Fox News — pro-criminal about more than just guns

Raw Story: Fox News host Jon Scott on Wednesday advised former IRS official Lois Lerner that she should give up her constitutional rights and testify before Congress if she wanted death against her life to stop.

During a House Oversight Hearing on Wednesday, Lerner invoked her right under the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and refused to answer Chairman Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) questions about the IRS targeting Tea Party and other conservative groups that applied for tax-exempt status.

Lerner’s attorney had previously asked the committee not to call her to testify, citing numerous death threats.

After an commentator mentioned the death threats, Scott went on to say that Lerner should give in to them. “I can see why if you’re getting death threats, why you wouldn’t want to open yourself up to more scrutiny,” he said. “But at the same time, it would seem that answering some of the questions might cause some of these people who are so angry to ease up.”

And if you give bank robbers a million dollars and a helicopter like they demand, they’ll let the hostages go, fly away, and stop bothering everyone. Sure, Scott frames his question as advice, but he’s pretty clearly trying to play good cop to Fox audience goon squad’s bad cop. And this whole IRS thing has fallen apart anyway, so the goon squad only exists because Fox keeps beating this dead horse and getting their gullible and mentally unstable base all riled up about it. Sure, Darrell Issa’s trying to do CPR on his cooked up “scandal,” but heroic measures aren’t going to revive this corpse. As the Dr. McCoy says on the teevee, “He’s dead, Jim.”

So, since there’s no there there, Fox’ Jon Scott urges (in abject desperation) that Lois Lerner give the terrorists what they want. Because what they want is what Fox wants — and if it takes a few death threats to create the story they want to cover, then that’s just Fox’s brand of “journalism.”

What Scott Walker has in common with a certain recently deposed Ukrainian criminal

If you ever come across a “gee, but Scott Walker is swell!” comment under a news story, blog post, or Reddit comment thread, assume it’s paid propaganda and call the commenter out for it — not because the odds show it’s likely to be true, but because actions like this deserve profoundly negative consequences:

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: In the heat of the 2010 governor’s race, Scott Walker urged both county employees and campaign aides to go to news websites and post comments promoting him and his record, newly unsealed documents show.

It was just such anonymous posts by a county worker on campaign issues that prompted prosecutors to expand a secret “John Doe” investigation — launched to probe into missing money in a veterans fund — to also examine whether taxpayer dollars were being used illegally to finance political operations.

In one instance in May 2010, for example, a close ally posted online a portion of a Walker email almost verbatim on a Journal Sentinel story just minutes after receiving the directive. Walker had sent the note to an inner circle that included county administrators as well as campaign operatives.

Tapping out a message on his campaign Blackberry on the afternoon of May 4, 2010, Walker urged county aides, campaign staffers and other trusted volunteers to go to an online Journal Sentinel business story and respond to critics of his plan to privatize the airport in the comments section below the story.

The legitimacy of pro-Walker statements online need to be challenged, because this sort of activity is the very definition of state-sponsored propaganda. It’s also just a hair short of sock puppetry, making it extremely dishonest. If the people who pull this sort of thing wind up worse off because of it, then they’ll stop doing it. So, when an online comment goes something like, “Yah but Walker is so awesome, too!” then just go ahead and assumed they’re on the guv’s payroll.

And this credibility problem is what Scott Walker has in common with a certain corrupt Ukrainian politician, currently on the run from his own people.

Buzzfeed: Several conservative bloggers repeated talking points given to them by a proxy group for the Ukrainian government — and at least one writer was paid by a representative of the Ukrainian group, according to documents and emails obtained by BuzzFeed.

The Ukrainian campaign began in the run-up to high-stakes Ukrainian parliamentary elections last year, and sought to convince skeptical American conservatives that the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by President Viktor Yanukovych, deserved American support. During that period, articles echoing Ukrainian government talking points appeared on leading conservative online outlets, including RedState, Breitbart, and Pajamas Media.

The emails and documents, which include prepackaged quotes from election officials and talking points that some writers copied nearly word-for-word, offer a glimpse into how foreign governments dodge tight Justice Department regulations on foreign propaganda to covertly lobby in the United States: The payments were routed through a front group in Belgium to an American consultant, who has urged writers not to cooperate with a reporter investigating the campaign.

The model resembles a recent stealth campaign in which bloggers were paid by the Malaysian government to write favorable stories, though the Ukraine campaign appears to have involved smaller sums of money.

