Incitement 4 - Rape - Beck, Limbaugh, Savage, Boortz, Steele

First seen on the Rachel Maddow Show. more

Incitement 1 - Limbaugh Incites Terrorism

Those of the far right have been inciting their lunatic followers (the McVeighists) to violence for years now, but the din of wingnut pundits has never been so loud or continuous as it is today. Some examples of what I consider to be incitement would be Bill O'Reilly's ruthless verbal attacks on Dr. Tiller which led to his death, Glenn Beck crying about how "we" need to "take our country back," and (in addition to his already vociferous and vile attacks on immigrants) Lou Dobbs's howling accusations that an illegal alien tried to assassinate him (thus inciting his gun crazy, xenophobic, racist followers to protect him). To me this all echoes the propaganda campaign that resulted in Kristallnacht; an increasingly vitriolic rhetoric composed of inuendo and belief, attribution of all negatives to the opponent even if the negative is a result of their actions, inventing facts to fit their argument, and inventing incidents that prove the guilt of the enemy. It doesn't take a lot of armed zealots to fuck things up in a big way.

So I will now begin a list of language that I consider to be an incitement to violence. Each post in this series will be named "Incitement #" and will link back to here. When I have time I will go into the past and dig up some specific language for the above examples as well as other examples.

We begin this series with the King of Hate:

...what's happening here -- this is an in-our-face weakening of our security, which means that if a civilian target is hit again, particularly New York City, Obama is toast. He's done. The American people will tolerate a lot, but not a grotesque mishandling of security based on a contempt for your own country. -- Rush Limbaugh 11-16-2009

This sounds to me like he's prodding someone out there to hit a civilian target. There are more McVeighists out there than we care to think about.

Q: How Do You Know a Right Winger is Lying?

A: Their mouth is moving.

"Why Alan, isn't that a bit harsh?" No. The recent rash of domestic terrorism is a perfect case in point. We'll stick to the terrorist assassination of Dr. George Tiller but since Obama was elected we have had three major terrorist attacks in this country carried out by right wing extremists.

Bill O'Reilly says he never suggested Dr. Tiller should be killed and he says he never called him "Tiller the baby killer." Well, not only did he constantly refer to Tiller as "Tiller the baby killer," in 2006 he said on his radio show:

OK. So, I'm the fascist, I'm the bad guy, I'm the problem. Not Tiller. No, he -- no, no, no. He's a good guy. Now, Tiller's pumping all kinds of money into obviously the attorney general race. He wants the guy that's gonna let him off the hook to win. Those of you listening in Kansas, you ought to know that. You know, I don't -- I'm not gonna tell you who to vote for. You guys know these guys better than I do, but I tell you what, anything Tiller wants, I'm voting the other way. And if I could get my hands on Tiller -- well, you know. Can't be vigilantes. Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech.

But despicable? Oh, my God. Oh, it doesn't get worse. Does it get worse? No. Back with your calls and comments.

"Oh, but that's just that wacky Bill O'Reilly. Nobody takes him seriously." Well, you're wrong about that. An uncle of mine (RIP) who became shockingly right wing after being "born again" said once, in a grave and serious voice, "Bill O'Reilly is looking out for you, believe me." Made me sick with anger but he was in the hospital so I bit my tongue. I guarantee you the man that shot Dr. Tiller worships O'Reilly and the rest of the Fox News machine. They incite this kind of violence.

O'Reilly is only one example. How about "activist judges?" Here's one thing I can tell for sure, when a conservative says he is against "activist judges" he is saying he wants the most activist of judges as long as they're conservatives. When he says he wants them to follow the Constitution as written he means interpret it according to the right wing world view.

When conservatives say they want to protect the environment you can rest assured they're about to poison as much land as possible in as bad a way as one can imagine.

When conservatives say New Deal liberalism has ruined the economy they are lying. Using the GDP as measure you will find that when Republicans have been in power we have had the worst GDP growth. The best growth has been under Democrats. Jimmy Carter is the only Democratic President who has done worse than a Republican, Reagan (who did worse than every other Democrat), but Carter's economy was better than every other Republican President. Our most prosperous years were when the government was taxing corporations and the wealthiest the most. The New Deal got us out of the Great Depression. "That's not true, it was WWII," I hear some feeble minded conservative mimic parrot out there. WWII was the epitome of "tax and spend." We taxed the richest in this country 91%, the government took complete control of business and industry in this country and regulated what we could eat, how much we could drive, and when our lights were on or off and we came out of the war the government shifted the wealth to the not wealthy amongst us with the GI bill, rural electrification, the minimum wage, protections for unions, and works projects. The way we waged WWII is the closest we've come to communism and right wingers will agree that it brought us out of a depression.

