Here's the full video clip: "State of the Union, 2011."
A bare majority at CNN's poll (52 percent) report a positive reaction to the address, and a third said "they had a somewhat positive response and 15 percent with a negative response."
More at Memeorandum.
I'll be reading over some of the left's reactions and will have more in an update.
And Bachmann's eliciting a heavy response from the deathly progressives. At Politico, "Michele Bachmann's Turn" and all the commentary at Memeorandum.
My previous essay is here, with some commentary and hot links: "Obama State of the Union Address 2011."
RELATED: "State of the Union 2011: Michele Bachmann delivers tea-party response to Obama."
Meanwhile, at LAT, "State of the Union: Obama Calls for Unity, Yet Challenges GOP":
The president's State of the Union message focuses on bipartisanship and offers proposals sure to please conservatives. But the broad outlines of his expected reelection run are clearly visible.More at the link.
The moment was tailor-made for President Obama, who rose to national fame seven years ago on a call for unifying America's blue and red states.
Standing before a divided Congress on Tuesday, with Democrats and Republicans seated side-by-side in a nod to comity, he delivered the appeal for unity many were expecting him to give.
"Governing will now be a shared responsibility between parties," he said. "We will move forward together, or not at all."
But the political reality behind his rhetoric was light-years removed from his lofty 2004 Democratic convention debut, when the then-Senate candidate from Illinois declared that "there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America."
Now, a president at midterm, he's wiser and battle-scarred, and appears to have bounced back from the November election that delivered what he had described as a "shellacking."
With a much-discussed, and thus far successful, turn toward the center, he has strengthened his hand as he prepares to battle Republicans in Congress and launch his reelection campaign.
After the Giffords memorial service, this effort seemed like Obama had phoned it in.Wince.
President Obama has an important opportunity to address Americans' concerns in his State of the Union address.That 30 percent mark on the moral climate is a new low for Gallup polling, and it's on Obama's watch. I'd say it's incumbent on the president to repudiate the leftist hate and debauchery that we've seen so far in 2011. Progressives are destroying this country. They say Obama's moving to the right, although I'm skeptical. I'll be more convinced if he returns to some of the moral clarity that characterized his emergence on the national scene in 2004.
Here is how much I am frightened and silenced:Charles Johnson, you are a hypocritical, dishonest lowlife punk. This post of yours guarantees that I’ll be doing a new post about you every single time I find out about another lie of yours.
Every. Single. Time.
In doing so, Charles Johnson, I will metaphorically crush you. I will metaphorically disembowel you and eat your innards. But I will not do a single physical thing to you. Nor will I encourage others to.
I will simply laugh and laugh as your reputation continues to shrink into nothing.
I have, of course, had people do this exact sort of thing to me many, many times before — and it’s not purely a tactic of the left, either. (In fact, there is one certain “classical liberal” site that did almost precisely the same thing a little more than a year ago.) Tbogg, Sadly No, Brad Friedman, his partner the convicted bomber, the aforementioned “classical liberal” site, and several disgraced reporters and columnists for the Los Angeles Times have all learned that the best way to get me to stop pointing out their dishonesty is to stop engaging in dishonesty.
You stop lying, I stop pointing it out. Simple as that.
UPDATE: It just gets better and better. Here is a Twitter message Johnson just republished:
In related news, follow the lastest in the debate at Instapundit: "PROFESSOR ANN ALTHOUSE DELIVERS A SOUND THRASHING: “History tells us” something that history doesn’t tell us, say sociologists stumbling to protect Frances Fox Piven."
And that Althouse link got a thread on Memeorandum. And Ann then updates with "'Sociology does not enjoy an especially elevated reputation in the academy, and the American Sociological Association provides an object lesson in why that is'."
Be sure to follow the links, but I'll say: This really has gotten pretty pathetic. Society has lost its marbles, or at least that part of society under the grip of the progressive left's institutionalized dishonesty and postmodern unreality. It makes you want to scream, or better yet, to tune into Glenn Beck.
