How Fox News misinforms: 15 minutes with Sean Hannity

Guest post by Ted Leibowitz

Ed. note: Ted's good friends with our former associate editor and co-blogger Creature, and Ted often wrote for Creature's now-on-long-hiatus blog State of the Day. Ted also guest blogged here at The Reaction. Looking back, I found a post from December 2008 in which he was rather critical of then President-elect Obama for choosing Rick Warren, who supported California's anti-gay Prop 8, to give the inaugural invocation. (We love President Obama here, but it's not like we're completely supportive of everything he does.) Well, it's great to welcome Ted back to the fold with a post on the completely unfair and unbalanced coverage of the election by the delusional folks at Fox. -- MJWS

Ted is an award-winning internet radio music director / DJ focused on bringing the best new and interesting indie rock to his worldwide listenership via his 10-year old station BAGeL Radio. He has been featured on panels at music/tech conferences and writes about the exciting new business of music as well as the foot-dragging, entrenched, dinosaur-like old music industry. Ted mainly tends to share his political thoughts around election time as this time of year makes him an insomniac.

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You lost, Sean. Oops.

I turned on the TV Wednesday night. It was tuned to Fox News. Sean Hannity was on. I watched, so you don't have to. For those of you who don't live in the U.S. and don't get the pleasure of tuning into Fox News, perhaps this sampling will help you understand how nearly 58 million Americans this week voted for a guy they didn't even like: they watch Fox News.

Below is what I gleaned from watching about 15-20 minutes of the show.

Sean Hannity is disgusted by President Obama for dirty campaigning.

SH: "One tragedy of this election is that Obama's dirty tactics have now been vindicated, and we're now going to see this [sic] kind of tactics replicated for many years to come. Thanks to Barack Obama, politics is now dirtier than it was, and it will get worse as others try to now perfect this "politics of personal destruction."

Apparently Mr. Hannity was not paying attention when George W. Bush (who is rarely mentioned anymore on Fox News for some reason) mercilessly took down one of his own, Senator John McCain, in the Republican primaries prior to the 2000 presidential election. Nor Dubya's second presidential campaign, during which Karl "Dubya's Brain" Rove invented the Swift Boat campaign smear against his opponent John Kerry, a recipient of the Purple Heart medal.

"If I'm [one of the people who ran Obama's campaign], today, I'm embarrassed," Hannity said, "because they knew no boundaries when it came to lying, and demonizing, slandering, smearing, besmirching, attacking a nice guy."

Hannity referred to the Obama campaign as "dirty and ugly and mean."

Even if this were true, it would be very "pot calling the kettle black" of someone at Fox News to disparage a campaign over such deeds. Fox News has on its payroll the unchallenged modern grand master of campaign dirty tricks, Karl Rove. Karl Rove learned dirty politics in the Nixon administration and went on to run many a smear campaign on behalf of George W. Bush with highlights including hinting that Texas Governor Ann Richards (1994) was a lesbian and suggesting that Senator John McCain (2000) was psychologically unstable due to his time as a POW (and also that McCain's wife was on drugs and that McCain had fathered an African-American love child). And who can forget the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame (2003) and the aforementioned Swift Boaters (2004).

The same Karl Rove who wouldn't concede Obama's victory on election night even after CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, and his own Fox News had already called it. Perhaps he thought if he kept barking he could pull James Baker out of a hat, like in 2000. But enough about Rove.

Next, Hannity had Ann Coulter on the show.

Coulter: "Recent immigrants are more likely to be on government assistance. The Democrats lure them in, get them on government assistance... recent immigrants are for more likely to be on government assistance than native-born Americans..." (I doubt she gets the irony of her poor word choice with "native... American")... get them on welfare, and they vote Democratic."

She continued, "Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration act was specifically designed to change the demographics of this nation."

Suddenly, 47 years after the fact, Ann Coulter woke up and realized that the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act was a liberal conspiracy to change the demographics of the U.S. by luring immigrants to our shores in order to get them addicted to government assistance so that they would some day vote Democratic.

Mr. Kennedy, if Ms. Coulter is right, you were an even more incredibly forward-thinking political genius than anyone knew.

