Tag: Conservative Values
Saudi Prince (and Fox News Investor) Calls in Change to FNC Coverage of ‘Muslim Riots’
During last month’s street riots in France, Fox News ran a banner during a news segment, reading: “Muslim riots.” Billionaire Saudi Prince al-Walid bin Talal, who owns 5.5% of Fox News, was unhappy with the tagline:
I picked up the phone and called Murdoch… (and told him) these are not Muslim riots, these are riots out of poverty. Within 30 minutes, the title was changed from Muslim riots to civil riots.Talal gained notoriety after 9/11 when he blamed U.S. policies for the terrorist attacks.
Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti refused to confirm or deny that the call took place but “acknowledged the network changed the banner after receiving complaints.”
Christmas Wars: The Tortured Elf
On CNN yesterday:
SAM SEDER, [host of Air America’s “Majority Report”]: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it’s almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
SEE THE VIDEO
Sam Seder on Christmas Wars
[CNN Newsreader Kyra] PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?
SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I’d like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.
PHILLIPS: I don’t think that exists…
SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.
PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?
SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it’s actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It’s exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.
Racists Reveal Their Own Ignorance and Fears
Ignoramuses among us: Our post on the Tookie Williams story – and the threat by gang leaders to riot in Los Angeles after his execution – has drawn mentally deficient outside interlopers – we call them “Bush Voters” – to leave the most incredibly vile, racists ravings in our comments section that we have seen to date.
Pensito Review has an informal policy of not censoring comments. For one thing, censorship is what the rightwingers do.
As an ex-patriated Southerner, I know racism inside and out. Here’s the bottom line: Racist statements and, especially, racist thinking, say everything you need to know about the dark-hearted fear and ignorance of the speaker and zero – absolutely nothing – about the people who are the objects of the speech and the thinking.
On their surface, racist statements may appear to promote the superiority of the speaker over the group he or she is castigating. In reality, these statements reveal their bearer’s intellectual inferiority and, especially, his or her cowardice and fear.
As to the comments themselves, Pensito Review has an informal policy of not censoring comments made on this site. For one thing, censorship is what the rightwingers do. For another, we count on our regular readers, and the other smart people who drop by here irregularly, to take on the cretins and expose their blackheartedness to the antiseptic light of day.
Which you do – and for which we are grateful.
Groups Demand Investigation into $4.2 Mil That Ralph Reed Took from Abramoff
Ralph & the Devil: Former Christian Coalition president Ralph Reed is known for his choir boy looks and a propensity for believing his own press. What other than blinding hubris could have led him to take $4.2 million from a sleazebag like Jack Abramoff? And you gotta hand it to him – he almost doubled disgraced GOP congressman Randy Cunningham, whose bribes from military contractors only totaled $2.4 million:
Texans for Public Justice, Common Cause of Texas and Public Citizen filed their complaint with Travis County Attorney David Escamilla.
They said Reed failed to register as a Texas lobbyist in 2001 and 2002, when he received a reported $4.2 million from Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon to push for the closure of casinos operated by the Tigua tribe of El Paso and the Alabama-Coushatta tribe of Livingston in East Texas…
Christianists Used Nazi-esque ‘Science’ to Convince Ford to End Gay Ads
Gullible in Detroit: AmericaBlog is leading the fight against Ford Motor Co.’s decision to stop advertising to gays and lesbians because of pressure from the ultra-crazy American Family Association (AFA) and other fundamentalist extremists. Now they have uncovered evidence that the AFA based its case against gays on psuedo-scientific data created by an organization listed as a “hate group” by the Southern Law and Poverty Center (SLPC).
“It is tragic that Ford ‘values’ a lifestyle which is harmful to so many, and leads to an early death. The average lifetime for a practicing homosexual is in the lower 40’s. Ford equates homosexual relationships with marriage.”
-AFA, citing fake data on longevity of gay people
-AFA, citing fake data on longevity of gay people
What is worse than the AFA using such shoddy, discredited propaganda is the fact that executives at Ford were either complicit with the AFA, or they were incredibly gullible and naive (which might explain the downward slide of American auto manufacturing over the past 30 years).
Readers of AmericaBlog found an action alert about homosexuality from the AFA that was based on false data developed by Paul Cameron, head of the hate group, the Family Research Institute. Now the question is, did Ford use the AFA data – which the SLPC says “echoes Nazi Germany” – in its use the fake data to influence decision to pull its advertising from gay magazines and events:
1. FORD MUST COME CLEAN ABOUT NAZI-ESQUE SCIENCE
We now know the AFA used Nazi-esque “science” in 2002 to try influence Ford, and may very well have used that Nazi-esque science in its ongoing communications with Ford this year. Ford must immediately come clean as to whether any Nazi-esque anti-gay science was discussed in any of its secret meetings, phone calls and communications with the AFA. And more importantly, Ford must immediately disclose whether its decision to drop the gay ads and events was in any way based on its consideration of this hate group’s science that “echoes Nazi Germany.”
