I think it’s time I got this out in the open; those familiar with my blogging history will know this, but if anyone hasn’t gotten the 411 yet, I actually can’t stand my former Senator Rick Santorum. I’ve tried to view him as a sincere human being whose beliefs simply don’t coincide with my own, in any respect, who nonetheless has the full complement of human reactions to events and considers them against his own value system, weighing those events in due course of time with sobriety and in the interest of fairness towards the persons who are the actors and victims in society’s turbulent never-ending parade of events, small and large. And yet, upon hearing anything he ever says ever, some part of me simply hears the flatulence of an inflamed asshole.
For this reason, I view his failure to get any delegates at all in the Puerto Rico contest and his lack of an attempt to narrow the gap in Illinois with some mirth. He went to Puerto Rico as if specifically to tell these people they needed to speak English to be considered for statehood. Translation: Screw your folkways, if English was good enough for the Bible, it’s good enough for Puerto Rico.
He loses Michigan with a diversion into how much he couldn’t stand JFK’s embrace of separation of church and state, but then he snuggles deep into the lap of “Christian-nation-hood” on the eve of Illinois. I guess because everyone needs a reminder that he’s the darling of the designated hate-group crowd.
And just today, he makes the absurd statement that this election isn’t about unemployment or the economy, which would be what any rational person might think the election would be about as we climb out of a recession. Nope, folks, it’s about freedom. He might clamp down on contraception, pornography, teleprompters, make people speak English, and dictate out of the Catholic catechism circa whenever Santorum was schooled in the particulars of his faith, but he will ensure that people are free to go without health care, or even job security, or a path to higher education, because that’s the kind of freedom he believes in. If freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose, consider him as down with that as can be. He’s promising nothing. And a little disapproving of everything else.
I’d like to think he was nearly out of the race, but I don’t think he is. Unfortunately, he has something Romney, Gingrich, and Paul don’t have—a “narrative”. He’s the pro-life faith candidate who lost big in his home state six years ago and is looking to redeem himself while he also redeems America from wickedness. Sadly, I was reminded recently by the HBO movie Game Change that narratives can override substance in an emotional campaign. I’d like to think Santorum would lose by virtue of his awfulness, but that he hasn’t so far unnerves me.
Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog discovers that Sarah Palin’s discovered the Breitbart-commemorating streetposter I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, as the Breitbartlets do their best to assemble a death cult—and now, apparently, an entire Special Forces Division—to honor their leader’s memory:
When at the top of an aggregation site I saw the headline (“Breitbart Is Here”) and byline (Sarah Palin), I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fool’s Day. No, that’s still two weeks away. But it’s almost too rich for description:
There is a new street art poster that’s being emailed around and will no doubt eventually be spotted on a street corner near you. It’s a gritty black and white image of Andrew Breitbart looking both battle-worn and ever vigilant with the caption: “BREITBART IS HERE.”
Those three words express the instant connection many of us feel for our fallen friend. They express our identification with him, and our need to continue his fight for the good of our republic.
With the death of Breitbart, the conservative movement didn’t just lose a General - we lost an entire Special Forces Division. But he didn’t leave us without the tools and the knowledge we need to fight. This website - Breitbart 2.0 - is the culmination of his study of the technology and aesthetics of new media.
OMG. Andrew Breitbart is the Right’s very own Alinsky.
Ed’s understandably a bit preoccupied with boggling at the combo of Griftzilla cottoning on to Breity’s poisonous legacy, but there’s a good argument that Alinsky is the Right’s very own Alinsky. As Rumproaster Boreds of Canada pointed out on that earlier thread:
Adam Brandon, a spokesman for the conservative non-profit organization FreedomWorks, which is one of several groups involved in organizing Tea Party protests, says the group gives Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals to its top leadership members. A shortened guide called Rules for Patriots is distributed to its entire network. In a January 2012 story that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, citing the organization’s tactic of sending activists to town-hall meetings, Brandon explained, “his tactics when it comes to grass-roots organizing are incredibly effective.” Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey also gives copies of Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals to Tea Party leaders.
(Wikipedia)
It seems to me that the Breitbartlets and assorted bandwagon-jumpers are being a little presumptious with their cries of “I am Breitbart!” and the repeated vows at the BIG sites and other corners of the wingnutsphere to continue his work.
What if Mr. Breitbart experienced a deathsidewalk conversion? For all they or I know, he may have had a few moments’ clarity before he slipped away, and chosen to repent his wingnutty, rabblerousing tendencies, in which case I think a far more appropriate way to honor his passing is to use the eyecatching design to convey a more fitting and urgently needed message to those who mourn the man in this manner.
The righty blogs are whooping it up because the latest CBS/New York Times poll reckons President Obama’s approval rating’s dipping (CBS News) and that there’s been a decline in his approval ratings among women despite the events of the last couple of weeks (Weekly Standard). So I guess they’d better double down on the slutshaming then.
Quote of the Week (already): “If these young women are being responsible and didn’t have the sex to begin with, we wouldn’t have this problem to begin with.”—North Carolina County Commission Chairman Tom Davis gives his learnèd opinion on contraceptive rights. (TPM)
UK Prime Minister David Cameron is doooomed because he’s not scheduled to pal around with shiftless raving rightwing nutjobs during his upcoming official visit to Washington, DC. (Daily Telegraph)
Meanwhile, ex-News International CEO Rebekah Brooks—a close friend and neighbor of Cameron’s—is the latest of Rupert Murdoch’s hacking hacks to be arrested (again—she was last arrested in July 2011), along with her horsey hubby this time, as the ongoing inquiries into the clusterfuck continue to unfold. Crown Prosecution Service involvement implies that there are specific charges to face. (BBC News)
And in the comics section, Griftzilla seeks to capitalize on her return to the headlines this last week—not just for the airing of Game Change, but because it’s SO unfair to cherrypick quotes from political opponents in campaign ads (TPM)—by calling President Obama a “frikkin loser slut”* on Facebook, excoriating him for everything everywhere everywhen, and declaring she’s “willing and free to discuss these issues with the President anywhere, anytime.” The White House responds: “How would the plains of Mars when hell freezes over suit ya?”* (Facebook)
I’ve probably missed a few things going on. Clue me in if you like.
I’ve got to say, Charles Johnson has come a long way since the 2008 election (when LGF was a pretty horrible sight/site). I think a lot of people will still have problems forgiving him for the worst of the anti-Islamic propaganda he and those who hung out in his comments sections propelled over a number of years before he (and apparently his weeded-out commenters) saw the light and turned on his erstwhile allies, who are now bitter, bitter enemies, but the guy has a knack of getting under the skin of the right-wing blogs and “news” sites like no one else I know. And so it’s been the last 24 hours or so.
In yet another humiliating attempt to catch the Obama campaign in a hidden video conspiratorial outrageous outrage, the heirs of Andrew at Breitbart.com have creatively edited a video of a lecture by Harvard Law School Prof. Charles J. Ogletree, Jr., to make it look like he was admitting hiding a supposed damning bit of “evidence:” that Barack Obama was a closer friend to Prof. Derrick Bell than they wanted known.
Unfortunately for the reactionaries at Breitbart.com, they had to cut out some important context to make it look that way.
Footage of Barack Obama praising and hugging Professor Derrick Bell. It was spliced and diced by the media to avoid showing just how close Obama was to Bell. More than that, a close associate of the Obama campaign, Harvard Law School’s Professor Charles Ogletree, admitted on our exclusive tape, ‘We hid this throughout the 2008 campaign. I don’t care if they find it now.’
— Ben Shapiro
[Emphasis mine] {i.e. Johnson's—YAFB}
Here is a short video showing that Prof. Ogletree wasn’t talking about the Obama campaign hiding that portion of the video; in reality, he was completing a humorous jab at some of his colleagues who also attended the same 1991 gathering as Obama and Bell.
...
Uh, and this is … you can see this is 1990, so this is 21 years ago.
None of these people look like this today [laughter] and I know they’re going to be afraid or mad that I found this but it’s a good example.
[quiet laughter]
Let me see if I can get this, uh, to work…
Now what makes this so interesting, when you think about it, uh it’s uh, of course we hid this throughout the 2008 campaign so don’t… [laughter] … I don’t care if they find it now but uh, because it just told you that his growth had been, uh, astronomical in terms of his sense about race …
Please notice: he was joking about his colleagues and himself looking older, not seriously “admitting” to hiding anything.
...
Betty’s been covering the BIG Breitbart left-behinders’ desperate and hilarious attempts to recover from being scooped by BuzzFeed with the BIG revelation that President Obama spoke at a demonstration to introduce Professor Derrick Bell back in 1990.