Coulter then said, "I think Mitt Romney would have won if he'd had the same demographics that Ronald Reagan had."

Yes, Ann, in an alternate reality, Mitt Romney could have won the Presidency of the United States this week. Unfortunately for Mitt, and you, and Sean, and Karl, and Fox News, we live in this reality.

Coulter went on to refer, in passing, to Bush's wars as "wars that help America." Off-handed remarks like that get bandied about without explanation all the time on Fox News, implanting unsubstantiated falsehoods in viewers' minds.

Then there was this exchange:

AC: "Simpson-Bowles [a commission set up by President Obama to address growing U.S. debt] would be better than anything Obama could come up with."

SH: "Tax reform is a sneaky way of basically raising taxes..."

AC: "...raising taxes, which produces less revenue to the government."

Wait a second... raising taxes is a way to produce less revenue for the government?!?! What?!?!

Then a favorite Fox News straw man came up: the Liberal Media, which is apparently a monolithic entity that works in concert against the interests of conservatives and America.

SH: "The Liberal Media put all it's resources behind re-electing Barack Obama."

He then had Bob Woodward of The Washington Post on to talk about how the Liberal Media worked to get Obama re-elected. Problem was, Woodward brought up three examples of how the "mainstream media" (which Fox always refers to as the Liberal Media) hammered Obama in recent months.

Hannity's response was (paraphrasing), "Well, you may have some [valid] points, but I don't think the Liberal Media covered the scandals* to my satisfaction." Before I get to just what those "scandals" were, here is what Hannity actually meant:

"Well, you may have some [valid] points, but I'm not going to let the facts which you just stated, Bob Woodward, and which I, Sean Hannity, just acknowledged the validity of, get in the way of me reiterating the false narrative we here at Fox News have created and are ramming down our viewers throats."

After that I could take no more.

*The "scandals" were "The Beghazi Cover Up" (a non-story that Media Matters thoroughly debunked); "The Fast & Furious" (which has been debunked by such liberal rags as Fortune and the NY Daily News); and something about high unemployment numbers, which Woodward had just stated had been pretty well covered by that demon, the Liberal Media.

OMG! Do I agree with Ann Coulter?

By Capt. Fogg

Could it be that Ann Coulter just said something I agree with? I think I need to wash out my brain with Lysol.

But I guess it's not quite that bad. Yes, I do believe that the oh-so-typical Tea Twit Todd Akin is a swine, but I would stop short of using nuclear weapons on him as she demands (rather messy at best), and I don't think he's not a real Republican as she asserts, and I certainly don't, as most of my saner readers will agree, think the Democratic Party financed his campaign just to make the Republicans look ridiculous. Hell. they've looked ridiculous for over 30 years.

"What he cares about is his own ego," said Arrogant Ann of the Thousand-Ton Ego on Insanity Hannity's Fox News show. She complained about his lack of knowledge of medical facts, as well one should expect of a propagandist who carefully researches and checks her facts to be sure none of her assertions actually corresponds with any.

I probably should rephrase that to use the word "whined" in ironic emulation of her favorite phraseology: Ann went wah -- she went wah-wah-wah.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The Republican Party vs. Newt Gingrich

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I wrote last night that Newt is probably done. He's still ahead nationally, but Romney has pulled well ahead in Florida and simply has too much of an advantage for Gingrich to overcome.

I would add that this is especially true with both establishment and movement conservatives, seeing him as a legit threat and entering full panic mode, going ballistic on his ass, from Dole to Drudge to Coulter, predicting disaster (for the GOP) if he's the nominee. Newt may still have some big names on his side, including Dear Leader Rush (who hasn't endorsed him but who despises Romney), but the full force of the Republican Party is coming down on him, and there's no way the party allows him to win. It'll do whatever it takes, and spend as much money as it takes, to make sure of it.

So much for that moon base. Alas.

Ann Coulter throws Newt Gingrich under the bus

By Richard K. Barry

I can't believe I'm actually pushing an Ann Coulter column, but I am, sort of. Coulter is a fool who says outrageous things to get noticed. I generally have no interest in what she has to say because she is about nothing but generating publicity for her own brand so she can make a good living.

She is a waste of time.