Specifically, the AFA is using Paul Cameron’s fake “study” in which he determines that gay men die by the age of 40. I’m serious. (Cameron simply read the obituaries of gay men in gay publications in 1993, then averaged the age of death – really.) The AFA literally cited the results of this study in their action alert – I’ve been following Cameron’s “research” and the religious right’s use of him for the past 13 years.
Conservative Coulter Cut Off In Connecticut
Just shut it: The “forces of political correctness” were astir at the University of Connecticut last night when a bunch of librul liberal education majors shouted down conservative commentator Ann Coulter when she tried to give a speech. The blonde wingnut ended the talk after 15 minutes and instead held a half-hour question-and-answer session.
“I love to engage in repartee with people who are stupider than I am,” Coulter told the 2,600 people at Jorgensen Auditorium.
Coulter’s appearance prompted protests from several groups, including Students Against Hate and the Puerto Rican/Latin American Cultural Center. They criticized her for spreading a message of hate and intolerance.
Nearly 100 students gathered inside the Student Union for a rally against Coulter. About a half-dozen people held protest signs outside the auditorium.
In her speech at UConn, Coulter called Bill Clinton an “executive buffoon” who won the presidency only because Ross Perot took 19 percent of the vote. She called California Sen. Barbara Boxer a good candidate for the Democrats because “she is a woman and she’s learning disabled.”
So what did the kids think about it? Here are two balanced viewpoints, one from a guy who was there and another by a nascent wingnut:
Eric Knudsen, a 19-year-old sophomore journalism and social welfare major at UConn, didn’t attend the speech.
“We encourage diverse opinion at UConn, but this is blatant hate speech,” said Knudsen, head of Students Against Hate.
Kareem Mohni, a 20-year-old junior and a member of a campus Republicans group, said he was disgusted with the Jorgensen crowd.
“It really appalled me that we’re not able to come together as a group and listen to a different view in a respectful environment,” he said.
Cunningham Bribe Figure Gave $70k to Schwarzenegger, Received Two Appointments
A businessman tied to the bribery scandal involving former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham donated more than $70,000 to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign committees and received two gubernatorial appointments.
At Schwarzenegger’s behest, Brent Wilkes, founder of the government contractor ADCS Inc., resigned Nov. 29 from the Del Mar Fair Board and from another panel that oversees the leasing of state land for racetracks, said Margita Thompson, the governor’s press secretary.
Schwarzenegger appointed Wilkes to the Del Mar board in April 2004 and to the State Race Track Leasing Commission last April. A seat on the Del Mar board is a sought-after post given the panel’s association with the Del Mar racetrack, among the most successful tracks in the nation…
When asked whether Wilkes’ appointments were linked to the donations, Thompson said: “Absolutely not…. There is no connection at all.”
…According to Cunningham’s plea agreement, Wilkes gave him more than $635,000 in bribes. Wilkes is not named in the Cunningham indictment or in the written plea agreement, but he is referred to as one of four unnamed co-conspirators, one of Wilkes’ attorneys has said. That lawyer, Michael Lipman, did not return phone calls Wednesday.
Wilkes’ company, ADCS, which is based in Poway, has received millions in federal contracts. According to the plea agreement, Cunningham pressured the Department of Defense to award contracts to ADCS, though it is not clear from the plea bargain that his intervention was pivotal.
Though ADCS appears to focus its efforts on winning federal contracts, the company also has done a small amount of business with the state. In 2001 and 2003, before Schwarzenegger took office, California selected ADCS as one of the vendors that could be hired to transform paper documents into computer images.
The American Talibanis’ War against Straight People
First they came for gay people: Ford Motor Company has bowed to pressure from ultra-rightwing Christian extremists led by the American Family Association and pulled its advertising from gay and lesbian magazines and its sponsorship of gay events.
The radical right is nearing victory on a three decades long crusade to give state law enforcement agencies absolute control over the reproductive rights of female citizens.
If you are not gay, you may think this attack on American values by the AFA only affects you indirectly, if it all.
In my youth, I did a 30-year stretch in the Bible Belt, and I believe that if Jesse Helmses and Jerry Falwells of this world had their way, after they have jailed (and/or executed) all the gays and lesbians in America, their next target would be adulterers, followed by single people who dared to have sex outside the holy bonds – and then everybody else who is not straight, white and Christianist.
Farfetched, you say?
The radical right is nearing victory on a three decades long crusade to give state law enforcement agencies absolute control over the reproductive rights of female citizens. It is unclear what the penalities will be for women and/or their doctors who violate the new anti-abortion laws by terminating zygotes, but what is crystal clear is that within five years after Samuel Alito is installed onto the U.S. Supreme Court, state police will start forcing women to reproduce.
Dan Savage, editor of The Stranger newspaper in Seattle, as well as his sex advice column, Savage Love, has more:
