Posted 2:52 PM by Scoobie Davis

Contrary to the Rumors
I wasn't the guy who crashed the White House dinner.

Posted 2:33 PM by Scoobie Davis

ADL Report on Glenn Beck and Right-Wing Extremists Has At Least One Major Error
A recent opinion piece by Tim Rutten on Glenn Beck is worth reading. Rutten quotes a passage from a recent ADL Report "Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies":

The report notes that while "other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists." By contrast, "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration. ... Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama."

The fact is that Limbaugh and Hannity have both cozyed up to anti-government extremists and have promoted paranoid conspiracy theories. Although Limbaugh was not a supporter of David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, during the Clinton years, Limbaugh vilified the Clinton administration for their actions in Waco, suggesting that the Clinton administration targeted the Branch Davidians because they were "people of faith." Similarly, Hannity's radio show was an early forum for indicted extremist Hal Turner's racist and extremist rants.

Limbaugh and Hannity have also been the proponents of discredited conspiracy theories long after they have been debunked. Years after investigations conducted by the United States Park Police, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the United States Congress, Independent Counsel Robert B. Fiske, and Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr found that Clinton deputy White House counsel Vince Foster's death in Fort Marcy Park was a suicide, both Limbaugh and Hannity have suggested that foul play by the Clintons was responsible for Foster's death (Hannity also defended the Reverend Jerry Falwell's fleecing of his flock when he sold bogus VHS tapes claiming that the Clintons murdered Foster).

Addendum: Quick: Someone give Glenn Beck Some Cocaine! Although I love to party, I hate cocaine and I have never liked or associated with people who use cocaine. Every coke user I have met has been a narcissistic asshole. I think it's not only because coke is a stimulant but because it makes people feel good without having done anything good.

Glenn Beck used to be a cokehead. What's really messed up about Beck is that he's become a more of a douche-bag after quitting cocaine! At the very least, he's more paranoid).

Posted 4:09 PM by Scoobie Davis

How Could They Think That? A Brief History of Paranoid Wing-nut America
(Updated below)
I was dismayed but not surprised when I heard about the recent poll that found that a slim majority (52 percent) of Republicans think that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama. It's appalling that the majority of a major U.S. party could think of such a silly thing. Essentially these people believe that hundreds of thousands of illegal votes were cast in order McCain to have been the actual victor in the electoral college One of the consequences of Bush administrations U.S. Attorneys Dismissal scandal was that when given massive resources, U.S. attorneys could find few actual cases of the practice occurring (this is a suucinct explanation about why American voter fraud is extremely rare).

The American Fringe: From the 1950s to the Present
Back in the 1950's the right's fringe consisted of the John Birch Society, a fringe group that held the view that President Eisenhower was a dupe of the communists. The Birchers never exceeded more than a few hundred thousand because prominent American marginalized them. Generally harmless cranks, the Birchers became the butt of jokes about their distrust of fluoridation and their campaign to impeach Earl Warren.

However, starting in the 1970's, some wealthy members of the American right invested heavily in right-wing organizations, think tanks, and the media, allowing previously fringe ideas to attain some legitimacy. Also, during the 1970s, many fundamentalists--previously apolitical--created a right-wing sectarian movement that aligned with the Republican Party (here's a blog post I wrote about how the sectarian right switched from religious paranoia in the 1980s to political paranoia in the 1990s).

In the 1990's, the paranoid right-wing fringe grew due to a few developments. The first is the rise of right-wing talk radio. Limbaugh and his clones amassed large audiences of listeners in which they spread stories about the Clintons murdering political enemies as well as friends who allegedly knew too much (such as Vince Foster, Ron Brown, and dozens of others).

Since then, political paranoia flourished for several reasons. The left failed to respond to the right in the 1990's--the Clintons and their allies were feckless and inept. The political left didn't understand the importance of media. The mainstream right refused to marginalize their fringe in the 1990s--e.g., William F. Buckley refused to repudiate Pat Robertson's bizarre conspiracy theories, even though they were just as loony as the ones promulgated by the Birchers.