Today, however, there was something desperate in her post about the recent rise of Newt Gingrich as a potential GOP nominee. It's not so much what she said, which was basically that focusing on Gingrich was pointless because Romney would be the eventual nominee. It was how she said it.

Ann Coulter actually came across, as least to me, as someone who is genuinely terrified that conservatives are screwing around with a bunch of also-rans when what they need to do is get behind the only guy who, apparently, can beat Obama.

It was fascinating to see this miserable women, right-wing hack that she is, argue as a serious apologist for Mitt Romney, even for Romneycare.

She thoroughly trashed Gingrich while anointing Mitt the virtual second coming of Ronald Reagan because she can feel the lack of conservative solidarity as it tries on yet another frontrunner. She knows it's poison for any serious hope of regaining the White House and it's frightening the crap out of her.

By any objective measure, Gingrich should be a candidate to her liking and Romney a disaster, but for Coulter and, very soon, a great many like her, to use the old football cliche, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."

Looks to me like they're starting to panic.

Check it out. Finally something Ann Coulter has written that's worth reading.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

I'd almost forgotten Ann Coulter existed -- lucky me

By Richard K. Barry

I stumbled upon an interview on television the other night with conservative author, commentator, loudmouth, and all-around vile creature Ann Coulter.

I had not seen her around in a while and surely would not have gone looking for her unless compelled by some reason I could not imagine. But there she was being interviewed, and I had to stop and watch, if only for a moment.

I have no interest in dredging up the compendium of obnoxious things she has said over the years, though it would be easy to do. Do it yourself, if you have the stomach for it. And I am not the least bit interested in having a discussion about the value of her arguments, because they have none.

I only know that Ann Coulter and a handful of other right-wingers who crop up now and again to spew undisguised hatred depress the hell out of me. And, make no mistake, this mode of presentation is a speciality of the right.

There is nothing clever in what she has to say. There is no nuance or argument worth parsing. It's bile plain and simple, it is hate speech, and she exists simply because a certain subset of the population will always be receptive to arguments based on hatred. She has figured that out and is, apparently, making a good living from it.

I don't know if it's an act or if she really is, deep down, this horrid. Either way, she deserves no attention and I would suggest that any media outlet, any organization, that continues to provide a way for her to be heard ought to be ashamed.

Coulter should remind us that there are limits to the opinions that deserve to be entertained.

Lines of that sort can and should be drawn.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Stuff to Read (3/24/10): North Korean cuisine and Canadian hate-speech laws

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Check these out:

-- Slate: "Kingdom Kim's Culinary Outposts," by Sebastian Strangio.

A fascinating look at North Korea's Pyongyang restaurant chain in Asia, open to the public but ruled over by Kim's state-run surveillance apparatus. The restaurants are apparently quite popular with South Koreans, with entertainment provided by "group[s] of pretty North Korean-born waitresses, who perform music and dance routines complete with tightly synchronized choreography reminiscent of North Korea's annual Mass Games." And what exactly do they serve? "Unlike North Korea proper, which is wracked by economic sanctions and constant famines, the food here is fresh and abundant. The menu features specialties such as Pyongyang 'cold noodle' (served encrusted with ice), barbecued cuttlefish, stringy dangogi (dog meat) soup, and countless variations on the kimchi theme, all served with glutinous white rice. Also available for sale are a series of North Korean products, including ginseng wine and some nameless bear 'product' promised to increase sexual virility." How do you say "Yum-O!" in Korean?

-- Salon: "The creepy tyranny of Canada's hate speech laws," by Glenn Greenwald.

Glenn rightly objects to Canada's objectionable (and wholly subjective) hate-speech laws, as I do (it's one thing about my country I really don't like), focusing on Ann Coulter's invitation to speak at the University of Ottawa, which essentially threatened her with legal action if she crossed the subjective line. "I think threatening someone with criminal prosecution for the political views they might express is quite 'hateful.' So, too, is anointing oneself the arbiter of what is and is not sufficiently 'civilized discussion' to the point of using the force of criminal law to enforce it... The hubris required to believe that you can declare certain views so objectively hateful that they should be criminalized is astronomical; in so many eras, views that were most scorned by majorities ended up emerging as truth." Be careful what you wish for, in other words, as the situation could reverse, the hunter become the hunted, the prosecutor become the prosecuted. (For more on Coulter's appearance in Ottawa yesterday, see Capt. Fogg.)

