5 Crazy Right-Wing Freak-Outs in Just One Glorious Week

By Brad Reed, AlterNet. Posted October 5, 2009.

For reasons that I don’t understand -- perhaps it’s subconscious karmic payback for murdering children in a past life -- I feel compelled to read a lot of right-wing blogs.

The wonderful thing about them is the window they offer into the pulsing id of the conservative movement -- up close and personal and without the filters of focus groups or dog whistles. For instance, do you think that Glenn Beck is insane? Oh puh-lease. Beck has precisely nothing on your typical Red State diarist or NewsMax columnist, each of whom is likely to support abolishing women’s suffrage or launching a military coup against Obama at any given time.

To give you an idea of the level of madness we’re looking at here, I’ve decided to share with you the five stupidest, craziest and most inflammatory things that right-wingers said over the span of a single week. When you read these things, keep in mind that these are the sorts of people Republican officials have to interact with on a regular basis. Indeed, the following five crazed tirades are almost enough to make you feel a little sorry for those staffers. Most of them came to Washington to act as soulless money funnels for corporate interests. Instead, they end up spending much of their time taking angry calls from some screamer who wants to privatize his local police force.

Number 5: John Derbyshire takes a bold stand against women’s suffrage

Last week, John Derbyshire, the National Review’s resident British crank, outlined a bold strategy to help Republicans return to power: by denying women the right to vote. The Derb explained that the trouble with women is that “they want someone to nurture, they want someone to help raise their kids, and if men aren’t inclined to do it… then they’d like the state to do it for them.” In other words, uterus-afflicted individuals should be barred from voting because they’re more likely to vote for people who disagree with John Derbyshire. Democracy in action!

Derb tried to show that he wasn’t completely out to lunch, however, by acknowledging that it’s highly unlikely that women will ever give up their right to vote.  Of course, if women ever did find their right to vote repealed someday, Derb also said that he “wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep” over it.

What is refreshing about Derbyshire is that he doesn’t try to hide his bigotry or to disguise it with code words – he just has it right out there. Derbyshire has been known to openly game-plan future race wars, to declare that blacks and Latinos are too stupid to educate and to write entire columns declaring his hatred for Chelsea Clinton back when she was just 20 years old. So in this respect, it’s not shocking that Derbyshire opposes women’s suffrage. What’s shocking is that it took him this long to say it.

Number 4: Erick Erickson threatens to dissolve his own town’s police department

Erick Erickson, the founder and managing editor of RedState.com, has a second gig as a city councilor in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. And apparently, the police force in that town is upset by low pay and long hours and they want to form a union. Erickson’s response? He threatens to simply abolish the entire department!

Writing at the PeachPundit blog, Erickson said that he actually asked the city attorney about the possibility of dissolving the police department. The attorney replied that police unions in the state of Georgia cannot strike or collectively bargain, meaning that any union the police formed would be essentially worthless. This didn’t deter Erickson entirely, however, as he said he’d still rather “contract out to the sheriff’s office than see a union come in” because unions “breed inefficiency, corruption, and taint.”

Regardless of how this ultimately turns out, you have to seriously question the intelligence of a man who talks openly of canning his entire police department. It’s almost as if he’s begging to be pulled over and subjected to multiple anal cavity searches.

Click on the link below to read the entire story.

5 Crazy Right-Wing Freak-Outs in Just One Glorious Week | | AlterNet

Medical Marijuana Lies Must Not Stand!

From New York Medical Marijuana Society

But what happens when they do not? What and where is the accountability when politics is allowed to extinguish the flame of truth, when propaganda rather than sound science is allowed to rule the day, dictate policy and shape public perception? Propaganda is a strong word, and therefore one I wish to define...from my perspective, for the purpose of this article, Propaganda is selectively omitting or employing facts to persuade members of the general public to hold a specific view point. All this may not make sense if you are unaware of ASA's (Americans for Safe Access) court case in the Ninth Circuit Court that was heard yesterday. At question...the Federal Government's wrongful position in public discourse that there are no Medical Benefits to be found in Cannabis (marijuana).

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Pentagon Closes Office Accused of Propaganda Under Bush.

By THOM SHANKER

WASHINGTON — A Pentagon office responsible for coordinating Defense Department information campaigns overseas has been abolished in an effort by the Obama administration to distance itself from past practices that some military officers called propaganda, senior officials said Wednesday.

Military and civilian critics said the office, the Defense Department office for support to public diplomacy, overstepped its mandate during the final years of the Bush administration by trying to organize information operations that violated Pentagon guidelines for accuracy and transparency.

