ThoughtCrimes.org

"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday--but never jam to-day." -- The White Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through The Looking Glass

"In the middle of two wars and in the middle of this giant security threat, why would we want to get into this debate?" Boehner asked, rhetorically.

"At a time when Americans are asking 'where are the jobs,' why do we want to get in this debate?" he continued. John Boehner on the issue of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Rawstory

We want to get into this debate now because, for the right wing, it’s never a good time to talk about issues like Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Really, when would be a good time? After all terrorism is defeated? After we’ve made a complete economic recovery? How many years will that take? And are we to believe no other problems are going to crop up that people like Boehner can point to and say, “this should take priority?”

So the answer, Representative Boehner, is “yes.”

We want to talk about this now.

By allowing these cameras to roll, it allowed Obama to sit there for an hour and a half refuting every single Republican talking point, which he really has not had an opportunity to do in his campaign rally speeches that he's been doing in Florida yesterday, that he's been doing addresses in the White House. He was able to directly refute Republicans to their face for an hour and a half on T.V. I think he scored a lot of political points. Crooks and Liars 1/30/10

This is why eliminating direct debate has been such an important tactic of the right wing for the past twenty years. Tea Partiers screaming insults and half-baked conspiracy theories works for them.

Reasonable discussion?

Not so much.

The defense had hoped to show Roeder was frustrated by Kline's failure to prosecute Tiller and was influenced in part by Kline's belief that Tiller was breaking the law. New York Times 1/28/10

It’s a relief to learn that Judge Warren Wilbert has ruled out the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter in the case of Scott Roeder, the anti-abortion activist who walked into a church and gunned down Dr. George Tiller. Wilbert has also ruled out testimony by former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who’d tried, but failed to prosecute Tiller. The judge feared turning the courtroom into a “referendum on abortion.”

This, thank goodness, puts a damper on the defense’s hope of citing Roeder’s “frustration” as a factor warranting the lesser charge of manslaughter. “Do what we say, and nobody gets hurt" seems to be a steadily rising chorus on the right.

The theme picked up by Media Matters’ overview of conservative response to the President’s State of the Union speech is pretty consistent:

John Hood, at NRO’s "The Corner" pronounced him “flippant and arrogant,” and John Erickson “cocky and snide.”

Jay Nordinger at The National Review allowed as maybe Obama couldn’t help it. "Obama looks arrogant, whether he's arrogant or not. I don't think he can help it: It's the upturned chin..."

Ben Stein before the speech observed that he expected Obama to exhibit “Fake modesty and fake humility" -- “fake” unless Obama says something like what Stein would like him to say which, according to Stein would be, “'I'm not the messiah; I'm a politician. I don't know very much. I'm going to take a year off until I learn more. And I'm not going to interfere and screw up people's lives anymore.' "

John Stossel also has some ideas for Obama's speech. “Well, I’d like him to say, ‘Gee, I’m so sorry. I was arrogant, we were arrogant, we thought we could reshape the world, my vision, so we wasted lots of your money…” Stossel was visibly disappointed afterwards. “He certainly didn’t sound humbled," he complained.

See, that’s why Obama is so darned arrogant. He doesn’t make a State of the Union speech in which he apologizes to everyone, says he was wrong, and promises never to do it again.

That President Obama – he just doesn’t know his place!

“The truth shall set me free,”

Here's James O’Keefe going all Sydney Carton on us after being caught allegedly attempting to do something in Senator Mary Landrieu’s office that apparently had nothing to do with wiretapping..

I mean, there could be an innocent explanation for him and his crew passing themselves off as technicians and trying to access Landrieu’s phone system…right?

“We understand these aren’t perfect bio-markers to measure overall health, but they do have the virtues of still being relatively good, easy to measure, and not too expensive to monitor. In the future it is possible that we will change or replace these bio-markers with superior alternative ones, if/when they are available and not too expensive to implement.”

Free Market Libertarian Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, in a leaked letter to his employees about a new health program offering higher store discounts to “Eligible Team Members” with the right blood pressure, cholesterol, and BMI.