So there’s the common thread: American conservatives on the turd-polishing payroll. At this point, there’s ample evidence that a lot of opinion-making on the right is paid propaganda BS — so really, if you take any of it without a massive grain of salt, you’re literally a grade-A, first-class chump. But take a look at the company Wisconsin’s embattled governor keeps on this one: gangsters and dictators.

I wouldn’t trust this guy. And that advice comes unbought, by the way.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Given a chance to stand up for religious liberty, Bobby Jindal takes a pass

Raw Story: The administration of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Tuesday broke its silence over a public school that allegedly advised a Buddhist family to change their beliefs if they didn’t want their child to face harassment.

In a statement to The Times-Picayune, executive counsel Thomas Enright said the Jindal administration had no comment until both sides of the case were known. He also warned against the government restricting religious speech.

“Religious freedom is foundational to liberty in America,” Enright said. “In this case, the plaintiffs are alleging violations of the establishment clause not the free exercise clause. We don’t want to comment on this particular case before hearing the defendant’s side of the story, but as a general rule, government needs to be very careful before making decisions that restrict any American’s religious freedoms.”

The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Louisiana filed a federal lawsuit against Negreet High School in Sabine Parish in January. A teacher at the school allegedly taught that the universe was created by God about 6,000 years ago. The same teacher is accused of calling 6th grade student “stupid” because he is a Buddhist and consequentially doesn’t believe in God.

When the parents of the students complained to Sabine Parish Superintendent Sara Ebarb, they were allegedly advised to change their faith or relocate their son to another school with more Asian students.

Here’s the fun part: “The Times-Picayune noted the Jindal administration commented on the case just days after warning of a ‘silent war’ on religious freedom in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library.” So Jindal’s not overly concerned about speaking out about other cases, just this one in particular. And even if he did have a reasonable excuse to not weigh in, it wouldn’t be at all out of bounds to add a “If these allegations are true” remark, which for all intents and purposes would be a discussion of a hypothetical.

But let’s be honest: Jindal’s “silent war” fairy tale isn’t about religious liberty. It’s about forcing non-Christians to abide by Christian doctrine — the opposite of religious freedom. It’s the same strategy as Fox News’ phony “War on Christmas” — it’s propaganda designed to force people who aren’t Christian to act like Christians, to foster a sense of victimhood among Christians, and to paint everyone but Republicans as the enemies of the faith. If Jindal really did believe in religious freedom, he’d be as passionate in defending the rights of Buddhists in a very real situation as he has been in defending Christians in totally made up ones.

For conservative Christians like Bobby Jindal, “religious freedom” means you’re free to choose any of the delightful assortment of many Christian denominations. When it comes to defending other faiths, the best you can hope for is “no comment.”

The GOP’s nightmare scenario is now: cascading stupidity effect under way

Just a little something to back up my earlier post arguing that attempts to spin away the GOP’s War on Women only serve to prove it’s real.

Right Wing Watch: On Friday, Allen West spoke with Steve Malzberg where he defended Mike Huckabee’s recent comment by declaring that “the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down” while Republicans seek to reach the hearts and minds of female voters.

Asserting that Democrats want the government to be “the sugar daddy” and replace men, West said Democrats have been “caught guilty as always” and are responding by attacking Huckabee. He then went on to claim that the Left remains utterly silent when women like Malala Yousafzai are abused and attacked by the Taliban before declaring that “I’m going to be very blunt: the Left tries to win the women’s vote by talking from the waist down.”

See, because women aren’t really concerned about all that contraception and reproductive health stuff — or if they do are then they’re wrong. Only Republican men like Allen West and Mike Huckabee know what’s important to women, so listen up and learn, ladies.

But this is also the beginning of the nightmare scenario, where one moron says one very stupid thing and other morons rush to defend him because that’s what they think you do when conservatives get criticized. This is what the GOP has been trying very, very hard to avoid and most likely won’t be able to. You can’t spend years encouraging this sort of thing and expect to be able to shut it off when it turns out to be bad politics. These people are going to engage in insane and clueless sexism because that’s modern conservatism. It’s what Limbaugh does every day, it’s what rightwing blogs do every day, so it’s absolutely normal and not at all crazy to these guys. They’re going to keep doing it because they just don’t know any better.

And West is probably more popular in the base than Huckabee — meaning that even more people will likely come forward to defend him. Then others will come out to defend them. And cetera and cetera and cetera, until the unofficial Republican position will be that women who care about reproductive health and freedom are just loose, slutty morons being preyed upon by Democrats.

