Skip to content

Month: August 2010

Dr Laura and Pamela Atlas — Victimization of the psychos

Victimization Of The Psychos

by digby

So Dr Laura Toughlove went on Larry King, snivelled about victimhood and quit her show because people criticized her for being racist on the air. Somehow, that translates into her being denied her first amendment rights which, as a card carrying member of the wingnut sisterhood, she is constitutionally (no pun intended) incapable of understanding.

Meanwhile, psycho Pam Gellar complains about lack of common decency and compassion and accuses others of being “radically intolerant.” Seriously:

The Crescent News Network, CNN, is framing the narrative in a most disingenuous way. But I am being too kind. John Roberts filled in for Anderson Cooper tonight and did a puff piece on the mosque, while placing the blame for grief stricken and humiliated Americans at the door of moi. It is so condescending and contemptuous of decent American …. as if they don’t think for themselves or know their own minds. On second thought, I just described the CNN viewer.

Echoing Salon, who got their talking point from Daisy Con herself, the left lemmings are off like a pack of wild dogs.

Sick. I am surprised they even had me on ……..the opening to this segment is crazy. It takes mental contortionism to come up with such a twisted narrative for what is essentially an absence of common decency and compassion.

The lack of respect and understanding by the Imam, Daisy and the media is radically intolerant.

In case anyone’s still unsure about Pamela Atlas’s “decency” and “compassion” here’s a clue:

The O-man, Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No résumé, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.

He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya. Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

What he isn’t, not a genetic drop of, is “African-American,” the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn’t a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.

Let that sink in: Obambi is not the descendant of slaves, he is the descendant of slave owners.

I think that clears up any confusion about whether or not Pamela confines herself to Muslim bashing. But in case it doesn’t, maybe this will illuminate her position on “radical intolerance” a little bit better:

Genocide In South Africa

The genocide of white South Africans is heating up.

Last week, South Africa‘s ruling African National Congress (ANC) finally told its members to stop singing the song “Kill the Boer” — that is, murder white South Africans. (Boer is Afrikaans for “farmer,” but colloquially is a disparaging term for any white South African.) This came after ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema defied a court ruling and kept singing the song (he still refuses to stop), and after Eugene Terreblanche, leader of the noxious and hateful neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), was found savagely bludgeoned to death at his farm in South Africa’s North West province.

The international media focused on Terreblanche’s white supremacism, showing his followers giving the Nazi salute at his funeral. No account of his murder or funeral spoke about Malema, “Kill the Boer,” or black supremacism — yet that is the really important story in South Africa today.

Whites in South Africa are keenly aware of the plans to kill them. They expect mass killings to begin very soon after the death of Mandela, but to tell this to the world is a waste of energy.

And speaking of Nazis, if you ever wondered if this level of inane hate could end up leading you to hate even your own self, here’s proof. This isn’t the first time she has sided with Nazis. Geller hates Muslims and blacks so so much that she started speaking at their rallies. She’s so twisted up with “radical intolerance” that she seems to have forgotten that for all their loathing of Muslims and blacks, they really, really hate Jews.

There’s a very interesting story here if the mainstream media wants to follow it. But I think they just don’t want to deal with the fact that people like Schlessinger, Geller and Gingrich have used the occasion of Obama’s elections to turn over the foundation of American decency to reveal some very ugly American racism thriving in the moist, cool soil underneath.

.

Rand Paul’s Parasite Investment Portfolio

Parasite Investment Portfolio

by digby

Speaking of sucking on the Aqua bong, Rand Paul once again “clarified” his remarks in which he prescribed helping rich people as the answer to the hard drug epidemic in Kentucky:

One of the things that has made America great is ability of our citizens to invest in themselves. We must fight to preserve the power of not just the rich, but also the middle class and working class to invest through savings and investment to build a nest egg and earn financial security, or to invest in business that creates jobs for their neighbors. Dr. Paul is committed to cutting unsustainable debt and spending so we can fundamentally strengthen our economy and preserve our American way of life.

The abuse of both legal and illegal drugs is serious and complex issue. We must keep a strong focus on prevention, treatment and enforcement, and healthy employment is great prevention. There is no silver bullet, but a gainfully employed, productive person will be far less likely to succumb to the evils drugs. Dr. Paul will fight onerous EPA regulations and Obama’s plans for Cap and Tax scheme so we can preserve and grow Kentucky coal jobs in the eastern part of our state.

As Greg Sargent points out:

While the statement clarifies that we need to “keep a strong focus on prevention, treatment and enforcement,” it doesn’t say how, or whether government should have any role in doing that. The statement says twice that healthy employment is a good cure, and says the best way to ensure high employment is to free up investment — not just by the rich, but other classes as well.

I guess he’s saying that if there is low unemployment, we won’t need prevention, treatment and enforcement, which certainly makes sense. The only reason parasites steal little old ladies’ Oxycontin is because they don’t have one of the low wage, soul destroying shit jobs our wealthy overlords would get busy creating for us so we can “compete” with India and China if only we didn’t make them pay any taxes.