That's the problem with a profit-driven, employer based healthcare system in which people are "rewarded" for being healthier. Along with making something like healthy food less accessible to those who need it most, it makes personal matters -- like your cholesterol level and weight -- you're boss' business. His bottom line trumps your privacy.

My mama once told me that the problem with lying is that you have to lie even more to support the lies. The bigger the lie, the more elaborate the framework of lies are needed to support it. Watching the right wing’s efforts to support their ongoing whopper – “Hitler was a leftist” illustrates this so neatly it would probably make a good children’s book. We could entitle it “Jonah, who Told Lies,” and pattern it after Hillaire Belloc’s poem about the unfortunate Matilda, with illustrations by Posy Simmonds. Instead of Jonah (or Andrew, or Glenn, any one of those names would do) being consumed by flames, however, we could show the book’s protagonist becoming permanently lost in the fantasy world he was forced to construct to support his big fib.

I admit, I’m a bit awed by the sheer audacity of these right wingers. If you’re going to lie so blatantly, I guess you might as well lie brazenly, outrageously, magnificently. Don’t engage in half measures. Lie like a rug. Lie like a rug nailed to the floor and ironed.

Not only lie your fool head off about a fact of history like “The Nazis were right wingers” that’s easily verifiable by anyone who takes the trouble to read contemporary news accounts, diaries, or journals -- but follow Andrew Breitbart’s lead and denounce the people you’re smearing for not taking part in the lie. In the wake of Glenn Beck’s documentary about how the Nazis were all progressives, and the liberals were part of a deep dark conspiracy to “cover up” the fact (known to anyone who didn't sleep through World History class) that Stalin treated the Kulaks with inhuman ferocity, Andrew Breitbart has called on progressives to “to address their movement's role in the Nazi genocide.”

The Neo-Progressives might do themselves a service by admitting the damage their predecessors have done, and trying to make amends for their horrors. Denying these documented crimes is the same as excusing them.

I should point out that I’ve linked this to Media Matters rather than Mr. Breitbart’s own blog because that entry containing this ringing challenge to progressives keeps popping in and out of view. Sometimes I can get to it. Other times I get the ol’ “400 Bad Request” screen for both the original post and a later post that refers to it.

And it’s a pity, because the comments section on Breitbart’s blog offers a fascinating view into the alternate universe you must inhabit to believe this fantasy about the Nazis being leftists. For instance, in response to the fact that Henry Luce’s Time Magazine referred to the Nazis as “Right Wing” back in 1932, one commenter has announced: “Luce was a communist stooge, and was parroting Stalins claims.”

Yes, folks, that’s right. In order to support the claim that the Nazis were leftists, these people are also willing to claim, in all apparent seriousness, that the rock-ribbed Republican Henry Luce was a commie, and Time Magazine a Stalinist mouthpiece.

Back in 2007 I had some fun “vandalizing” with facts Andrew Schlafly’s font of right-wing misinformation, Conservapedia and in the process got an object lesson in the extent to which reality will be folded, spindled, and mutilated to support the “Hitler was a leftist” lie. The discussion surrounding the section on the Third Reich was especially interesting. In order to support the premise that the Nazis were, in fact, leftists rather than right-wingers, the editors deliberately omitted things like the 1937 degenerate art exhibit, the 1933 book burnings, and the purging from libraries of “literature with liberal, democratic tendencies and attitudes, and writing supporting the Weimar Republic.” And in order to tie the Nazis to the liberal policies of the Weimar Republic one of them claimed -- I kid you not:

There is a large divergence between American historirans and Germans in discussing Wiemar Germany. Germans regard what is called "Wiemar Germany", or "the Wiemar period" as extending from 1919 to 1939. Americans assume Wiemar Germany ended in 1933 with the rise of Hitler & Nazism. This is what I call "the Hollywood view" while popular and prevelent, nonetheless over fictionalized.

So apparently, In order to believe the Nazis were leftists, it helps to not only believe that Henry Luce was a red, but that the Weimar Republic lasted until Hitler invaded Poland.

And that’s not all! The concentration camps? Most people knowledgeable about history are aware that the term “concentration camp” was coined during the Boer war. The Oxford English Dictionary places its usage as early as 1901, in a passage referring to “the policy of placing the women and children confined in the concentration camps of South Africa.”