That’s exactly the wrong way to convince people you’re not waging a sexist War on Women. But it’s exactly what the base believes.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Republican gun raffle offensive at every level

Josh Marshall: The geniuses who run the Multnomah County Republican Party in Multnomah County, Oregon are honoring Martin Luther King Jr and Abraham Lincoln by raffling off a rifle in their honor.

From the MCP website …

Portland, OR January 13, 2014: Multnomah Country Republicans recognize the incredible time of year we are in. In successive months to start the year, we celebrate the legacy of two great Republicans who demonstrated leadership and courage that all of us still lean on today: Martin Luther King, Jr and Abraham Lincoln. In celebrating these two men, and the denial of the rights they fought so hard against, the Multnomah County Republican Party announces that we have started our third raffle for an AR-15 rifle (or handgun of the winner’s choice). The drawing will be held at our Lincoln Day Dinner on February 15th, 2014. Tickets are once again $10 apiece, or 12 for $100, and there is a hard cap of 500 tickets in the raffle.

Not only are they raffling off guns “in honor of” people murdered by guns, but they’re returning to the old “MLK was Republican” lie — after a year of especially nasty Republican racism. The party — who argued that Trayvon Martin got what he had coming to him, who said that Mike Bloomberg’s stop-and-frisk racial profiling policy was the smartest thing ever, who defended Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson after he said African-Americans had nothing to complain about in the lynching south — does not get to say they’re the inheritors to Martin Luther King jr’s legacy.

And who remembers what MLK was doing the day he was murdered by a Second Amendment Hero using his God-given liberty to protect America from the tyranny of desegregation? That’s right, he was in Memphis supporting the right of collective bargaining for sanitation workers — a right the GOP is currently stripping away from workers in state after state after state.

The only way this could be more offensive is if they took the guns they’re raffling and set up a shooting range where you take shots at an MLK effigy for prizes. The Republican Party in no way represents Martin Luther King’s work — on any level. And anyone who pretends otherwise should prepare themselves for the justifiable anger of those who know better.

Learning from the master

Joel Pett, Lexington Herald-Leader.

Climate ‘skeptics’ fail to understand that ‘global’ and ‘local’ have very different meanings

AlJazeera America: Meteorologists predict record-low temperatures for large swaths of the United States on Sunday and Monday.

The cold snap, which comes after snow blanketed much of the northeastern United States last week, has also led to confusion surrounding how weather relates to global warming.

[…]

That skepticism could be seen in full force recently as snow covered the New York City headquarters of Fox News, from where the station broadcast several reports suggesting that recent cold weather conflicted with scientists’ assessments of climate change, or even suggested the globe may be cooling.

Fox News hosts weren’t the only ones taken aback by the cool weather. Donald Trump tweeted that the ship of scientists that was until recently trapped in antarctic ice was proof that climate change is a lie. And U.S. Rep. John Fleming, R-La., wrapped up the confusion between weather and climate succinctly when he tweeted, “‘Global warming’ isn’t so warm these days.”

Here’s the thing: the US isn’t the world. Global warming means global warming — not just warming in your neck of the woods. And when did any climate scientist ever argue that climate change meant it there would never be ice, cold, or snow again? If they didn’t, then the appearance of ice, cold, or snow proves jack.

Right now, Australia and New Zealand are experiencing a heat wave and drought, driving wildfires. And it’s not even the entire US that’s freezing right now; the west coast is experiencing an abnormally warm winter. Further, snow and cold was late to Scandinavia.

But if you really want to fully grasp how little sense these statements make, consider them in the context of another common climate flatearther argument. For years, they’ve argued that a long term warming trend is just natural variation in global temperature. But then they turn around and insist that every heavy snow or exceptionally cold few days is supposed to be proof positive that global warming is a hoax. So big changes over time are just fluctuations — while fluctuations are PROOF THAT THIS ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ HOAX IS A COMMUNIST PLOT TO DESTROY AMERICA!! GAH!! PANIC!!!

In order to be a climate denier, you either have to have no idea what you’re talking about or pretending to be that ignorant. So the question, as it so often is when dealing with wingnut extremists, is whether they're lying or stupid.

Either way, there’s no reason to give them the time of day.

Egyptian military using Tea Party propaganda to justify coup

The indispensable Charlie Pierce points us to a NYT piece on how the military junta is talking about the overthrow of Mohamed Morsi to the people of Egypt. Turns out they’re talking a whole lot like any random American rightwing radio host; people can no longer trust the American government, because Pres. Obama is secretly in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood and trying to destroy Egypt.

"However crackpot that view may sound," the Times reports, “it is widespread among supporters of the military.”

But Pierce zeroes in on one extremely disturbing paragraph in the piece:

Many Egyptians refer to YouTube clips played repeatedly by the pro-military news media, quoting Representative Louie Gohmert, Republican of Texas, who recently equated giving $1.5 billion in aid to the Morsi government with support for terrorists.

"Be proud, all of you who voted in the worst Congress in the history of the Republic," writes Pierce. "Be proud. Republican leadership, which has proven to be unable or unwilling to control the flying monkeys in its midst. You’ve done something remarkable. In the streets of Cairo, the face of American foreign policy is Louie Gohmert, scourge of Terror Babies, and the biggest bag of hammers in the House Of Representatives. This is a blow from which diplomacy may never recover."

Tea Party conspiracy theorizing is finding its way into Egyptian propaganda. How long before other despots, criminals, and dictators follow their lead? How long before the ravings of Louie Gohmert, Michele Bachmann, and Steve King become the voices that speak for America, carefully cherrypicked because of all the helpful lying?

Tea Party BS doesn’t stop at America’s borders, apparently. And it’s not the world’s brightest beacons who find it useful — not people like Nelson Mandela or Aung San Suu Kyi.

No, it’s the killers and the tyrants people like that  fight against who find Tea Party lies most useful. And that tells you all you need to know about the original authors of those lies — don’t trust them any farther than you can throw them, because they are most definitely not good people.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

Because the GOP base only responds to ridiculous BS now…

The Hill: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a key architect of the Senate’s comprehensive immigration reform bill, warned Tuesday that President Obama could use an executive order to legalize millions of illegal immigrants if Congress does not act on the issue.

“I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress, to issue an executive order as he did for the Dream Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen,” Rubio told WFLA’s “The Morning Show with Preston Scott.”

"Now we won’t get any E-Verify, we won’t get any border security, but he’ll legalize them," he added.

So, how do you get Republicans on board with immigration reform? Sell them an insane conspiracy theory. That’s what they’re used to and that’s what they like.

"What’s particularly interesting here is that Rubio doesn’t think it’s enough to point out that the current situation is untenable," notes Greg Sargent. "According to GOP pollster Whit Ayres, even Republican primary voters, once they engage on the issue, agree that the current situation amounts to de facto ‘amnesty’ for the 11 million, and want to do something about it. But merely proposing to solve an existing problem won’t do it; Rubio thinks he needs to make inaction appear far more frightening to Republicans by also invoking Obama’s evil intentions, i.e., his secret desire to grant citizenship to them without securing the border.

"Here you have the makings of a way out of the GOP predicament. Republicans can embrace comprehensive reform as a way of frustrating Obama’s secret designs."

But how badly has the Republican Party and their press shop at Fox News and talk radio screwed up the heads of GOP voters? They won’t listen to reason anymore, so you have to cook up some insane and panic-inducing fairy tale about grand conspiracies and scary brown people taking over America.

I wonder when Republicans will realize they’ve taken propagandizing way too far?

Maybe it’s too late for that realization to make any difference. Maybe they already known they’ve twisted the minds of millions beyond any hope of rationality and, as Rubio’s finding out, the only way to lead them anymore is to play along with the paranoid madness the party has instilled in them.

[photo by Gage Skidmore]

No, embassy closings do not prove that massive NSA data collection is necessary

As US embassies and consulates close in the middle east and Africa, surveillance hawks are using the news to promote their favorite spy program.

CBS News: Lawmakers used the government’s early warning of a terrorist threat to defend the National Security Agency’s controversial surveillance programs on Sunday, saying the threat — which some have described as among the most serious since 9/11 — might not have been detected without the government’s aggressive intelligence-gathering tools.

Sources tell CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton that intelligence officials learned about the threat, in part, as a result of “intercepts" of terrorist chatter that indicate that the operation is in “the final stages" and “it could be big."

[…]

For [supporters of NSA data-mining], the plot is proof-positive of the need to preserve the embattled surveillance programs. “The NSA program is proving its worth yet again," declared Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on CNN. The hawkish Republican said that al Qaeda is “on the rise" across the Middle East and North Africa, warning that America risks another 9/11 by disengaging.

OK, so here’s the problem: the NSA data collection that Edward Snowden blew the whistle on is data from the US to foreign sources of vice versa. That’s what everyone’s all worked up about and I can say without hesitation that this data collection had jack-all to do with the embassy closures. According to the Telegraph, “US intelligence picked up on messages in which Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor, ordered Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of its Yemen branch, to carry out an attack."