Added: At Yid With Lid, "Before Making False Claims Against Glenn Beck, Perhaps Cenk Uygur Should Fix His Own 'Jewish Problem'," and at Fausta's, "The Roundup." Also, at Maggie's Farm, "That scary, dangerous, evil moron Glenn Beck."
WASHINGTON — Carol M. Browner, the White House coordinator for energy and climate change policy, will leave the administration shortly, officials confirmed Monday night. Her departure signals at least a temporary slowing of the ambitious environmental goals of President Obama’s first two years in the face of new Republican strength in Congress.The Politco's piece is here: "Carol Browner to Leave White House."
Ms. Browner, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was charged with directing the administration’s effort to enact comprehensive legislation to reduce emissions of climate-altering gases and moving the country away from a dependence on dirty-burning fossil fuels. That effort foundered in Congress last year, and Mr. Obama has acknowledged that no major climate change legislation is likely to pass in the next two years.
No decision has been made on whether she would be replaced or if the position would simply disappear, a White House official said.
“She will stay on as long as necessary to ensure an orderly transition,” a White House official said. “Carol is confident that the mission of her office will remain critical to the president.”
News of her departure was first reported by Politico.
Long Beach. Rep. Linda Sánchez, D-Lakewood, recently spoke with Dennis Muilenburg, CEO of Boeing Defense, Space & Security, about how to reverse the proposed 900 Boeing layoffs in Long Beach.More later ...
The downsizing, announced late Wednesday, is the latest in a series of reductions to Long Beach's once-mighty aerospace industry, where employment has dropped from more than 20,000 in the 1990s to less than 7,000 today.
Boeing said the cuts are needed to prepare for a reduced C-17 production schedule, which is 14 annually, to 10 beginning this summer.
Sánchez - a member of the President's Export Council along with Boeing President and CEO W. James McNerney - offered her assistance in working with Congress and asked about several options that might help the plant remain operative, such as reforms to export controls and overseas promotion of the C-17.
She also stressed the importance of these jobs to her constituents and the impact the job losses will have on the region.
And at Los Angeles Times, "Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement":
Jack LaLanne, the seemingly eternal master of health and fitness who first popularized the idea that Americans should work out and eat right to retain youthfulness and vigor, died Sunday. He was 96.
LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia at his home in Morro Bay, Calif., his agent Rick Hersh said. He had undergone heart valve surgery in December 2009.
Though LaLanne was for many years dismissed as merely a "muscle man" — a notion fueled to some extent by his amazing feats of strength — he was the spiritual father of the health movement that blossomed into a national craze of weight rooms, exercise classes and fancy sports clubs.
LaLanne opened what is commonly believed to be the nation's first health club, in Oakland in 1936. In the 1950s, he launched an early-morning televised exercise program keyed to housewives. He designed many now-familiar exercise machines, including leg extension machines and cable-pulley weights. And he proposed the then-radical idea that women, the elderly and even the disabled should work out to retain strength.
Full of exuberance and good cheer, LaLanne saw himself as a combination cheerleader, rescuer and savior. And if his enthusiasm had a religious fervor to it, well, so be it.
"Well it is. It is a religion with me," he told What Is Enlightenment, a magazine dedicated to awareness, in 1999. "It's a way of life. A religion is a way of life, isn't it?"
"Billy Graham was for the hereafter. I'm for the here and now," he told The Times when he was almost 92, employing his usual rapid-fire patter.
Another time, he explained, "The crusade is never off my mind — the exercise I do, the food I eat, the thought I think — all this and how I can help make my profession better-respected. To me, this one thing — physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America."
*****
President Barack Obama will call for a "responsible" effort to shrink the deficit but won't offer detailed plans on spending and taxes in a State of the Union address Tuesday that will presage the broad themes for political debate through the 2012 election.More at the link.
The president is expected to call for "shared sacrifice" from both parties, and to reach out to the GOP with a nod to possibly lowering the nation's corporate income-tax rate as part of an overhaul of the corporate-tax code, according to people familiar with speech preparations.
