Thanks for this thread, Brad, and the links and especially the poster atop.

In the question Brad asks, "Any of that look or sound familiar?" I have to answer yes I read the MIAC report. I've seen lots other memo's, directives, and orders of misguided dangerous stuff from the dhs as well.

The poster atop I am not that impressed with.

Going out on a limb as the devil's advocate, "Don't Retreat, Instead --- RELOAD!". Sounds like a hunting vacation resort advertisement in the back of Southern Living Magazine. It's all about word games. I beg you all STOP it.

Bamboo Harvester in da house .............

Some of the grievences reported by the Timeline are legitimate, such as Pelosi being against the Constitution when she failed in her duty to initiate impeachment against the Bush administrations head officials, which would also be true regarding none brought against Obama, although it should be noted the congressperson making the accusation was several years too late. What would be more impressive is a listing of persons and organizations that provided the funding for these seemingly seperate groups beginning about 100 years ago when the Hate Machine realy got going after the Civil War. Impunity also feeds the flames, which really got going when Democrats refused to impeach Reagan and GHW Bush for their many crimes. IMO, the state of affairs today would be markedly different if those two killers had been put into prison until they died. As you state, Democrats are just as responsible. Perhaps it's because both parties owe their allegience to the Money Power instead of the People that the creeping police state which certainly favors the Money Power exists.

Yes, there is a direct correlation between Hate Media and the actions described by the Timeline. The question for me is Qui Bono? My answer is the demostrably anti-democratic, anti-humanrights Money Power, the Power Obama, the RNC and DLC clearly serve by their actions/deeds.

Thank you for pointing out that the Department of Homeland Security had seen an increase in this type of behavior. People have seemed to have forgotten about that. and the important link to the f c c.

I can't help thinking about the case of the guy (whose name I choose not to use) who shot up a Unitarian church in Tennessee. He had been reading books by right-wing people like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reily, and he said, "Liberals must die".

We're all very close to the edge of the cliff here. Think about all that could happen if even one act of retribution were to take place right now. We're not so far away from Beirut really.

Reading that timeline, I see a lot of evidence of how stupid, ignorant, and misinformed the right is. They want freedom, democracy, and capitalism, but what they are fighting for is fascism.

Germany went through that and they learned the hard way. Germany now has socialized medicine. The German people are healthier than we are, live longer, and they spend a lot less on health care. German workers get huge salaries compared to Americans, and six week vacations. They have benefits American workers could never dream of. But Germany competes with China for the biggest exporter of goods in the world. While Chinese goods are cheap, German goods are high quality.

By law, a law imposed by us after WWII by the way, half of the Board of Directors of every corporation in Germany is composed of workers, and they have an equal say in management, so corporations can't export German jobs or cut corners on worker safety.

The right wants socialism, but they don't know what it is. I often tell the story of the time I was standing on line at a supermarket for a flu shot (I stopped getting flu shots years ago, as I believe that they are useless and possibly dangerous) behind a Navy mom with a kid in a stroller and we started talking. She told me that she believe that everyone should have access to health care, but she was opposed to socialized medicine. In other words, because it has a label she doesn't understand and fears, she opposes exactly what she wants.

That's the right wing. They blame poor hard-working immigrants for taking their jobs, as rich white male CEOs continue to outsource the few jobs we have left. No immigrant ever outsourced a single American job, but millions of jobs have been outsourced to China, Burma, the Phillipines, Mexico, India, and anywhere else that wages are low and workers have few rights or protections.

The right is supporting tyranny because they fear tyranny. Of course they're violent and kill people. They don't know how to think, so they believe what they're told and when it doesn't make any sense, they lash out. The same rich white CEOs who outsourced their jobs, fund the right wing propaganda that tells them to blame immigrants. So they support their enemies and shoot their friends.

In most countries, the political right represents the wealthy oligarchs, and the political left represents the working class. Here, the working class actually believes that the right represents them, and blames the Democrats (the working class on the right blames the Republicans), instead of uniting with other working class people against the tyranny of the rich.

Obama and Congress won't do anything because the Democratic Party is just as dependent upon big corporate donors as the Republican Party--in fact those big corporate donations are the only thing the two parties compete for, so they support the same corporate agenda. And the nutcase right is shooting Democrats for not supporting torture, wars of aggression, free trade, globalization, and the continuing theft of the commons by privatizing and making unaffordable everything that is needed for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, such as jobs, health care, and a social safety net.

These people are so dumb that if Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck and the rest pointed them at mirrors and told them to shoot their enemies, they'd scream, "Down with tyranny" and shoot themselves.

