In case you missed it here is Jon Stewart's response to Rick Santelli and the notion that the rich investors and Wall Street traders represent a cross-section of the American people. No they represent the wealthy They are uninterested in average Americans except when they need they during an election cycle or to use them to promote their agenda which has little to do with the concerns and struggles of the average American.
Jon Stewart Eviscerates CNBC and Rick Santelli - March 4, 2009
Quick and dirty mirror of http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/h..., sorry about video quality.
Original here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/ind...
and more of Jon Stewart on Letterman:
Jon Stewart on Dave Letterman -- Still Kicking CNBC's Ass
The Young Turks - March 6, 2009
And here's Letterman making fun of Rush Limbaugh while wondering why the Republicans and Conservatives take Limbaugh seriously as the head of the Conservative Movement.
On Limbaugh Rick Santelli and Pity for the Rich
David Letterman- Rush Limbaugh Bonehead Gangster
March 02, 2009
What does Katie Couric think about Rush Limbaugh's new look?
Rachel Maddow Show - guest Howard Dean discusses recent rumblings in the opposition party...
March 4, 2009
Glenn Beck started a new series called the "War Room " on his TV show in which Beck and his guests talk about doom and gloom worse case scenarios . Well of course Glenn Beck has been preaching that America is on the verge of a disaster and a possible uprising or second 'Civil War 'since Barack Obama 's election victory. Obama is a secret terrorists an evil Socialists or even a Collectivist Communists who is out to destroy America and make it unrecognizable from what it was. Beck believes that Obama is against all that America traditionally stood for. One wonders what American values are those which Beck thinks were the true values of America- Do these values include the lies and propaganda of the Bush Regime which led America into an unnecessary war, or is it the values of 'warrantless wiretaps or suspension of the basic rights of prisoners or the use of torture or the handing out of billions of dollars in no bid contracts to the friends of the Bush Regime etc.
Colbert's 'Doom Bunker' Parodies Glenn Beck's 'War Room'- March 6, 2009
Republican Party Slams Obama 's Proposal For Taxing hidden Offshore Accounts of the Wealthy. Oh yes Obama is going to tax these in many cases illegal off shore accounts of the rich. This may mean an end finally to "tax Haven" and other methods of creative accounting procedures.
RNC Continues To Brag About Protecting The Rich
The Young Turks -March 4, 2009
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And on a more serious note in an article from The People For The American Way the authors argue that the Religious Right and Political Right are still a force to be reckoned with though some commentators after Obama's election victory pronounced the Far Right and Religious Right as being dead or irrelevant. The Right have re-emerged as a "Resistance Movement " to the Obama administration. The Right Wing organizations it should be noted have rather deep-pockets with budgets in the millions to hundreds of millions to fight for whatever causes they believe in and to do as much as they can to prevent Obama's policies from being put into action. These people are media savvy and have the power once they are focused on the issues which concern them to fill the air waves and the internet with their message. They also have the power to put pressure on the media to control how certain issues are treated by the press in the same way that they did with the help of the Bush Regime when it was in power. No matter what we must take them seriously as a threat as having a powerful voice to steer the media discourse according their biased angle as it were.
The Right Re-Tools as a 'Resistance Movement' People For The American Way: Right Wing Watch , March 2009
RIGHT DECLARES WAR ON THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION
Last week more than 8,000 right-wing political leaders, media personalities, and activists gathered in Washington D.C. for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Watching GOP officials and other speakers made it clear that the movement sees its future not in cooperating with the Obama administration but declaring war on it. Mike Huckabee warned that the U.S. was becoming the Union of American Socialist Republics, while Sen. James DeMint claimed that Americans were ready to take to the streets to stop America’s slide into socialism. CPAC made it clear that right-wing media, religious and political organizations are seeking renewed energy as a “resistance movement” – and are mobilizing their supporters by denigrating the Democratic Party and the Obama administration as enemies of American values.
That effort began as soon as the votes were counted last November. “I knew, moments after the election results came in, that I was now part of the resistance movement,” says Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America. CWA is mobilizing religious conservatives with the claim that “We face a president and Congress more hostile to unborn children, to marriage, to religious freedom, to free speech, to protecting our country than has ever existed in our history.” Right-wing Catholic leader Deacon Keith Fournier similarly pledged to be part of a “massive resistance.”
Republican Party leaders are being successfully egged on by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich to do what they can to try to make the Obama administration a failure. The fruits of this right-wing campaign and its embrace by national Republican leaders can be seen in the near-total party-line opposition to the economic stimulus bill and opposition to new Obama budget proposals. And the strategy of repeatedly referring to President Obama’s economic plans as a “socialist” plot is echoed throughout the right wing media machine. The strategy is gaining some success with the recently reported decline in support for Obama among Republicans even as his overall public support remains high.