Ann Coulter -- Liberal

By Capt. Fogg

I've been told for decades that the culture of victimhood is a Liberal thing; that the lazy slackers of America simply pretend to be victims when they could simply get a job instead of mooching the "hard earned" dollars of hard working Americans. I think I agree and that's why when Ann Coulter stunk up Ottawa today by claiming she's the victim of hate crimes by a University of Ottawa today. You see, the university’s vice-president of academic affairs and provost François Houle sent her an e-mail encouraging her to brush up on what’s considered acceptable in Canada whose laws about free speech may be unfamiliar to her. You have to admit that's just as egregious as lynchings, firebombings, painting swastikas on Synagogues and dragging some gay kid to death behind a truck. It's hate speech if I ever heard it and according to time honored righty dogma, claiming to be a victim makes Ann a liberal.

"You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.”

said the e-mail and who could disagree that its message is in every way a conservative one: Learn the law and obey it. Ann is a Liberal, no doubt about it and even though the e-mail was obviously inspired by her previous performance in London, Ontario, it's a hate crime directed at consrvatives and what could be more liberal than that? At the University of Western Ontario, she attacked gay rights activists, the mainstream media, Barack Obama's administration and told a Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying. Republicans have all been highly critical of any American criticizing the president or the government while abroad -- any Liberal American, that is -- so I'm expecting we'll hear them all chime in soon. Yes, cautioning someone whose actions have bordered on the criminal to be careful while in Canada is a hate crime if ever there was one and it's just like a liberal to ask for special rights for a minority group: psychotic blond transvestites. I think it's fitting to quote one of her most often used phrases, because it says it all:

"Liberals go wah -- they go wah, wah,wah."

And nobody gives a shit.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Me too! I was disgusting too!

By Capt. Fogg

The first thing that came to mind when I saw George Bush and Bill Clinton trying to control their mutual loathing while sharing a podium for the President's bi-partisan humanitarian effort, was that Clinton shouldn't be forced to associate with the most embarrassing thing that ever crept into the White House on two legs; the most embarrassing president we have had in our history. He shouldn't be forced to work with a party whose major spokesmen are still giggling about it being a publicity stunt to gain favor with "light skinned and dark skinned" groups and recommending against saving any lives.

I think we should call it the Coulter principle: find some tragedy, some enormity, some egregious horror and turn it inside out, turn it upside down.

" Clinton is a 'national embarrassment' and Bush shouldn't be 'forced' to partner with him" hissed the wicked witch on Fox News' Geraldo at Large last Sunday. "To force poor ex-President Bush -- like he hasn't suffered enough -- to be hanging around with Bill Clinton, who's leaving his essence on Kleenex in the White House..."

Scummy enough for you?

As Raw Story tells us, Coulter seems to feel she missed the sleaze train with the tragedy in Haiti, with Robertson, Beck and Limbaugh scooping her badly while she was off in the bushes shedding her skin.

"Stop asking about Rush's statement. I made some controversial statements this week too,"

she warned Geraldo. I'm quite sure she did -- it's just that the screams of a quarter million maimed and dying people drowned her out.

Cross posted from Human Voices

On a clear day

By Capt. Fogg

"I don’t see a clear angle on the anus." Said Adam's Apple Ann Coulter to Bill O'Reilly Monday night.

Never mind Ann, I think we have a very good angle on an anus right here.


Objecting to the idea of Body scanners at airports, Ann insisted they wouldn't be effective because you can't look up people's rectums or under their foreskins, so those would be a great place to hide bombs. Of course Muslims circumcise their sons but that's OK, nobody expects sanity from Ann and her fans wouldn't know sanity -- or an asshole -- if they saw it.

O'Reilly and Bachmann, a perfect match

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Wrong again, Bill O'Reilly.