The speech and the Republican response are likely to frame contrasting philosophies that will drive political discourse for the next two years. Mr. Obama has chosen "competitiveness" and "investment" as terms to guide discussion over how to create jobs, daring Republicans to resist his push for new spending in areas that he will call vital to the nation's future. He will seek to wall off education, infrastructure, science and energy from cuts, in effect making them the ground on which the 2012 campaign is to be fought.
Republicans have chosen House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin to deliver the State of the Union response. Mr. Ryan has outlined a vision of smaller, less-intrusive government, extending to popular programs such as Medicare, which he would turn increasingly over to the private sector.
Since what Mr. Obama described as his party's "shellacking" in November, he has tried to appeal to the political center by moving right. He struck a deal with Republicans on taxes and has been remaking the White House with deal makers from Bill Clinton's White House schooled in bipartisan outreach. He also has reached out to business with pledges to pare regulations and consult more closely on trade, taxes and "competitiveness."
The moves appear to be yielding political results. A slew of new polls have put the president's approval ratings at levels not seen since the pitched partisan battles over Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul began in August 2009.
Suddenly, Republicans face an unanticipated problem: less than three months after their midterm triumphs, President Obama has regained political momentum.Look, it's a new year and we've just had a shooting tragedy with national implications. The president's been striking the right tone. The same can't be said for his backers on the left. And of course, there's a long while until all these numbers really matter. We've got a year until the first primaries and caucuses, and lots needs to happen in terms of economic recovery. That, and the Republican success in Congress will determine a lot of how things look for Obama a year from now. Until then, the Democrat-Media-Complex will be spinning relentlessly to build up the administration and destroy conservatives. And you can take that to the bank.
As Mr. Obama approaches the State of the Union address on Tuesday, various polls show him rising toward or beyond 50 percent approval of his job performance. Before his first 2011 clash with Republican adversaries who now share governing responsibility, those surveys also show that Americans credit Mr. Obama with greater commitment to finding common ground.
And at New York Times, "Suspect Pleads Not Guilty in Tucson Shooting":
PHOENIX — Jared L. Loughner, who the police said was responsible for the shooting rampage outside a Tucson supermarket on Jan. 8, pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges that he tried to murder Representative Gabrielle Giffords and two of her aides.
Appearing in Federal District Court alongside his defense lawyer, Judy Clarke, Mr. Loughner entered a written plea to Judge Larry A. Burns of San Diego without uttering a word.
Dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and wearing glasses, Mr. Loughner, 22, smiled through most of the proceedings and chuckled when a clerk read out the name of the case: the United States of America v. Jared Lee Loughner.
Ms. Clarke offered no objection to a request by Wallace Kleindienst, an assistant United States attorney, to move the court proceedings to Tucson. But Mr. Kleindienst, who is considered an expert in murder cases, indicated that additional charges were likely to be filed and that Ms. Clarke would have additional opportunities to push for the trial to be held elsewhere.
During the arraignment, which was conducted under high security, Judge Burns asked Ms. Clarke whether she had any concerns about her client’s ability to understand the case against him. “We are not raising any issues at this time,” she said.
The prosecution on Monday turned over to Ms. Clarke records from Mr. Loughner’s computer and transcripts of 250 witness interviews.
Check out Pat in Shreveport, "Full Metal Jacket Reach Around: The I've Been Reading Edition," and also Blazing Cat Fur and Director Blue.
Plus, Astute Bloggers, Bob Belvedere, CSPT, Dan Collins, Gator Doug, Irish Cicero, Left Coast Rebel, Mind-Numbed Robot, PA Pundits International, Pirate's Cove, Saberpoint, Snooper, WyBlog, The Western Experience, Yankee Phil, and Zion's Trumpet.
Plus, see the Rule 5 action at American Perspective, Maggie's Notebook, and Theo Spark.
As always, drop your link in the comments to be added to the roundups.
