Dumbing Down Our Airwaves

by Bert
I'd like to bring up for a moment another part, besides those four overworked words "you didn't build that", that was also there in the speech President Obama delivered in Roanoke on July 13: 

And what this reminded me of was that, at the heart of this country, its central idea is the idea that in this country, if you’re willing to work hard, if you’re willing to take responsibility, you can make it if you try. 

Compare that with how Charlie Sykes described on his WTMJ radio show on Friday what Obama said: 

That [conservative] vision encourages and celebrates – listen to this -- character, independence, energy, hard work as the foundations of a free society and a thriving economy. Those were exactly the qualities that Barack Obama in that Virgina speech was mocking.

There are other places besides my excerpt from Obama's speech where the president  praises hard work and what it will earn a person in America. Of course, there is no where in his talk at all where you find hard work, energy, character, puppies, mom, etc. mocked by the president.

Sykes obviously knows this. But the approach of his program is often less than honest, and I guess he can't trust the listeners to turn against Obama based only on what Obama actually says and means. Instead, Sykes would rather insult the intelligence of his audience.

On second thought, scratch "insult". Maybe the better word here is "mock". 

So You Don't Have To

As the header of this site says, we are committed to monitoring of the local right-wing media and exposing their lies, hypocrisies and foibles, so you don't have to.


In that sense, here is what you will hear tomorrow, whether you listen to Charlie Sykes, Vicki McKenna, James T. Harris, Jeff Wagner, Jay Weber, Mark Belling, or any of the other squawkers:


On President Obama's State of the Union address:  He LIED! He's a socialist! His math is fuzzy! His numbers are wrong! He said it before and LIED then too!  He wants to spend more! He wants to tax you into the poor house!  He's a communist! He's not from this country!  He's so pompous! 


On Senator Paul Ryan's rebuttal:  Brilliant! Genius! He nailed it! A rising star!  He really gets it! A TRUE American! God Bless Paul Ryan! Right on!


On Representative Michele Bachmann's rebuttal:


So now, I just gave us all the day off from talk radio tomorrow.  Instead of listening to a Chicken Little squawking, go out and listen to a real bird singing.  


Enjoy!


PS: If you do decide to put yourself through the torment of listening to them, remember the other part of our header:  Great moment in radio history--Charlie Sykes: "My evidence...Absolutely none!"

A Teabagger's Happiest/Saddest Occassion

So the people in Hawaii elected their first Republican Senator in a long, long time.

Now the poor teabaggers don't know if they should cheer that a Republican won in President Obama's home state or if they should bitterly cling onto their birther conspiracy theory.

I imagine that Tom McMahon will find a way to do both.

County Executive Who?

PaddyMac is putting out what I'm sure he considers witty comments, by saying that even though it took years for the Bush/Cheney economic meltdown to occur, President Obama has no business pointing this out to the impatient conservatives, who want Obama to clean up their mess, and do it yesterday, or else they will tantrum.

But darn if I can't find Paddy's post saying that it is time for Walker to give up his "It's all Ament's fault" spiel. Especially since it's been eight years.

But I know Paddy's post needs to be there somewhere, lest someone would think Paddy to be a hypocritical dullard.

Limbaugh's Afraid of Assassinating Own Character

I have to ask: What character?

The president is trying to trick Rush Limbaugh into talking about himself and would rather engage in "character assassination" than debate conservatives in the "Arena of Ideas," the conservative talker charges in an e-mail to POLITICO.

Two days after President Barack Obama labeled Limbaugh and conservative television host Glenn Beck "troublesome" in a CBS interview, Limbaugh says Obama is trying to get him off his game.

"I think the president is trying to distract me, to get me talking about ME on my show instead of talking about him and the regime's agenda. But it won't work. I'm wise to their tactics," he wrote. "I know that a majority of Americans are angry at the regime's (and the Democrats') constant attempts at character assassination of their opposition. They want no part of engaging us in the Arena of Ideas. They seek instead to discredit and marginalize us, and it has gotten old."