Michele Bachmann doesn't "drive the far left crazy" because she's "attractive," "good-looking." In fact, she doesn't drive the far left, or the left, or liberals, or progressive, or Democrats, or any of her other opponents "crazy." We laugh at her, you see, because all the evidence -- and she supplies it on a constant basis -- points to her being the crazy one, an embarrassment to the Republican Party and to anything and everything that calls itself conservative. And while we laugh, conservatives like O'Reilly fall all over themselves whenever a supposedly attractive woman enters the picture, be it Bachmann or Palin or Coulter or whomever. They swoon, you see, seduced by whatever sexual appeal these woman have. Which, I might add, they overstate to comic degree.

Really, Bachmann? Personally, when I look at her, all I see is insanity, paranoia, and fundamentalist fervour. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, and I'm sure O'Reilly beholds her differently, but she certainly doesn't drive me crazy. Nor does Coulter, who is simply repulsive. Nor even does Palin, whom I admit is fairly attractive. In her case, conservatives really did succumb to a sort of adolescent lust when she emerged on the national scene last year. The rest of us just thought she was stupid, or at least not remotely qualified for the national stage, not to mention a bit of a thug. If anything drives us crazy, it's that these women get more attention than they deserve, not just because conservatives lust after them but because the media do, too.

Lefties

By Capt. Fogg

All political violence is committed by the left in this country,

said Ann Coulter, continuing her livelihood of making preposterous proclamations designed to inflame any reasonable person enough to produce a counter attack. Given a sufficiently absurd, preposterous or outrageous premise, that becomes so difficult that most of us are reduced to tears and she to witch-like cackles.

Of course, the fulcrum of that statement, as it so often is, is the definition of "Left." In this case, "Left" would have to include abortion doctor shooters and bombers, schizophrenics trying to impress Jody Foster, people like Byron De La Beckwith and, of course, how can we forget those Islamic "liberals" who blew up the World Trade Center and the Pentagon? If John Wilkes Booth can be a liberal, than there are only three conclusions we can make about Ann Coulter: insane, dishonest, or both.

When something like insisting that there is little danger to a president surrounded by angry opponents equipped with rifles and telescopic sights can inspire even Geraldo Rivera to say she's insane, logic again allows only two conclusions: Rivera is a liberal and ipso facto potentially violent, or he's right and she's insane.

Coulter has a long history of calling the police and claiming people are stalking her. She claims she's more likely to be shot than the president, although one wonders about her reaction to being surrounded by armed men carrying signs calling for her assassination. She said nothing, however, about being more likely to be fed rat poison than the federal judges she deemed worthy of such treatment. I wonder if she has a food taster -- or if she eats what humans eat.



(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Let's all torture like it's 1499

by Capt. Fogg


I know, I know, you're going to tell me that I'm obsessed with Ann Coulter and I should just ignore her until she goes away. Well, I'm not and she won't of course, but it's just that every time I think I've identified the craziest or most repugnant, evil minded, nasty and dishonest humanoid resident within the US borders, Ann, like one of those sea cucumbers that extrudes its intestines in order to gross out predators, gives us another and bigger load from her oversized colon.

Yes, of course Rush Gassbaugh is already on record as stating that the beatings, the attachment of electrodes to testicles and worse at Abu Ghraib were something only a girly man and liberal would object to, but Abu Ghraib is old news. It's all about Guantanamo and it's Ann's turn to tell us that waterboarding someone 189 times is just like a carnival ride people would actually pay to experience and that "the Muslims" are laughing at our weakness because we don't torture them enough. Only a hundred have died, after all. What we do is to put an "adorable little caterpillar" in someones cell, said adorable Ann to Sean "insanity" Hannity -- kind of like Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition using soft pillows and comfy chairs. We're "Wussies" for having any sense of morality greater than a jackal's says Ann while lounging around her luxury Palm Beach estate drinking a glass of human blood and munching on some child's barbecued leg.

Of course she's referring to our playing on some prisoner's phobias and to some, being trapped and unable to prevent an insect crawling up their leg is worse than pain. We all have some secret fear, after all. Imagine being trapped in an elevator with Coulter and Limbaugh, for instance, on the day you forgot to take your gun with you.

