10 Headlines Fox News Might Have Written Had They Existed During Key Points in U.S. History

November 27, 2013 By Allen Clifton 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s noticed the tendency for conservatives to have what can best be described as a foggy recollection of history.  While modern day right-wing media outlets like Fox News mostly paint the Republican party in a positive light, anyone with any kind of common sense knows that, while political parties might have shifted over time, the beliefs of the “conservative” have not.
Hell, these people now try to claim that President Kennedy was actually a conservative and if MLK were alive today he would be a Republican.  And while many conservatives today love programs like Social Security and Medicare, their rabid opposition to anything “socialized” leads me to believe with great certainty that had Fox News been around during the time when Social Security and Medicare were created, conservatives would fiercely oppose both programs as well.
So while this idea has been explored by others, I decided I would give my own take on the type of headline I believe Fox News would write about certain issues that have happened throughout our history.
I figure, let’s have a little fun.
In no particular chronological order, here we go:
1) Watergate:
Liberal Witch Hunt Continues: Mainstream Media’s Relentless Attack on President Nixon Proves Their True Liberal Bias


2) MLK’s “I Have a Dream” Speech:
Racist Martin Luther King Descends on Washington D.C., Continues to Try to Make Race an Issue
3) Social Security:
FDR the Socialist? President Signs Largest Redistribution of Wealth Legislation in United States History
4) Medicare:
Following Kennedy’s Assassination, President Johnson Signs Communist-like Law Forcing Younger Americans to Pay for Free-Loading Seniors 
5) Truman’s Election:
Rampant Voter Fraud Leads to Unexpected Truman Victory
6) Pear Harbor Bombing:
FDR’s Nazi Sympathizing Backfires: German Ally Empire of Japan Attacks United States Naval Base 
7) Custer’s Last Stand:
American Hero General Custer Slaughtered by Pack of Illegal Immigrants
8) Lincoln’s Push to Free Slaves:
“King” Lincoln Wants the Federal Government to be Able to Seize Your Personal Property, Destroy United States Economy
9) University of Alabama Integration:
Police State in Alabama: President Kennedy Attacks States Rights, Sends Military to Protect Inferior Negros Trying to Mix with Whites 
10) Building of the Interstate Highway System:
Government Spending is Out of Control as President Eisenhower Plans Socialist Takeover of Interstate Travel 
Alright, I’m going to stop there.  Honestly, I could do this all day.
Did I exaggerate a bit on some of them?  I’m really not so sure.  Considering the radical nature of the Republican party — tea party Republicans in particular — and Fox News being the mouthpiece for the GOP, I think most of them would be fairly accurate.


But of course Republicans won’t agree with any of these.  Then again, most conservatives are in complete denial about the sad reality of their own party.
I hope those reading this will share this around and see if others agree with what these “headlines” from Fox News might have been.
Image via “If Fox News Was Around” on Facebook

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10 Weirdest Fundamentalist Christian Conspiracy Theories

The world of fundamentalist Christians is crawling with conspiracy theories, urban legends, and just plain bizarre beliefs.

AlterNet / By Amanda Marcotte

 