The wing-nut right flourished during the 2000s; however, as the fringe became more dominent in the GOP, moderates began leaving the party. The result is that the birthers, deather, and tenthers became a bigger part of a rump party. Also, in the 2000s, a progressive media infrastructure emerged to marginalize the fringe right for its paranoid conspiracy theories.

This quick history of the paranoid right not only explains why so many Republicans believe is silly things like massive voter fraud, it also explains why so many of the teabagger crowd express the notion that this is no longer their country (watch this priceless video of a "scared" town hall protester "I want my America back"). With the emergence of powerful media outlets such as Media Matters for America, and media personalities such as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, and Rachel Maddow, members of the hard right are now the laughingstocks that the Birchers were in the 1960's.

Addendum: It Doesn't Add Up I don't have time to do a full analysis on what ACORN would have needed to do in order to steal the election. Just eye-balling the 2008 election results shows that it is absurd for anyone to seriously think that ACORN could have stolen the election for Obama. McCain needs a swing of 97 electoral votes to be the winner. Let look at some of the electoral votes that went to Obama in close races: North Carolina, Nebraska 2nd district, Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, and New Mexico--that's 93 electoral votes, not enough to put McCain over the top. Had McCain been the actual winner in these contests, it would have meant that ACORN stuffed over 1,300,000 illegal Obama votes into ballot boxes in those states and in Nebraska's 2nd district.

UPDATE: Cenk Uygur on how the media are also at fault:

This is very similar to when 69% of the country in September, 2003 believed that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11. No evidence of that whatsoever, but people believed it. Why?

It's because conservative media puts these messages out there non-stop without any effective challenge. They poison the conversation with absolute falsehoods and no one fights back. Who's fighting for ACORN now? Who is telling people that ACORN did not steal any votes in 2008? There is a continual battering ram of lies from one side and no response from the other.

But this is not just the fault of Democrats or progressives in not fighting back well enough. It is the job of the press to inform the American public. And obviously they're doing a terrible job. They constantly call everything 50-50. They're scared to death of saying that one side is simply lying. They cower behind the mantle of neutrality instead of challenging all sides to tell the truth. You're not supposed to be neutral in reporting lies and facts. You're supposed to be on the side of truth.

Posted 7:55 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
A picture worth a thousand words on the Sun Myung Moon blog.

Posted 5:01 PM by Scoobie Davis

Who's Afraid of a Fox News Nerdlinger? The Democratic Party's House Attack Dog, That's Who

When Representative Alan Grayson (D-FL) started making headlines over his strident comments on the floor of the House about health care, I'm glad I didn't jump on the bandwagon and write glowingly about him--I suspected that Grayson was too good to be true. An recent incident with one of Bill O'Reilly's flunkies shows that Grayson is not ready for prime time. This is sad but not surprising considering the recent history of the Democratic Party. Democrats don't know what time it is.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
As a result of Grayson's emergence as a player in the national media, Bill O'Reilly repeatedly requested that Grayson appear on his Fox News show; Grayson refused. I think this was a squandered opportunity because it would have been an opportunity for Grayson to not only speak in favor of health care reform, but because Grayson would be appearing live, he could have gotten off a few zingers at the expense of O'Reilly and FNC (e.g, here) It's a pity that Grayson wussed out.

O'Reilly wasn't deterred. He send Griff Jenkins, one of his flunky producers to the hallway outside of Grayson's office to interview him. Instead of facing Jenkins, Grayson hid in his office and called the Capitol Hill police (who could do nothing because Jenkins had a right to be there). After hiding in his office for a few hours, Grayson finally met with Jenkins and his performance was weak (watch the video here).

