Friday, April 25, 2014

Conservatives Ditch Their Hero

Cliven Bundy, out in Nevada, owed the federal government more than a million dollars for decades of grazing his cattle on restricted federal land. The problem was easily solved: he simply refused to recognize the federal government. So the actually existing federal government came in to move his cows off their land. When Mr. Bundy and a couple hundred like-minded non-government-recognizing individuals went to the property in jeans and cowboy hats and a whole bunch of guns, the government left the cattle to graze and went back to their bureaucratic desks, with their suits and ties and everything. The rightwing militia movement declared a great victory and looked forward to even more revolting opportunities.

Conservatives including U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Governor Rick Perry, 2012 Presidential Hopeful Herman Cain, and more than anyone, Fox News threw their support behind Bundy, arguing that Obama's federal government was trampling individuals' rights etcetera etcetera.

The anti-American Bundy, an amateur, did not understand the importance of sticking to the talking points.
Cliven Bundy: “I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.” A Defiant Rancher Savors the Audience That Rallied to His Side


Before Bundy's comments about "the Negro," Fox News had mentioned him 469 times, including five hours of primetime coverage. But on Thursday, as of noon they had mentioned Bundy twice -- neither time mentioned his racist views. One of the mentions was a suggestion that we turn our attention away from Nevada and focus on something else.

Tell me: who is surprised by any of this?

The satirical Borowitz Report had the last laugh with a faux-news article titled REPUBLICANS BLAST NEVADA RANCHER FOR FAILING TO USE COMMONLY ACCEPTED RACIAL CODE WORDS. A few zingers in there...
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) — Republican politicians blasted the Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy on Thursday for making flagrantly racist remarks instead of employing the subtler racial code words the G.O.P. has been using for decades.

“We Republicans have worked long and hard to develop insidious racial code words like ‘entitlement society’ and ‘personal responsibility,’ ” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). “There is no excuse for offensive racist comments like the ones Cliven Bundy made when there are so many subtler ways of making the exact same point.”

Fox News also blasted the rancher, saying in a statement, “Cliven Bundy’s outrageous racist remarks undermine decades of progress in our effort to come up with cleverer ways of saying the same thing.”



19 Comments:

Anonymous go ask Nate said...

the planet warmed slightly between 1975 and 1998, although this rise has now ended and we are in a period of temperature stability

indeed, not only has the temperature stabilized but it appears extreme weather events are becoming less sever in this new warmer age:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579495581998804074?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303603904579495581998804074.html

April 25, 2014 12:49 PM  
Anonymous Reginald Slobberty said...

I do say, the evidence against alarmism simply continues to accumulate.

April 25, 2014 12:54 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

While its true that the rate of atmospheric temperature increases have slowed over the last 15 years, the overall warming of the entire climate system has continued rapidly over the past 15 years, even faster than the 15 years before that. If you look at this graph you can see that while the rate of temperature increase in the atmosphere has slowed, the atmospheric heating represents only 2% of the overall warming of the global climate. The rates of temperature increase for the remaining portions of the global climate such as upper and deep ocean temperatures, and land and ice temperatures have increased at a far greater rate. It is a myth that global warming has paused, or halted.

And the truth is extreme weather is becoming more common:

New Study Finds Extreme Snowstorms And Deluges Are Becoming More Frequent And More Severe

As our climate warms, wet areas will generally get wetter (and dry areas drier). One of the consequences of global warming is the severity and frequency of rain and snow storms – fueled by the increase moisture in the atmosphere as the air warms.

A new report released by Environment America Research & Policy Center analyzed more than 80 million daily precipitation records across the United States from 1948 through 2011. The analysis reveals that climate change is now affecting the large rain or snowstorms.

The following are highlights from the report:

•Extreme downpours – rainstorms and snow falls … are now happening 30 percent more often on average across the contiguous United States than in 1948.
•New England has experienced the greatest change with intense rainstorms now happening 85 percent more often than in 1948.
•Not only are extreme downpours more frequent, but they are more intense. The total amount of precipitation produced by the largest storm in each year at each station increase by 10 percent over the period of analysis, on average across the contiguous United States.

But the United States is not the only country to experience extreme rain, snow, and flooding. Australia saw the country’s worst floods since 1974. A surge of rain in Brazil caused deadly landslides north of Rio de Janerio. Rainfall during June to September’s monsoons season in Thailand was up to 80% higher than the season average according to the WMO.

It is becoming much clearer how climate change affects extreme weather.

April 25, 2014 12:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Looks like "go ask Nate" and his ha-ha comment alter ego "Reginald Slobberty" is another embarrassed card carrying member of the right wing who does not want to talk about their latest Great White Hope who turned out to be just another old white racist.

I don't think FAUX NEWS/Hannity mentioned their "patriot" Cliven Bundy at all last night, after days of touting him as a folk hero who thinks ranchers have the right to OCCUPY federal lands set aside by the federal government (which he does not recognize even exists) to protect the dessert tortoise.

Jon Stewart got it right.

Cliven Bundy is a welfare rancher and has been for decades.

It's time to make him pay his fees and fines or put him up free of charge in a federal penitentiary.

April 25, 2014 1:18 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Right good anonymous. Its hilarious how conservatives like to wail about poor people on welfare but the defend the welfare rancher Bundy and claim he's a patriotic hero. Or at least they did until they found out he's a racist.

Funny how the right is now quick to condemn Bundy for saying blacks were better off without equal rights but someone saying the same thing about gays is not supposed to be hateful but is rather "respectful dialogue".