But there was little time in which to marvel.All Martin’s consciousness was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active, head and hand, an intelligent machine, all that constituted him a man was devoted to furnishing that intelligence. There was no room in his brain for the universe and its mighty problems. All the broad and spacious corridors of his mind were closed and hermetically sealed. The echoing chamber of his soul was a narrow room, a conning tower, whence were directed his arm and shoulder muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the swift-moving iron along its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, just so many strokes and no more, just so far with each stroke and not a fraction of an inch farther, rushing along interminable sleeves, sides, backs, and tails, and tossing the finished shirts, without rumpling, upon the receiving frame. And even as his hurrying soul tossed, it was reaching for another shirt. This went on, hour after hour, while outside all the world swooned under the overhead California sun. But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The cool guests on the verandas needed clean linen.

According to Rand Paul, that’s called freedom.

.

Napolitano’s classroom —- I thought losers didn’t get to write history

Losers Don’t Get To Write History

by digby

The Saudi owned propaganda network Fox News is spending a lot of time “re-educating” their viewers these days. Glenn Beck U is so bizarre it’s actually a comedy school. But this, as the person who sent it to me described it, is downright creepy.

It’s a history of the civil war and the gilded age by libertarian Andrew Napolitano. Lincoln was a traitor and a tyrant and slavery didn’t exist. Grover Cleveland, on the other hand, was a one of our greatest presidents because he didn’t believe in providing relief during the Depression of 1893. You have to see it to believe it.

Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

I think Napolitano’s been puffing on the Aqua bong way too much. The good news is that the average age of his viewers is 97 and most of them who still give a damn about all this actually went to school. Let’s just hope the home schoolers aren’t using this as a teaching guide.

.

Alpha Girls and Beta Boys — Pathetic whimpers, no chance of a bang

Alpha Girls and Beta Boys

by digby

This Minnesota GOPvideo, courtesy of Adam Weinstein at Mojo is pretty hard to take. (You have to watch through to the end to see the worst of it.)

I can’t help but be reminded of Sarah Palin’s stirring words:

“The choice of photo for the cover of this week’s Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this “news” magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner’s World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness — a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin.

I wonder if she’d have a problem with this video? Hmmm.

It’s hard to know what to say about it other than, “would you want your mother to see this?” After all, most of the Republican women they objectify in the beginning are younger (or their pictures are from when they were younger) while most of the “Democrat” women are well over 50. But hey, when a conservative can insult women, liberals and older people all in one short video, they’ve hit the trifecta.

This “hot GOP babes” theme is so pervasive that I have to wonder if these conservative male homunculi have convinced themselves that because there are attractive female GOP celebrities it naturally follows that GOP males are big time alphas. I don’t know how to break it to them, but it’s the women who are the alphas not their goopy fanboys.

.

Daniel Webster — another spoiled Republican telling grandma she needs to pay for GOP sins

Daniel Webster Tells Grandma That Fancy Feast Tastes Just Like Chicken

by digby

Wow. Alan Grayson’s probable GOP opponent seriously wants to put retirees on a catfood diet:

A Republican House candidate in Florida wants senior citizens to share the burden of reducing the national budget deficit through cuts to Social Security benefits.

“My number one priority would be to cut spending, turn off the spigot. We can do that, and the way we would do that is to roll back the budget to 2007,” said Daniel Webster during a Tea Party forum for Republican candidates gunning for firebrand Democrat Alan Grayson’s job.

“Just three years ago, if we would take that budget and pass it today just as it was, does it roll back some salary increases? Yes,” Webster continued. “Does it get rid of TARP and health care and all of the other things, including the stimulus package? Yes, it does that. Does it take back some of the COLAs for the entitlement programs? Yes, it does that, too. But it’s only three years ago. If we took that budget and passed it, it would self-balance in two more years.”

Aside from all the other idiocy (and convenient ignoring of the bloated Pentagon budget) what this translates into for senior citizens is this:

Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) in 2008 and 2009, of 2.3 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively, amounted to roughly $100 per retiree every month.

Sure, those are the people who should have to pay for Webster’s party’s looting of the treasury and deregulation of the financial system. That’s only fair. Besides, only losers would care about the loss of 100 bucks a month. They deserve to suffer.

These guys are so offensive, with their blithe talk about “rolling back” everything to 2007 and turning off the spigot. Well, it isn’t 2007, it’s 2010 and we’re dealing with an economic crisis of huge proportions caused by bozos just like him who turned this country into a disaster zone with the policies they governed under — in 2007!

I’m to the point that I can hardly even stand to listen to the swill they spew. These privileged creeps love to prescribe “sacrifice” for little old ladies and children (and the love to drop bombs on them too.) But ask them to pay a penny more in taxes and they whine and pout like spoiled little princes and threaten to blow up the whole country if anyone even tries it.