MASSIVE RESOURCES EVEN IN A TIME OF TIGHT BUDGETS
Right-wing organizations are not immune from the economic realities and financial pressures facing the economy and advocacy groups across the political spectrum. Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based media empire created by James Dobson, has recently let go about 20 percent of its staff – but that’s from a 2008 budget of $151 million and more than 1000 staff. So even a downsized Focus on the Family, which is associated with more than three dozen Family Policy Councils, is still a huge part of the massive media and organizing infrastructure that is committed to thwarting progressive policies and rebuilding right-wing political power. It’s worth noting that Focus didn’t let its budget concerns prevent it from donating some $700,000 to California’s Prop 8 campaign to strip same-sex couples of the right to marry, and that Religious Right groups and their members and activists helped raise tens of millions of dollars for successful anti-gay initiatives in California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas last year. Although public budget figures from the latest IRS 990 forms available, usually covering fiscal years 2006 or 2007, are slightly out of date, they demonstrate the huge political infrastructure controlled by Right wing groups. Among other elements of that infrastructure:
* Religious Right legal organizations including the Alliance Defense Fund, which reported an annual income of $31 million in 2007; Sekulow’s American Center for Law and Justice, with a nearly $12 million dollar annual budget; and others including the Rutherford Institute and the Becket Fund, with budgets all dedicated to eroding separation of church and state and advancing right-wing values through the courts.
* The Missouri-based American Family Association, which took $500,000 out of its reserves to back Prop. 8 and reported revenue of $23 million in FY 2007; the Family Research Council, among the primary sponsors of the annual “Values Voter Summit,” a Religious-Right dominated counterpart to the more secular CPAC, which took in more than $12 million in 2007; the California-based Traditional Values Coalition, which reported revenues of $8.5 million; and a long list of allied organizations, including Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, Concerned Women for America, and more.
* An array of state and national think tanks designed to give right-wing public policy prescriptions intellectual heft and marketing muscle. The Heritage Foundation alone has an annual budget of more than $50 million; the American Enterprise Institute another $28 million.
In addition to the array of right-wing religious, legal, and political advocacy organizations, the movement’s infrastructure includes not only the huge reach of media personalities like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but the massive audiences for religious media outlets, including Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (which took in $263 million in 2005), and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which in 2006 reported a budget of some $200 million and assets of $800 million.
...NOT ‘MISUNDERESTIMATING’ THE RIGHT
There is no question that the outcome of the national elections in 2008 was a major blow to Religious Right organizations and their political allies. But they will not wither and disappear in the wake of an electoral defeat. Both the movement’s history and the events of recent weeks indicate that they will aggressively seek to shape public opinion and media coverage and rally their followers to give time and energy to rebuild the movement’s political strength. To achieve those goals they will intensify their claims of religious persecution and relentlessly attack the Congress and the Obama administration as enemies of faith and freedom. The over-the-top rhetoric from elected officials, GOP operatives, and pundits at CPAC was a clear signal of what’s to come. These efforts are designed to blunt the momentum for change, obstruct progressive policy advances, and sow confusion, cynicism, and fear among the public at large. To prevent right-wing leaders from achieving these goals, progressive advocates and activists must give public officials, journalists, online activists, and individual citizens the information and tools to expose the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the right-wing movement and discredit its leaders.
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" The Smoking Wreckage of Limbaugh Nation " by Digby, Hullabaloo March 5, 2009.
George W. Bush's America was Limbaugh Nation and Limbaugh Nation was George W. Bush's America --- they have nothing else. They are nothing else.
Limbaugh is now calling people "butt boys." This is on top of his adorable comments that Republicans are being asked to "bend over and grab their ankles" because Obama is black. I realize that the term "butt boy" is fairly common in junior high locker rooms as a synonym for sycophant, but when did it become ok to say this on radio? Does the FCC know that it literally means submissive, teenage anal sex (with a strong implication of coercion?)
Also see:
" Michael Steele Rejects Calls for His Resignation: 'Not Me Baby!' " by Ryan Powers, Think Progress March 6, 2009.(AlterNet.org)This has not been a good week for Michael Steele.
and:
" Rushing Toward Irrelevance " by Joe Conason, TruthDig.com, March 5, 2009
...At the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington last week, Rush Limbaugh declared that new ideas ought to be shunned by every right-thinking American. The radio kingpin savaged those in his movement who have dared to suggest that the right needs policy alternatives to compete with Democratic plans for economic revival, universal health care, environmental stewardship and educational improvement. Ranting on for more than an hour, he warned against any reconsideration of the sacred platitudes of Reaganism.
“Everybody asks me ... well, what do we do, as conservatives? What do we do? How do we overcome this?” said Limbaugh, and, of course, he had a simple answer: “One thing we can all do is stop assuming that the way to beat them is with better policy ideas.” He went on to denounce the conservative “media and policy types” in the “Beltway establishment” who have written on “the concept that the era of Reagan is over.” That cued loud booing from the audience, which turned into cheers as Limbaugh roared: “We have got to stamp this out within this movement because it will tear us apart. It will guarantee we lose elections.”
The image of a radio demagogue, dressed entirely in black, roaring against dissenters from the official line, provoked comparison with Fidel Castro or Mao Zedong. Here was the harbinger of an ideology in decline, exhibiting pathological aversion to intellectual activity and unfettered debate, an aversion that is always the surest evidence of political decay.
And David Sirota argues that the right word to describe what is happening is " Apocalypse".
" The A Word " by David Sirota Truthdig.com March 5, 2009
Apocalypse ... it seems so biblical, but suddenly feels so “now.” And if we don’t quickly wake up and turn things around, we will be left to mutter Col. Kurtz’s despondent whisper: “The horror ... the horror.”
and so it goes,
GORD.
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