The campaign to use the tragic shootings in Tucson to silence conservatives continues. The latest twist is an attempt to highlight anonymous threats against leftist scholar and strategist Frances Fox Piven as a way of forcing Glenn Beck, a critic of Piven, off the air, or at least prohibiting him from mentioning her on his Fox News television show. This affects me as well, since an excerpt from my recent appearance on Beck’s show to discuss Piven has been aired in the course of the controversy. My new book, Radical-in-Chief, extensively treats Piven’s influence on contemporary leftist strategy, and on Barack Obama’s political development. If Beck is forced to stop talking about Piven, efforts will surely be made to silence me and other conservative critics of Piven.Absolutely perfect. Be sure to read the whole thing.It is extraordinary that conservatives should be charged with stirring up violence at a moment when Piven, in an editorial in The Nation, has called for an American movement of “strikes and riots” on the model of the one recently seen in Greece. The anonymous threats against Piven are reprehensible. I condemn them in the strongest terms. Yet it is not conservatives but Piven and The Nation who advocate violence. Neither Piven nor The Nation should be forcibly silenced, but they certainly ought to be criticized. Instead, The Nation is leading the effort to silence those who have rightly condemned Piven’s call for rioting in America.
An article by Brian Stelter in Saturday’s New York Times is a thinly disguised gesture of support for The Nation’s campaign. The piece downplays Piven’s radicalism, noting that her widely criticized call for intentionally creating a political and economic crisis in America’s welfare system was made 45 long years ago. Although Piven has freely described her own strategy as an effort to set off “fiscal and political crises in the cities,” Stelter delicately avoids the word “crises,” writing instead of “fiscal and political stress.”
Why is a newspaper that has been posturing as the scourge of violent rhetoric now siding with a purveyor of such rhetoric, and blatantly slanting the news as it does so? Because her opponent is a prominent media figure from outside the old media establishment. Because Glenn Beck is a threat to the authority of the New York Times.Taranto make a careful distinction been advocating violence and inciting it, and so far Frances Fox Piven hasn't done the latter. But read this one in full as well. While Piven hasn't crossed a legal line, she's crossed a moral one, and so has the New York Times.
As I keep learning, there are few things greater than abortion that more fundamentally separate normal, life-loving Americans from the death-loving dregs of progressivism. Scott Lemieux is simply a vile man. As a college instructor he's made abortion politics one of his pet projects. Rarely is the conventional evil of Democrat-progressive politics better represented than in Lemieux's posts at LGM. See for example, "Once You Get Your Position Sorted Out, Perhaps We Can Talk." There's no need to quote it. He's attacking Darleen Click at Protein Wisdom. As can be seen at the title, Lemieux's all about elaborating all the tired public policy explanations for the enormity of the Kermit Gosnell murders. And that's the thing: It's just superfluous. No explanation is needed. As Michelle wrote previously:
Deadly indifference to protecting life isn’t tangential to the abortion industry’s existence – it’s at the core of it. The Philadelphia Horror is no anomaly. It’s the logical, blood-curdling consequence of an evil, eugenics-rooted enterprise wrapped in feminist clothing.This is how mass murder gets a pass from progressives like Scott Lemieux and his evil hordes at LGM. And there's yet more here. It's all very clinical. What never comes into the picture --- never, ever --- is the idea that killing the unborn is an enormity of world historical evil. To commit abortion is to violate the command of the absolute truth of goodness: honor life. Our own Declaration of Independence bears this, that governments are established to preserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. All progressives want is more death, destruction, and desperation. I find it horrifying. But then, I look at politics from a stance of fundamental morality, and that separates me --- and my allies like Darleen, Lila, and Michelle --- from the heathen left. And where I may differ from others is that I don't question the civil liberties of abortion, and frankly I'm not necessarily down with the greater criminalization that's alleged by pea-brained progressives. The question is of moral agency. Of moral choice. People of goodness have to persuade women to choose life. That's the imperative, because whatever happens in the law --- whether the remote possibility exists for vacating Roe v. Wade, for example --- the final foundation of both moral right and popular will is in the realm of ideas, popular ideas. So in this sense, it's no contest. Progressive can't win on the merits, they can't win the debate, because they've got no case for life. When you see people like Barbara O'Brien claiming that the system worked in Philadelphia, you know how deep are the evils of these ghouls who are unfortunately fellow Americans.
