Obama Derangement Syndrome
Fox-watchers and tea-baggers are strange.
It’s like their DNA has been changed.
They’re taking their cues
From Beck at Fox News,
But it’s Obama who’s made them deranged.
Month: March 2010
Verbatim
Perhaps they felt like they had killed health care reform … They thought the fight was over. And that the president couldn’t now succeed. I do believe that. And it is almost as if they had made the statement that they thought they had stopped the thing. And so it created a breathing space for us to regroup.
— White House adviser David Axelrod, quoted by the Huffington Post, on Republicans letting down their guard after winning the Massachusetts Senate special election in January.
Fox News’ Only Legit Anchor Says Violent Threats against Congress Caused by ‘Over-Inflated Rhetoric’ – Meaning Glenn Beck, Tea Baggers
There’s only one legitimate journalist anchoring for Fox News, and yesterday he laid blame for a spate of violent threats against members of Congress in the wake of passage of the health-care reform law on “over-inflated rhetoric” on the right:
“I wonder when it is an isolated incident becomes a string of things,” he said Wednesday. “You wonder when some in there, on both sides of the aisle, are gonna look in the mirror and go, my over-inflated rhetoric is causing some people…[to] go out and react given the information that they’ve been given. I just wonder if anybody’s gonna settle down a minute and go, Wow, we better settle down here, relax.”
Shep continued on that subject with a hint that he was really talking about those on the far right, including possibly his Fox News colleague Glenn Beck.
“What we do know is that when leaders on either side of the aisle go with this over-inflated rhetoric and they tell us it’s the end of the world, it’s Armageddon, the Marxists have taken over Washington, it’s the end of the world as we know it, we’re moving into socialism,” he said, “when they say things like that, that maybe some of them don’t believe, and then the fringes believe it, and then they go out and do stupid things…Well, I mean, it’s all kind of tied together isn’t it?”
How long will Shepard Smith keep his job — and how long before he starts receiving threats from tea baggers? Stay tuned.
In Snit over New Health-Care Law, GOP N.C. Sen. Burr Stops Hearing on Defense Bill, Wasting Taxpayer Cost to Fly in Military Brass from Asia to Testify
In retaliation against Dems over the new health-care law, Burr used a parliamentary trick to stop a hearing on the fiscal year 2011 Defense Authorization Bill.
The witnesses who were in the room included Navy Adm. Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, who’d flown in from Hawaii; Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command; and Army Gen. Walter Sharpe, commander of the U.S. forces in Korea, who’d flown in from Asia.
Watch George W. Bush Wipe Something Icky off His Hand onto Bill Clinton’s Shirt
Still not ready for prime time…
In the video, we have two former presidents in Haiti working what is essentially a rope line, shaking hands with local residents. Behind the presidents but out of view are Secret Service personnel and staffers, at least some of whom are equipped — as they are for every similar situation — with wipes, disinfectant soap and hand lotion.
In the video, we see George W. Bush, the blue-blood from the “let them eat cake” wing of the Republican aristocracy, shaking hands down the line until he apparently feels something gross on his hand. So he pauses, and instead of asking a staffer for a tissue, he reaches over and wipes his hand on the first available clean cloth he can find, which happens to be the shirt of Pres. Clinton.
Is this an expression of his disdain for Pres. Clinton because he’s a Democrat or a commoner, or both? Or is just a revealing look at how truly feral and uncultured Bush is?
And why send him to Haiti in the first place? As we saw during his criminally negligent response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Bush has no empathy for under-privileged people, especially those of African descent.
Meg Whitman Spending $249 a Minute to Buy California Governorship
Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive turned Mitt Romney-esque candidate for the Republican nomination for governor of California, has been spending lavishly on her campaign — $358,439 a day, $14,935 an hour, $249 a minute, almost all of which is her own money — and it is paying off, at least for now.
According to the latest Field Poll, she is ahead of her Republican opponent and against the only Democrat in the race, Attorney General (and former governor) Jerry Brown, who is running unopposed in the primary and has not been actively campaigning:
Brown … now trails the former eBay Inc. chief executive by 43 percent to 46 percent in a two-way matchup.
Eleven percent of those polled, a random sample of 748 likely general-election voters, said they were undecided. And Whitman’s lead was within the statistical margin of error.
…Whitman also widened her advantage over her rival for the Republican nomination, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, 63 percent to 14 percent. In January, she led Poizner 45 percent to 15 percent. The percentage of undecided Republican voters shrank from 38 percent to 23 percent.
Brown, not surprisingly, still holds a better-than three-to-one lead (69 percent to 20 percent) over Whitman among Democrats. But Whitman’s lead among Republicans is even grater [sic], 77 percent to 13 percent. Independents split in Whitman’s favor, 50 percent to 36 percent for Brown.
Whitman also holds huge leads over Brown among the roughly one-third of likely California voters who identify with the Tea Party movement. She scored better among middle-aged and older voters, while Brown was favored by younger voters. Both male and female voters preferred Whitman by small margins.
By comparison, Brown led Whitman last October 50 percent to 29 percent, but saw his lead shrink to 10 percentage points, 46 percent to 36 percent, in January.
One factor to consider, however, is that Republican registration has dropped [PDF] to 30.8 percent, while Democratic registration is up 44.6 percent and Independents (called “Decline to State” in California) now represent 20.2 percent of the electorate.
The Fox Effect: 67% of Gops Believe Obama Is a Socialist, 57% That’s He’s a Muslim, 45% That He Was Not Born in U.S.
A new Harris poll demonstrates again that the mission of right-wing media outlets, particularly Fox News, is not to inform their audience but is rather to spread disinformation:
- 67 percent of Republicans (and 40 percent of Americans overall) believe that Obama is a socialist.
- 57 percent of Republicans (32 percent overall) believe that Obama is a Muslim
- 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president”
- 38 percent of Republicans (20 percent overall) say that Obama is “doing many of the things that Hitler did”
- Scariest of all, 24 percent of Republicans (14 percent overall) say that Obama “may be the Antichrist.”
Similarly, in August, a NBC News/Wall St. Journal (which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns Fox News) poll found that Fox viewers were far more easily duped about health-care reform than people who got their news from non-propaganda outlets:
- 72 percent [of Fox viewers] believe undocumented residents will be covered
- 79 percent believe they will lead to a government takeover
- 69 percent believe abortions will be covered
- 75 percent believe there will be “death panels”
