==========================
This a post by Cal Thomas for the Jewish World Review dated April 20, 2010.
It is time to revisit this topic.
*************************
Protesting the Protestors
By Cal Thomas
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
“I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, ‘We are Americans and we have a right to debate and disagree with any administration.'”
Was that a tea party protestor seeking to rile up white men and incite them to violence?
No, that was Hillary Clinton in 2003. The administration she was criticizing was that of George W. Bush. [Emphasis added above]
She was right then. Protest can be patriotic, and no one should be thought less of an American because that person opposes the policies of a particular administration.
But now that the (left) shoe is on the other foot, we hear nothing about protest being patriotic. Instead, we hear from the left that it is dangerous and might lead to another Timothy McVeigh blowing up a federal building or trying to assassinate a president.
The left invented the modern protest movement. I recall covering some of the demonstrations against the Vietnam War in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Conservatives were on the side of American troops in Vietnam. They criticized the critics of presidents Johnson and Nixon. Conservatives believed it was unpatriotic to criticize a president fighting communists. Many conservatives supported Nixon almost to the very end in the Watergate scandal. Some said it was unpatriotic to belittle the president of the United States and that the media and Nixon’s enemies were conspiring to “get him.” That sounds like the “right-wing conspiracy” charges leveled against conservatives by the modern left.
No one suggested at the time that the protestors encouraged twisted minds that might lead to an attempt on a president’s life.
People like William Ayers, Tom Hayden, Eldridge Cleaver, Sam Brown and Jane Fonda, and groups like SNCC, were seen by the mainstream media and liberal cultural commentators as exercising free speech and assembly, even when that assembly sometimes turned violent. Fonda’s trip to Hanoi was treated by some on the left as legitimate protest. [Emphasis added]
Many on the left explained that protests — even when they became violent — were the result of pent-up emotions brought on by an “illegitimate” war about which the demonstrators could do nothing and so they had to protest in sometimes the most extreme ways. Now when the right becomes angry about what it sees as the systematic dismantling of the country through higher taxes, misspending (by both parties) and tone deafness, it is supposed to be setting the stage for the next Timothy McVeigh and is somehow illegitimate and outside constitutional boundaries.
If you don’t like President Obama’s policies, you are a racist who is setting him up for assassination by a neo-Nazi who is waiting in the (right) wings for sufficient inspiration. You should be lying down and taking it, because Obama wants only the best for all Americans.
If you don’t like what courts are doing — legitimizing behavior that used to be called sinful before that word fell into disrepute — you are a fundamentalist wacko who wants to impose your religion on the country.
If you think the Founders wanted to restrict the power of the federal government and that your taxes on hard work and initiative are too high, you are a greedy, uncaring person who disregards the poor and needy. If you think many of the poor and needy made wrong decisions about their lives which contributed to their poverty, and that by making right decisions they could better their circumstances, this proves you are insensitive, judgmental and a religious nut.
In this way of thinking, everything done by government when it is headed by leftists (though not by conservatives) is noble, righteous and good. If you disagree with any of it, you are opposing G0d, though of course to the left there is no real G0d. Government is G0d.
The left conveniently forgets people like the 1960s black-power apostle H. Rap Brown, who said, “Violence is American as cherry pie.” No it isn’t, but peaceful protest is.
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas042010.php3
*****Written by Cal Thomas****
===============================
POLITICS HOWARD DEAN RECITES NEW VAN JONES BATTLE CRY: GOP ‘KILLING THE AMERICAN DREAM’
June 21, 2011
By Tiffany Gabbay
According to Howard Dean, Republican “do-nothing hatemongers“ are in the business of ”killing the American dream.” Funny, because Van Jones just launched a MoveOn.org ad in which he, using the same verbiage, claims Glenn Beck is the one killing it.
Townhall provides the clip of Howard Dean’s rant:
So what’s with all the “American dream” talk flying around among leftists like Dean and Jones? Could it have something to do with the pending launch of a joint Van Jones, MoveOn campaign titled ”Rebuild the Dream?”
In an exhaustive, platitude-filled Huffington Post article written by Jones, he likened his American Dream campaign to “our Tea Party,” and laid out his pesonal plans, and vision, for saving Americans from who he calls the “slash and burn” GOP.
More from Jones’ article:
Take Movement to a Higher Plane: Defending the American Dream
And we should announce that our renewed movement is more than just a mobilization to back unions or oppose illegitimate power grabs (as important as those agenda items are). Something more vital is at stake: our country needs a national movement to defend the American Dream itself.
After all, it is the American Dream that the GOP’s “slash and burn” agenda is killing off.