England took away guns, not just from citizens, but also from cops. The result was that the murder rate dropped precipitously. But they also have socialized medicine, only they started it right after WWII and everyone agreed about it, so nobody was shot. Every industrialized country in the world has a national health care plan, but the Tea Party wants to kill anyone who dares to suggest that they're entitled to free medical care. They're not smart enough to know that because countries with socialized medicine spend less on health care, they'd save money, and they think it would cost them money. We have the most expensive health care in the world, and it sure isn't the best.

Right wing Americans are people who, if a corporation dumped poison in their drinking water, and all the children in town developed cancer, but nobody in town smoked cigarettes, would blame it on a smoker who walked through the town fifty years earlier with a lit cigarette, because right wing Americans know that smoking causes cancer and that corporations provide jobs. And if a several independent scientific studies proved conclusively that the cancers were due to the poison, and legislators tried to enforce laws against corporations dumping poison in drinking water, right wing Americans would shoot the legislators for imposing on their freedoms, even as they buried their children.

This comment is pending approval and won't be displayed until it is approved.~huffingtonpost

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DEMAND THE FCC HOLD THE NETWORKS ACCOUNTABL­E FOR NOT BROADCASTI­NG

IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST ... OR ARE THE NETWORKS TOO BIG TOO SHUT DOWN ?

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Mark E. Smith @8, referring to the 21st Century "know nothings" aka "Tea Party" followers, wrote:

They want freedom, democracy, and capitalism, but what they are fighting for is fascism.

The problem, Mark, is that the typical right-wing follower does not understand the fundamental contradiction between "capitalism" and "freedom and democracy."

When right-wing, billionaire sociopaths, like the Koch brothers, who fund and control the "Tea Party" movement, refer to "free markets," for example, they actually mean the "freedom" of capital to enslave the mass of humanity. The corporate security state they envision is not merely "fascist" but neo-feudal.

They consider real democracy--one in which an enlightened citizenry places the needs of the many, and of a sustainable planet, above the greed of the privileged few--as their mortal enemy.

The vitriol of 24/7 hard-right propaganda is intended to exploit the fear brought on by the displacement of the middle-class by a harsh capitalist reality.

By directing emotional angst against government, convenient scapegoats, like immigrants (during the Weimar Republic Jews provided the ideal right-wing scapegoat) and a perceived socialist boogieman, the billionaire class evades focus on the true source of the economic demise of the middle-class--corporate capitalist greed and the very billionaire class that is funding their movement.

Despite a solid analysis presented here by Brad, and by others elsewhere, linking that vitriol to repeated acts of violence (remember O'Reilly's "Tiller the killer"?), at most, we can expect a temporary pause, before the irresponsible vitriol resumes. Vitriol is a vital component of a deceptive, anti-egalitarian movement.

During his appearance on Democracy Now, Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates who investigates right-wing movements, ties Loughner's seemingly random, paranoid ideas to "longstanding right-wing conspiracy theory."

The Koch brothers do not control all of the Tea Party factions. And that has already become a problem for the GoP.

There is a very interesting article by Matt Taibbi in the current Rolling Stone that offers some valuable insight into at least one faction that refused to be bought out. And it's in Boehner's back yard too!

Crap..here's the link

http://www.rollingstone....-boehner-20110105?page=4

Well, of course, Dan-In-PA, every movement triggers fringe splinter groups that can potentially get out of control. But the truth is that the so-called "Tea-Party" is a top-down, billionaire-funded, organized and controlled group whose followers are clueless as to the extent of their own manipulation.

The so-called "Tea Party" presents the illusion of a grassroots organization by putting its useful idiots out on the front lines--and that applies whether you follow the carefully arranged movements and meetings of the "Tea Party Express" or the seemingly spontaneous but well-organized angry mobs who shut down the town hall meetings.

And, if you ask any of those indoctrinated and manipulated useful idiots, they'll express the unfounded belief that they are actually in charge.

This article should be well distributed and the links are all keepers.
The striking phenomena to me is that much of the events on those lists, have never been reported or mentioned in the mass media, so people don't know.

Thank you Brad Friedman for such terrific work, you are awesome!

Gabrielle Giffords Faced Opposition from Local Anti-War, 9/11 Truth Activists

This is how local antiwar activists in Tucson have viewed Gabrielle Giffords (and her political machine) in the past. We offer our condolences for those who have died, those who were injured, and their families who are left to deal with the aftermath of this horrific tragedy. The fact is there was a lot of opposition to Gifford's stance regarding the wars, torture and rendition, the patriot act and impeachment of the Bush administration. We are proud of the work done in pointing out the hypocrisy of pro war crime politicians no both sides of the isles. Everyone loses if you start attacking free speech.

See video here.