As some commenters both here and on Balloon Juice have noted, since similar footage has appeared in documentaries in recent times, the only “scoop” is the spectacularly blatantly race-baiting spin Joel B. Pollak (“THE VETTING: OBAMA EMBRACES RACIALIST HARVARD PROF”) and Dana Loesch (“Andrea Mitchell Runs Defense for Obama, Derrick Bell”) are trying to feed their readers before Pollak’s appearance on the Hannity show this evening. The righty blogs are in medium cry about it right now (though I detect a hint of “OK, we’re on board. BOMBSHELL!!! Er, but is that all you’ve got?”, reading between the lines).
The whole thing’s as half-assed as you’d expect from this bunch of puffed-up amateur demagogues. BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith’s Twitter feed tells some of the story about the day’s developments if you’re interested. He deeply resented the BIG allegation that the video had been “selectively edited,” and since then, as Rumproaster Nellcote let us know on Betty’s last thread, PBS’s Frontline has issued the full video to prove there was no such editing:
Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Brietbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.
But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then.
Meanwhile, geek that I am, I’ve been checking out the Wikipedia article for Derrick Bell. We’ve caught conservatives desperately and clumsily trying to edit Wikipedia and even Conservapedia to suit their own purposes in the past. I don’t think this episode is quite as comical, but I’ll catalogue it after the fold just to add to the day’s daftness.
A package sent to Rush Limbaugh’s home that prompted a call to the bomb squad was nothing more than “a business opportunity,” WPBF 25 News’ Ari Hait reported Thursday night….
The package came from Pennsylvania, and investigators there already have interviewed the man who sent it, Hait reported. The man, whose identity was not released, said it was just a business opportunity and that he was sorry for causing the alarm.
Police said inside the package was an electronic plaque that had something to do with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln….
More specifically:
The package contained an electronic plaque commemorating the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth, authorities said.
O ... K. A self-link about that “DAILY CALLER INVESTIGATION” that revealed David Brock to be a drug-crazed maniac who still manages to run rings around right-wingers on a daily basis. His indulging in “this sort of thing” by inciting a daft Wexford man to send novelty items through the post is a new twist, but you’ve obviously got to go with the lemons you have.
there’s no denying responsibility now.
Says the Beauchamp Brogan Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee.
I call upon the President to denounce his supporters’ hateful violent rhetoric, to promise not to engage in or encourage it again, and to apologize to Limbaugh for stirring up this cesspit of hatred among his followers. A President is supposed to lead, not incite violence
I’m sure he’ll get right back to you about that.
Maybe we should start posting Obamicons with “HATE” instead of “HOPE” until he does. . . .
UPDATE: Reader Paul Stinchfield writes: “Is it time to remind folks again that Dutch libertarian Pim Fortuyn was murdered by a Green Party member, and that this murder was incited by the European Left? Or to recall the American Left’s open and unashamed fantasies of assassinating George W. Bush?” Yes, I think it is.
Silly question, Paul. In INSTAPUNDITland, It’s always time to blah blah blah blah blah.
I laid off writing about the untimely demise of Andrew Breitbart last week, partly because it was being covered wall-to-wall pretty well everywhere else and I had nothing much to add to that, partly because my own sadness was entirely to do with the unfinished business it left in its wake, such as the Sherrod vs. Breitbart et al. court case, and despite appearances, I still try to retain a tiny bit of class regardless of how folks on the right of the political spectrum choose to beHAAAAVE!!! Sorry.
But since Breitbart’s ex-employees and devotees, and his (possibly shortlived) legacy of BIG sites now seem dedicated to mounting his stuffed corpse as an entrance lobby hatstand to scare young children and liberal commie assholes, I see no reason to maintain my silence, and they’re more than fair game in my book.
Grief was understandably thick on the ground at the various outlets he’d set up last week. The comments sections were full of people pledging to follow his example in life and double down on the roaring and lying at teh dreaded lefties. The first signs of a death cult emerged as a viral campaign of posters and T-shirts, and in time no doubt mugs and other paraphernalia, for sale hit the tubes, the proceeds to go to Breitbart’s family. Residents of DC and elsewhere may have already been mildly mystified to see flyposters such as this decorating odd corners of their city streets.
Dastardly situationists (and there could even be a few reading this) may already be rubbing their hands and anticipating the Photoshop and sticker amendments that might improve the image, others may just wish to let them stand to prompt passersby to ponder deep questions, such as “Who the fuck is Breitbart?”, “Who defaced that property with that daft poster?”, or if they’re more au fait with blog lore, “Jeez, call the refuse department. If it’s true, that could be a public health hazard.”