A suicide attacker detonated a bomb at Russia's busiest airport Monday, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 100 others, authorities said.ADDED: The New York Times reports that this video "appears to show the smoke and flames in the terminal and then the bodies of victims of the blast":
The 4:32 p.m. blast near the international arrivals area of Moscow's Domodedovo airport was the country's worst terrorist attack since twin bombings left 40 dead in the Moscow subway last March.
President Dmitry Medvedev convened an emergency meeting of top law-enforcement officials and ordered airport and other transportation security tightened across the country. He said the "preliminary" indications were that it was a terrorist attack.
Officials at Domodedovo, south of the capital, said the airport was still functioning. Some international flights were diverted to other Moscow airports, where security was also tightened.
The blast took place outside a security zone near the baggage claim area, near the Asia Kafe, where people await arriving passengers, Interfax news agency said, quoting the Federal Customs Service.
Russian news agencies quoted security officials as saying the bomb, laced with metal pieces to increase its power to kill, was detonated in the crowd of people meeting arriving passengers. The blast was equal to seven kilograms (15 pounds) of TNT, the reports said.
In all my reporting on the idiocies and lies of the wingnuts, here's one thing I found just too boring and stupid to follow: the fact that, virtually every day, there are stories about a supposed attempt by the left to silence right wing talk radio, and TV liars like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Despite the fact that there is not a shred of evidence for this claim, they go on with this nonsense endlessly, like the equally fictional war on Christmas.Oh brother. Could you just make that "goodbye cruel world!"
Well, here's the reality of press suppression in this country: MSNBC just fired their top-rated broadcaster. And make no mistake about the reason: it was solely because he dared to tell the truth in public. And if you think Rachel, Ed Schultz, and that clown O'Donnell don't get the message, you really are fooling yourself. If Keith is expendable they all are. It is apparently tolerable for CNN to employ the right wing hatemonger and professional liar Erick Erickson. But being a moderate liberal is too much for this country to allow anyone a public voice.
But of course, whoever owns these networks has the right to fire anyone they want, right? And thanks to the sainted Ronald Reagan, no one owns the media anymore but the rich. How many times have you heard decisions like this justified by claims that "it's just business" or that it's all about profits and not about the person's political views at all? Well, I'd like someone to explain to me how it's all about profits when a network fires its most highly rated star.
This is not a minor moment in our history as a nation. It is a major legitimation of the right to stifle dissent. It is a giant step toward fascism; and I am not using the term figuratively. When it becomes acceptable for the rich and powerful to stifle dissent, totalitarianism is on the way.
That’s it, folks. Keith Olbermann is — and always has been — nothing but a loud-mouthed, adolescent wannabe. In short, it’s not hard to see why Comcast balked at paying little Keith more money. What is difficult to imagine is why they ever put him up against an accomplished journalist like Bill O’Reilly in the first place.
As hard as I’ve tried, I’ve never really been able to hate Keith Olbermann. He clearly has various and quite intricate female “issues.” He has never been married. His love of fame and money and loose morals have left him with nothing more substantial than his own potty mouth for comfort. And he is getting old fast.
So, maybe I will cry a bit for Olbermann and leave you, dear readers, with this one admonishment:
Whatever you do, Mommas and Daddies, don’t let your sons grow up to be Olbies.
Nothing whatsoever good could ever come of following this reprobate off the cliff into a life of nothing whatsoever worthwhile or in the least bit desirable or admirable.
And that’s all I have to say about Keith Olbermann. I’m just so glad I’m not his mother.