Yemen in not in the United States and if Ayman al-Zawahiri were here, I’d hope we’d be doing one helluva lot more than tapping his phone at the Motel 6. So the NSA program that Graham is praising didn’t bring the intel on the threat to embassies in the Muslim world. It couldn’t possibly have. He’s just cynically and dishonestly trying to shore up public opinion for the program by appealing to people’s fears. And he’s not the only one; Rep. Peter King and Sen. Saxby Chambliss joined in, as well as Democrats Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger and Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Unfortunately, that’s what we’ve come to expect from security hawks; fearmongering and propagandizing, rather than making a legitimate logical argument for their position. That’s the neocon way, after all, and it shows the weakness of their argument. If your position is good, you don’t need to lie about it.

[photo via misterphisch]

Another ‘Obama scandal’ quietly dies

Politico: After months of fiery hearings and vows to get to the bottom of Benghazi, House Republicans are now barely making a peep when it comes to an issue they once couldn’t stop talking about.

Democrats say Republicans are lacking damaging evidence against the Obama administration in the aftermath of the attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya. They argue the House GOP is in retreat over the investigation that some conservatives believed could bring down the White House or tar a 2016 presidential candidate.

“I know our leadership in general does not want to look at that at all,” Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) said. “They’ve said they have very little interest.”

An aide to one House leader dismissed the notion that leadership is uninterested saying, “That claim is ridiculous, just totally, out-to-lunch, La-La Land absurd.”

Of course leadership isn’t interested in further pursuing Benghazi — it didn’t go anywhere. It just wandered around in circles until it finally died. It doesn’t matter how much of a frenzy you whip up over something, you can’t make your baseless outrage create its own foundation. Reality does not bend to the conservative will, no matter how much they insist the opposite.

So whatever happened to Benghazi? The same thing that happened to Solyndra and “Fast and Furious" and the idiotic birther crap and etc. — Republicans went on a fishing expedition where there were no fish. And now they want everyone to forget they ever went at all.

NRA’s completely dishonest defense of ‘stand your ground’ laws

ThinkProgress: The National Rifle Association has been silent since a jury acquitted George Zimmerman Saturday in the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. But it didn’t take long for the gun lobbying group to weigh in once Attorney General Eric Holder blasted the notorious NRA-backed Stand Your Ground laws that gained national attention in the aftermath of Martin’s death.

In an address to the NAACP national convention Tuesday, Holder criticized state Stand Your Ground laws for causing more violence than they prevent, and potentially empowering individuals to become vigilantes. “By allowing and perhaps encouraging violent situations to escalate in public, such laws undermine public safety,” he said. In response, NRA Institute for Legislative Action executive director Chris Cox elevated the controversial state provision to a “human right,” calling Holder’s opposition “unconscionable.”

The attorney general fails to understand that self-defense is not a concept, it’s a fundamental human right. To send a message that legitimate self-defense is to blame is unconscionable, and demonstrates once again that this administration will exploit tragedies to push their political agenda.

The NRA’s opposition to Holder’s statement is unsurprising. In partnership with the American Legislative Exchange Council, the NRA was behind the drafting and dissemination of these laws, ushered through legislatures in at least 22 states over the course of just a few years.

See what they’re doing here? They’re trying to trick you into thinking that the only reason self-defense is legal is because of these idiotic “shoot first" laws. “Stand Your Ground laws clearly go above and beyond a minimal self-defense guarantee, by authorizing not just the use of force, but the use of deadly force, without any duty to first attempt to retreat or mitigate the situation," the report goes on. “These provisions also authorize that use of force when one fears death, as well as severe bodily harm or even a forcible felony."

If we did away with Stand Your Ground today — and federal legislation could do exactly that, read your Constitution — self-defense would still be a valid legal defense in a court of law. Any right to defend yourself is totally independent of Stand Your Ground laws and anyone who says different is a liar.

No, massive data collection did not stop Danish terror plot

Pro Publica: Defending a vast program to sweep up phone and Internet data under antiterror laws, senior U.S. officials in recent days have cited the case of David Coleman Headley, a key plotter in the deadly 2008 Mumbai attacks.

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said a data collection program by the National Security Agency helped stop an attack on a Danish newspaper for which Headley did surveillance. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the Senate intelligence chairwoman, also called Headley’s capture a success.

But a closer examination of the case, drawn from extensive reporting by ProPublica, shows that the government surveillance only caught up with Headley after the U.S. had been tipped by British intelligence. And even that victory came after seven years in which U.S. intelligence failed to stop Headley as he roamed the globe on missions for Islamic terror networks and Pakistan’s spy agency.