Like me, you’ve probably been witnessing the last few days of Post-Breitbartocalypse Rightwingsexscoldslutslutslutblowhardgate with jaw agape alternating with teeth clenched grindingly shut.
It’s been quite the sight to behold, even marked in my homeland by the appearance of fiery balls in the sky (which I sadly missed through inattention/embarrassment/partial cloud cover).
I haven’t felt the urge to blog about it since innumerable bloggers have been writing up a storm about the libeling and attempted shaming and silencing of Sandra Fluke, not least John Cole on the sane side of the kerfuffle, countered in inimitable fashion by too many lying rightwingnut scribblers to mention, all singing from the songsheet Rush was yodeling from till he saw the writing on the wall and backtracked just a tad.
One I will mention is Colonel, a.k.a. Professor, “Cnut”* Mustard, who this morning staggered through the detritus of discarded Cheeto wrappers, soiled underwear, and scraps of the Constitution that litter his lair to hammer out on his keyboard a call to arms to his loyal followers:
Liberal groups have seized on a strategy I didn’t think would be effective, but has had some success, to go after advertisers of prominent conservative media personalities.
Media Matters explicitly seeks to bring down Fox News and investigate its executives, and Fox News advertisers have been targeted by groups like Color of Change, which has targeted Glenn Beck, Eric Bolling, Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan and Andrew Breitbart.
Now Rush Limbaugh advertisers are the target because of an analogy he used. As Jimmie Bise points out, Rush’s comments were overblown if one listens to what he actually said, but nonetheless, the use of “slut” or “prostitute” even in an analogy was inappropriate, as Rush has acknowledged. It also distracted from the attack on religious freedom which is the heart of the controversy.
As has become the pattern, Rush’s advertisers immediately were attacked and threatened, and several gave in quickly, like Quicken Loans and Sleep Number, pulling their advertising.
No advertiser was more associated with Rush than Carbonite, an online computer back up company. Rush often would read Carbonite’s ads himself, and would tout their service.
Remember that atrocious “rap” video from CPAC I posted a couple of weeks ago? The one with Dana Loesch’s hubby and Fox “comedian” Steve Crowder cavorting around in wigs as their captive audience made out like the worst Mexican wave you’ve ever seen? Yeah, that one. You’d probably tried to obliterate it from memory with the aid of whatever drugs you could lay your hands on. I know I did.
I have to say, at this point I am convinced that no one on the left really hates racism. In fact, they love it as it is their most important tool with which to control gullible voters. Cry racism and their mind-numbed acolytes dutifully echo the charge whether it is true or not — and it’s usually not. Well, they’ve done it again, cast the race card at conservatives. But this time they fell into a trap laid for them purposefully, set in order to prove their hatemongering, stupidity, cynicism, and lies.
At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last weekend a humorous video debuted during the TheTeaParty.net blogger awards hosted by John Hawkins of RightWingNews.com. It was a rap video created by comedian Steven Crowder and his pal Chris Loesch. They called themselves the “Powdered Zombies” and the song was meant to highlight the wrong turn this country has made and how we’ve drifted away from the founder’s ideas.
One line of the song was an obvious satire on the left’s constant cries of racism. Remembering that these rap singers were evoking the founders, the line in question goes: “But I’m back from the dead now bringing back all my knickers.” The next line confirms what the reference meant: “I’m just talking about my short pants.”
Knickers, of course, were the short pants that ended at the knee, pants that everyone knows were the stereotypical male fashion statement of the founder’s era.
Naturally the geniuses on the extreme left were unable to understand the difference between the word “knickers” and, well, the “N” word. Two of the left’s leading (low) lights on the Internet, Gawker.com and Wonkette both made the quip somehow into a clear example of conservatives being raaacist.
Wankette claimed that a black man in the room was so disgusted by the racism that he “walked out” and Gawker claimed that “they use the N word” in the video. Neither is true. How do I know? I was there! You can see the top of my gray fedora (A Stetson Whippet from the 1940s, by the way) at about 1:40 into the video. I was sitting behind the guy in the green shirt holding up the cell phone who appears often at the left lower corner of the screen and right in front of the person making the video.
The fact is there was no racism in this song. Zip, zero, nada.
I haven’t written much about Trump’s adventures in our Highland fastnesses before (I think the sum total of it on Rumproast is in the comments here) because the story’s quite depressing, and much more our problem than yours, though it has garnered some media coverage in America over the years.