So I guess what the Arm Chair warriors from Palm Beach would like to see, is an America so utterly depraved and devoid of conscience as to make the world shudder in horror as we torture, maim and kill for pleasure -- you know, like real men like Ann and Rush do. Well they don't actually do anything, but they do giggle and laugh and snicker and mock decency while telling us we're "godless" for not torturing more people in more horrific ways and that we're suffering from "derangement syndromes" for criticizing evil.

Anyway, the dishonesty, the depravity, the malignant personality of laughing Ann doesn't need me to criticize it. Someone who makes a living lying, insisting that concerns of right and wrong, good and evil are for weaklings and that only cruel and inhuman leaders who make us safe by terrifying and disgusting the world can be supported -- while ridiculing liberals for being without religion isn't going to listen, and those who support her will simply read inexplicable hostility into my words and claim she's the victim.

We don't burn these people at the stake any more -- perhaps that's the danger of being Godless, but I'm just as happy that he's dead or gone or never was at all, since this is the kind of thing that would provoke any deity into raising the sea level once again.

Cross posted from Human Voices

Waiting for Ann

By Capt. Fogg

Oh goody! The Republicans on the Supreme court have handed down another victory to the Republicans here on Earth who think we need to punish people who say "indecent" things like "shit" and yet want to "move on" when it comes to punishing people for lesser indecencies like torturing suspects to death.

Now any minute now, Ann Coulter will be calling for these "activist judges" to be poisoned, won't she? After all, if it's Communism (or Fascism on alternate Tuesdays) to let a 3% tax cut expire and Fascist censorship to restore the Fairness Doctrine, how bad must it be to allow Federal censorship over broadcast TV? Any minute now, I'm sure. Ann and Godot -- any time now.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Stay classy, John McCain

By Michael J.W. Stickings

John McCain has a long history of being a jerk. Two recent cases in point:

1) When asked by George Stephanopoulos today, via Twitter, what he thought of his daughter Meghan's "feud" with right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham (about which we've posted here and here) and right-wing sexpot Ann Coulter (about which we've posted here) -- McCain said only this: "I'm proud of my daughter and she has a right to her opinions."

When asked whether he agreed with Meghan's opinions, he only said this: "[L]ike any family we agree on some things and disagree on others."

Translation: McCain does not agree with his daughter.

But what "opinions" are we talking about? Meghan criticized Ann Coulter for being "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time" and said that "there's an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme."

That's all.

As McCain apparently does not agree with his daughter, he must believe that there is not in fact extremism in both parties. He surely believes that there is extremism in the Democratic Party, though, so what he must mean is that there is no extremism in the Republican Party, which is to say, that the likes of Coulter and Ingraham, not to mention Dear Leader Rush, as well as their views, are not extreme. Similarly, he must believe that Coulter is neither offensive nor radical nor insulting. This from a man who throughout his long career has fashioned himself an independent, a maverick, above the partisan political fray.

Now, it may be that McCain does agree with his daughter but doesn't want to admit that he does, perhaps for partisan political reasons of his own. You know, because the Republican Party, his party, has been taken over by extremists to whom he must now pander, or to whom he thinks he must now pander, if he is to have a future in the party, a future of any significance and influence.

Again, so much for the self-made, media-enabled mythology on which he's been coasting. McCain is a coward or a hypocrite, or both, as well as a shameless opportunist. The mythology has always been a facade covering a partisan and self-aggrandizing core, but at least, at the very least, he used to speak out against the radicals in his party, including the theocrats. He may not always have been an admirable man, but from time to time he did and said admirable things. He sold his soul for the Republican presidential nomination and played to the far right with Palin and his pandering campaign, and now, having lost, the pandering continues.

Whatever he really thinks of his party's extremists and extremism, he's playing right along.

But that's not the worst part.

As a father, should he not have been critical of Ingraham's personal attacks on his daughter? Ingraham basically called her a "plus-sized" dimwit, after all. Could he not have spoken in her defence? Could he not have said that such attacks are simply not acceptable?

What a classy guy. What a great father. What a jerk.

2) And how about this?

As Stephanopoulos writes: "McCain said it is 'too early' to tell if President Obama has put the nation at risk of a terror attack, refusing to agree or reject Cheney's recent comments" (about which we've posted here and here).

Too early to tell?

