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POPSHated Roosevelt, Hate Obama: Paleoconservative Persuasions
Nock saw the state as “them,” not “us,” and “them” really came to mean Roosevelt. You must know that Roosevelt was hated by many during the Great Depression. Not disliked, hated. The laissez faire crowd saw every move toward government relief of intolerable conditions as government self-aggrandizement—Nock’s term, not mine. Despite the fact that people were desperate in the streets, extreme-sport capitalists saw only usurpation of the powers of the church (as the precursor to the modern social relief agency) and the individual—that old fall-back, the rugged individual—Nock’s term, not mine. Professor Nock pulls no punches. With a Beckian flourish he proclaims, “This regime was established by a coup d'État of a new and unusual kind, practicable only in a rich country.” Yup. A coup d’etat. You almost want to ask for Mr. Roosevelt’s birth certificate. Nock’s antipathy to Roosevelt knew few boundaries. Perversely, Nock saw in the New Deal, “the erection of po
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POPSFox News isn't even pretending anymore The boldest innovator, however, has been Fox News. Since President Obama’s election, the cable news channel has dropped all but the barest pretense of objectivity. Billing itself as “fair and balanced,” Fox has turned itself into what White House communications director Anita Dunn recently called “the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.” Actually, that’s an extremely polite way of putting it. It’s closer to Orwell’s “Ministry of Truth.” Fox openly promotes “Tea Parties” and other political demonstrations; it portrays every perceived White House defeat, such as Chicago’s failure to secure the 2016 Olympic Games, as a victory for something called “Fox Nation.” “Doublethink,” Orwell called it: the ability to “hold simultaneously two opinions which canceled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them.” So it is with “Fox Nation” and “fair and balanced.”
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POPSSmears of "sick and immoral" "pervert" Jennings: the worst of the worst "Jennings' praise of gay rights pioneer Hay had nothing to do with NAMBLA. In a 1997 speech often cited by conservatives attempting to smear Jennings as a supporter of NAMBLA, Jennings reportedly said, "One of the people that's always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America. In 1948, he tried to get people to join the Mattachine Society." Jennings' remarks include no mentions of NAMBLA. Upon Hay's death in October 2002, numerous obituaries noted that Hay was a pioneer of the American gay rights movement -- just as Jennings noted in his 1997 speech." It sickens me how people try to confuse pedophilia with homosexuality. And some of these folks are right here on Clipmarks. They should be ashamed of themselves, if they had any shame of course.
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POPSMeet the man who changed Glenn Beck's life How did Skousen become an expert on communism? He claimed, as his apologists still do, that his years with the FBI exposed him to inside information. He also boasted that he worked closely with J. Edgar Hoover. But both claims are open to question. Skousen's work at the Bureau was largely administrative, according to Ernie Lazar, an independent researcher of the far right who has examined Skousen's nearly 2,000-page FBI file. "Skousen never worked in and he never had significant exposure to data concerning communist matters," says Lazar. Skousen also trumpeted the insight he says he gained researching "The Naked Communist." But this research was as shaky as his résumé. Among the theories Skousen charged a healthy fee to discuss was the alleged treason of FDR advisor Harry Hopkins. According to Skousen, Hopkins gave the Soviets "50 suitcases" worth of info on the Manhattan Project, along with nearly half of the nation's supply of enriched uranium.
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POPSThe Bad Medicine of the Republican Doctors Then there's Oklahoma Senator and unexpected Obama confidante Tom Coburn. As a Senate candidate in 2004, Dr. Coburn famously warned that "lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they'll only let one girl go to the bathroom." Upon his arrival in the Senate, the former obstetrician was elevated to the Judiciary Committee despite having advocated the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions. More recently, Coburn the C Street marriage counselor to John Ensign and Mark Sanford turned Deather:
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POPSThe Man Who Sold the War The fabrication might have ended there, the tale of another political refugee trying to scheme his way to a better life. But just because the story wasn't true didn't mean it couldn't be put to good use. Al-Haideri, in fact, was the product of a clandestine operation -- part espionage, part PR campaign -- that had been set up and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon for the express purpose of selling the world a war. And the man who had long been in charge of the marketing was a secretive and mysterious creature of the Washington establishment named John Rendon.
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POPSThe So Called Libera Media VIII: NYT carried false Pentagon claims Cont.... The article seemed to adopt the Pentagon’s contention that freed prisoners had “returned” to terrorism, ignoring independent reporting by The Times and others that some of them may not have been involved in terrorism before but were radicalized at Guantánamo. It failed to distinguish between former prisoners suspected of new acts of terrorism — more than half the cases — and those supposedly confirmed to have rejoined jihad against the West. Had only confirmed cases been considered, one in seven would have changed to one in 20. Most of the caveats about the report were deep in the article, where they could hardly offset the impact of the headline, the first paragraph and
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POPSGOP in 2007: CIA "Misleading," an "Anti-Bush Cabal" Behind a "Coup d'Etat" Among Speaker Pelosi's interlocutors now is former Intelligence Committee chairman, Republican Pete Hoekstra (R-MI). But as ThinkProgress detailed, years before he claimed Pelosi was "blaming the CIA," Hoekstra blasted "an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress." And when it came to the 2007 NIE which asserted Tehran halted its nuclear program in 2003, Hoekstra insisted the agency was holding back: Similarly, in 2007, Hoekstra described a closed-door briefing by representatives from the intelligence community (including CIA) on the National Intelligence Estimate of Iran's nuclear capability, saying that the members "didn't find forthcoming."
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POPSCheney's Lies: Let me Count the Ways — Cheney said that President Barack Obama's decision to release the four top-secret Bush administration memos on the interrogation techniques was "flatly contrary" to U.S. national security, and would help al Qaida train terrorists in how to resist U.S. interrogations. However, Blair, who oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, said in his statement that he recommended the release of the memos, "strongly supported" Obama's decision to prohibit using the controversial methods and that "we do not need these techniques to keep America safe." — Cheney said that the Bush administration "moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and their sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks." The former vice president didn't point out that Osama bin Laden and his chief lieutenant, Ayman al Zawahri , remain at large nearly eight years after 9-11 and that the Bush administration began diverting U.S. forces, intelligence assets, time and mone
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POPSCheney sought waterboarding of prisoner to 'uncover' nonexistent Saddam-Al Qaeda link Quoted in the article: Lawrence Wilkerson essentially confirmed this today. Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida. So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
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POPSArmy lied about how my son died in Iraq: Friendly-fire victim was 'misidentified' as enemy gunman "I don't view it as colossal failures," McCarthy said. "I think he made some mistakes." He called Hanson a "great and steady" leader. Hanson, since promoted to captain and serving as a brigade staff officer at Fort Campbell, Ky., would not return calls for comment. The report also omitted that an overhead drone had an infrared camera clearly displaying Sharrett's body heat, which his commanders didn't use to guide the search for the dying soldier.
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POPSFEMA concentration camps? The militia good times are rollin' again Now, only a couple of years back, progressives had a similar wave of paranoia hit them about concentration camps being built in the heartland by the Bush Administration. It didn't go very far, because it quickly became clear that there was no there there. No one was actually building any new camps; all that had happened was that a Halliburton subsidiary had been given a contract to build them in the event of an emergency, but the contracts had never been activated.
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POPSDay Late and Dollar Short: Chris Matthews Shocked By NeoCon's Lies MATTHEWS: These people, they use anthrax. They will use—“The Weekly Standard” has reams of arguments why we should go to war. They won‘t quit, Pat. It is funny, but it‘s horrible. They would use any case to get us into a war with Iraq, and they did. And they won. They got us in. What about the charge that Saddam Hussein should have been fought, we had to go to war in Iraq because he bombed Oklahoma City? That is so close to fringe argument, Laurie Mylroie stuff, nutcase stuff, I should say. Gaffney was—was reaching... Because he is a good guy, but he was reaching for the crazy stuff. TRIPPI: They have been reaching since the beginning. That‘s the whole...(CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: Oh, OK. I don‘t know where they—where they drink this stuff.
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POPSThe Imperial Unconscious In the U.S., "covert war" has long been a term for wars like the U.S.-backed Contra War against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in the 1980s, which were openly discussed, debated, and often lauded in this country. To a large extent, when aspects of these wars have actually been "covert" -- that is, purposely hidden from anyone -- it has been from the American public, not the enemies being warred upon. At the very least, however, such language, however threadbare, offers official Washington a kind of "plausible deniability" when it comes to thinking about what kind of an "American face" we present to the world.
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POPSTexas: The state of sex (mis)education Suicide, death, murder? These programs gotta be pretty good at scaring teens out of having sex, right? Mmm, not exactly. Texan teens "rate well above national averages on virtually every published statistic involving sexual risk-taking behaviors," according to the report, and the state has the third-highest teen birthrate in the country.
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POPSInside the Commodore 64 This pioneering PC made instant geeks out of millions of people back in the '80s. But what lies within the Commodore 64's fetching brown shell?
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POPSWhite supremacism lies at the root of the 'respectable' nativist right Last October, as America was being roiled by the subprime mortgage meltdown that led to the current financial crisis, the executive director of one of the most influential immigration think tanks in the nation was in a joking mood. Shortly after the failure of Washington Mutual Bank, Mark Krikorian found a press release issued months earlier by the bank that celebrated its inclusion on a list of “Business Diversity Elites” compiled by Hispanic Business magazine. Krikorian posted the release at the conservative National Review Online, where he writes from time to time, along with his own sneering headline: “Cause and Effect?” Krikorian no doubt thought of his posting as a simple joke. But to many, the attempt by the leader of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) to suggest a link between Washington Mutual’s commitment to opening its ranks to Latinos and its demise spoke volumes about the nature of CIS and its prolific research. Although the think tank bi
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POPSCountdown: Keith Olbermann Looks At Bush's REAL Legacy Clearly a work of fiction. And while it's all fine and good to castigate the Bush administration for their non-stop public relations messaging over substance, I do wish that Olbermann would be as equally harsh on his colleagues in the media (besides the ones on Fox News) only too happy to repeat these talking points, because it is they who will continue to give a platform for the lies.
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POPSThe CIA influence on Hollywood The model for this is the defence department's "open" but barely publicised relationship with Hollywood. The Pentagon, for decades, has offered film-makers advice, manpower and even hardware - including aircraft carriers and state-of-the-art helicopters. All it asks for in exchange is that the US armed forces are made to look good. So in a previous Scott film, Black Hawk Down, a character based on a real-life soldier who had also been a child rapist lost that part of his backstory when he came to the screen.
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