Who the fuck works for Grayson? O'Reilly gave Grayson an opportunity on a silver platter to stick it to O'Reilly and Fox News and Grayson acts like the biggest pussy in the world. This is pathetic. At the very least, Grayson could have gotten one of his staffers to get his own video camera to record the encounter and then do the Olbermann approach to ambush interviews. Undignified? Maybe, but it's a lot more dignified that walking away from a douche like Jenkins with your tail between your legs.

Fuck a duck, don't these people know how to research on the Internet? If they did, then Grayson could have turned the tables on Jenkins and confronted him about revving up the crowd at the recent DC Teabagger event and how that breached journalistic ethics. What is sad is that Grayson is touted as the Democrats attack dog on Capitol Hill. This is sad and pathetic.

Posted 1:18 PM by Scoobie Davis

Quick Note to People Who Appear on Right-Wing Talk Radio: Record The Conversation
Mark Benjamin of Salon.com recently reported that when he appeared on right-wing radio talk show host Laura Ingraham's show, at crucial times Ingraham hit the mute button so that information he was conveying did not reach her radio audience.

One thing to keep in mind is that the hard right talkers aren't interesting in discussing ideas, they are only interested in ratings and their own reactionary agenda; accordingly, they will not hesitate to play dirty. I've had a pretty good run when it comes to fighting the right on their own turf (check out the transcripts on the sidebar); fortunately, I was able to get my points in before I was cut off or muted. Former Fox News Marc Lamont Hill reports that Sean Hannity liberally used the mute button. I received an e-mail from someone who appeared on Limbaugh's radio show, he told me that he recorded the radio and that when he listened to the tape, and said "yeah, right" to one of Limbaugh's phony points, that Limbaugh or the radio engineer used that mute button and there was a second of dead air instead of his comment, and thus giving the radio audience the impression that the caller had no objections to Limbaugh's remark.

If you call into a right-wing talk show, record the radio and the phone conversation so that you can catch them dishonestly muting you.

Posted 12:56 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Chick Tract!
It's called "It's Not Your Fault." It's very dark. Quick note: In Matt Madden's book, 99 Way to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, one storytelling example is chick tract style.

Posted 12:28 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Political Lookalikes. Actually, Joe Lieberman looks like the Dad from Alf; I've noted on this blog that John Bolton looks like Scruffy from Futurama; Jon Stewart has also noted that Michael Steele looks like Humpty Hump.

Posted 4:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

The Googlebomb Blog is Back!
Back in 2003, I discovered the power of Googlebombs. In 2005, I created the Google bomb Project Blog. The blog has been very effective in increasing the visibility of negative but truthful web sites to people who do keyword searches of prominent right-wing personalities and ideas. However, in the fall of 2006, other progressive bloggers such as Chris Bowers of MyDD seized upon my idea and publicized the idea of g-bombing GOP congressional candidates (BTW, they failed to give me any credit for coming up with idea). This concerned me because g-bombs are most effective when they occur under the radar (articles in Slate and The New York Times were not helpful). Also, these progressive bloggers didn't know the nuances of g-bombing and their actions threatened to majorly fuck things up with Google (since the publicized attempted to manipulate ranking, Google has changed its indexing to attempt to thwart this manipulation).

I laid low and the blog has been dormant for the past three years. However, I have decided to revamp the blog. The latest target is Glenn Beck.

Here's how to G-Bomb Glenn Beck

1. Copy and paste the following to your web site or on an internet bulletin board:


<a href="http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911060002">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/glenn_beck">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA7-BvVDV10">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgbg604XqPY">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/obamas-army-glenn-beck-sees-scary-bl">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/10/12/glenn_beck/index.html">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-august-13-2009/glenn-beck-s-operation">Glenn Beck</a>
<a href="http://www.dickipedia.org/dick.php?title=Glenn_Beck">Glenn Beck</a>


The results will look like this:

Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck

Posted 7:01 PM by Scoobie Davis

Michael Savage:"Liberalism" to Blame for Fort Hood Massacre
I heard him say it on his radio show this afternoon. That didn't take long.