounds like 2 bombs again today. Must be nice to so easily dismiss life in an attempt to spread right wing talking points.

A heads up. Keith will be giving a special comment on Countdown tonight:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the Democratic-controlled Congress not to interfere in the conduct of the Iraq war and suggested President Bush would defy troop withdrawal legislation. "I can't imagine a circumstance in which it's a good thing that their flexibility is constrained by people sitting here in Washington, sitting in the Congress," Rice said. "The president is going to, as commander in chief, need to do what the country needs done," she said. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/25/AR2007022500357.html

Sec. Rice, when asked about Democratic plans to revise the Iraq authorization, said this:

"It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

Keith's SPECIAL COMMENT on her remarks, tonight.

It has been a couple of weeks since we had one. We are over due. Thanks Keith!