Maine Owl

I don't like Rahm Emanuel either

Yesterday I was listening to No Agenda Netcast with John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry (#123). I've always been usefully entertained by Dvorak's tech columns and his skeptical view of just about everything. Adam Curry is the father of podcasting.

They spent a little time admiring a Glenn Beck segment with Democrat swift-boating apostate Pat Caddell called "A Look at Chicago-Style Politics".

Normally I would dismiss something like this as wingnuttia just stroking itself again, but this certainly is interesting:

BECK: America, does the name Whitacre, the guy who helped Rahm Emanuel make $16 million, does the name Whitacre ring a bell? Pat?

CADDELL: Because, when they appointed the new chairman of G.M., who announced the day of his appointment, I know nothing about the car business, his name was Edward Whitacre.

They have a whole web of intrigue that goes along with this, including Emanuel's work with Wasserstein Perella, a Wall Street "deal company", where the $16 million came from a deal involving phone company SBC.

Say what you will about wingnuttia and its bright lights that shine only in one direction. But how these Obama-administration characters with a history of self-enrichment are handling the public interest certainly deserve more scrutiny from credible media. It's sad that these things are left for Glenn Beck.

Colbert does his best


Glenn-Harried Glenn-Lost

No, there probably is no cure for Glenn-Beck-type wingnuttery. Practitioners most likely will be unable to comprehend the asshat's perfidy, even after Stephen Colbert makes it abundantly clear in this piece.

Limbaugh implied syllogism: Obama/Pelosi/Democrats = socialism = Nazism

Follow the drumbeat at Media Matters, HERE.

Today's best gem (of many):

Limbaugh: Which group of people are closer to the National Socialism of Germany on this health care plan? Is it Obama and the Democrats in the plan, or is it people showing up to protest the plan at these town hall meetings? It's no contest.

The people who are closest, and with the most striking resemblance to the socialist policies of Nazis, is today's Democrat Party, with ... this ... health ... care ... plan. Not saying Hitler and Pelosi are the same thing. Not saying that. But Nazi is derived from the German word, national socialism. ...That's where Nazi comes from!

Socialism is socialism wherever it is--be it in the Soviet Union, be it with Hitler in the bunker in the 30s and 40s, be it with Kim Jong Il today, whoever, Hugo Chavez down in Ven.... And I'm telling you, what the Democrat Party is doing today is doing with this health care plan, from the president on down, bears far more resemblance to socialized policy of previous regimes in the world, including the Nazis, than anything the people protesting this are doing. They don't resemble anything at all to do with,... they are protesting to stand up and maintain their liberty, and their freedom. Hitler ... Lenin ... Stalin were all men of the left.

Yeah, and I would never call Rush Limbaugh a big fat fuck paid to incite a legion of swastika-waving lunatics and then accuse the people being attacked of resembling Nazis.

Also, if you get into a discussion about these idiotic equivalencies with dittoheads, ask them to show the history book explaining how the Soviet Union, an ally in WWII that lost 20,000,000 people in unimaginable suffering while valiantly fending off the Nazis, is really one in the same with the Nazis.

Related items:

• Do reactionary hecklers portend arrival of fascism?
• Hitler like Obama

Hitler symbolism becomes drumbeat of anti-health-reform wingnuttia

There is so much more today on the health reform = Nazism front (see previous post). Listen carefully to the language Limbaugh uses: "Now does this sound like something any conservative president has done or does it sound like something liberals are doing all over this country."

Limbaugh was making some silly comment about a German law requiring the boiling of lobsters. But don't we have Jonah Goldberg's faux construct of "liberal fascism" going on here? This is really a twisted, Alice-in-Wonderland attempt to replace (often though not always unfair) notions that conservatives are fascists and to insert liberals as a target for angry scorn. Goldberg tried this in his preposterous book.

Today Sara, posting at Orcinus, fires a warning shot. With the arrival these swastika-waving mobs--albeit ones angrily trying to reflect their own images onto those of Congressional liberals and President Obama--the guessing game, according to Sara, is over.

America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

The post warns that these mobs portend a "danger line" beyond which "no country has ever been able to return."

Please read the whole post and comment below what you think of it. I won't speak for Ms. Owl, but I'll tell you that while she agrees with me this is a strong strategy to stop cold health reform, it's just a little hyperbolic to say this means we are on the threshold of fascism.

Maybe. But what if fourteen months from now health reform is dead, the political process is at a standstill, anger is seething from every corner of the electorate, and Obama is scrambling to avoid a replay of 1994 while Republicans pretend to possess the salve with their Contract on America? Where are we then?

Rush Limbaugh: "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate"

Back in 2004, our wingnut friends may recall their indignant uproar because uploaded video in a MoveOn.org ad contest included pieces comparing Bush to Hitler. Fox News reported at the time "Ad Comparing Bush to Hitler Gets Heat" and that the Republican National Committee "called on all nine [2004] Democratic [presidential] candidates to condemn the ads."

Wingnuts certainly remember the huge brush they used to paint the Michael Moore /Janeane Garofalo camp as radical purveyors of hate, with this particular incident held up as proof. Except they don't.

Times have changed. Despite a little post on Media Matters and some attention on the Rachel Maddow Show, there is no broad-based reporting of this offensive comparison, made by the host of a national radio program. Obviously, conservatism is equivalent to civility, as everyone knows.

Department of bad forgeries

The latest WND Birther document is from the Republic of Kenya before the Republic of Kenya was a republic. Hmmm, maybe it shows too that Iraq sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

HERE is a long expose on Orly Taitz from the Orange County News: "Meet Orly Taitz, Queen Bee of People Obsessed With Barack Obama's Birth Certificate."

It's worth reading just for entertainment.