The truth is that conservative policies have ruined the economy every single time it's been ruined. Reagan brought us a horrible recession which GHW Bush kept us in and under GW Bush our economy weakened and our capital system collapsed.

Here's yet another HUGE conservative lie: "We follow the intent of the Founding Fathers." Nothing could be further from the truth. The Founding Fathers believed in education and science while conservatives are opposed to and supicious of both. The Founding Fathers were from very firm to rabid in their belief in the separation of church and state while right wingers want evangelicals everywhere and everyone else elsewhere. The Founding Fathers believed your privacy was sacrosanct while Republicans have pressed for reduced protection from being stopped at random and searched, more surveillance of private citizens, and spying on people simply for having different opinions than theirs (they spied on the Quakers, for Christ's sake!). And don't even get me started on habeus corpus.

How about this lie: "We want to reach across the aisle." When the Republicans held power in the Congress and the Executive they totally shut out the Democrats (who took it like a bunch of fucking pussies, I'd like to throw in here), including not even allowing them to use a proper meeting room for their caucus. They put the "fuck you" in bi-partisanship.

Here's a few more:
Colin Powell's speech before the U.N.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"The United States of America does not torture."

"It was just a few bad apples." - Donald Rumsfeld

So if you hear it come out of the mouth of Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Mitch McConnel, Bill O'Reilly, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity, or any other "conservative" figure the exact opposite is true.

They Turned Out the Lights

Hmmph. Here's a little science that most conservatives will ignore because... it's science*:

It is not the military surge that has brought peace to the areas of Iraq where it has "succeeded." It was a surge in sectarian cleansing. The night time lights in Iraqi cities were analyzed and it was found that, starting before our "surge" began, the level of light in various ethnic areas of the cities were dimming. Why? Because as they fled, the victims of this cleansing turned out the lights. We have "achieved success" in Iraq by letting the Sunnis to run the Shiites out and the Shiites to run out the Sunnis. What was that about us not being able to leave because there would be a civil war and horrible bloodshed? Mightn't it have been quicker, cleaner, and a hell of a lot cheaper to have just let them take care of this themselves? They did it anyway, but we were trying to stop them.



*Actually, conservatives will ignore this information (if they ever encounter it as I doubt it will be reported on Fox Noise without a mighty heapin' of venomous scorn) is because they were first told that the "surge" has "succeeded." (Why do I feel it so necessary to put sarcastic quotes around all the key words used by this administration?) I think you should listen to this story from the fantastic radio program On the Media from WNYU for a better explanation than I can give in short here. Here's a short excerpt from the transcript that speaks specifically to why I think conservatives would probably ignore this study of night lights in Iraq:

SHANKAR VEDANTAM: The researchers, Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler, brought in a bunch of Republicans and told them about the Bush Administration’s claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. And then they provided the volunteers with essentially a correction of that information.

About 34 percent of conservatives believed that Iraq had either hidden or discarded the weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion, but after they heard both claim and refutation, 64 percent of conservatives believed that Iraq had had the weapons of mass destruction.

In other words, the refutation caused more people to believe in the Bush Administration’s claim than they did before.

There are more studies about that show that conservatives respond differently to the world than liberals (or non-conservatives), specifically in the case of new or contradictory information. Now if I were to hear I was likely to deny the truth this week just because I believed something wrong last week, I would try really hard to correct for that. Conservatives can't work like that, at least not easily.

There is so much about this out there. Odd how Fox Noise (or any major media outside of NPR) has completely failed to report on this. The findings really are quite striking and if you look at the studies, they're very well done. The right wingers are, as always, impuning the messenger and the message but what doubt I've seen has been towards individual tests. It seems odd that so many different studies could reach the same conclusion. If you've ever had any involvement in science you know that one spends a great deal of time removing any external cues or prejudices in the design process of the test. Here is a case where there may be a small bit of doubt as to whether the analysis is biased. I kind of don't think so. (I wonder if that makes me a conservative?)