For the Christian right, having a “faith-based” worldview extends far beyond claims about demons and angels. Unsurprisingly, the world of fundamentalist Christians is absolutely crawling with conspiracy theories, urban legends, and just plain bizarre beliefs about how the world works. Here’s a list of 10 of the weirder ones are currently in circulation.
1) Same-sex marriage is an elaborate scheme concocted by lesbians to entrap men. David Usher of the Center for Marriage Policy managed to cough up a theory that is an outstanding blend of homophobia, misogynist myths about the mendacity of women, and paranoia about the supposed gravy train that is child support. He argues that women will marry each other and conscript men into supporting them by “pretending they are using birth control when they are not.” The men will then “become economically conscripted third parties to these marriages, but get nothing in return,” presumably because the only reason a man would want to care for his own children would be in exchange for sex and housework. He also assumes that the only sources of income women have access to are child support and welfare; the possibility that women hold jobs doesn’t seem to occur to him.
Usher is trying to find a way to justify the increasingly ridiculous right-wing claim that same-sex marriage is somehow undermining “traditional” heterosexual marriage. He has zero-evidence for his claim outside of his belief that women are generally sleazy liars, and will “cheat” men out of the straight marriages they’re entitled to by sneaking off with women.
2) Planned Parenthood is trying to get kids “hooked” on sex. The anti-choice organization American Life League has been peddling the idea for a long time now that Planned Parenthood works like a mythical drug dealer, but with sex. The theory, summarized in this amazing video, goes like this: Planned Parenthood lures otherwise asexual young people into thinking sex is fun (something they are dead certain that you would never, ever think if not for Planned Parenthood). They then trick them into having sex by telling them contraception works, but (evil laugh), the contraception doesn’t work and the young people get pregnant and have to have abortions. Which means profit for Planned Parenthood! This neat little theory requires ignoring both the fact that Planned Parenthood is a non-profit and that the overwhelming scientific evidence shows that contraception does work, but ignoring facts and evidence is what the Christian right does best.
3) Gay men wear special rings for the sole purpose of giving innocent straights HIV. This one was trotted out recently by everyone’s favorite disseminator of Christian right urban legends, Pat Robertson. “You know what they do in San Francisco, some in the gay community there they want to get people so if they got the stuff they’ll have a ring, you shake hands, and the ring’s got a little thing where you cut your finger,” he explained, suggesting there’s a serial killing ring of gay men who kill with HIV for reasons undetermined. Robertson backpedaled, but as Anderson Cooper suggested, only because he got caught.
4) The abortion-mad Chinese eat human fetuses. This one is popular in anti-choice circles, because it hits both the abortion-obsessed and racist sweet spots. The claim is sometimes that the Chinese eat “fetus soup” as an aphrodisiac, because concern that other people are enjoying sex too much is always part and parcel of any anti-choice urban legend. This obviously false bit of racist propaganda is spread mostly through email, though prominent anti-choice activists like Jill Stanek have also perpetuated it.
5) Crazed liberals in Illinois want to teach 5-year-olds how to have sex.A Chicago school district has implemented a mandatory sex education program for each grade level, leading Christian right publications to accuse the district of practicing “pedophilia” by trying to get kindergartners to think about “sex and sexual acts.” While it’s no surprise that fundamentalists love the opportunity to titillate and outrage themselves by imagining kids getting blow job lessons, the reality is much more mundane….and pedophilia-preventive. Lessons for kindergarten and first grade will simply be about anatomy, with an emphasis on learning the difference between “good touch vs. bad touch,” specifically so children who are targeted by pedophiles know to report what’s happened. But perpetuating the belief that evil pervert liberals are targeting innocent children clearly matters more to the Christian right than stopping real-life perverts who are actually targeting children.
6) Obama is the Antichrist and plans to rule America by sharia law. Even though you’d think Obama would be getting on with this plan already instead of wasting time talking about bombing Syria, the belief that any day now a combination of sharia law and the apocalypse will be brought on by Obama still rules in Christian right circles. Public Policy Polling found that an alarming 13 percent of Americans are sure Obama is the Antichrist and another 13 percent entertained the possibility. Christian right-wingers are always on the lookout for “evidence” that Obama’s secret sharia plan is about to take off, leading to headlines likes this one from Breitbart.com: “Obama administration paves the way for sharia law.”
7) Charles Darwin took it all back the day he died. This one has been around since the 19th century, but still has a significant amount of play on the Christian right, as part of the ur-conspiracy theory which holds that scientists are just making up evolutionary theory as part of a grand atheist conspiracy conducted for reasons unknown. Interestingly, this is one legend leaders in the Christian right have been trying to put to bed recently, with even the group Answers In Genesis—which believes that dinosaurs and humans lived in harmony together—denying that Darwin recanted his atheistic views on his deathbed.
8) JK Rowling is trying to lure your children into Satanism with her Harry Potter books. Hardline Christian conservatives have always been afraid pop culture is a conspiracy of Satan’s to attract impressionable young people, so it’s unsurprising that Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with its portrayal of fantasy magic, made the top of the list of products to be feared. The hysteria hit a peak in 2001, with fundamentalist activists accusing the books of trying to “desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult” and “trafficking in evil spirits.” Things were made worse when the Onion published a satirical article Christian conservatives didn’t realize was satire, causing them to literally believe young kids told the Onion things like, “But the Harry Potter books showed me that magic is real, something I can learn and use right now, and that the Bible is nothing but boring lies.” The furor has died down somewhat, but plenty of evangelical leaders still routinely claim demons can possess your body if you read Harry Potter.
9) Pro-choicers in Texas were planning to pelt the state senate with jars of feces. This one rose up and was debunked within the space of six weeks over this summer of 2013. The claim, which unfortunately was given credence by the Texas Department of Public Safety back in July, was that evil pro-choicers were planning to sneak jars of poop into the debate and were only stopped by brave, poop-confiscating lawmakers. Eventually, the TX DPS reluctantly handed its actual documents regarding the protests over and sure enough, there is no evidence outside of urban legend-mongering from conservatives that there were any jars of any human waste whatsoever. Unfortunately, the legend was already out and circulating.
Humorless fundies are also perpetuating the claim that there was Satan-worshipping from pro-choicers at the protests, even though a cursory perusal of the evidence shows that the shouts of “hail Satan” were not a prayer so much as a joke aimed squarely at the Christian right protesters.
10) Birth control pill turns your uterus into a grave littered with teeny-weeny corpses of fully formed babies.Kevin Swanson, Christian right talk show host, expelled this one recently, claiming that “certain doctors and certain scientists” are finding that women on the pill have, “these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb.” An evocative image, albeit one that requires not only falsely believing the pill “kills” embryos (it works by suppressing ovulation), but also simply refusing to believe that menstruation actually exists.
These are just a sampling of the stories you’ll hear in hushed, can-you-believe-it tones in Christian right circles, where the urban legend is a primary form of communication.

Amanda Marcotte co-writes the blog Pandagon. She is the author of It's a Jungle Out There: The Feminist Survival Guide to Politically Inhospitable Environments.

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Ex-Generals Say President Obama Must be Forced to Resign

Ex-Generals Say President Obama Must be Forced to Resign

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Monday, November, 25th, 2013, 7:46 am

Traitors Paul E. Vallely and Charles Jones

World Net Daily yesterday celebrated the idea that the time has come for the U.S. military to step in and force Obama to resign, a poll showing that 79 percent (822 votes) feel that the military should “Court martial our commander in chief for treason against our nation and its defense.” And WND managed to do it without ever once mentioning that the whole idea of a military coup – which is what they’re talking about – is unconstitutional. Or that there is something inherently creepy and banana republic-like about ex-generals keeping an eye on a twice legally elected president:

After one of them called for the “forced resignations” of President Obama and congressional leaders in response to multiple grievances, including the alleged political purge of hundreds of senior military officers, two retired U.S. generals are creating a citizens’ commission to scrutinize Obama administration actions on national security and economic issues.
“America’s Provisional Leadership Council” will look at major concerns, as outlined by Army Gen. Paul E. Vallely and Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Jones, in an eight-point paper titled “The Americans Project.”
…
In calling for the forced resignations of Obama and the leadership of Congress, Vallely outlined suggestions for nationwide rallies and said a peaceful “civil uprising is still not out of question.”

You might be interested to know that Vallely, an Islamophobe, is senior military analyst for Fox News and that Jones, an apparently VERY angry old white man, wrote an open letter in support of birther Orly Taitz, claiming that the president was “possibly [a] citizen of Kenya.”
We are told that “In their paper, Vallely and Jones call for adherence to the Constitution with strict congressional oversight of all executive actions.”
What a great idea for saving our Constitution! Except…
NOTHING in the United States Constitution provides for using force to terminate a presidency. NOTHING. Yet the claim made here is that this would be done in order to protect the Constitution. Yes, protect the Constitution by violating it.
Interesting concept. Something that would make sense only to a tea party mind.
It’s kinda funny too, in a way, in that these generals are angry at Obama for “forcing resignations.” Did they forget their oath? Did they forget that the U.S. president is the “commander-in-chief”?

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States….
ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 1

Did they forget that the president was legally elected according to the Constitution and that neither a military coup nor leading a civilian uprising would not be in accord with the Constitution they swore to uphold?

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

This is Vallely back in 2010 telling a bunch of Republicans in Virginia City, Montana, about his plans:


Perhaps he doesn’t remember the significance of the oaths he is talking about here? Is it possible he does not see that violating the Constitution does not protect the Constitution?

The current crop of leaders, he said, must face a “demand resignation” process, which he explained requires massive grassroots protests and social networking which he envisions can be undertaken through his organization. And example of a “forced resignation,” he said, was that of President Richard Nixon.
“Our federal government continues down the path of destroying America,” Vallely said. “Americans must now stand up and put America back on the right track.”
…
Vallely and Jones in their paper say “The Americans” leadership has developed workable solutions to “help solve and fix what has without question stunted our nation’s ability to clearly, legally and peacefully function as a constitutional republic.”

Never mind that Nixon – who, unlike Obama, actually did something wrong – was not forced to resign – he chose to resign rather than face impeachment.
Vallely, if he really cares about this country, should be pointing the finger at the tea party anarchists in the House of Representatives, at the Citizens United ruling, and at a host of other problems that can be laid at the door of Republican ideology and governance from 2001-2008.
Republicans really can’t get over the fact that Americans have rejected them – twice, and that their brief tea party resurgence in 2010 did not imply that President Obama relinquish his role as president to a small band of lunatics in the House of Representatives. It did not alter Democratic control of the Senate. The Constitution did not change in 2010 from what it was in 2008. Barack Obama is still the president of the United States. He was re-elected president of the United States by 5 million votes in 2012.
Recent elections and polls show support for the Republican and tea parties to be at an all-time low. Deadly diseases are more popular than the Republicans in Congress.
What part of this do you treasonous clowns not get?
You can stomp your little feet if you want, sure. You can rant and rave, which is something you have shown us all you love to do. But you don’t get to shut down the government because you don’t like how America voted. How is that patriotic – or constitutional? And you certainly don’t get to impeach the president simply because you don’t like him, and what in the world gives you the idea that the military can remove a legally elected president because you don’t like the results of an election?
Don’t even pretend that you are doing this for us. What you want has nothing to do with what polls and elections show the American people want. Don’t even pretend you are doing this to protect the Constitution. Neither is true.
You are conservative reactionaries. You are doing this for yourselves, because you don’t like the fact that we as a culture have moved on, that the American people are no longer interested in what you have to offer. You ran our country into the ground and we aren’t going to let you do it again.
Not on our watches. Government OF the people, BY the people, and FOR the people. It is no more government of, by, and for the military than it is of, by and for the corporations or of, by, and for God.
If you don’t like the results of the last election, win the next election if you can, a possibility that is daily – thanks to your own insane behavior and ideas and actions – becoming more remote.

Ex-Generals Say President Obama Must be Forced to Resign was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Mon, Nov 25th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved
 

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Up Close With Small-Town White Male Rage

Up Close With Small-Town White Male Rage

By Michael Kimmel

 

Explaining the phenomenon of the bitter, scary men who feel left behind by economic and cultural change.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com/PhotosbyAndy

November 20, 2013  |  

 

The following is an excerpt fromAngry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era, by Michael Kimmel (Nation Books, 2013). 

Who are the white supremacists? There has been no formal survey, for obvious reasons, but there are several noticeable patterns. Geographically, they come from America’s heartland—small towns, rural cities, swelling suburban sprawl outside larger Sunbelt cities. These aren’t the prosperous towns, but the single-story working-class exurbs that stretch for what feels like forever in the corridor between Long Beach and San Diego (not the San Fernando Valley), or along the southern tier of Pennsylvania, or spread all through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, across the vast high plains of eastern Washington and Oregon, through Idaho and Montana. There are plenty in the declining cities of the Rust Belt, in Dearborn and Flint, Buffalo and Milwaukee, in the bars that remain in the shadows of the hulking deserted factories that once were America’s manufacturing centers. And that doesn’t even touch the former states of the Confederacy, where flying the Confederate flag is a culturally approved symbol of “southern pride”—in the same way that wearing a swastika would be a symbol of German “heritage” (except it’s illegal in Germany to wear a swastika).
There’s a large rural component. Although “the spread of far-right groups over the last decade has not been limited to rural areas alone,” writes Osha Gray Davidson, “the social and economic unraveling of rural communities—especially in the midwest—has provided far-right groups with new audiences for their messages of hate. Some of these groups have enjoyed considerable success in their rural campaign.” For many farmers facing foreclosures, the Far Right promises to help them save their land have been appealing, offering farmers various schemes and legal maneuvers to help prevent foreclosures, blaming the farmers’ troubles on Jewish bankers and the one-world government. “As rural communities started to collapse,” Davidson writes, the Far Right “could be seen at farm auctions comforting families...confirming what rural people knew to be true: that their livelihoods, their families, their communities—their very lives—were falling apart.” In stark contrast to the government indifference encountered by rural Americans, a range of Far Right groups, most recently the militias, have seemingly provided support, community, and answers.
In that sense, the contemporary militias and other white supremacist groups are following in the footsteps of the Ku Klux Klan, the Posse Comitatus, and other Far Right patriot groups who recruited members in rural America throughout the 1980s. They tap into a long history of racial and ethnic paranoia in rural America, as well as an equally long tradition of collective local action and vigilante justice. There remains a widespread notion that “Jews, African-Americans, and other minority-group members ‘do not entirely belong,’” which may, in part, “be responsible for rural people’s easy acceptance of the far right’s agenda of hate,” writes Matthew Snipp. “The far right didn’t create bigotry in the Midwest; it didn’t need to,” Davidson concludes. “It merely had to tap into the existing undercurrent of prejudice once this had been inflamed by widespread economic failure and social discontent.”

And many have moved from their deindustrializing cities, foreclosed suburban tracts, and wasted farmlands to smaller rural areas because they seek the companionship of like-minded fellows, in relatively remote areas far from large numbers of nonwhites and Jews and where they can organize, train, and build protective fortresses. Many groups have established refuge in rural communities, where they can practice military tactics, stockpile food and weapons, hone their survivalist skills, and become self-sufficient in preparation for Armageddon, the final race war, or whatever cataclysm they envision. Think of it as the twenty-first-century version of postwar suburban “white flight”—but on steroids.

They’re certainly Christian, but not just any Christian—they’re evangelical Protestant, Pentacostalist, and members of radical sects that preach racial purity as the Word of Jesus. (Catholicism is certainly stocked with conservatives on social issues, but white supremacists tap into such a long and ignoble tradition of anti-Catholicism that they tend to have their own right-wing organizations, mostly fighting against women’s rights and gay rights.) Some belong to churches like the Christian Identity Church, which gained a foothold on the Far Right in the early 1980s. Christian Identity’s focus on racism and anti-Semitism provides the theological underpinnings to the shift from a more “traditional agrarian protest” to paramilitarism. It is from the Christian Identity movement that the Far Right gets its theological claims that Adam is the ancestor of the Caucasian race, whereas non-whites are pre-Adamic “mud people,” without souls, and Jews are the children of Satan. According to this doctrine, Jesus was not Jewish and not from the Middle East; actually, he was northern European, his Second Coming is close at hand, and followers can hasten the apocalypse. It is the birthright of Anglo-Saxons to establish God’s kingdom on earth; America’s and Britain’s “birthright is to be the wealthiest, most powerful nations on earth...able, by divine right, to dominate and colonize the world.”
A large proportion of the extreme right wing are military veterans. Several leaders served in Vietnam and were shocked at the national disgust that greeted them as they returned home after that debacle. “America’s failure to win that war was a truly profound blow,” writes William J. Gibson. “If Americans were no longer winners, then who were they?” Some veterans believed they were sold out by the government, caving in to effeminate cowardly protesters; they can no longer trust the government to fight for what is right. Bo Gritz, a former Green Beret in Vietnam, returned to Southeast Asia several times in clandestine missions to search for prisoners of war and was the real-life basis for the film "Rambo". He uses his military heroism to increase his credibility among potential recruits; one brochure describes him as “this country’s most decorated Vietnam veteran” who “killed some 400 Communists in his illustrious military career.” In 1993 Gritz began a traveling SPIKE (Specially Prepared Individuals for Key Events) training program, a rigorous survival course in paramilitary techniques.
Many of the younger guys are veterans of the first Gulf War, a war that they came to believe was fought for no moral principles at all, but simply to make America’s oil supply safer and to protect Israel from possible Arab attack. They feel they’ve been used, pawns in a larger political game, serving their country honorably only to be spit out and stepped on when they returned home to slashed veteran benefits, bureaucratic indifference to post-traumatic stress disorder, and general social contempt for having fought in the war in the first place. They believed they were entitled to be hailed as heroes, as had earlier generations of American veterans, not to be scorned as outcasts. Now a guy like Bo Gritz symbolizes “true” warrior-style masculinity, and reclaiming their manhood is the reward for signing up with the Far Right.
The Class Origins of Racial Politics
Perhaps what binds them all together, though, is class. Rural or small town, urban or suburban, the extreme Right is populated by downwardly mobile, lower-middle-class white men. All of the men I interviewed—all—fitted this class profile. When I compared with other ethnographies and other surveys, they all had the same profile as well.
In the United States, class is often a proxy for race. When politicians speak of the “urban poor,” we know it’s a code for black people. When they talk about “welfare queens,” we know the race of that woman driving the late-model Cadillac. In polite society, racism remains hidden behind a screen spelled CLASS.
On the extreme Right, by contrast, race is a proxy for class. Among the white supremacists, when they speak of race consciousness, defending white people, protesting for equal rights for white people, they actually don’t mean all white people. They don’t mean Wall Street bankers and lawyers, though they are pretty much entirely white and male. They don’t mean white male doctors, or lawyers, or architects, or even engineers. They don’t mean the legions of young white hipster guys, or computer geeks flocking to the Silicon Valley, or the legions of white preppies in their boat shoes and seersucker jackets “interning” at white-shoe law firms in major cities. Not at all. They mean middle- and working-class white people. Race consciousness is actually class consciousness without actually having to “see” class. “Race blindness” leads working-class people to turn right; if they did see class, they’d turn left and make common cause with different races in the same economic class.
That’s certainly what I found among them. Most are in their midthirties to early forties, educated at least through high school and often beyond. (The average age of the guys I talked with was thirty-six.) They are the sons of skilled workers in industries like textiles and tobacco, the sons of the owners of small farms, shops, and grocery stores. Buffeted by global political and economic forces, the sons have inherited little of their fathers’ legacies. The family farms have been lost to foreclosure, the small shops squeezed out by Walmarts and malls. These young men face a spiral of downward mobility and economic uncertainty. They complain that they are squeezed between the omnivorous jaws of global capital concentration and a federal bureaucracy that is at best indifferent to their plight and at worst complicit in their demise.
And they’re right. It is the lower middle class—that strata of independent farmers, small shopkeepers, craft and highly skilled workers, and small-scale entrepreneurs—that has been hit hardest by globalization. “Western industry has displaced traditional crafts—female as well as male—and large-scale multinational-controlled agriculture has downgraded the independent farmer to the status of hired hand,” writes journalist Barbara Ehrenreich. This has resulted in massive male displacement—migration, downward mobility. It has been felt the most not by the adult men who were the tradesmen, shopkeepers, and skilled workers, but by their sons, by the young men whose inheritance has been seemingly stolen from them. They feel entitled and deprived—and furious. These angry young men are the foot soldiers of the armies of rage that have sprung up around the world.
Printed with permission from Nation Books, a member of The Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2013.