GOP Cuts Muscle, Fat and Bone — Republicans Attack American Way
If deficits are truly the issue, then raising taxes and cutting spending both should be on the table, as tools.
“Attack the American way?” That sounds strangely familiar.
Jones goes on to suggest his American Dream movement is “rooted in a deeper patriotism” than what he calls “negative liberty” embraced, presumably, by the Tea Party.
That is an important moment and concept. But the notion of “negative liberty” (”don’t tread on me!”) is only one principle among many that make our country great. Other equally vital American values and ideals (like justice, opportunity, fairness and democracy) have gone largely undefended and unheralded, in this recent crisis. That ends — now. Our rising movement should stand for the full suite of American values and principles.
And the American ideal most in need of defense is our most essential one: the American Dream.
Yes, this new “American dream” mantra hails straight from Jones’ playbook — and if these recent tirades by Dean and Jones are any indication, there’s a good chance we might be hearing a lot more of it moving into 2012.
LINK
===============================
MEDIA BECK LASHES OUT AT WASHINGTON POST ‘LIARS’ FOR COLUMN CALLING HIM ‘ANTI-SEMITIC’
June 20, 2011
By Jonathon M. Seidl
On Friday, the Washington Post published and opinion piece blasting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for saying he would try and join Glenn Beck in Israel for Beck’s Restoring Courage event. According to the author, Beck is a “creature” who is “the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media.” Not surprisingly, that didn’t sit too well with Beck. And he made that quite clear.
On his radio show Monday, Beck unleashed on the Washington Post for its “smears” and for “propping up lies.” Not only did he point out that he’s received the “defender of Israel award” from the Zionist organization of America — an honor previously bestowed upon the likes of Joe Biden, Tom DeLay, and even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — but he also used a bit of historical evidence.
Beck pointed out specific instances where he has been an ardent defender of Israel, playing clips from his radio show, Fox News show, and even his time at CNN.
“I know of no show that has spent more time of national airtime telling the truth about the growing wave of anti-semitism over the past decade than this show in all its forms, he said. “That’s important to point out, not to brag—but to show the incredible liars that the Washington Post allows to write on their pages.”
He later asked a rhetorical question: “Ask yourself this question, especially if you write for the Washington Post: How could we possibly continue to smear and prop up lies?”
To hear some of the clips Beck played on radio showing his respect for Israel, you can go to GlennBeck.com. There, you will also read how he defends himself against the charge that he once hosted an ant-Semitic guest on his show.
LINK
=***WHO wrote the Opinion Piece at the Washington Post against Joe Lieberman and Glenn Beck?***=
Dana Milbank
JULY 31, 2010
Dana Milbank: Plagiarist, Conspiracist, or just a Shill? A new propaganda machine is born: MMM–Media Matters & Milbank.
Does the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank lift his stuff from Media Matters—or does he simply take dictation from Media Matters? Let’s take a look at the similarities between what Media Matters wrote on Friday, and what Milbank wrote for the WP. As we can see, the two items show the same speculative sequencing of events to make the argument that Glenn Beck is a menace. Milbank is either a plagiarist, or a co-conspirator.Here’s the first part of an e-mail that Media Matters (MM)–the lefty group founded by David Brock, funded by George Soros–that was mass-blasted out yesterday, as part of MM’s usual tub-thumping and fund-raising schtick:
——Original Message——
From: Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters for America
To: _____
Subject: What Has Beck Unleashed?
Sent: Jul 30, 2010 12:25
Dear ___:
On Sunday, July 18, unhinged ex-convict Byron Williams loaded his truck with guns and headed up a California highway with the intention of starting a revolution. If he hadn’t been stopped by brave officers — two of whom were wounded in the confrontation — he could have carried out a plan to kill staff at progressive organizations, including the Tides Foundation.
What is the Tides Foundation? It’s the nonprofit that Glenn Beck brags about “turning the light of day” on by constantly attacking it as part of a socialist conspiracy to destroy our government. The Tides Foundation isn’t the shadowy political influence of Beck’s fantasies — it’s a transparent organization known in the philanthropic community for doing good public service. Make no mistake: Beck’s intention was to paint the Tides Foundation as a dangerous, increasingly powerful threat to freedom that must be stopped. And Williams set out to stop them.
OK, that was Friday–MM writes about a criminally insane man out to get the Tides Foundation, and blames the man’s actions on Beck. Of course, we don’t even know where Byron Williams got his ideas from, and what his ideas were–we are just supposed to take MM’s word for it.