In other words, if Limbaugh starts talking about himself, it's character assassination.

Yup, sounds about right.

Does James T. Have Some Unresolved Issues?

The Milwaukee Drum is reporting that on Charlie Sykes' Sunday Incite show this past weekend, James T. "Hit him where it hits" Harris went on to use Elton John's goofy and inappropriate comment about Jesus being gay to make his own goofy and inappropriate inference that President Barack Obama was gay.

Harris then was on Sykes show today, and again, per the Milwaukee Drum, tried to defend his obnoxiousness. Sykes apparently didn't offer much in the way of a defense for his buddy either.

All of that reminded me of something else I saw. A few days ago, Team Walker, while writing about a campaign event that Walker was at, had this to say about Harris:

The best line of the night was from James T. Harris, the MC for the evening. He said he had told Scott Walker that he would be his Oprah as he ran for Governor. :)

Hmmm. Multiple comments regarding homosexuality, a habit of saying how good looking he thinks he is, and an urge to portray a woman.

Perhaps Harris would greatly benefit from some intensive psychotherapy with a psychologist trained in sexual identity issues.

Always A Nominee, Never A Winner

Charlie Sykes has been relentless in his selective outrage regarding President Barack Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

One would think that it is simply Charlie parroting the right wing talking points, as Illy-T alludes to in this post.

But for Charlie, the anger is seated a little deeper. He is just jealous, since he will always be just a nominee, never a winner.

Laughable Item Of The Day, Indeed

Aaron Rodriguez* of the Hispanic Conservative figures that he is going to take a cheap shot at Eugene Kane, one of the few remaining employees at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Rodriguez' whole argument is trying to poke fun at Kane for saying Obama's economic policies are working. To do so, Rodriguez shows that he has all the economic savvy of a rock, and ignores the reality that his hero, George Bush and his failed policies are the one that got us into this mess.

But if he is going to criticize Obama on his economic policies, or Kane on his journalistic musings that even Senator John McCain, who lost the election to Obama, acknowledges that things are getting better, Rodriguez would be smart to do one thing first.

Make sure his spell check is working. Here is the title of Rodriguez' post:


*Hysterically, Rodriguez, according to my Google reader, goes by the name of A-Rod.

The Intellectual Elite Of The Right

A faithful reader cued me on this one. Vicki McKenna, the version of Jessica McBride that still has somehow hung on to her show, has a number of Facebook pages.

On her page, someone posted this:

Here it is blown up:



Would someone tell me how your suppose to even have a conversation with people so ignorant that they consider this to be cute?

Obama The Fascist

One of my new favorite blogsites is Griper Blade. This site, along with that of Emily Mills, is the kind of writing that I could only hope to mimic.

Let me show you what I mean. From Griper Blade, a post titled "The Hitler Hypocrisy":

No, Barack Obama is exactly like Adolf Hitler because people say so. You don't need an analogy or parallel, it's just true. So shut up, turn off your damned brain, and listen to the nice shrieking voices from conservative media. Obama's Hitler because Glenn Beck says so, Ann Coulter says so, and Sean Hannity says so. Obama's a fascist, until he's a socialist. That these are polar opposites (fascism was founded to counter leftism) and constitute a political oxymoron is beside the point. Socialist fascism makes as much sense as pro-slavery abolitionism. But conservative media carefully guards their audience's ignorance, so there's no way the people being told about President Obama's socialist fascism know any of that. Not that they'd want to know anyway. Wingnuts tune in to wingnut media precisely because it preserves their ignorance. Knowledge is for liberal elitists; the real "folks," as Bill O'Reilly refers to them, believe what they're told to believe, because that's what real Americans do. That O'Reilly's constant references to "the folks" would be a literal translation of Hitler's term der volk is certainly lost on his audience. They don't know things like that because they don't want to know. What they know is only what they want to know and it doesn't make any difference whether or not it's true. "The folks" get to decide for themselves what's true. And what's true is that Barack Obama is exactly like Hitler.

