Combat television on MSNBC

In the past week, there have been several interesting sparring matches on MSNBC as it seems that liberals are trying to grow a set of balls.

First was Joe Scarborough and Max Bluementhal. Blumenthal's book Republican Gomorrah argues that the Republican party has been hijacked by right-wing evangelical Christians. Scarborough began pressing Blumenthal on why he feels that evangelical Christians have no right to participate in politics, but the conversation quickly shifted to a discussion on extremism.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Then there's the Dylan Ratigan/Betsy McCaughey feud. Betsy McCaughey is a liar (famously exposed by Jon Stewart over the summer) whom the media keep inviting on their programs to continue to lie about health care. And so, today she ended up on Dylan Ratigan's Morning Meeting with Representative Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). There was a brief, mad moment where I thought that this might end well, but it didn't.

The tactics McCaughey deploys in situations like this are a heavy-duty pretense that she supports health care reform, the Palin-esque answer-a-question-with-an-answer-to-a-question-of-her-liking technique, the ability to quickly provide information and opinion that's completely beside the point, et cetera. Unfortunately, Ratigan wanted to have a discussion on health care competition and cost containment, and that didn't dovetail too well with what McCaughey prefers to do in such a debate: set aside all substantive issues so that she can fearmonger about seniors being killed by the government.

And so, McCaughey unleashed her SENIOR CITIZEN HEALTH CARE APOCALYPSE nonsense, accusing Weiner of being ignorant and telling Ratigan that he wasn't a "fair moderator," to which Ratigan replied, "Well, you're not a fair answerer." Ratigan gamely attempted to get McCaughey to reconcile how she'd continue to provide the current level of unsustainable funding to Medicare without updating the system to address its inefficiencies, to no avail.

McCAUGHEY: This will go down in history as one of the most browbeating interviews in television history.

RATIGAN: I hope that it does, and maybe you'll learn to go on television to answer questions as opposed to casting accusations.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Gun-toting soccer mom dead in murder-suicide

Draw what conclusions you will. There are many to work with. Starting with 'live by the sword...'.

MSNBC
A soccer mom who gained national attention when she openly carried a loaded gun to her 5-year-old daughter's game was shot dead Wednesday along with her husband in what appeared to be a murder-suicide, police said.

Meleanie Hain and Scott Hain were pronounced dead Wednesday night at their home in Lebanon, a small city about 80 miles west of Philadelphia.

The couple's three children were home at the time but weren't hurt, police said. They were taken to stay with friends and relatives.

Meleanie Hain made headlines after she attended a children's soccer game in a park on Sept. 11, 2008, with a handgun in plain view holstered on her hip, upsetting other parents.

The county sheriff, Michael DeLeo, revoked her gun-carrying permit nine days later.

Hain successfully appealed the permit revocation, although the judge who restored the permit questioned her judgment and said she had "scared the devil" out of other people at the game.

Did someone say "indoctrination"?

Someone call Michelle Malkin. The proprietors of Jesus Camp are teaching children to worship the president. Literally.

No, the right doesn't embrace terror..... NEVER!

(Crooks and Liars)

Scott Roeder is the guy who assassinated George Tiller. The other one speaks for itself. This stuff is being sold over at Cafe Press.

Right-wing extremists? Nahhhh.....

I'll start this off the same way I did FOUR DAYS AGO. "Remember when the right-wing went nuts(er) about the Homeland Security report detailing the efforts of right-wing extremists, aka domestic terrorists?"

Oh, the indignity! The right-wing went (ironically) nuts. NEVER! NOT US!

Meanwhile, we've seen the assassination of George Tiller.

We've seen an officer of the Southern Baptist Conference who's praying for Obama's death (and sees no problem with Tiller's killing).

We've seen John Zaubler threaten to kill Sonia Sotomayor and Barack Obama by "blowing (them) up".

We've seen Daniel James Murray become the subject of a nation-wide manhunt by telling a Utah bank manager he was "on a mission to kill" Obama.

Now we have James Von Brunn, long-time far-right fringe wingnut.

A frustrated artist and an angry man, the suspect in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board, a "caper" thwarted when a guard captured him outside a board meeting carrying a bag stuffed with weapons.

Von Brunn, 88, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier, was sentenced in 1983 to more than four years in prison for once trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board, a "caper" thwarted when a guard captured him outside a board meeting carrying a bag stuffed with weapons. He describes the 1981 assault with apparent pride on his Web site, the source of fulmination against Jews and races other than his own.

Top it off with Fox News' Sheperd Smith describing the rise in far-right hate mail. Remember, Shep works for Fox News. And Fox News - let it sink in, Fox News - is saying hate speech is getting out of hand.