No, McCain didn't go as far as Cheney did, but it was reckless and irresponsible fearmongering nonetheless, not least coming from a supposed national security expert, and, while presented as a neutral observation coming from a non-partisan authority, it was just as partisan a smear, in its own way, as anything Cheney said -- in fact, it was worse, given that McCain has more credibility than Cheney outside the conservative insanitarium.

But how exactly is it "too early" to tell. Does McCain now believe that banning torture, closing Gitmo, and putting an end to Bush-Cheney abuses of power could make America less safe? What else has Obama done to warrant McCain's skepticism? I can understand how Cheney is opposed to Obama's policies, but McCain?

Could it be that McCain has always been much more like Cheney than he's ever cared to admit? Could it be that, like Rush, he wants Obama to fail?

At the very least, McCain has once again exposed the partisan core that has always been his driving force.

Limbaugh-Cheney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I love this:

Yesterday, when CNN's Ed Henry asked Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for his reaction to Cheney's criticisms [of Obama on Sunday -- see, here, here, here, and here], Gibbs said that CNN invited Cheney because "Rush Limbaugh was busy," and called Cheney "the next most popular member of the Republican cabal."

How nice is it, at long last, that Democrats are calling out the Republicans for being a party of extremism and demagoguery? And how even nicer is it that it is the Obama White House that isn't taking any shit?

Sure, sure, sure, the right and its media minions, many in the so-called mainstream, will say that Obama is just being partisan, and thereby violating his own supposedly post-partisan principles, and Cheney may not be #2 among Republicans, given all the love/lust for Palin, and also for Coulter, but Gibbs was right to place Cheney right at the top of the GOP.

If Republicans want to run behind Dear Leader Rush and deify Cheney, and they clearly do on both counts, it serves them right have their real leadership exposed for what it is.

McCain to Ingraham: "Kiss my fat ass!"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Grab some popcorn, and maybe a beer, sit back, relax, and enjoy the side-splitting hilarity of the Republican Party and its right-wing enablers.

You may remember that:

1) Meghan McCain said that she finds Ann Coulter "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time."

2) McCain said that "there’s an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme."

3) Laura Ingraham called McCain "just another Valley Girl gone awry" and put her down as "plus-sized."

4) On The View yesterday, McCain responded to Ingraham: "That's what I feel right now. I'm like, 'Kiss my fat ass!'" (h/t: John Amato, who reminds us of John McCain's tasteless "joke" about Chelsea Clinton)

5) In response, Ingraham said she was just "teasing."

Methinks we haven't heard the last of this.

In the meantime, let's get a round of applause for Ms. McCain. (Go ahead. Put your hands together. Show her some love.)

She isn't just a pretty face and a pretty body -- she isn't plus-sized, but so what if she were? She's speaking the truth to the conservative powers of the Republican Party, and, predictably, they're fighting back with nasty personal attacks.

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Here's the clip of McCain on The View:

Laura Ingraham, asshole extraordinaire

By Michael J.W. Stickings

A couple of days ago, Meghan McCain, daughter of John, dared to criticize wingnut sexpot Ann Coulter -- well, she's a sexpot to them, if not to me. Appearing on Rachel Maddow's show last night, she repeated her criticism, arguing as well that there is "there’s an extreme on both parties and I hate extreme."

In response, Laura Ingraham, who is hardly known for her moderation, called McCain "just another Valley Girl gone awry," essentially dismissing her as an airhead. As well, just to drive home the ad hominem nature of her attack, she called McCain "plus-sized."

Now, whether or not McCain is "plus-sized" is beside the point. (Although she certainly isn't.) But why even go there? I expect an extremist like Ingraham, a sort of Limbaugh lite, to stand up for wingnut orthodoxy, like Rush, and to lash out at opponents, including Republican opponents, with venomous glee. And perhaps I expect her to get personal in her attacks. But to make fun of McCain's appearance -- although, again, there isn't exactly much to make fun of, and so what if she were plus-sized? -- and to suggest that she's a moron? Well, sure, I guess we should expect such nastiness from the likes of Ingraham, too. These are ugly, nasty people, after all, and Coulter and Ingraham are two of the far right's worst offenders.