This just isn’t good enough, however, if you’re striving to paint the Nazis as leftists, so Conservapedia’s entry reads:

The term concentration camp was coined by Soviet Communist Party General Secretary Vladimir Lenin in a letter of 9 August 1918…

When an editor pointed out the OED entry, he was told that “It's simply an effort to detract from the historical fact the [[V.I. Lenin]] invented the term 'concentration camp', and Hitler just mimed it."

That’s right. Those wild-eyed lefties compiling the Oxford English Dictionary were deliberately trying to white-wash Hitler’s connection with Lenin!

So… in order to believe that the Nazis were leftists, it helps if you also believe that:

1. Henry Luce was a communist.

2. The Weimar Republic lasted until 1939

3. Lenin invented the term “concentration camp."

4. The editors of the OED are leftists who’ve been conspiring to alter our conception of history since the beginning of the 20th century.

See what I mean? You just wander further and further afield from reality. It can’t be healthy.

It might be fun to follow this over the next few months and document the sheer level of historical revisionism piling up around this lie. I plan to keep an eye open.

And I will welcome any contributions from readers who stumble upon historical revisionism being used to prop up this historical revisionism, or even, like the claim about the OED, a conspiracy theory being used to prop up historical revisionism being used to prop up this historical revisionism.

"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better," Bauer said.

In South Carolina, 58 percent of students participate in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

Bauer's remarks came during a speech in which he said government should take away assistance if those receiving help didn't pass drug tests or attend parent-teacher conferences or PTA meetings if their children were receiving free and reduced-price lunches. www.thesunnews.com

Damn straight! A few days without lunch will teach those kids that there are consequences to allowing their parents to take drugs and miss PTA meetings!

January 20

Progressives = Nazi War Criminals!

I’m going to be like the Israeli Nazi hunters. I’m telling you, I’m going to find these big progressives, and to the day I die, I’m going to be a progressive hunter. I’m going to find the people who have done this to our, to our country, and expose them! I don’t care if they’re in nursing homes. I’m going to expose what they have done and make sure that the people understand…

Well, see, the Israeli Nazi hunters were exposing Nazis so they could be prosecuted for war crimes. They even went so far as kidnapping Eichmann and hauling him back to Israel.

Is that what Beck has in mind for elderly progressives? Does he think they should be dragged from their nursing homes and put on trial for being progressives?

Nahhh. He’s just using a little hyperbole… right?

January 21st

Progressives Are a Cancer Destroying the Republic!

This is the poison that is killing our constitution. This is the reason why you see Che t-shirts, this is the reason why you see Mao Christmas ornaments on the Christmas tress. And it must be corrected! If it is not corrected, if we don’t correct – this is the fundamental root of the disease. If we don’t correct this root of disease, it is only a matter of time. the body will eventually die of cancer. We’ve got to irradiate it! We must burn this out of the American system! We must make sure that progressivism cannot slink away and cover itself again.

Well, of course, Glenn means conservatives should do this through our political process, right? He thinks progressives should be voted out of office. That’s what he means by burning us out of the political system. That’s what he means by “correct.”

Right?

….right?

Wrong

January 22

This isn’t about winning the next election. This isn’t about “how can we get a few more Republicans elected?” This is about saving the republic. The republic and the progressive cannot coexist, as you will learn all next week on the program. They cannot coexist. They are diametrically opposed to each other.

So if it’s not going to be done through elections – what is he proposing?

…why are Jewish people liberal, when it seems that so much of what liberals do would be an anathema to Jewish people? Particularly abortion, but any number of things – taxes, tax increase…There are a lot of people, when you say “banker,” people think “Jewish,” people who have prejudice, people who have …a little prejudice about them. To some people, “banker” is code word for “Jewish,” and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people! And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I’m wondering if there’s starting to be some buyers remorse there. Rush Limbaugh, 1/20/10

H/T to Media Matters.



Hey, Rush, I got an idea! Along with recommending that your listeners read Normon Podhoretz, why not tell them to actually ask their Jewish neighbors and co-workers if, as the “money people,” they object to President Obama “assaulting bankers.”

See what they tell you.