Michael Kimmel is among the leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity in the world today. The author or editor of more than twenty volumes, his books include Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity (1987), Men Confront Pornography (1990), The Politics of Manhood (1996), The Gender of Desire (2005) and The History of Men (2005).

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"Birther" Busted For Threatening To Kill Obama Wisconsin man, 81, refused to recant claim he'd shoot president

"Birther" Busted For Threatening To Kill Obama

Wisconsin man, 81, refused to recant claim he'd shoot president

NOVEMBER 22--An 81-year-old "birther" was arrested today and charged with threatening President Barack Obama’s life, according to federal court records.
Prosecutors allege that Elwyn Nels Fossedal was in a post office near his Wisconsin home last month when he announced, “If President Obama was here I would shoot him right there and kill him right now.”
When Secret Service agents confronted Fossedal about the threat--which was relayed to law enforcement by witnesses--he would not recant the statement and “repeated the threat using different words. He also made a number of additional threats towards the President,” according to a felony complaint.
A Secret Service investigation determined that Fossedal’s wife Margaret Ann--to whom he had been married nearly 57 years--died in early-October and that “he is displacing his grief on her loss with anger towards” Obama and other public officials being protected by the Secret Service.
An investigator noted that Fossedal “is proficient in the use of various firearms.”
Pictured above, Fossedal this morning made an initial appearance in U.S. District Court in Madison, where a magistrate judge ordered him detained. If convicted of the threat, he faces a maximum of five years in prison.
Fossedal, a retired Pfizer employee, appears to be a “birther” based on comments he has posted online. A Rush Limbaugh fan, Fossedal has also called for Obama’s impeachment over the Affordable Care Act and declared that, “We need to throw the Muslim in the White House, OUT.”
In a funeral home obituary for his wife, Fossedal is reported as having resigned from the Lions Club International because the community service organization purportedly “would not allow the worship of Jesus Christ” so that it could “be accepted by Islamic Nations.” (4 pages)

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Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This

Republicans Outraged Over President Obama and Gettysburg Really Won’t Like Reading This

November 20, 2013 By Allen Clifton 

I love how the right-wing media blatantly treats conservative voters like idiots, knowing that they’ll eat it right up.  See, while liberals like myself often call Republicans ignorant, the right-wing media seems to feel the same way.  How else could they deliberately create “outrage” over events they know to be completely inaccurate?
Because they know conservative voters are just dumb enough to fall for it.  The right-wing media knows that they can simply make up almost anything they want, “report” it to the masses of conservatives just itching to find something new to hate President Obama for, and Republican voters will believe practically anything they say.
A few months ago it was “Umbrellagate” that caused conservatives to spit their venom toward the president.  Then more recently it was Michelle Obama encouraging children to drink more water that seemed to offend conservatives to their very core.  Now it’s President Obama not going to the 150th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, and during his reading of that very same Gettysburg Address he didn’t utter the words “under God.”
First, let’s address his lack of attendance on the 150th anniversary of Gettysburg.  Here’s a fun fact for conservatives: No president since William Howard Taft, who went in 1909, has attended Gettysburg on its anniversary.  Not even their hero Ronald Reagan.  Who, by the way, never visited Gettysburg while he was president.
Aww, too bad.  So much for that pointless conspiracy the right-wing media blatantly made up and millions of ignorant conservatives took off and ran with.