I have no doubt that Fox News is correct in saying that Beck has never directly called for violence against Piven, if only because we would surely know if he had. But if some crazy person does decide to try to murder Piven, it will probably be caused in large part by the rhetoric of Beck and others like him. If it were not for Beck and other, less successful demagogues, Piven's name would only be familiar to those who read the Nation or who have a historical interest in left wing politics.Actually, notice how Farrell can't place any responsibility on Glenn Beck or Fox News for specifically and allegedly advocating violence against Francis Fox Piven. He's thus reduced to mere "probabilistic" analysis, which in the jargon of political science means, "frankly, I can't predict squat about this." Farrell then cites an August 2010 Dana Milbank hit-piece at Washington Post. Milbank alleges that "an unemployed carpenter" set off to "kill progressives" in San Francisco after being moved to political violence by Glenn Beck. But Milbank offers not a single piece of evidence for his claims, and includes this disclaimer: "It's not fair to blame Beck for violence committed by people who watch his show." Henry Farrell omits that key sentence at his post. And he then once again throws out a disclaimer to his argument before offering a causal hypothesis attacking Glenn Beck:
It is not a good idea to make broad claims about how an atmosphere of violent rhetoric is causally responsible for this or that specific incident without good evidence. However, where there is good evidence of a more specific causal relationship between particular speech acts, and particular outcomes, it's a very different matter. There is good evidence that Beck's targeting of the Tides Foundation very nearly helped cause a major tragedy. There is also good evidence that his targeting of a political science professor is causing death threats and sundry other forms of nastiness. I hope that Piven doesn't suffer anything worse than the (doubtless pretty horrible) forms of verbal assault that she is now undergoing.Actually, the only piece of remotely related "evidence" cited at the Milbank essay is a quote from the unemployed carpenter's mother saying her son watched a lot of television. That's it. The rest is pure conjecture, and certainly not any kind of hard data to warrant Farrell's claim that there's "hard evidence" that "Beck's targeting of the Tides Foundation very nearly helped cause a major tragedy." Moreover, there's not much more to Farrell's claim of "good evidence" that Beck is "targeting" Frances Fox Piven. Glenn Beck's a political commentator on a conservative cable outlet. He publishes some of his stuff to his homepage and his political blog, The Blaze. But Farrell is claiming there's a causal relationship between Beck's commentary and hypothesized violence against Piven. This implies a relationship that condition A is the cause of effect B. However, there is no logical reason here to argue that Glenn Beck's own programming (A) would be the cause of violence against Frances Fox Piven (B). The reason, most importantly, as acknowledged by Farrell, is that there's no evidence that Beck has personally called for violence against Professor Piven. So methodologically it can't be said that such an outcome would be determined causally from the broadcasts in a scientifically empirical way. The relationship wouldn't even be true in the probabilistic sense (i.e., drastically reduced degree of predictive accuracy). Farrell's claim rests simply on the fact that Beck frequently reports on Piven's revolutionary agenda. Of course, there are some heated comments at The Blaze website, and there are reports of alleged threatening e-mails. Yet, these cannot be blamed on Glenn Beck, just as the Arizona shooting could not be blamed on Sarah Palin. This is libel. Hostile and threatening comments at online message boards and blog posts are a regular feature of online discourse. And this is to say nothing of secondary variables that could influence potential violence (as in mental instability, like Jared Loughner, who didn't even watch political television or listen to talk radio).
Conservatives have been attacking their ideas for decades. But the paranoid demonization of the couple by the extreme Right has escalated since Obama's election.It goes on like that for a while, and in fact, it's personal for Dreier. He's an academic radical in the tank for the Democrat Party's socialist/community activist operations. Or as journalist Matthew Vadum indicates, Dreier's an "academic for hire" who "has spent much of the last few years as a paid shill for the organized crime syndicate, ACORN." Dreier wrote a whitewash of ACORN for the American Political Science Association's journal, Perspectives on Politics: "How ACORN Was Framed: Political Controversy and Media Agenda Setting." And as noted at the abstract:
The story they now tell about Piven can be traced to David Horowitz, a former New Left radical who did an about-face in the 1970s and became a prominent conservative propagandist. In his 2006 book, written with Richard Poe, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party, Horowitz identifies the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" outlined in their 1966 Nation article as the centerpiece of the radical blueprint to "collapse" the capitalist system.