And I think this is really interesting:

More On That "Bridge to Nowhere"

Palin lobbied hard for the bridge in Gravina, Alaska, and she kept all the Federal money for it. How does that equal "thanks, but no thanks?"

...the money did not go back to Washington. It stayed in Alaska for a different road project.

She endorsed the multimillion dollar project during her gubernatorial race in 2006. And while she did take part in stopping the project after it became a national scandal, she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.

she expressed support for the Bridge to Nowhere earmark as well. “I do support the infrastructure projects that are on tap here in the State of Alaska that our Congressional delegations worked hard for,” Ms. Palin said

When will the mainstream media grow the balls it needs to call a liar a liar?

Here's a really good NPR story about this.

Palin

I'm still trying to get my head around what the Nazis* are doing with Mrs. Palin. They introduce this absolute stranger 7 weeks before the election and then refuse to let her speak or for anyone to question her past in any way. They seem to be using the popular Christian Right tactic of shouting about how they are being "attacked" by the "liberal press," leading to a perception amongst the idiots of this country that they are some kind of innocent, oppressed minority.

Here are some questions I would like answered:

1. Why does she keep saying she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere" when she actively lobbied for it until the Congress killed it out of embarrassment?

2. She may not be a member of the secessionist movement in Alaska but her husband was. Why is it off limits to enquire about her involvement with this extreme right wing movement? If she never had anything to do with it and opposed her husband's involvement then that's cool. But if she did in fact speak before the group and offered them words of encouragement then I think we need to know this.

3. What actual experience does she have commanding the Alaska Nat'l Guard? The party has touted this as her "executive experience" but they have yet to show she ever gave a single command during her 20 months in office.

4. Her "experience" as a mother has been offered as more proof of what a good Vice President she would be. How can this be offered as proof if we're not allowed to question her about her mothering? Doesn't the pregnant, un-wed, underaged daughter kind of prove she may not have been doing the best job there?

5. If she is so wonderful for making the choice to have a Down's Syndrome child, why is she also so wonderful for wanting to make sure noone else has a choice? Her daughter has also been praised for her "decision" to have her child, i.e. she had a choice. I also wonder how much of a choice her daughter and her daughter's husband-to-be have actually had. On the boy's Facebook site he said (amongst other jock-ish statements), "I don't want children." Hmmmm. We're not allowed to ask questions about this, right?

6. Palin strongly supports abstinence only sex education (which is so oxymoronic it hurts). Isn't the proven fact that this doesn't work combined with her own daughter's pregnancy at 17 kind of beg the question, "Is she really stupid or just ignorant?"

7. Does she really believe that God wants a pipeline through Alaska? Really?

8. Does she also really believe we're fighting a war in Iraq because that's what God wants? Really? That's one fucked up God if you ask me. It also begs the question, does she think God wants us to kill all muslims? Does God want us to take over the world by military force? These are legitimate questions that she is not going to be asked, much less answer.

I could go on and I'm sure I will but I need to go do something busy with my hands before my head explodes.

*a.k.a. Republicans. Let's call a spade a spade, as it were.

Vast Right Wing Idiocy

Maybe someone should ask people like my Senator (Mitch McConnell) why they completely ignore these suggestions. Perhaps it is because their political ascendency would be altered by behaving ethically and prudently.

My favorites are:

Avoid Ill-Defined and Offensive Terminology: We are communicating with, not confronting, our audiences. Don't insult or confuse them with pejorative terms such as 'Islamo-fascism,' which are considered offensive by many Muslims.

Never use the terms 'jihadist' or 'mujahideen' in conversation to describe the terrorists. A mujahed, a holy warrior, is a positive characterization in the context of a just war. In Arabic, jihad means "striving in the path of God" and is used in many contexts beyond warfare. Calling our enemies jihadis and their movement a global jihad unintentionally legitimizes their actions.

Avoid negation, such as "We are not at war with Islam." Sadly, studies show that people tend to forget the negative part of a statement, so that when you say, for instance, "I do not hate them," the words that get remembered are hate and them.

Often it seems to me that the right wing hawks have seen this document and decided to use that language against their opponents regardless of its effect on national (or worldwide for that matter) security.

Quote of the Moment

"Not all conservatives are stupid, but most stupid people are conservative." - John Stuart Mill

Thanks to my girl for finding this one.