Right Wing Propaganda

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.

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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!

This is a clip from FOX's new show, "The Half Hour News Hour", their "competition" to The Daily Show:

Oh this is going to be a massive bomb. The first reviews are out and they are very un-raving. First from the TV Gal Blog on the Seattle PI-

A few television series simply aren't worth profound analysis. It could be that the odds of their survival look so incredibly low, and the creative effort that went into producing seems so shoddy, that the energy it would take to expend coming up with zingers describing its overall failure would be better spent doing something else. (In my case, I'd rather pack to leave town.)

OUCH! But there is more. Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel has his own take on the new show:

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The UN report on climate change has come out and says global warming is now "unstoppable". So who do we thank for getting to this point? Here is a starter:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Yup - the greedy bastards at $75,000 a minute Exxon are a big factor behind this. Of course they couldn't have got this far with out help from Bush himself. Since the rest of the world actually takes global warming more seriously than we do, this makes another great reason for them to hate us. Thats ok. Once we are all dead because this planet can not sustain life anymore, these idiots will be nothing either. They can't take the money with them and I hope there is really a hell as people like this will be very welcomed.

The right wing loons are at it again. Aravosis has a complete run down of their latest attack and this time it is on the Capital Police. Here is a prime example, but please read the entire thing:

1. ALLEGATION: The Capitol Police "allowed" the protesters to spray paint the US Capitol - the police saw the protesters defacing the property and did nothing about it because the chief of police ordered his fellow officers to let the evil protesters do whatever they wanted.

TRUTH: The Police had no idea that a small group was defacing anything, and had they seen the defacement, there would have been immediate arrests. And I quote the chief of police:

Some members of this group did covertly mark the pavement on the Lower West Terrace during their confrontation with us. Had this been observed, I would have directed arrests to be made. However, the size and continual movement of the crowd provided concealment and made detection of their actions impossible. Once the crowd dispersed, I was appalled and disgusted that any individual, whatever their cause, would deface the grounds of the Capitol. Fortunately, due to the notable efforts of the staff of the Architect of the Capitol, their signs of disrespect were quickly washed away.

Now the war bloggers are up in arms over this and wanting to "jam" the switchboards at the Capital Police:

And now, the right wing blogs are getting involved, spurred on by the religious right groups, and they're asking their readers to harass the Capitol Police. Imagine that, trying to close down the phone lines of a police department - and not just any police department, but the police department in charge of protecting our members of Congress from the terrorists.

So in this post-9/11 world, the answer is to jam the switchboards of first responders (and not any first responders - the Capital's first responders)? I know that interfering with emergency response is a criminal activity and I hope they pursue it as such if these idiots go this route. True al Qaeda could be asking them to do this. Isn't that what they would say if this was some "moonbat" calling for this action?

Another thought. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would say these right wing bloggers are in some coordinated effort to make the blogosphere so vial that our law makers have no option but to regulate them heavily. Between this and Malkin's totally idiotic rants and the threats of outing anonymous sources for the media, it could easily seem this way. That of course is only if I were a conspiracy theorist.

This is how loony the right is becoming, as they fear our newly elected Democratic congress:

A radio talk-show entertainer whose earlier statements that he "may" have to assassinate members of Congress if the wrong people were elected Nov. 7 now has set a timetable for those killings.

In a statement on his website, Hal Turner noted that a newspaper has reported that a bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens is expected to be enacted in January, when the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate and House.

"ANY MEMBER OF CONGRESS WHO INTRODUCES, CO-SPONSORS OR VOTES IN FAVOR OF ANY SUCH AMNESTY WILL BE DECLARED A DOMESTIC ENEMY AND WILL BE CONSIDERED A LEGITIMATE TARGET FOR ASSASSINATION," Turner posted on his website.

Reading further down the article, the Secret Service and FBI are apparently blowing this off also. Funny how when school kids make posters that the Secret Service feels are a threat to the President, they come to their school and pull them out, yet someone who uses our public airwaves to make his fame and advertise his website, which contains text calling for the assassination of our elected officials, it is nothing.

Look what happened a little over a month ago. They caught the guy sending fake anthrax letters to Democrats and left-wing media personalities. Turns out that guy was a product of the right wing blogo-sphere and frequented the sites of Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.

Make a serious note of this. The right is the ones that constantly engage in this sort of activity, yet they blame the left for engaging in it. Pretty funny, being the technical administrator for two of the largest left-wing blogs out there, I don't see this activity happening on our side. This is typical of them in politics and writing.

So what does Mr. Turner think about the majority of this country that overwhelmingly put the Democrats in power? Does he feel the same way about them?

Here is something for Mr. Turner to chew on. The people that come into this country that he apparently so despises, have a better knowledge of how our democracy works then him. His statement is very much a terroristic threat and should be handled as such. He is calling for the assassination of members of Congress. Ironically, the Democrats mostly support the same thing Bush does, so the President should be included in that (remember his Oval Office speech about immigration? HINT: Guest workers!).

So here is what should happen. 1) He be questioned and charged for his actions. 2) The hosting company for his site needs to suspend his account indefinitely. All hosting companies in the U.S. have some sort of policy against engaging in illegal activities. 3) The FCC must suspend his license indefinitely and he can never return to the airwaves in this country.

Even if all these punishments happened, it would be far less then what happened to people falsely accused of being terrorists. True Mr. Turner is more of a terrorist then any of those. Osama didn't take down the towers on 9/11. He was just the ring leader behind it. Sounds like the same position that Mr. Turner is shooting for.

(h/t AmericaBLOG)

I find this appalling. Today John Boehner, my congressman, decided to blame the generals on the ground for the failures in Iraq.

How dare Mr. Boehner take such a stance against our military. This on the very day he threatened to "beat Mr. Kerry to death" because of Kerry's comments.

Now will the media attempt to clear themselves of their label of "media bias" and report none stop on what Mr. Boehner said today? John Kerry is not running for office this year, John Boehner is. This story demands at the very least the same amount of attention that the Kerry story received. We have the Majority Leader blasting our troops on the ground and our President making jokes about the very reason why 2,800+ United States soldiers have died.

The following is a release from Harry Reid:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid released the following statement on House Majority Leader John Boehner's decision to blame the troops for Republican failures in Iraq.

"John Boehner ought to be ashamed. He's blaming our troops for failures in Iraq. If he wants to cast blame, he can start by looking in the mirror because he and his Congressional Republican colleagues have rubberstamped the Bush Administration's failed policy for nearly four years. Our troops in Iraq have performed bravely. It's political leaders like Congressman Boehner and Donald Rumsfeld, who have failed. I expect President Bush and Congressional Republicans, who demanded John Kerry apologize, hold their own party's majority leader to a much higher standard. There's no spinning his disparaging comments. He made them. He needs to apologize."

Aravosis has a copy of the statement Howard Dean has released.

I just did some more playing in Premiere and cleaned up my little "ad" some more, as well as added some nice background music.

Feel free to share it or post it on your site. This is my first real attempt at anything like this. My video work is limited to 3D-modeling and special effects from the 3D world.

Also - Think Progress has video of John Boehner on FOX earlier saying he would "beat him {Kerry} to death". It sounds to me like Boehner has made a threat against a sitting United States Senator. Perhaps he should be investigated for this.

I just threw this together, but you get the idea. Perhaps the DNC can getting something close to it on the air before the elections.

Update:

Kerry has now apologized for his comments:

Democratic Sen. John Kerry said on Wednesday he was sorry about a "botched joke" that drew election-year fire from President George W. Bush and other Republicans who accused him of insulting U.S. troops in Iraq.

Kerry reiterated the target of his joke was Bush, who immediately seized on the senator's remarks to rally Republican supporters ahead of Tuesday's elections, in which the party's control of Congress is at risk.

Kerry said he was returning to Washington from a trip campaigning on behalf of Democratic congressional candidates because he did not want to be "a distraction."

A day after rejecting calls to apologize for his remarks, Kerry, appearing on the "Imus in the Morning" radio show on MSNBC, declared: "I said it was a botched joke. Of course, I'm sorry about a botched joke."

Now will George Bush apologize for his little joke called "wmds"? I doubt it. Once again the bigger man prevails.

John Kerry has cancelled all his campaign appearences today in the wake of his botched joke:

ABC news is reporting that Senator John Kerry has cancelled all appearances today - including a campaign stop in Philadelphia with Pennsylvania U.s. Senate candidate Bob Casey.

President Bush and other Republicans have been demanding Kerry make an apology for saying those who don't study hard risk getting "stuck in Iraq." Senator Kerry says his comments were a failed attempt at a joke that was directed at the president.

Last night Andrew Sullivan was on CNN saying he understands what happened with Kerry's joke, however Kerry should swallow his pride and apologize for it. Something along the lines of "I was trying to make a joke and it got botched and the words in turn were misconstrued. For that I am deeply sorry and would never insult our troops the way the right has been making it out to be". I agree with Andrew's assessment. This would help get the story off the front page and out of the news cycle. It will also provide the best ammo to fight back with.

Adding to that ammo should be this clip from the 2004 White House Correspondents' Dinner

People seem to have forgot about when George Bush was making jokes about WMD's not being found in Iraq. Since his joke about the reason we went to war, almost 2,000 soldiers have died. None will die from Kerry's botched joke. I would much rather someone joke (or even question) the intelligence of a loved one than joke about the very reason they sent my loved one to fight and die. That is what this clip shows - George Bush thinks it is funny that our soldiers are dead. That is the kind of animal he is.

In the last few weeks we have heard the right-wing talking heads going on about how the Insurgents, Iran and North Korea are trying to influence the elections. This morning, we have the following as the big story:

North Korea agreed on Tuesday to return to six-party talks on dismantling its atomic weapons just weeks after staging its first nuclear test, and a U.S. envoy said he wanted to see "substantial progress" after a year-long hiatus.

Envoys from North Korea, the United States and China met in Beijing and agreed to resume the talks in the near future, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its Web site.

So is North Korea still trying to influence the elections? Maybe they are. Perhaps they are hoping this will boost the Republicans chance of winning, because they know it is easier to screw with a Republican controlled America. They didn't have nukes under Clinton. They got them under Bush and even tested them. Chew on that one for awhile John Gibson.

The right wingers jump every time the word "classified" or "secret" is used as a source in a New York Times article. Well how about if the Washington Times uses the same terms?

Recent U.S. intelligence analyses of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs were flawed and the lack of clarity on the issue hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts to avert the underground blast detected Sunday, according to Bush administration officials..

Some recent secret reports stated that Pyongyang did not have nuclear arms and until recently was bluffing about plans for a test, according to officials who have read the classified assessments.

The analyses in question included a National Intelligence Estimate a consensus report of all U.S. spy agencies produced several months ago and at least two other classified reports on North Korea produced by senior officials within the office of the Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte.

(emphasis mine)

So what's the difference? Why isn't Bush out calling the Washington Times traitors and his little pack of cult followers yelling for treason charges against the paper? Oh wait. This is the conservative Washington Times and the information could be looked at to help Bush. That makes it all better. Classified information is not the same when it comes to political save face - just ask Valerie Plame.

Since this whole Foley thing opened up, I have realized that the Republicans are right. They are right when they say the problem with Foley is his being gay. Of course the reason for me agreeing with the Republicans is probably not what they would expect.

For years it has been “rumored” that Foley was gay. He would never publicly comment on it. His sexual preference became more agreed upon across the aisle only after his lewd messages with young male pages was uncovered. Interesting how it takes such a scandal to make people agree.

So why did the Republicans get this one right? Well it is very simple. They are right because it is their own hatred towards gays that prevent people like Mark Foley from living an open life that they had chosen. They can not come out and be openly gay because that would cause them to be shunned by their party. Instead they have to live with this secret and when you have to live with something like that as a secret, you might as well have other secrets.

This is not something I have just come up with; this is a trend that the evidence already points to. Remember Mayor Jim West of Spokane? He was a Republican hero as he championed against gay marriage, only to later find out he was gay and accusations arose of him even having sex with minors.

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Family Research Council - Protecting Family Faith and Freedom. What a damn joke!. Here is the statement they released about Foley:

In response to the events surrounding the resignation of Congressman Mark Foley (R- Fla.), Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins released the following statement:

"We are all shocked by this spectacle of aberrant sexual behavior, but we shouldn't be. This is the end result of a society that rejects sexual restraints in the name of diversity. When a 16-year-old boy is not safe from sexual solicitation from an elected representative of the people, we should question the moral direction of our nation. If our children aren't safe in the halls of Congress, where are they safe? Maybe it's time to question: when is tolerance just an excuse for permissiveness?

"Both political parties need to be more serious about protecting children from sexual predators. We need public policy in our country that protects marriage, respects parental authority and aggressively polices boundaries around our children."

So they are trying to make this a gay issue and don't even mention the fact that members of Congress tried to cover this up. There you have it - the FRC is far more worried about partisanship than they are family.