Pentagon officials said the position of deputy assistant secretary of defense for support to public diplomacy had been eliminated, with the staff members reassigned and the office closed.

Senior Pentagon officials said the decision to close the office was made by Michele A. Flournoy, the new under secretary of defense for policy, and was meant to ensure that global communications efforts by the Defense Department and military would be aligned with the rest of the government.

“Because of the history of the office, we needed a fresh start in how we integrate the critical function of strategic communications across the board,” said a senior Pentagon official, who spoke anonymously to discuss a change that has not been publicly announced.

The office was created in 2007 to be the central point within the vast Pentagon bureaucracy and far-flung military to coordinate the Defense Department’s overseas information efforts with the rest of the government, in particular the White House, the State Department and American embassies.

But American military officers in Afghanistan in particular were angered last year by sets of “talking points” provided by the office for use in responding to queries on matters like civilian casualties. Officers who received the talking points predicted that the information would be seen by the Afghan public as blatant propaganda, and they refused to use them.

Officials said the Pentagon would now play a supporting role to the White House and the State Department in communicating government messages to foreign audiences, with the efforts no longer centralized in one place but assigned to each Pentagon policy office and regional military combatant commander.

Questions over the proper role of the Pentagon in public diplomacy have lingered since it was disclosed in 2002 that the Defense Department had created the Office of Strategic Influence; that office, a forerunner of the Pentagon public diplomacy office, was shut down after members of Congress expressed concerns that its behind-the-scenes efforts to shape public sentiment in wartime might undermine the military’s credibility.

Even in a supporting role, the Defense Department has far greater resources in money, trained communications personnel and broadcast and print technology than any other government agency or department.

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Paul Craig Roberts: The War on Terror is a Hoax

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

According to US government propaganda, terrorist cells are spread throughout America, making it necessary for the government to spy on all Americans and violate most other constitutional protections. Among President Bush’s last words as he left office was the warning that America would soon be struck again by Muslim terrorists.

If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.

The most obvious indication that there are no terrorist cells is that not a single neocon has been assassinated.

I do not approve of assassinations, and am ashamed of my country’s government for engaging in political assassination. The US and Israel have set a very bad example for al Qaeda to follow.

The US deals with al Qaeda and Taliban by assassinating their leaders, and Israel deals with Hamas by assassinating its leaders. It is reasonable to assume that al Qaeda would deal with the instigators and leaders of America’s wars in the Middle East in the same way.

Today every al Qaeda member is aware of the complicity of neoconservatives in the death and devastation inflicted on Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza. Moreover, neocons are highly visible and are soft targets compared to Hamas and Hezbollah leaders. Neocons have been identified in the media for years, and as everyone knows, multiple listings of their names are available online.

Neocons do not have Secret Service protection. Dreadful to contemplate, but it would be child’s play for al Qaeda to assassinate any and every neocon. Yet, neocons move around freely, a good indication that the US does not have a terrorist problem.

If, as neocons constantly allege, terrorists can smuggle nuclear weapons or dirty bombs into the US with which to wreak havoc upon our cities, terrorists can acquire weapons with which to assassinate any neocon or former government official.

Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion.
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Independent Groups Debunk Israeli War Propaganda

By Thalif Deen, IPS News. -As the Israelis try to justify the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza, their arguments are shot down by the U.N. or by human rights organizations.
UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - As the Israelis try to justify the massive loss of civilian life in Gaza, their arguments and counter-charges continue to be shot down either by the United Nations or by international human rights organizations.
Did the Israelis misidentify a school run by the U.N. Relief Works Agency (UNWRA), where 43 Palestinians seeking shelter were killed in an early morning air strike? Or were there Hamas gunmen shooting from the school drawing Israeli fire?
Neither assertion is accurate, says John Ging, UNRWA's director of operations in Gaza.
All U.N. schools in Gaza are clearly marked, and they fly the Organization's distinctly discernible blue-and-white flags.
Moreover, he told reporters, Israel has been provided with Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of all of UNRWA's installations in Gaza.
So there could not have been a misidentification of the U.N. school in the Jabaliya refugee camp whose compound was hit by an artillery shell early this week.
Asked if Hamas militants could have taken shelter in the school that was attacked, Ging said that UNRWA was "hugely sensitive" to maintaining the integrity of its facilities.
"We vet all those who seek shelter in our facilities to make sure militants were not taking advantage of them," he said.