Next up, Milbank. He’s more than happy to take MM’s word for everything. Indeed, he is more than happy to take MM’s words, period. Here are the first few paragraphs of his column, datelined Sunday; note that Milbank uses the same set-up–crazy man stalks Tides Foundation, inspired by Beck, says MM, oops, I mean, Milbank:
Late on a Saturday night two weeks ago, an unemployed carpenter packed his mother’s Toyota Tundra with guns and set off for San Francisco with a plan to kill progressives.
When California Highway Patrol officers stopped him on an interstate in Oakland for driving erratically, Byron Williams, wearing body armor, fired at police with a 9mm handgun, a shotgun and a .308-caliber rifle with armor-piercing bullets, Oakland police say. Shot and captured after injuring two officers, Williams, on parole for bank robbery, told investigators that he wanted “to start a revolution” by “killing people of importance at the Tides Foundation and the ACLU,” according to a police affidavit. His mother, Janice, told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son had been watching television news and was upset by “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.”
But what television news show could have directed the troubled man’s ire toward the obscure Tides Foundation, which sounds as if it’s dedicated to oceanography, or perhaps laundry detergent, but which is in fact a nonprofit that claims to support “sustainability, better education, solutions to the AIDS epidemic and human rights”?
A week after the incident, the mystery was solved. “Tides was one of the hardest things that we ever tried to explain, and everyone told us that we couldn’t,” Fox News host Glenn Beck told his radio listeners on Monday. “The reason why the blackboard” — the prop Beck uses on his TV show to trace conspiracies — “really became what the blackboard is, is because I was trying to explain Tides and how all of this worked.” Beck accuses Tides of seeking to seize power and destroy capitalism, and he suggests that a full range of his enemies on the left all have “ties to the Tides Center.” On Monday, he savored the fact that “no one knew what Tides was until the blackboard.”
The similarities between MM’s e-mail blast and Milbank’s column are so strong that if MM wanted to, the group could nail Milbank for plagiarism–a firing offense at newspapers. Milbank credits MM with providing anti-Beck information, but doesn’t credit MM for writing the column for him.
But instead of being mad, MM seemed delighted by Milbank’s piece, which suggests that MM and Milbank were in this together all along. Here’s the way MM reported all of this on Saturday morning–see screen grab above, touting Milbank’s column; note the arrow. For its part, MM takes credit for providing the “research” to Milbank, but doesn’t note that Milbank used the MM lede.
So what to make of this combination? MM and Milbank are like twins–maybe we should call the two of them simply, “MMM”–for Media Matters & Milbank. A new propaganda machine is born, carrying lefty messages from Soros’ wallet, to Brock’s factoid mill, right into the pages of the Washington Post.
Which makes The Cable Gamer wonder: Does the WP have any ethics? Does the paper care that its reporters are simply water-carriers for agenda-driven billionaires?
And there’s more to come: As reported earlier this year, Milbank is writing a book on Beck, with the not-so-unloaded title of “Tears of a Clown.” No doubt MM will praise that book too. Although a better question is: Will MM write the book for Milbank?
LINK
***Posted by Cable Gamer***
===============================
=======================
Sexist Washington Post Headline: ‘Bachmann Assumes the Position’
Dana Milbank: Bachmann assumes the position
By Dana Milbank, Washington Post
Tuesday, Jun 14, 2011
MANCHESTER, N.H.- “Assume the position!” CNN’s John King ordered the candidates as they approached their lecterns just before airtime for Monday night’s debate.
The Republican presidential contenders did as the moderator told them.
Mitt Romney assumed the position of the capable but cautious frontrunner.
Tim Pawlenty assumed the position of a timid challenger, afraid to take on the leader.
Newt Gingrich assumed the position of a bored college professor.
Ron Paul and Herman Cain assumed all sorts of positions – privatizing Social Security? Loyalty tests for Muslims who want to serve in government? – while Rick Santorum assumed he could get by reciting platitudes.
There was one candidate who rose above the usual positioning, though she stood a head shorter than the six men on the stage. Eleven minutes into the debate, Michele Bachmann stole the show, and she didn’t return it in the subsequent hour and 49 minutes.
===========================
All writers of opinion pieces have the right to show bias, but when the opinion writers proclaim to be journalists doesn’t the sponsoring site, Washington Post have the obligation to “edit” for plagiarism, libel, slander, sexist remarks etc?
Reiterated from above post by Cable Gamer:
Media Matters & Milbank.
A new propaganda machine is born, carrying lefty messages from Soros’ wallet, to Brock’s factoid mill, right into the pages of the Washington Post.
Which makes The Cable Gamer wonder: Does the WP have any ethics? Does the paper care that its reporters are simply water-carriers for agenda-driven billionaires?
Romanticpoet's Weblog 