Horowitz's idea caught on with other elements of the conservative lunatic fringe, particularly after an African American former community organizer was elected president. A few weeks after Obama's victory, James Simpson penned an article for the right-wing American Thinker entitled, "Cloward-Piven Government," describing their "malevolent strategy for destroying our economy and our system of government." The right-wing echo chamber has transformed the duo into Marxist Machiavellis whose ideas have not only spawned an interlocking radical movement dedicated to destroying modern-day capitalism but also, in their minds at least, almost succeeded, as evidenced by what they consider Obama's "socialist" agenda.
Conservative radio jockeys Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin have, on multiple occasions, warned their listeners about the nefarious social scientists. "The Cloward-Piven strategy is essentially what Obama and a number of these people are following," Limbaugh told his listeners on December 18, 2009, "and its ultimate objective is to have everybody in the country on welfare, by destroying it."
Horowitz, the editor of FrontPage, a far-right magazine and website, called Cloward and Piven the "architects" of "radical change." Other right-wing outlets, including American Spectator, The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Free Republic, NewsMax, and WorldNetDaily, have all educated their audiences about how the Cloward-Piven Strategy has infected society like a dangerous left-wing virus.
Using the news controversy over the community group ACORN, we illustrate the way that the media help set the agenda for public debate and frame the way that debate is shaped. Opinion entrepreneurs (primarily business and conservative groups and individuals, often working through web sites) set the story in motion as early as 2006, the conservative echo chamber orchestrated an anti-ACORN campaign in 2008, the Republican presidential campaign repeated the allegations with a more prominent platform, and the mainstream media reported the allegations without investigating their veracity ... We demonstrate that the national news media agenda is easily permeated by a persistent media campaign by opinion entrepreneurs alleging controversy, even when there is little or no truth to the story ...Blah, blah.
President Obama was right last week to focus his thoughts—and ours—on the victims of the Tucson rampage and the lives they led. Those who gathered that day were doing something fundamentally American: they were meeting with their elected representative at a “Congress on Your Corner” event, participating in the give-and-take of the democratic process. For nearly 200 years, Americans have also been rightly haunted by that strange subspecies of citizen that is their opposite: those who see killing political leaders as a better form of self-expression. They are a sorry lot, mostly a collection of sexually frustrated loners and misfits united only by their common background in social isolation. But they, too, are a longstanding part of the American fabric.And this next passage is forced to the extreme:
They may have something to teach the rest of us, however unintentionally, about the consequences of our atomized country. Where political violence in other countries is nearly always associated with extremist movements, religious fundamentalism, or criminal organizations, American assassins are usually peculiar stalkers defined less by ideology than vague political and personal grievances.
Jared Lee Loughner would seem to be just the latest to fit this American profile. The 22-year-old gunman killed six people, including federal Judge John Roll and 9-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 14, among them Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Wielding a Glock semiautomatic, the assassin fired 30 rounds in a few seconds outside a Tucson supermarket. His mugshot, with that twisted smile and weirdly sparkling eyes, told you almost everything you needed to know about the coherence of his motives.
It’s often impossible to cite specific, direct causes for individual episodes of mayhem. Most people can hear repeated references to comments like “If not ballots, bullets” (Florida radio talk-show host Joyce Kaufman) or “Tiller is a baby killer” (a reference to Dr. George Tiller, murdered by an anti-abortion activist) or “Second Amendment remedies” (Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle) and do nothing violent. Still, Arizona alone is home to roughly 21,000 schizophrenics, according to the calculations of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, and about 10 percent of them are potentially dangerous. When they explode, they could be responding to the voices in their heads, or the voices on the radio (or in books and online), or, most likely, some cacophony of voices within and without.I'm calling bullshit right there.
An “Insurrectionism Timeline” posted by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence cites more than 100 examples of incitement (gun sights on congressional maps weren’t threatening enough to make the list) and direct threats of bodily harm in the last two and a half years. Just two days before the Tucson attack, police arrested a man for threatening to shoot members of the staff of Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. Three days after Giffords and the others were attacked, police took a man into custody after he allegedly made threatening phone calls to the office of Rep. Jim McDermott, suggesting he deserved to die for voting against the extension of the Bush tax cuts.