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Israel's leaflets warning Gaza it will 'escalate' IDF offensive

By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies - The Israel Air Force has dropped leaflets on the Gaza Strip warning residents that it plans to escalate its two-week-old offensive. The army says it has dropped the fliers throughout Gaza. It says the notices are meant as a "general warning."
IAF warns Gazans that offensive will escalate
The Israel Air Force on Saturday dropped leaflets into the Gaza Strip warning residents that it plans to escalate its two-week-old offensive. The army says it has dropped the fliers throughout Gaza. It says the notices are meant as a "general warning." The notice says Israel is about to begin a "new phase in the war on terror." It says it will "escalate" an operation that already has killed more than 800 Palestinians.
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Robed Obama picture ignites row

The more desperate Clinton becomes the dirtier the race gets.

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TomPaine.com - Cue the Smear Machine

Paul Waldman

February 13, 2007

Paul Waldman is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America and the author of the new book, Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Can Learn From Conservative Success. The views expressed here are his own.

In June of 2004, I wrote a column for The Gadflyer asking why the right wing seemed so slow in getting its machinery of anger and innuendo aimed at presumptive Democratic nominee John Kerry. “Where are the anti-Kerry books?” I asked. “The conspiracy theories? The intimations of murder and drug-running? The maniacal ravings of the unhinged Right we've come to know and love?” Before long, of course, they got their act together, and Kerry never recovered from the blizzard of lies told by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and other assorted conservative dirty tricksters.

We all know how early the 2008 presidential campaign has begun. It is nearly a year before the first primary vote will be cast, and the smear machine is already taking aim at the Democratic contenders, hoping to replicate the successes it had in torpedoing the last two Democratic nominees and hamstringing Bill Clinton’s presidency. But it isn’t just the candidates that are readying themselves for a campaign that will be longer and more arduous than ever before. And what about the reporters who have so often been the right’s gleeful partners? There are reasons for both hope and concern.

In their repugnant book The Way to Win, ABC News political director Mark Halperin and John Harris of The Politico (and formerly of The Washington Post ) explain that, as journalists, “Matt Drudge rules our world.” In other words, when Drudge—a right-wing operative who closely coordinates his activities with the Republican National Committee—puts up a sensational story on his website, Halperin, Harris and the rest of their cohorts simply have no choice but to run off and cover it, whether it is true or not. What’s that, you say? Barack Obama once killed a man in a barfight? John Edwards is a pedophile? Hillary Clinton knows where Bin Laden is, but won’t say because they’re lovers? Run that baby! After all, “questions are being raised.”

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Source: TomPaine.com - Cue the Smear Machine

Technorati tags: Tom Paine, propaganda, elections, voting, opinion, blogs

Bush: 'I intend to do something' about Iran...

By Rex Nutting

Last Update: 11:43 AM ET Feb 14, 2007

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Insisting he isn't angling toward another war in the Middle East, President Bush said he intends "to do something" about the Iranian presence in Iraq that's harming U.S. troops. At his first news conference of the year, Bush said he knows Iranian forces have provided bombs to insurgents in Iraq, but doesn't know whether Tehran's "top echelon" ordered it. Last weekend, anonymous U.S. officials told reporters in Baghdad that Iran's leaders were responsible for the bombs. Bush said U.S. troops in Iraq are counting on Congress to approve the funds they need. Bush said a U.S. pullout would lead to the collapse of the Iraqi government, which would be "disastrous" for the American people.

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Source: Bush: 'I intend to do something' about Iran presence in Iraq - MarketWatch

Technorati tags: Iran, Bush, Iraq war, war on terror, Iraq, news, politics, opinion, propaganda

Powell tried to push Iran talks in 2003 and ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’

'couldn’t sell it at the White House'?...in other words, it didn't work for the propaganda machine...

Former Bush National Security Council official also says Rice likely lied about not seeing document

Former Bush National Security Council official Flynt Leverett, speaking on Wednesday at a forum held by the New America Foundation, told a crowd in a Senate office building that in 2003 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell received a “grand bargain” offer from Iran and was rebuffed by the White House, RAW STORY can reveal.

“I know as a fact from multiple sources this went all the way up to Secretary Powell,” Leverett said, citing multiple sources at the State Department and the NSC. “In [Secretary Powell’s] words, he ‘couldn’t sell it at the White House.’”

Source: The Raw Story Powell tried to push Iran talks in 2003 and was rebuffed, former official says

Technorati tags: Iran, Colin Powell, The White House, government, propaganda