Supporters of the sweeping U.S. surveillance effort say it’s needed to build a haystack of information in which to find a needle that will stop a terrorist. In Headley’s case, however, it appears the U.S. was handed the needle first 2014 and then deployed surveillance that led to the arrest and prosecution of Headley and other plotters.

So basically, US authorities were tipped off that something was up — and then the surveillance began. So pretty much what you think of when you think of ordinary, everyday criminal surveillance. It wasn’t spying or snooping or data-mining, it was police work. You know, the old-fashoned kind law enforcement that supposedly can’t possibly deal with modern terrorist threats, because terrorists are magic or something.

And how few and far between must NSA success stories be that they’d have to exaggerate one like this to justify PRISM? If there were plenty of defeated terrorist plots out there, they wouldn’t have to pad this story to supply one. From a logical standpoint, the lie weakens their case — it doesn’t strengthen it.

Why isn’t Obamacare more popular? Because advertising works

Steve Benen: Even the most ardent proponents of the Affordable Care Act would balk at describing the law as “popular.” It’s just not. The individual provisions within the law enjoy broad public support, but much of the public still doesn’t know exactly what’s in the health care law, and many continue to have negative impressions of the overall package.

But there’s no great mystery as to why Americans are reluctant to hold the breakthrough domestic policy milestone in high regard: they’ve been told not to like it.

Seven months before the core provisions of President Obama’s health care law are to take effect, most television advertising that mentions the law continues to come from its opponents.

Since the law’s passage in March 2010, critics have spent a total of about $400 million on television ads that refer to it, according to a new analysis by the Campaign Media Analysis Group at Kantar Media, which tracks such spending. Supporters have spent less than a quarter of that — about $75 million — on ads that cast the law in a positive light, according to the analysis.

For those keeping score, that means the law’s opponents — various Republican committees, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, etc. — have outspent its proponents by a greater than five-to-one margin.

With a public-relations imbalance like that, it’s hardly a surprise that the public remains skeptical.

It’s a strange position to be in to have to spend money fighting a battle you’ve already won, which explains the aforementioned public-relations imbalance. Obamacare is the law of the land and the idea that  it will be repealed is a fantasy.

But Republicans have nothing positive to run on — mostly because the party no longer stands for anything. They’re a set of post-policy reactionaries who are defined only by what they’re against — which means they must keep up the attacks on Obamacare, as futile as they are, in order to create the appearance of having some sort of policy to run on — even if that policy is merely being against a policy.

Benen quotes Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum: “Dems need to be promoting Obamacare with the same fervor Republicans bring to the attack, pointing out its benefits and upsides at every opportunity. So far I haven’t seen this — or even anything even close to this — and I suppose that might only be due to the fact that 2014 is still a ways off. But it better start happening soon.” Fortunately, “soon” is now. The president is heading to California to boost his reforms, congressional dems plan to put it front and center and paint Republicans as wanting to repeal popular provisions of the law, and “the DCCC is even confident enough to launch robocalls slamming 10 House Republicans for voting to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”

The advertising dollar cuts both ways.

Heritage Foundation’s downward trajectory

The last we heard from the rightwing Heritage Foundation, they were nursing a self-inflicted credibility wound after releasing a BS report on the cost of immigration reform — a report written in part by an anti-Latino racist. Now they’re back, this time with economist Selim Furth testifying before a Senate committee on the restorative wonders of austerity.

The problem wasn’t that the testimony was bullshit, the problem was that it was such obvious bullshit that it would never convince anyone in a million years. He cherrypicked numbers and left out others — in short, outright lying to support his case.

Steve Benen: …Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) pointed during the hearing that Furth’s claims about [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] numbers are largely the opposite of the figures from the OECD itself.

“I am concerned that your testimony to this committee has been meretricious,” Whitehouse told Furth. “I am contesting whether you have given us fair and accurate information.”

For a Senate Budget Committee hearing, that’s pretty tough language. Indeed, the senator was effectively accusing an economist from the nation’s preeminent conservative think tank of presenting deliberately misleading information on an important issue.

Which leads Paul Krugman to wonder if Heritage has finally just jumped the shark entirely:

One does wonder, by the way, whether Heritage may at this point be destroying its own usefulness. Its purpose was never to do real research; it was always a propaganda arm of the movement. But it was supposed to create a plausible illusion of intellectual rigor, good enough to take in gullible journalists.