Then on to an issue many conservatives have throw an even bigger fit about — President Obama reading the Gettysburg Address without saying the words “under God.”
It’s true, in Lincoln’s speech he did say the words, “under God.”  But they weren’t actually written in the original speech — which is what was given to President Obama by Civil War scholar Ken Burns.  Burns gave him a version of the speech called a “Nicolay Copy.”  A “Nicolay Copy” is in reference to John Nicolay, the White House staffer who preserved the speech.
Darn, strike two for made up right-wing conspiracies.
But they are a perfect 2-0 in this for proving that they are absolutely terrible at knowing United States history.
Oh, and just for good measure, our Pledge of Allegiance originally never contained the words “one nation under God” either.  In fact, our pledge was written by a Christian socialist and the words “under God” weren’t added until 1954.
This “outrage” has just been another perfect example of conservatives manufacturing fake stories to use in a pathetic attempt to attack President Obama.  Just more of the same from the people whose careers depend on the abject stupidity of the average conservative.

About Allen Clifton
Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, and author of the popular Right Off A Cliff column. He is also the founder of the Right Off A Cliff facebook page, on which he routinely voices his opinions and stirs the pot for the Progressive movement. Follow Allen on Twitter as well, @Allen_Clifton.

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Stop Fox News: Tell FCC To Revoke Broadcast License NOW!

Stop Fox News: Tell FCC To Revoke Broadcast License NOW! 

Help us take Fox News off the air—get the FCC to revoke Rupert Murdoch’s broadcast licenses NOW!

The deplorable actions Murdoch has taken to run his News Corp. empire prove we can't trust him to act in the public interest. Now, a study by Farleigh Dickinson University shows Fox News can’t even claim to inform its audience: its viewers are less informed than those who avoid news outlets altogether!

It’s the Federal Communications Commission’s job to consider the character of a media owner when dealing out broadcast licenses, and to label programs as news only when they actually inform viewers. The Murdoch Mafia has failed on both counts, and we have a chance to take them down for good. Save the airwaves from bigotry and corruption: tell the FCC to enforce the law NOW!

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION: Rupert Murdoch has failed every “character” test available, and the programs under his broadcasting licenses have both been implicated in scandal and have been proven to make audiences less informed, not more. We urge you to revoke Murdoch’s broadcasting licenses immediately, and to take a stand against his corrupt media empire.

SIGN HERE!!!

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The Republican Alphabet

Author: Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario April 27, 2013 11:55 am

 

Most people don’t know this, but in addition to a remedial civics class, Michelle Bachmann also taught a remedial English course. She started with the basics:
A is for Anti-Christ. See B & O.
B is for Barack – Isn’t that an “exotic” name for a President? George, Ronald and Sarah are far more American sounding.
C is for Christ, who informs all of my decisions, including the ones where I discriminate against the poor and sick. Just like He would!
D is for Death panels and they’re coming to unplug Grandma!
E is for Electoral Campaign Finance Reform. AHAHAHAHAAHH! Just kidding! The letter E is brought to you by, well, Citizens United says I don’t really have to tell you that anymore, do I?
F is for Fascism!!! BE READY TO VIOLENTLY FIGHT THE FASCIST LIBERAL GOVERNMENT AT ANY TIME!!! Nothing bad ever happens when you live your life by this doctrine. If it does, it’s an isolated incident (see I).
G is for God, Guns & Guts. Everything a population needs to run a country wisely.

H is for Health care reform. Get the guns! They’re coming to kill Grandma again!
I(1) is for Immigration. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and I will do everything in my power to disenfranchise and demonize them as a way to maintain the White (not white, White, how many times do I have to clarify that?) hegemony.
I(2) is for Isolated Incident. These unfortunate events that only appear to have been instigated by violent rhetoric are totally unrelated to any other letter in this list (See A,B,D,F,G,H,L,N,O,P,U,X).  Unless the offender is a liberal, then it’s MSNBC’s fault.
J is for Jesus. I can never have too much of him in my life and I want to make sure he’s part of YOURS too, whether you like it or not.
K is for Kansas and Kentucky where evolution is a four letter word. No, seriously, our education system is so bad we can’t spell but wee no wi ain’t relaytuhd 2 no munkey!
L is for Liberal. Liberals hate you and everything about you. They’re plotting to take over the country by force. They also happen to be total wimps and weaklings who hate guns. How are wimps and weaklings without guns going to take over the country? Please see Q.
M is for Marriage between a man and a woman ONLY. Even if it’s Brittany Spears’ 55 hour marriage, it’s still sacred, dammit!
N(1) is for Nazi. Nazis want to destroy America. Anyone who disagrees with you is one of these.
N(2) is for Nig…well I won’t say THAT word about those people or the liberal thought police will come for me but I think you know what I mean (wink wink).
O is for Obama. See N(1) and N(2).
P is for President 1.The highest office of the land. The most powerful man in the world (for now…Palin in 2016!), deserving of our respect and admiration and love and full support during a time of war 2. A secret Muslim foreigner terrorist sympathizer that is out to kill you and all you hold dear. It depends on who we are talking about. See O.
Q is for questions. Never ask any. Ever. About anything.
R is for Ronald Reagan. Ronnie represented a righteous religious revival and rapacious right-wing Republican revolution that ruined Russia. It doesn’t matter that, by the time he left office, he was unable to repeat or understand the previous sentence.
S(1) is for Sarah Palin. Sister Sarah symbolizes strength, serenity, sweetness and street smarts. She supports several serious stances on society’s struggles. Which ones? All potential interviewers please see Q.
S(2) is for Science, which is Satan’s tool. Again, please see Q.
T is for Tea Party. The Tea Party tactlessly trampled through a thicket of town halls by throwing tenacious televised tantrums about terrible tax increases that never happened. “Alliteration? That one of them fancy college words for taking away my Medicare?”
U is for Us vs. Them.
V is for Voting. Voting is a God given right that we would NEVER think of interfering with by forcing people to pay ofr ID they can’t afford, gerrymandering Congressional districts, underfunding voting machines in low income areas, mailing fliers to African Americans with false information, using robo-call centers to convince Hispanics to not vote in protest or anything else you can think of. If you do think of anything else, whatever you do, please don’t suggest it your local GOP campaign headquarters. (1-800-drty-trk)
W is for Wealth redistribution. What goes up must never come down. That would be class warfare!
X is for Xenophobia (courtesy of Chuck Hutchings). “HELLO? WHICH. WAY. TO. THE. BATHROOM? EL BANO? DO. YOU. SPEAK. AMERICAN? Good lord, I hate Canada!”
Y Is for Yesterday when things were so much better than they are today. Women and Negroes knew their place and pinko commie liberals were blacklisted. Don’t you wish we could go back to those good ol’ days? So do we and we’re trying as hard as we can!
Z is for Zero accountability (courtesy of Dave Mann). Words are completely powerless. If words had ANY kind of power at all, our Founding Fathers would have used them to declare our independence or elevated them to first among our rights. So stop blaming every death threat, attempted assassination, anti-government militia and shooting spree on us. It was an isolated incident. They all isolated incidents! See I(2)
Come join me on Facebook, my home blog or just follow me on Twitter @FilthyLbrlScum

 

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This Is How Right-Wing Media Start Their Inevitable Race-Baiting Of Certain Presidential Nominees

Blog ››› November 15, 2013 4:56 PM EST ››› SERGIO MUNOZ 

 

Immediately after President Barack Obama nominated the highly-qualified and widely respected Debo Adegbile to be the next assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Department of Justice, right-wing media attacked this top lawyer of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund for purportedly being a "racialist."
Writing on an obscure right-wing blog, J. Christian Adams, a frequent Fox News guest who served in the highly politicized and disgraced Bush-era DOJ and "whose claim to fame as a federal lawyer seems to be his penchant for accusing black people of discriminating against whites," accused Adegbile of "racialis[m]" and the venerable NAACP Legal Defense Fund of a "radical racial agenda." From a November 14 post on Pajamas Media:

Adegbile hails from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, an organization that has pushed a radical racial agenda including attacks on election integrity measures, opposition to criminal background checks for hiring, and racial hiring quotas for state and local governments.
[...]
Adegbile's name was mentioned as a possible nominee to the federal bench.  Because of his advocacy for racialist policies, such a nomination would face serious confirmation difficulties.  But in Eric Holder's Justice Department, nakedly racialist policies are standard fare, and Adegbile will fit right in.
This is an an-your-face nomination.  This is the White House sending a message to Republicans and conservatives that the radical racial policies of the Justice Department will continue full speed ahead.
[...]
[I]n the Obama Justice Department, the law is not as important as the cause. And with Adegbile, the cause is racialist.

In another context, the venue and content of this thinly-veiled insinuation of so-called reverse racism could be easily ignored. Unfortunately, on the topic of executive and judicial nominees of the current president, Adams' attack is disturbingly similar to the same sort of race-baiting that jumps from little-read blogs to prominent right-wing platforms like Fox News, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, National Review Online, and even the mouths of GOP congressmen engaged in the ongoing blanket filibustering of the president's diverse nominees.
Accusing select presidential nominees of racialism or anti-white bias is a tired page of right-wing media's playbook against those who litigate and uphold longstanding civil rights precedent, a body of law that tends to help most those systematically disadvantaged by racism. This rant has been directed with more or less subtlety at Labor Secretary Thomas Perez (who previously led the DOJ's Civil Rights Division), Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and Attorney General Eric Holder.
Assumedly, these charges have some sort of salience with those unfamiliar with American history and basic civil rights law.
Beyond the name-calling and dog whistle politics, however, the substance of this alleged hostility to whites and the criticism of the nominees' qualifications is quite thin. Adams' substantive attack on Adegbile, for example, is basically limited to pointing out he was involved in the legal defense of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which the conservative Justices ultimately gutted in a bitterly split opinion. That is, Adegbile joins the line of famous and talented lawyers who have at one time lost a case before the Supreme Court, a long list that includes other such wild-eyed radicals as conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, who didn't win 14.
In sum, Adegbile is a famous defender of civil rights. This is, apparently, a big problem for right-wing media.

 

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Glenn Beck Has Had Enough: ‘I, Personally, Am Calling To Impeach The President’

By Brian Carey on September 18, 2013 Subscribe to Brian Carey's Feed@brianmcarey

Go big or go home, huh?