And to demonstrate the truth of that passage, this video:




Video brought to us, courtesy of the Brawler, who has more to say on the subject here.

Will Talk Radio Give Any Credit To Pres. Obama?

The following is a post by Dan Cody, author of Left on the Lake, as an open letter to the right wing talk radio hosts. It is reproduced her with full permission from Mr. Cody.

Dear conservative radio talk show hosts,

What happened to you spending massive amounts of airtime talking about how this was “Obamas economy” as recently as a few weeks ago and lambasting him for not “keeping his mouth shut!” which in your opinion was causing the markets to tank?

Has something changed in the last several weeks that’s caused you to abandon your rants about how President Obama would kill this economy and that the markets were clearly expressing their opinions on our new President and his financial policies in a negative way?

Like I said back then, I thought that up or down, it was kind of silly you were choosing to rip into the new President a few weeks into his administration by using the fickle Dow Jones industrial average as your “proof” that Wall Street had expressed their opinion about the new President, and it was an overwhelming “NO!”.

Anyways, since you spent so much time a month ago trying to make the point that because the markets were down that Obama was a failure, I thought you’d probably want to spend just as much time talking about how Pres. Obama must be a success now that the markets are moving up.

Fair, accurate and balanced and all, you’re probably dying to get this story out there.

All my best,

Dan

Our Neediest Cases

Who would argue that Barack Obama's Special Olympics comment on last night's Leno show was really dumb. We know it and he knows it, issuing a statement from Air Force One on the way back to DC, not because he was pressured into it but because he knew it was the right thing to say. Many people will probably reason that when you say enough things, in and amongst all the words will be a stupid comment or two. Bush got us used to that -- in spades.

But as we know the right wing is on a constant gaffe hunt because if they have to stand on the issues, they don't have much to stand on as the last election proved. As the John Kerry dis the troops incident proved, even if it isn't a gaffe the right wing will try to make it out to be one.

But of course Sykes as usual like a junkie and smack, just can't leave Obama's remark alone. Then Sykes adds a special dollop by citing the sagely Sarah Palin.

The problem is, as John Cook points out, the President is fairly gaffe proofed. To pin the President's poor comment on him so as to make him out as someone who hates mentally challenged people isn't going to wash. This will generate chatter among the right and their media enablers, but for the 80% of the rest of the country the focus will be on the economy.  

Another thing that will play on many minds is that the right has been not too mentally-challenged friendly. Look at where they cut funding when cuts have to be made. Scott Walker's performance when it comes to county mental health services is one example.

Then there is the out of control and aptly named Michael Savage, whose infamous comment that 99% of autistic children are frauds. The was not word one at TMJ for yanking this yahoo off the air.

If you you ask the parent of an autistic child which party is more sympathetic to the needs of their kids, the GOP probably doesn't spring to mind. 

If Barack Obama keeps on putting the mouth in gear before engaging the brain, he will be in trouble.

But don't bet on it.

Bum Stock Tips from Sykes and Esenberg

With the right when it is a choice between prosperity and the supremacy of conservative fantasies, it is fantasyland hands down.

The day after Barack Obama's highly effective speech, Sykes and Esenberg cheered a dip in the market when it opened the next day as a sign that Wall Street isn't in favor of the proposed plan to uplift you know, you and me.

A couple of weaknesses here.

1) The right wing has never been in favor of the uplift of this country. Otherwise why would they be dishing out policies that cripple the middle class?

2) As Nate Silver points out, what's good for Wall Street is not necessarily good for Main Street.

3) What goes down, can go up. Turns out that the Obama speech had nothing to do with the markets opening down on Wednesday (unless that down market is the Jindal stock).

Maybe Rick should stick to what he knows, whatever that is.

BTW, notice the difference between 2001 and 2009?

In both cases we have a state of crisis. In 2001 the opposition pulled behind the president. In 2009 the opposition is praying for failure.

Is Charlie an economic surrender monkey?

And This Is One Of Their Favorite People

All of the right wing squawkers, from Sykes to PaddyMac to even the former blogger, former squawker McBride, and their Posse Comatose, love themselves some Michelle Malkin.

Now we know why, thank to Dan Cody:


How classy of her to be hamming it up with some starker who has a swastika in Obama's name. Class acts all around, just like our local hate right wingers.

For further distastefulness, Other Side discusses the racist cartoon that appeared in the New York Post.

Gotta love them "big tenters."

James Stays Classy

James T. must be missing his fifteen minutes of fame when he was promoted nationally as the fool he is.

In a desperate effort to regain national attention, he gives us this:

Well, now we get to deal with a couple of new firsts. First black President, first black presidential flub up of the Presidential oath. First President to acknowledge non-believers as a religious group.

This can’t be good. How do we know they used a Bible at the do-over and not a Koran? Hey, I’m just asking!

Update: Obama didn’t use the Bible or the Koran! Oh shiggedy! Another first? Which swearing in should count? The one with the Bible or the one without?

First of all, would someone kindly point out to James that John Roberts is the white Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, not a black president?

Secondly, would someone please tell me how Obama can be a Muslim, which reject the teachings of Christ, and at the same time, have gone to one of those hateful Christian churches for 20 some years? It's one or the other, unless your schizophrenic. Then you can believe in both, I guess.

The Concrete Thinking of James T. Harris

James T. wanted us to know just how he felt during Inauguration Day.

First, in the morning, he shows real (lack of) class:

This is the heart of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision. Content of character triumphant in a colorblind society. To say that today’s inauguration of Barack Obama is the culmination of Dr. King’s dream is to spit on that great man’s vision.

If anything, today's coronation of America's first black prince is the triumph of skin color over Dr. King's stated characteristics, and he would be sickened by the celebration.

As am I.

At noon, it's more than a little bit more than a different story, in which he congratulates President Obama.

Later in the day, after the medication wears off, and the madness returns, it's back to bashing and blasphemy.

Indeed, James has a mind like concrete: All mixed up and firmly set.

America Weighs Anchor and Sets Sails

By Keith R. Schmitz

A black man will be residing in a house built by slaves and millions have given him a warm welcome on an icy day.

As we speak the old ideas and tired dogmas are being hacked away. Now we get busy. The strings that have tethered the ideas and energy are being snipped and will allow them to be aloft.

All we care about now is what works.

The train is rolling on and everyone is urged to jump on board.

Paddy The Magic Catholic

Chip Saltsman wanted to be the head of the RNC, but basically took himself out of the running with the ill-advised, but revealing, act of sending out a CD full of conservative ditties including the offensive "Barack the Magic Negro," made infamous by national racist talk show host Rush Into Limbo.

The right wingers have their faux outrage going on big time about this, including local blogger Mary at Freedom Eden and MJS lead squawker, PaddyMac.

Mary's big beef is that she feels that anyone complaining about this is hypocritical, because the left was so mean to George W. Bush. What she fails to comprehend is that the song ridicules Obama for his race, while people are critical and sardonic towards Bush is that he was one of the worst, if not the worst, president in US history. It was Bush that started the Iraq war and cost thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens their lives. It was Bush that neglected his duties when Hurricane Katrina headed towards, struck, and nearly destroyed New Orleans. Neither of those disasters have been cleaned up yet.

As offensive as Mary's hypocritical stance is, Paddy's is even worse. He tries to defend the song at parody, and takes the wild position that the song has no racism in it at all.

Um, Patrick, the song wouldn't have been written at all if Obama wasn't black. As one of his commenters pointed out, the cacophony of right wing outrage would be deafening if someone made a song called "George the Magic Christian." There would have been controversy to no end as the pseudofaithful claim foul and said that their beliefs were being mocked.