But is there anyone not a committed right-winger who, at this point, believes anything coming out of Heritage? And in that case, what’s the Foundation for?

That’s a good question. Heritage is a bullshit factory; the propaganda shop for the far right in America. But is propaganda worth anything when it’s such obvious lies that no one could ever believe it? At this point, they’re pretty much just crazy-assed talk radio dressed up nicer. Limbuagh, Hannity, Beck, etc. don’t convince anyone, all they do is rile up the base and get them to the polls. But that base is becoming too small to make the difference and are mattering less and less every cycle. Talk radio is a steadily declining influence in American politics and Heritage is right behind it.

How about that visionary leadership from Heritage leader and former Sen. Jim DeMint, huh? Everything started to come apart over there after he signed on.

Say what you like about Jim DeMint, but he sure knows how to get a plane to the ground in a big hurry.

[photo via Wikimedia Commons]

Rubio thanks Fox News for helping with Benghazi propaganda

Raw Story: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) on Thursday thanked the Fox News channel for everything they had done to promote the idea that President Barack Obama’s administration deliberately allowed four Americans to die in Benghazi, Libya last year.

Following a day of near wall-to-wall Fox News coverage of the House Oversight Committee hearings on Benghazi, Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy asked Rubio for a reaction.

“Very insightful and there’s a lot more to be learned now,” the Florida Republican opined. “Here’s what we know about Benghazi. First of all, that post probably shouldn’t have been opened. And the people in charge, Secretary Clinton and the State Department, they had a steady stream of reporting that showed how dangerous it was.”

“You know, I just want to congratulate those like Fox News and others that have kept on this issue,” he added. “Because this is not about politics. This is about accountability. Someone needs to be held accountable for what’s happened here. But it’s also about preventing this from happening in the future.”

Rubio asserted that the administration had tried to cover up “any reference to terrorism” because of political motivations during an election year.

Of course, if the Obama administration was trying to cover up “any reference to terrorism,” they pretty much failed immediately, since the President called it an “act of terror” the very next day. Viewers of Fox were probably disappointed, since the wall-to-wall coverage was of a yawnfest that turned up nothing new.

But Rubio and other Republicans are pleased as punch with Rupert Murdoch’s propaganda shop, since this whole Benghazi “scandal” is such an obvious load of horseshit that no one other than Fox will give it more than passing mention. According to the report, “Even Fox News host Megyn Kelly observed during the Wednesday hearings that the network had gotten a ‘little lopsided’ by favoring Republicans.”

If it weren’t for Fox, the Benghazi hearings would be a lame sideshow without a barker. As it is, it’s a lame sideshow with various every Foxbot trying to lure rubes off the midway with false promises to shock and amaze.


Related: Jon Stewart rips conservative attempts to create Benghazi hysteria to shreds.

Anti-immigrant Heritage study co-author a believer in racist pseudo-science

WonkBlog: The Heritage Foundation made something of a splash with its study suggesting that immigration reform will cost the public trillions. Past work by one of its co-authors helps put that piece in context.

Jason Richwine is relatively new to the think tank world. He received his PhD in public policy from Harvard in 2009, and joined Heritage after a brief stay at the American Enterprise Institute. Richwine’s doctoral dissertation is titled “IQ and Immigration Policy”; the contents are well summarized in the dissertation abstract:

The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

This is important, since this would seem to be one of the underpinnings to the argument that immigration reform will cost trillions of dollars.

“The main premise of the heavily disputed Heritage Study is that undocumented immigrants will be unable to reach education and income levels high enough to make them a net plus to the economy, even after several generations,” reports Talking Points Memo’s Benjy Sarlin. The Heritage study doesn’t come right out and say that Latinos are too dumb for America, but it would seem that’s only because it would rightly doom the study’s credibility.

Once again, we see that the Heritage Foundation is a bullshit factory and this particular variety of bullshit can be classified as “fullblown racist.”

GOP website not extremely proud of the party it represents

Salon: The new website for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, has earned a lot of attention in the past week for its bold new attempt to win the Internet and elections by imitating BuzzFeed. On the website today, you can find items like “13 Animals That Are Really Bummed on ObamaCare’s Third Birthday” or a video of President Obama whiffing 20 free throws. There’s more substantive fare too, like a polling memo on the Keystone XL pipeline.

One thing you won’t find on the front page, however, is the word “Republican,” except for at the very bottom in a disclaimer box that reads, “Paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee.”