This time, it was the daughter of the Republican nominee for president who was the target of their viciousness. It will be someone else next time. Indeed, it doesn't really matter who it is. Whether it's Ann or Laura, Michelle or Rush, Sean or [fill in the blank], this is what they do, this is how they try to take down anyone and everyone who challenges them. In this sense, Laura was just being Laura, an asshole extraordinaire.

A McCain I can believe in: Meghan unloads on Coulter

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From CNN, it's our Quote of the Day:

I straight up don't understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time... Maybe her popularity stems from the fact that watching her is sometimes like watching a train wreck.

The CNN post suggests that Meghan has problems with Coulter's "personality" rather than with her politics, but it's pretty clear that she rejects the "extreme thinking" of Coulter Republicans, of the conservatism on display at the CPAC insanitarium last week. (She added that Coulters followers are a "cult that cannot be denied.)

Meghan is still a Republican, to be sure, but she obviously doesn't like the direction her father's party has taken, and, to her credit, she is using her new platform at The Daily Beast to speak her mind. Let's hope we don't see her, like those Republicans who dared to challenge Dear Leader Rush, crawling back, grovelling, recanting, and begging for forgiveness and readmittance into the fold.

In lashing out at the extremist core of the Republican Party, Meghan is, in a way, being a good McCain, just like her father, who once upon a time did much the same. His maverick-ness was always more myth than reality, but it wasn't entirely an act. But John changed, hugging Bush, cozying up to the crazies, and pandering to the far right to secure their support for his presidential bid. Perhaps his daughter's similar independent streak, on display here, will prove to be more genuine.

A glimpse into the mind of insanity 5

By Michael J.W. Stickings

They're all bad, I know, Dear Leader Rush and the rest, but perhaps no other conservative occupies the gutter quite like Ann Coulter.

Because isn't it hilarious to joke about three U.S. cities being bombed? Sure, because Coulter wouldn't mind if certain cities were destroyed, if some of those Americans she doesn't like were genocidally obliterated. (There simply is no left-wing equivalent to Coulter. There are crazies on the left, to be sure, but they aren't celebrities in the liberal-progressive movement, nor are they ever wildly cheered. And just imagine how the right would have collectively frothed at the mouth had a liberal said something like this, even in jest.)

Here's the personification of insanity herself, in all her glory, speaking at CPAC:

The Riot Act

By Capt. Fogg

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

-- Ann Coulter

____________

We've been hearing about the dangers of song lyrics and video games for decades and of course there's some statistical correlation, according to some researchers, between constant exposure and violent behavior. Why is it then that we're not hearing about the effects of the unrelenting barrage of furious denunciations of the various straw men set ablaze by the religious right and the political right? Why aren't we concerned about the effect on Jim Adkisson?

Dubious denunciation has been around since the Biblical prophets, but we've certainly outgrown hand copied parchment scrolls as the medium. We have blogs, we have newspapers, newsletters, e-mail; we have radio broadcasts, we have 24 hour opinion shouting by people like Michelle Malkin, Anne Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and others. Anger, hate, and bigotry can be spread faster than Smallpox and we have enough angry opinion to drown out reality. For some men like Adkisson, it's been enough to push him into domestic terrorism.

So when Jim Adkisson, an unemployed truck driver, killed two people and wounded six others with a homemade and illegal sawed off shotgun at a Tennessee church last summer, it was because he hated the "liberals" he perceived as infesting the Unitarian Church. He still hates them so much that he smiled as he entered a guilty plea yesterday and was sentenced to life without parole.

So when Ann Coulter, for instance, proclaims a "fatwa" against liberals and blames everything from 9/11 to the current failure of Republican economic policy on "treasonous" liberals in her hysterical and incessant way, when she advocates the poisoning of federal judges and armed assault on Islamic countries, when the American public sits mesmerized in front of Fox News and its endless fantasies about "terrorist fist bumps" and sneering, condescending and fictitious stories about "liberals" conspiring against us all, perhaps it's time we remember the Riot Act. Perhaps it's time we saw these wealthy commercial hatemongers in the same light as we see the bearded boogeymen from Afghanistan who incite people to blow up infidels.

At least Jim Adkisson admitted his motives, even if he has no remorse.

(Cross posted from Human Voices.)