Hi JT Waldron,

I really appreciate where you are coming from, and I do agree that Free Speech needs to be protected.

But the rhetoric that has been advanced most especially by the Tea Parties, Palin, Beck and Fox News has shifted far from free speech, through outright negligence and on to contrived outrage manipulated by lies. It has become a sick and psychotic exercise the most volatile forms of cognitive dissonance.

Look, only a few weeks ago, Fox aired Glenn Becks “Puppet Master” series.

In that series, Beck explicitly accused Holocaust survivor (and “liberal” philanthropist) George Soros of being a Nazi collaborator (thats a pretty serious charge to throw at anyone, let alone someone who survived the horror of the Holocaust.)

Beck also claimed in his series that Soros is responsible for destroying entire economies world wide, and that he intends to do just the same (through Obama, “progressives” and HealthcareReform) here in the US. These statements are lies, and ones that are designed to make you want to fight.

Beck produced that series and explicitly stated those lies himself. He pushes them every week with an almost evangelical fervor. Its on the record, and that cant be changed.

How much more incendiary and alarmist does a program need to be? Is that Free Speech, or is that just very deliberate and damaging hyperbole specifically intended to inspire the most hostile emotions in Becks audience?

Perhaps you might remember that just last summer Byron Williams got into a shoot-out with police en route to an armed assault on the Tides foundation. Williams credited Beck with “blowing his mind” by revealing the “truth” about Tides (an organization that Beck had frequently cited as a nefarious Anti-American enemy), and other community organizing groups.

And lets not forget that, not too long ago, Beck acted out the scenario of poisoning Nancy Pelosi on tv as a “joke”. Its right there online.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j66UQDzW3yU

These arent occasional outbursts... it’s the fever pitch insanity that Fox and the Tea parties regularly stimulate day and night non-stop.

The Tea Parties repeatedly lie about a deadly and imminent ambush on American sovereignty by claiming things like “Obama made the Constitution illegal. Obama made George Washington an enemy of the state., Obama is a Muslim, etc...” They send out emails stating these things all the time. They state these lies explicitly and persistently (I know because I have the misfortune of receiving these emails from people who I know in the Tea Parties.)

Its not an attack on Free Speech to notice that there is a very overt attempt by Fox and in the Tea Parties to enrage people with fabricated nightmares. Look how they conflated HealthCare Reform with the Holocaust.

I mean, only this last Christmas, Fox & Friends’ Gretchen Carlson enraged her audience with claims that a Florida School had "cow-towed to political correctness" and forbad the use of green and red holiday decor. Gretch and pals were really ticked off about that, and if you saw the broadcast, you’d know that she really played up the idea that the Christian Holy Day (and Christianity itself) was in the grips of a severe threat from Big Liberal Government.

Then it turned out that the whole thing was fake, and that Fox never checked the facts before airing the story. The Florida school district issued its own demand for a correction, and demonstrated that no anti-decor policy was ever instituted there. Fox never issued a retraction... they never do.

So yeah, lets protect Free Speech, but lets promote RESPONSIBLE news.

Re J.T. Waldron @16.

First, Gifford's positions on war and peace, the USA PATRIOT Act, etc., are irrelevant to the core issue raised by this piece.

The question, as Brad aptly puts it, usually in the context of election integrity but just as applicable to the topic at hand, is not left or right, but right and wrong.

The 1st amendment right to free speech is not a license to say "anything." You can be prosecuted for yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. You can also be prosecuted if you incite someone else to commit an imminent lawless act, e.g. murder.

Charles Manson did not personally participate in the Tate/LaBianca murders. He persuaded others to kill for him, and, for that, he was appropriately convicted and sentenced for first degree murder.

What Brad is saying but we're not seeing elsewhere is "Its the media, stupid".

Bill Clinton's saying politics need to change. How the heck will that happen given that the media is almost completely controlled by one party? A party that has used media to intimidate and smear?

"How the heck will that happen given that the media is almost completely controlled by one party?"

Media is far beyond "one party", it's not the party causing the problem, or the L vs R paradigm. These stations get to say whatever they want, as long as they embrace the establishment's agenda. This is the dirty little secret of how they keep their FCC license in today's world.

Out of this We get, CNBC's "the economy is recovering." No news at all out of the GOM when clearly people, not just animals are dying from it. Anti-Wikileaks, Pro-war, Pro-TSA and DHS which We now have in 9000 locations across the nation like Wallmart. Want to be adeptous exemptous? Watch CiaBS to see how it's done.

The volume has in fact been cranked up a level!
So what happens when one of those 9000 Wallmart DHS ads ruin You or a loved one's life, because of some stazi snitch thinks your a terrorist?

Why are all the middle east war toys being aimed at American citizens now?