[…]

One possible reason for the omission: The Republican brand has seen better days. The latest CNN Poll found that 54 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the GOP, while fewer than three in 10 say they have a positive view of the Republican Party. Just over two-thirds of respondents say the party favors the rich and nearly half think the GOP’s policies are too extreme.

And how about that kicky new landing page, huh? Nothing says a bright new future awaits better than an empty desert highway leading into dark storm clouds.

But this story got me thinking of a seemingly unrelated piece over at Politico. In that one, we’re told that Rand Paul-style “Libertarianism” is a-takin’ over the GOP, so watch out stodgy old party! Yeehaw!

What both stories point to is a Republican Party desperate to distance itself from the Republican Party. Rand Paul breaks with his party on one or two issues, sure. But he’s as “Libertarian” as he is Communist. If you ticked off a list GOP platform planks, Paul would be with his party about 98% — what a wildcard! And let’s not even get into his “fetal rights” BS, which would force women to give birth against their will.
The word “liberty” does not apply there.

No, what Rand Paul and the new NRCC website have in common is that they’re both not so very eager to call themselves Republicans, out of fear the voters will reject them as part of a thoroughly ruined brand.

How guns reduce crime

Talking Points Memo:

A prominent Utah gun lobbyist fell victim to a robbery earlier this week when his AR-15 was stolen from his vehicle, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported.

Clark Aposhian, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, said his car was locked and parked outside his home on Wednesday, with his weapon secured in a case in the backseat. By Thursday morning, the AR-15 was nowhere to be found. Investigators still have no leads on the missing weapon.

Gun apologists like to argrue that more guns means less crime. But the reasoning is flawed. Crime has been declining for years and so has gun ownership. Sure, gun sales are high, but it’s panic buying by gun nuts. The number of people who actually own one or more guns has been declining for decades. So the math is not “more guns = less crime,” the math is “fewer gun owners = less crime.” After all, if you have two guns, it doesn’t mean you’re twice as likely to witness a crime, let alone stop one. This story illustrates one reason why that’s so. Some dope gets his AR-15 stolen and now cops have to worry about one more assault rifle in the hands of a criminal.

This also points to another problem with blood lobby arguments. When they start talking about guns and crime, they gloss over the fact of stolen firearms. But if you start talking about restricting sales, they start talking about a “black market” where criminals will be able to buy guns. And where do those black market guns come from? Well, they’re stolen, of course.

So guns absolutely stop crime — except when they absolutely do not. It really all depends on which serves your current line of bullshit.

[photo by Vlad & Marina Butsky]

MI prosecutor determines Fox contributor picked fight, then claimed he was attacked

Lansing State Journal:

Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III said he won’t file criminal charges after reviewing unedited video showing events that led to a Fox News contributor being punched during December’s right-to-work demonstrations.

Steven Crowder filed a police report following the Dec. 11 incident at the Capitol, which Michigan State Police had referred to Dunnings’ office for review. The fight occurred amid generally peaceful demonstrations involving more than 10,000 people who had gathered in Lansing that day as lawmakers voted on a package of bills that ban requiring union dues as a condition of employment.

Dunnings said today the first video his office reviewed had been edited. After reviewing an unedited clip, he decided to not pursue the case.

“It’s pretty clear the person that they wanted to charge was acting in self-defense,” Dunnings said of the union member who apparently slugged Crowder.

Crowder posted a heavily edited video of the altercation, which made it seem as if he’d been attacked out of the blue by Fox News patented “union thugs.” Needless to say, Crowder accompanied the video with a pocketful of victim cards. But a second, less dishonest video completely undermined his story.

Crowder said on Twitter later day that he suffered a minor cut to the forehead and a chipped tooth after being “sucker-punched” four times.However, unedited footage shows that the union member who apparently punched Crowder appeared to have been pushed to the ground seconds before the brawl.

It’s unclear who pushed the union member. Crowder was standing nearby and appears to throw his hands up in the air in a gesture of innocence after the man fell, the video shows.

If you see someone fall over, you don’t immediately claim you’re innocent unless you’re not. He might as well have shouted, “Wasn’t me!” He also provided the prosecutor with the dishonestly-edited version of the incident, which you would only do if you had something to hide. Both videos are at the link.

If you ever thought that maybe Fox News wasn’t really a propaganda outfit, that they were simply a conservative-leaning network in a mirror opposite mold of MSNBC, you can disabuse yourself of those notions. This “news” outfit was actively engaged in making pro-union people look bad, by trying (and succeeding) to incite them to violence. By all appearances, Crowder attacked a man to get him to take a swing at him.

One thing’s for sure, you’re probably not going to see this story on Fox News