Loughner’s motives were less coherent, but that doesn’t mean his heinous act was nonpolitical. This was not a case of a lunatic going berserk and shooting up a random shopping center. Loughner felt aggrieved by what he considered to be Giffords’s failure to answer a question he asked her at a previous community meeting in 2007. He obsessed over his desire for vengeance (“Die bitch!” read one of the missives recovered from his personal possessions) and apparently plotted the attack in advance. By aiming for a political leader, he moved from the ranks of mass murderer to assassin.
In Loughner's case, defense attorney Judy Clarke would have to show that her client did not know his actions were wrong. Evidence that Loughner was paranoid or delusional would not be enough to shield him from punishment, under either federal or Arizona law.Last Sunday, New York Times ombudsman Arthur Brisbane published an apology for the paper's erroneous reporting on the Arizona shooting. While strained, the essay at least acknowledged that reporters had jumped the gun (metaphor) in their early coverage and the editors had failed their responsibility to provide professional, untainted journalism. But in the case of Newsweek, it was Jonathan Alter himself who was the very first journalist to recommend that President Obama exploit the massacre for political gain. Never let a crisis go to waste, they say. And while the facts have long been clear regarding what happened on January 8th --- and while the country has made great attempts to increase civil debate --- not wasting the crisis remains the top agenda item for the progressive left.
Such evidence may be good enough to shield him from a death sentence, however, if the Justice Department or the state asks for one.
Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the latter.The Other McCain has video clips: "Democrat Attacked After Vitriolic Rhetoric From Sarah Palin … No? Never Mind."
They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.
Brezik was reported to have been covered in “demonic” tattoos and to have scribbled a strange symbol on one of the schools walls. Some sources claim that the “demonic” symbols and tattoos were anarchist signs.This was also not his first rodeo. He was arrested at the G-20 meetings earlier this year, something he proudly wrote about on his Facebook page:
Brezik’s Facebook page paints a portrait of an angry man. He had 26 friends and bragged in June about being the first person arrested at the G-20 Summit.
“Crossed the security fence. Ran from the cops. Was tackled. Spit on an officer. Was arrested, charged, and deported. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” he wrote.
For that Brezik spent two days in jail and got ten days (?!?) probation for assaulting a police officer. Had Canada taken his assault of a police officer more seriously today’s violence may not have happened.
Brezik’s devolution began much earlier however. His family reported him missing in March 2009 and he was listed as an endangered missing adult, which means he may have had mental health issues. Marijuana use is known to exacerbate existing mental problems.
It’s easy to blame Casey Brezik’s left wing politics for this violence, but the truth is that these traveling “radicals” are a drug culture and Casey Brezik was a user. The May Day riot in Asheville was another example of these “anarchists” getting high and running wild and the truth about anarchism is that troubled souls who self-medicate and drug addicts are 90% of that movement.
One thing I want to point out here is that marijuana played a significant roll in Brezik’s lifestyle and ultimately his crime. He was high when he tried to murder an innocent person and had more weed on him, suggesting that he planned on getting high again. Would he have tried to kill someone without pot? Maybe. But we know that if pot was legal this crime still would have happened and Brezik’s access to pot facilitated his insanity. This is not a victimless crime.
"Because we do in fact hate commies, at least real commies, not the imaginary commies that community collegeRight. Imaginary. That is, if you're idiot butt-freak Tintin from Sadly No!AssistantAssociate Professor Douglas sees lurking behind every potted plant."
Several months ago I published a post about Glenn Beck's obsession with City University of New York Professor Frances Fox Piven. I talked about having met her briefly in the early '80s in a grad course and about what a wonderful experience that was.Oh my gosh (sniffle, sniffle).
Mostly I wrote about how Beck, and those inclined to buy into his hateful message, can't stand anyone who helps poor people be heard or helps them make a legitimate claim to a decent life in America. I wrote about how Piven's career has been largely dedicated to helping us understand marginalized people and helping them help themselves, and that for this sin Beck was using the full weight of Fox News to vilify her.
