Describing the hate-mongers

A wonderful description of the right-wing radio and TV talk show hosts. I don't know the author, Hal Crowther, but it seems as if he is spot on.

Right-wingers might be better moving out!

Family Values - right-wing style

Understanding the violence of the right-wing

Anti-goverment hyperbole and gun violence: A timeline.

And this is from Daily Kos...


"There really couldn't be a clearer demonstration that both sides do not have an equal share of the blame, and that non-stop anti-government fear-baiting works to foment violence. Here's a few weeks in the spring of 2009.

March 11, 2009—NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre speaks at the 2009 Conservative Political Action Conference and announces that “Our Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns make the rules.”

March 21-22, 2009—Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) states that she wants residents of her state to be “armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people—we the people—are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country.”

April 4, 2009—Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”

April 7, 2009—The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis releases an assessment of right wing extremism in the United States. The Department notes that “the economic downturn and the election of the first African American president present unique drivers for rightwing radicalization and recruitment.” Recalling the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh, the Department speculates, “The possible passage of new restrictions on firearms and the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks.”

April 15, 2009—Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, is arrested by FBI agents after he openly states onTwitter that he is going to turn the upcoming Oklahoma City “Tea Party” into a bloodbath. Two months earlier, Hayden had written online, “The only thing that is keeping the New World Order from destroying this nation is the presence of over 100,000,000 guns in civilian hands. When guns are outlawed, only criminals will have guns. Since we are already criminals in the eyes of the New World Order, and they intend to enslave us all, and to kill those of us who will NOT submit to their slavery, I say to IGNORE gun "laws" and keep your guns (AND ammo) handy.”

There's a reason that the DHS didn't release an assessement of left wing extremism in the United States. Digbyhighlights another several days, just last summer, "which culminated a week later with this shoot out with police."

July 2, 2010—The Wyoming Department of Revenue suspends sales tax collections at the state's gun shows because of "increasing animosity"  toward field tax agents. Dan Noble, director of the department's Excise  Tax Division, cites one particular incident at a gun show that "crossed  the line" and says, "We  tend to have more trouble at gun shows than any place ... I have 10  field reps throughout the state, and every one of them has experienced  some animosity ... I don't want to put my people at risk."

July 3, 2010—Joyce  Kaufman, a conservative radio hosts on WFTL in Florida, tells a crowd  of supporters at a Fort Lauderdale Tea Party event, “I  am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to  ensure me my First Amendments rights was they gave me a Second  Amendment. And if ballots don’t work, bullets will.  This is the  standoff.  When I say I’ll put my microphone down on November 2nd if we  haven’t achieved substantial victory, I mean it.  Because if at that  point I’m going to up into the hills of Kentucky, I’m going to go out  into the Midwest, I’m going to go up in the Vermont and New Hampshire  outreaches and I’m going to gather together men and women who understand  that some things are worth fighting for and some things are worth dying  for.”

July 6, 2010—Herb Titus, a lawyer for Gun Owners of America, tells Religion Dispatches, "If  you have a people that has basically been disarmed by the civil  government, then there really isn't any effectual means available to the  people to restore law and liberty and that's really the purpose of the  right to keep and bear arms—is to defend yourself against a tyrant." Titus goes on to cite the "totalitarian threat" posed by "Obamacare" and "what Sarah Palin said about the death panels."

Right-Wingers rallying their supporters.

From Acerbic Politics

He Makes A Good Point

David Neiwert over at Crooks and Liars brings up a very, very good point...

John V. Santore at Media Matters makes a convincing case that what Glenn Beck is doing in attacking President Obama's appointees as "communists" and "Marxists" is simply a new form of McCarthyism.

Now, what do we do about it?

Step 1: Expose both Beck and his enablers for what they are: liars, smear artists, and political charlatans.

Connect to the article HERE.
-

The New Republican Outrage

Read more at THE ONION...

Afterbirthers Demand To See Obama's Placenta

In the continuing controversy surrounding the president's U.S. citizenship, a new fringe group informally known as "Afterbirthers" demanded Monday the authentication of Barack Obama's placenta from his time inside his mother's womb. "All we are asking is that the president produce a sample of his fetal membranes and vessels—preferably along with a photo of the crowning and delivery—and this will all be over," said former presidential candidate and Afterbirthers spokesman Alan Keyes,

Right-Wing Parrots

In order to read the fine print in this image, you'll need to click on it and view it larger.

Speaking of the Financial Crisis

There's a great essay, by Joe Conason, on the financial crisis over at Salon. I think Salon is a subscription-only web magazine, but this article is free - once you get past the advertisement on the way in.

Click here to read the whole article, but here are a couple of paragraphs to whet your appetite...

Now that we're all about to take on hundreds of billions or perhaps a trillion dollars in new public debt to redeem the nation's super-smart corporate financiers, there is one thing I hope we can expect in addition to postponing the apocalypse. Will they all please shut up about the wonders of the unfettered free market and the horrors of big government?

For decades, the investment class and their mouthpieces in the conservative movement have been telling Americans that if only we repealed all those musty old New Deal rules and programs, then we could enjoy unprecedented prosperity. Repeated endlessly by the think tanks, magazines and academics of the right-wing machinery, this message eventually drowned out the reality-based ideas of the American liberal tradition. Although those were the ideas that had actually built this country over the past century, they were erased from public consciousness by a combination of amnesia and propaganda.

...

We ought to have learned the way the world really works -- that is, how privilege, power, entitlement and greed undermine free markets -- during the teaching moments of the savings and loan debacle, the corporate scandals of George W. Bush's first term, or any of a number of smaller crises when taxpayers had to rescue major enterprises that were "too big to fail." Indeed, there has been a similar result -- along with higher unemployment, falling family incomes, rising debt and deficits, and neglected public infrastructure -- every time we have bought into the free-market extremism of the Republican right.