Glenn Beck is fed up with this President, and he wants him out of office. In fact, he wants President Obama out of office well before January of 2017, when he is scheduled to leave office.
Just yesterday on his own television network, BlazeTV, Beck personally called for the impeachment of President Obama. This is the first time that he has done that.
“I called today for the very first time in my career,” Beck said, “on this President. I, personally, I have said before, ‘That’s impeachable.’ I, personally, am calling to impeach the President of the United States. This is impeachable.”
And what, exactly, does Beck mean by “this”? What is it that President Obama is doing that rises to the constitutionally defined level of “high crimes” and/or “misdemeanors”?
Beck believes that the President should be impeached because he is willing to arm the Syrian rebels. “He is arming known terrorists,” Beck said, “and people like John McCain should be impeached as well.”
John McCain should be impeached? We didn’t see that one coming.
“If you don’t want your vote back,” Beck continued, “what will it take? If you in Arizona said, ‘I voted for John McCain because I thought John McCain was strong on defense and better than the other guy.’ Whatever the deal is, if them saying, ‘We’re going to arm al-Qaeda’ and yes, we know that some of the arms are going to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda… if that’s not an impeachable offense for Lindsey Graham, for John McCain, for John Boehner, for the President of the United States, I don’t know what an impeachable offense is.”
Have a look at the video below.

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How the tea party lost on Tuesday night

• By Sean Sullivan and Aaron Blake

• November 6 at 6:30 am

  All in all, Tuesday was a lousy night for the tea party wing of the Republican Party.
  
  
  

  (Julie Jacobson/ Associated Press)
  Consider all that happened:
  * Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II, a tea party-aligned Republican and social conservative, lost the Virginia governor’s race to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, a flawed candidate who some Republicans were giddy about running against at the beginning of the campaign.
  * New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) was the national Republican standout. He won a commanding victory in a heavily Democratic state. Christie is a center-right Republican, not a tea partier. His  resounding victory will no doubt stoke chatter in the GOP that the party needs to moderate its views and get behind more candidates like him. (Which would mean less tea party candidates.)
  * E.W. Jackson, a controversial Republican who said it was “God’s plan to beget the Tea Party,” lost his bid for lieutenant governor in Virginia.
  * Bradley Byrne, a business-backed Republican, defeated Dean Young, a Christian conservative aligned with the tea party (National tea party groups largely refrained from backing him, though) in a House GOP runoff in Alabama. While Young attracted almost no national support, he rallied local tea party support and tapped into a palpable anger with federal government in the campaign.
  The most noteworthy points are what happened to Cuccinelli versus what happened to Christie. Cuccinelli lost moderate voters by more than 18 points while Christie coasted to a historic win in a deep blue state. No Republican had done as well as Christie did statewide in New Jersey since the 1980s. It will be hard for the party to interpret that as something other than a loud and clear call to move toward the politics espoused by Christie and away from what the tea party has argued for.
  Winning is an awfully persuasive argument in politics — perhaps the most persuasive argument.
  To be clear, there were lots of factors at play Tuesday. Cuccinelli and Young were both outspoken social conservatives, a reality that cost the former and may have cost the latter. Local issues mattered and so did the effective campaigns against the tea party candidates. So no, not everything that went wrong for tea party candidates was a direct result of  voters’ desire to defy the movement.
  Still, the overall pattern was not an encouraging one for the tea party. The movement remains a force in the GOP, and in Congress (see Cruz, Ted). But on Tuesday it had some of the wind knocked out of its sails.
  Fixbits:
  Democrat Bill de Blasio was elected mayor of New York.
  Mike Duggan (D) will be Detroit’s first white mayor in four decades.
  Martin Walsh (D) is Boston’s next mayor.
  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (R-Nev.) gives Hillary Clinton a vote of confidence for 2016.
  New Jersey adds the minimum wage to its state constitution.
  Colorado voters approved a state marijuana tax.
  Illinois appears set to become the 15th state to approve gay marriage.
  Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been diagnosed with a recurrence of prostate cancer.
  Cuccinelli’s campaign blames national Republicans, and Buono’s campaign blames her own party.
  

   

   

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A Minority Pawn

By Elecpencil

  I see where Florida Democrat Rep. Alan Grayson sent out campaign literature comparing the Tea Party to the Ku Klux Klan. When I heard this I said, “Um, duh.” Jennifer Burke, national outreach director for TheTeaParty.net was outraged when she heard about Grayson’s campaign material. She said, “as a black Tea Party activist, I could say that there is nothing more offensive than equating the Tea Party with the Ku Klux Klan.” She continued, “The hate speech uttered by sitting congressman Alan Grayson is deplorable, even by the low levels reached in recent years when Democrats routinely call us racists and suicide bombers.”

  How could Ms. Burke and I have such varied opinions of the Tea Party? I would say it is because she is deaf, dumb and blind. Here for Ms. Burke’s eyes is my proof of the Tea Party’s racism:

The truest sign in the whole bunch:

Now for some articles for MS. Burke to read about her racist Tea Party:

Tea Partyers shout racist slur at White House cops.

Tea Party members says racism is over and doesn’t exist in the U.S.

Study showing Tea Party members more likely to exhibit racism.

Once again Tea Party member sends out racist Emails.

What out of the closet racists say about the Tea Party.

Racism helps define the Tea Party.

Videos: Proud Tea Party racists.

Tea Party panel at CPAC turns racist.

Tea Party’s racist roots.

Tea Party racists.

Tea Party candidate busted for sexism and racist Emails.

NAACP alleges Tea Party racism.

Racist North Carolina Tea Party school board wants segregation.

A Tea Party organizer asks, “Why should I ask racist to leave a Tea Party demonstration?”

Ms. Burke I must say you are the type of minority the Tea Party loves. That would be naive ones they can use to pretend they aren’t racist. As for your quote about suicide bombers, I’d say any black person that gets involved in the racist Tea Party has a suicide wish.

RIP Lou Reed.

Lou Reed: “Bus Load of Faith”

“Dirty Blvd.”

“Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

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