The New Clearances
In 2007, The Donald flew in, waved his checkbook around, and set about bribing, menacing, and armtwisting his way into building a mammoth new billion-dollar “world-class” golf resort at Balmedie, near the UK’s old oil capital of Aberdeen, initially slated to include “a 450-bedroom hotel, a golf academy, 950 holiday homes, 36 golf villas and a residential development”. One of his websites trumpets:
I have been actively looking for links land in Europe for the past few years, and of course my preference was Scotland over any other country because I am half Scottish. My Mother, Mary MacLeod is from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. She grew up in a simple croft until she landed in Manhattan at the age of 20 and her first language was Gaelic.
When I saw this piece of land I was overwhelmed by the imposing dunes and rugged Aberdeenshire coastline. I knew that this was the perfect site for Trump International - Scotland. I have never seen such an unspoiled and dramatic sea side landscape and the location makes it perfect for our development. Our site is close to two of the world’s most famous courses and is just 15 minutes by car from Aberdeen Airport.
The initial wrangles focused on his plans to stabilize sand dunes that comprise a Site of Special Scientific Interest that make up 40% of this coastal “unspoiled and dramatic landscape”. The dunes naturally shift with wind and tide, and form a rare environment hosting a vast range of bird and wildlife. Trump’s argument was basically that he’d stop them blowing away and tidy them up, which is surely a good thing all round.
People try to live in this area too. Trump chose to honor his mother’s memory and his Scots heritage by re-enacting the Highland Clearances on a smaller scale. This did not go unopposed, one major thorn in his side being the organization Tripping Up Trump:
The TUT campaign has been key to Donald Trump’s retreat from the use of compulsory purchase orders.
The threat of forced evictions was deliberately held over the heads of the Menie families for nearly two years. Donald Trump’s track record shows he cannot be trusted to behave reasonably towards his neighbours or act responsibly towards the environment. He has bullied and mislead from the start.
As the Republican primaries rumble on, the pivoting from “Anybody but Mitt” to “Anybody but this bunch of useless demogogic clowns” continues. Jeb Bush wades into the fray, only to be labeled “confused” by Jake Gibson of Fox News:
Jeb Bush seems a little confused by some of the rhetoric being tossed around by the GOP’s 2012 presidential frontrunners in debates and out on the campaign trail.
How so?
“I used to be a conservative ...
Uh-huh. I mean, Huh?
... and I watch these debates and I’m wondering, I don’t think I’ve changed, but it’s a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people’s fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that’s kind of where we are,” said the former Florida Governor.
No shit, Sherlock. I think that bird flew the coop a few decades ago, Jeb.
“I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope.”
Insensitivity to escaping avians aside, he doesn’t sound very confused to me. In fact, the bulk of the comments over at Fox News right now seem to share his befuddlement, if that’s what it is.
Santorum spoke Alice Stewart seeks to “explain” Ricky’s references to President Obama’s religion the other day. It doesn’t go well.
An honest misspeak? Direct line from unconscious to mouth? Undigested talking point burp? We report, you decide, but in view of Ricky’s dogfoghorn-blowing, you have to wonder.
There seems to have been little discussion in any media of recent developments in the long-running lawsuit between Shirley Sherrod and Andrew Breitbart.*
Big bullying right-wing hero that he is, you’d think that Breitbart would be absolutely desperate to see this case proceed so he can gain wider currency for his claim that the motivation behind the video was to expose Sherrod’s role in the supposed “Pigford Affair” and pursue the mythical discovery process that his followers were jumping with joy over when news of the suit first broke. But Breitbart’s legal team, which appears to have enlisted Orly Taitz as a consultant, has been trying to stall and have the suit thrown out on numerous grounds, most recently in April 2011 by invoking the Anti-SLAPP Act:
WASHINGTON (CN) - Former U.S Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod’s lawsuit against right-wing blogger Andrew Breitbart survived a motion to dismiss, clearing the way for her to pursue the high-profile defamation suit she filed against him and a colleague last year.
Sherrod Sued Breitbart and associate Larry O’Connor in February 2011, charging the two men posted a heavily edited clip of her online that led to accusations of racism and ultimately got her fired.
Breitbart filed his motion under the D.C. Anti-SLAPP Act, which provides that if a defendant can show the claim at issue arises from an act in furtherance of the right to free speech - and if it is also related to an issue of public concern - he can file a special motion to dismiss.
But in a terse decision, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon tossed the motion, pointing out that the D.C. law that the motion was based on did not take affect until more than a month after Sherrod filed her defamation suit.