****UPDATE****
Here's a reminder of the conservative media freak-out at the DHS report. More ignored warnings.

No, there are no Right-wing extremists..... none

Remember when the right-wing went nuts(er) about the Homeland Security report detailing the efforts of right-wing extremists, aka domestic terrorists?

Do you remember how indignant they were? No conservative (as if they can all be lumped together) would ever engage in politically-based terror.

Right....

NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan man who threatened to kill U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor and said he wanted to kill President Barack Obama has been arraigned on charges of making a terroristic threat. A criminal complaint says 48-year-old John Zaubler called 911 Saturday and said he was going to kill Sotomayor by "blowing her up" because he did not want his girlfriend to go to federal prison.

The complaint also says he wanted to kill Obama by "blowing him up."

Or this guy....

A nationwide manhunt was underway Friday night for the "Cape Man" of Blue Jay Way - a gun-loving goofball from upstate New York who threatened to kill President Obama. Daniel James Murray, who got G-men on his tail by telling a Utah bank manager he was "on a mission to kill" Obama

Daniel James Murray, who got G-men on his tail by telling a Utah bank manager he was "on a mission to kill" Obama

And is there anyone who will argue with a straight face that the assassination of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was not political terror, designed to scare doctors from performing this legal service?

Please.

O'Reilly's jihad against murdered doctor

While many Americans may never have heard of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller, who was killed Sunday, his name — and nickname, "Tiller the Baby-Killer" — should be familiar to viewers of Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor." Salon's Gabriel Winant reports that Bill O'Reilly has mentioned Tiller on 29 episodes since 2005, most recently in April of this year.

"There's no other person who bears as much responsibility for the characterization of Tiller as a savage on the loose, killing babies willy-nilly thanks to the collusion of would-be sophisticated cultural elites, a bought-and-paid-for governor and scofflaw secular journalists" than O'Reilly, Winant writes.

Some of the things O'Reilly has said of Tiller, according to Salon:

He "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000."
He's guilty of "Nazi stuff," a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-Qaida
"This is the kind of stuff that happened in Mao's China, Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union"
"operating a death mill"
"has blood on his hands"
"executing babies about to be born"

Does O'Reilly have blood on his hands?  No, I don't think so.  But he does bear responsibility for his words and the climate he creates.  At what point do we get back to discussing politics and not playing the Demonization Game?

Full Winant article here

Homeland Security warns of right-wing terror; Hannity attacked by fellow wingnut

The Department of Homeland Security - the group that was created after 9/11 to prevent us from MORE 9/11 - has warned "that home foreclosures, unemployment and other consequences of the economic recession "could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists"..." (Reuters summary here, report in PDF here)

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues - DHS report, pg 3

At what point, exactly, will we realize that this crazy rhetoric being peddled by Beck, Hannity, et. al, and started by Santelli (who has crawled under a rock and hidden since) is dangerous? Free speech is fine, but when you're crossing the line to hate speech that could result in violence, then it's no longer a First Amendment issue. It's yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

And when Bernie Goldberg, who has gone so far off the reservation that he can't even see sane anymore, is telling Sean Hannity that he's gone too far - well, that's when you know you've gone waaaay too far. This is like Idi Amin advising someone to ease up on the killing.

"I don't want to put Barack Obama on Mount Rushmore for simply being the commander-in-chief, but we have to stop going out of our way to find fault with every single thing he does.

If something bad happened here, and thank God it didn't, but if something bad happened here, I'll guarantee you, I'll tell you who would be leading the crusade against him: You. And you may have been right, if something bad happened, you may have said this is because he's seen as soft and they took advantage of him. You might have been right. But it didn't. Look, Sean, the good guy is alive and well. The bad guys are dead. That's all good. It happened on Barack Obama's watch. He gets the credit." - Bernie Goldberg

And of course, wingnut supreme Michelle Malkin is shocked - SHOCKED! - that the DHS report could possibly be referring to her. In fact, now it's an Obama-led hitjob on conservatives who have been doing nothing - NOTHING! - wrong.

****UPDATE****
Glenn Greenwald comments on the Malkin outrage:

When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you. If you create a massive and wildly empowered domestic surveillance apparatus, it's going to monitor and investigate domestic political activity. That's its nature. [...]

As the National Review/Bush-following-Right has been telling us for years now, there's nothing to worry about if you've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide.

Especially since the U.S. News reported in 2005: "In the 10 years since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing killed 168 people, roughly 60 right-wing terrorist plots have been uncovered in the United States, according to an upcoming report by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. The plots, all foiled by law enforcement, reportedly included violent plans by antigovernment militia groups, racist skinhead organizations, and Ku Klux Klan members to use various types of chemical bombs and other weapons."