Patrick then goes on with this:

So we’ll go on, having to pretend not to notice the next president's ethnicity unless we swaddle the mention in a protective context of praise. This is going to be a hilarious four years, I can tell already, especially if anyone starts prattling on about how, under Obama, we can now have our long-delayed national conversation about race. Good luck, when half the country is barred from the subject.

My question to Patrick, since he and his overlords have seen it fit to ban me from commenting on any of their sites, is this: What does Obama's race have to do with any of his decisions and/or policies that he will be setting forth in the next four or eight years?

Just by feeling the need to make that an issue shows Paddy's latent racism. He also let the cat out of the bag regarding what the right's arguments are going to be for the foreseeable future: Obama's only doing this to get back at the white man.

How preposterous these people can be!

To add to the fun, Paddy then brings up the fact that Obama is going to be sworn in using his full name, which holds to tradition of any person being sworn in as President. One of his commenters points out the fallacy of Paddy's faux oversensitivy by writing this (grammatical errors included):

This is another typical lazy straw-man argument. It is not the words being used but their intended usage and YOU KNOW IT. The magic n***o thing was simply a ploy to try to evoke a response that right wingers could decry as PC and it just made these people look dumb and ignorant (if the shoe fits right?). The Obama middle name thing makes me laugh the hardest. How many times did people refer to mccain by all 3 names? Uh, none. Why did right wingers put obama's middle name in caps or emphasize it in their blood thirsty rallies? It wasn't that they used it but they clearly intended to use it to play on some peoples fear and hatred of anything muslim. Trying to evoke some of the worst in mankind using this approach is the very definition of racism. I could care less about words, it is the intent in which they are used. You know this is true Pat but you are just subscribing to the same play you and your ilk use over and over and over again, conservatives are always the victims. Pathetic

Pathetic indeed.

Comparing Wax Apples To A-Bombs

Today, on his blog, PaddyMac invents a straw man, and yet still manages to lose to it.

Paddy first claims that Obama is trying to perpetuate the fiscal crisis caused by Bush and his failed economic policies, which Paddy just loves. His criticism is that Obama isn't doing enough to fix Bush's mistakes, even though he's not even sworn into office yet. (Imagine how loudly PaddyMac and his buddies would be squawking if Obama took an even more assertive stance.)

Paddy then shows his true lack of integrity by repeating an outright lie:

Look, the outgoing administration, having itself come into office after a vindictive transition that saw Clinton staff trashing offices and peeling W’s off keyboards, appears to want to make things smooth. The economy’s in crisis, the Treasury is asking how the new guy wants to proceed so it doesn’t set up something at loggerheads with where we’ll be going in the next four years – and Obama can’t even involve aides of “sufficient rank” on the conference call?

First of all, the whole trashing the White House and the keyboard stories have all been debunked:

Accounts that departing Clinton administration officials destroyed office equipment and committed other acts of vandalism in the White House during the presidential transition were significantly overblown, a manager at the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, said yesterday.

The General Services Administration found nothing unusual about the condition of White House offices after Clinton officials left, and President Bush's staff said it had no records that indicated damage or subsequent repair work, the accounting office manager said.

But even if PaddyMac was telling the truth for once, I say so what? He is going to mince about a few keyboards being vandalized, when the Bush administration has raped and left to ruin not one, but two separate countries.

I feel safe in saying that I would rather have to replace a couple of keyboards and scrub a few walls than to deal with the damage from Hurricane Katrina (which Bush still hasn't done), a full blown recession (if not already a depression), the mess in Iraq, strained relations with most of the world and the multitude of other messes Cowboy George has created.

Some Advice For Charlie

It's been two weeks since the election, yet Charlie is still scouring the corners of the Intertubes to find anything that he can copy and paste to show that Obama is a bad, bad man and that the election wasn't fair, or some such nonsense.

Um, Charlie, to paraphrase someone, perhaps the only one, that you love, adore and respect, let me say this:

The election is over. Obama won. Get over it. No, seriously, get over it.