Anybody know where you can buy cheap pitchforks these days?

.

Motivated Cognition For Dummies

Motivated Cognition For Dummies

by digby

This may be one of the stupidest article I’ve ever read. Apparently, Andrew Breitbart isn’t a racist, he’s just a victim of “motivated cognition.”

There is very little evidence, if any, that Sarah Palin hates teachers, or that Andrew Breitbart is a racist. Yet a recent flood of viral stories propagated by internet journalists allegedly catch prominent conservatives red-handed in acts of hate.

[…]

The flurry of finger-pointing, both of prejudice against Palin and Breitbart, and the counterclaims of conspiracy against the “liberal media,” misses the hidden puppet master causing the scandals: a powerful psychological tendency for ideologues unwittingly to distort facts to fit their preconceived biases.

[…]

The official psychological term for this behavior is “motivated cognition” — a tendency to bias our interpretation of facts to fit a version of the world we wish to believe is true. For instance, one study found that college basketball fans, viewing the same video of a game, were likely to believe the rival team committed at least twice as many fouls as their own…

Motivated cognition seems as likely an explanation of Breitbart’s poor video editing as do allegations that he is a racist.

Evidently, “motive” and “cognition” can’t be racist. Oy.

.

The daily Show — final word on the “Mosque-arade”

This Says It All

by digby

The dangers of the noise machine bubble

Orwellian Bubble

by digby

Kevin Drum wonders if there’s been any decent polling on the Cordoba House and makes this observation:

The very first time I heard about the “Ground Zero mosque” I thought it was literally a plan to build a mosque as part of the memorial at the rebuilt WTC site. I wonder how many people still think that?

If this is all you’ve seen, then you surely do:

But that’s not the only propaganda. How about this one that appeared on Jihadwatch last June? (It got 504 comments.)

(I love the crack about Islam having an “impossible afterlife.”)

In case you didn’t know, this is a “bigger threat to our freedom than Nazism ever was.”

People who live entirely in the wingnut noise machine honestly don’t know the truth about the project and are being scared half to death by this propaganda. Those who are apathetic (most Americans) probably think as Kevin did, that the “mosque” is being built on the site of the WTC as part of the planned memorial, which just seems odd. I don’t think you can underestimate how uninformed most people are on just about anything. But on this issue I think there’s a very good chance that they are more misinformed than usual.

I could be wrong, though. Maybe most of the country really believes that it’s insensitive for American Muslims to practice their religion near Ground Zero, in which case we have bigger problems.

.

Aqua Buddha on drugs

Aqua Buddha Speaks

by digby

When asked about how to solve the drug problem in Kentucky, Rand Paul distractedly fingered his stained copy of Atlas Shrugged Cliff Notes, took a deep breath, held it for a long moment and said:

“You want rich people because that’s what creates jobs. If you punish people, they won’t expand or create jobs, dude” Paul said.

(Ok, I added the “dude.”)

.

News Corps is being very insensitive to its xenophobe audience

Frenemies

by digby

Maybe Newtie could persuade Rupert Murdoch to have his partners build some synagogues and churches and end all this unpleasantness.

The stridency with which Fox News personalities attack the downtown Islamic center — red meat for the millions who tune in each night — is an example of the often uneasy relationship and occasionally diverging interests between many of News Corp.’s properties, in this case Fox News and its parent corporation.

For example, News Corp.’s second-largest shareholder, after the Murdoch family, is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal (pictured above ), the nephew of Saudi Arabian King Abdullah, and one of the world’s richest men.
[…]

Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by Alwaleed’s uncle King Abdullah, is, of course, an authoritarian petro-monarchy that actually is governed by Sharia law and is known as one of the top global sponsors of terrorism. A spokesperson for the Saudi embassy in Washington says that while Alwaleed is part of the royal family, he isn’t a member of the government, but rather a private citizen.

I doubt all those Fox news patriots know that the same News Corp that’s owned by a Wahhabist Saudi prince just donated a million dollars to the Republican party. Of course they’ll never find out because the only network they watch is the same terrorist funded network that’s doing it.

But if they were to hear about it, considering that they all seem to be so worried about the terrorists coming to kill them in their beds, I would imagine they’d be uncomfortable about getting all their news from a network that’s partially owned by one of “them.” And I’d be very surprised if they were sanguine about a scary Muslim donating to their patriotic political party. Why next thing you know they’ll be trying to build community centers near Ground Zero.

At the very least, this whole thing is very insensitive, don’t you think? After all, some people really hate Muslims and it’s very unpleasant for them to have to watch news networks that are owned by them and be asked vote for a Party that’s funded by them. I’m not saying that Murdoch should be forced to stop donating millions to Republicans or partnering with Saudi princes who believe in Sharia law. I just think it’s common sense that he wouldn’t do it in the first place.

h/t to @markos.

.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c