April 25, 2014 1:35 PM  
Anonymous go ask Nate said...

"Looks like "go ask Nate" and his ha-ha comment alter ego "Reginald Slobberty" is another embarrassed card carrying member of the right wing who does not want to talk about their latest Great White Hope who turned out to be just another old white racist."

truth is, Reginald and I never heard of our "latest Great White Hope" until Jim posted this

maybe we'll get a chance to look into this and get back this weekend

April 25, 2014 1:50 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Wyatt/bad anonymous said "truth is, Reginald and I never heard of our "latest Great White Hope" until Jim posted this".

And if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you.

April 25, 2014 1:52 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Apparently you, nate, and Reginald don't read EVERY opinion piece the WSJ publishes.

You must have missed this one about Cliven Bundy.

April 25, 2014 3:14 PM  
Anonymous Thank you, Joan Walsh said...

"I’ll admit, this brilliant Stephen Colbert piece made me wonder: Could Sean Hannity’s detestable role in making Cliven Bundy a right-wing folk hero, and his lingering embrace of Bundy despite signs that his Nevada standoff would never end well, doom him at Fox? You’ll enjoy Colbert’s “Ballad of Cliven Bundy,” which falls apart because “unfortunately, nothing rhymes with Negro.”

Hannity is already in some trouble: Roger Ailes gave Megyn Kelly his ultra-prime 9 p.m. prime-time slot and bumped him to 10 p.m. last year. And remember, Ailes dumped Glenn Beck when he became a laughingstock and a liability for the network, and for conservatism. Hannity has done the same.

Now, it’s not about Hannity’s politics, and it wasn’t about Beck’s either. I agree with Ailes biographer Gabriel Sherman, who argues that “Ailes is more extreme than Glenn Beck.” Sherman explained: “One thing that makes Roger Ailes a genius is he obscures his true agenda. Glenn Beck is transparent.” Beck’s sin wasn’t his increasingly extreme conservatism; it was damaging extreme conservatism by making one of its leading faces an unstable lunatic.

Hannity likewise damaged right-wing politics by making Cliven Bundy a hero. Now he and the entire network have to backtrack, but the travesty once again exposed the way racism so often goes along with right-wing ideology today. (Often, not always.)

Yes, it was Colbert who made me think about the possibility that we’re watching Hannity self-destruct. I don’t watch Hannity, so I’d missed the clip Colbert showed, where the Fox host told the welfare cowboy, “You and your family seem like really nice people.” This makes a lie out of Hannity’s insistence Thursday night that he merely endorsed the rancher’s struggles against government overreach, not the rancher himself.

But even before Bundy’s ongoing self-exposure as a racist, he should have been too toxic even for Hannity and Fox. How does a guy who declared early on “I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing” become a folk hero in the first place? The extremism of that statement should have been warning enough that Bundy was not only crazy but dangerous (and probably racist to boot, since not believing in the federal government tends to go along with not believing in the Emancipation Proclamation or the 13th Amendment, as Colbert noted.)

Now Hannity is trying desperately to distance himself from Bundy. “The ranch standoff that took place out in Nevada was not about a man named Cliven Bundy,” Hannity declared, in a segment, unbelievingly, titled “Government Gone WILD. “At the heart of this issue was my belief that our government is simply out of control.” Of course it was Ronald Reagan who imposed the grazing fees Bundy refused to pay. Cliven Bundy only became a hero to many on the right because he was standing up to Obama.

To many, I should add, not all, or even most. The Weekly Standard is getting a lot of praise for this piece warning against lionizing Bundy, even before he began his racist rants. It’s great; it’s also common sense.

Let’s remember it was Hannity who also made George Zimmerman a right-wing folk hero, when Trayvon Martin’s killer chose Hannity to tell his story to, even after his own lawyers advised against it. Now, as Colbert noted, Hannity’s embrace of Bundy makes the two righties “as close as Ku and Klux.” Ailes can’t afford to make Fox the “Klan” in that punch line. Hannity has endangered not only Fox but the right-wing project to which Ailes has devoted not just his network but his life.

The wily Roger Ailes of old would see that – he likes his racial resentment a little bit more subtle; stirred, not shaken, you might say — and Hannity would be in trouble. But it’s possible the Roger Ailes of today is poisoned by his own Obama-hatred and too many years of working with toxic racial bile, and Hannity will keep his job."

April 25, 2014 4:45 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

if you had a kid under the water in that boat in south korea, what would you have done ?

because I am padi certified, and am horrified that they let those kids die.

is anyone else horrified ?

April 26, 2014 4:27 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

because if this had happened in America, you know what would have happened ?

YOu would have had dozens and dozens of armed americans who would hold up scuba shops, insist on purchasing lanterns and lamps, are PADI certified taking to the waters ON THEIR OWN risk and maybe dying, but saving large numbers of those children. if you had a ferry capsizing off of America, do you think you would have had the mass deaths that will be present here ?

NO.

every child's parent or relative of a parent would have been in the water with their boats, with their scuba gear and with their lanterns. EVERY CAVE DIVER would have been helping immediately. Why ?

CAPITALISM.

desperate parents would have paid enormous sums to trained cave divers to help. Every diver across the US would flock to the site. Immediately.

Because desperate parents would pay tens if not hundreds of thousands to rescue their precious children.


what happened in south korea ?

they all died.


now, I am padi certified, but I haven't ever been cave diving.

but if my son or daughter was in that water ?

I would be out with a tank from wherever I could get it in half a minute.

and if that accident had happened in America ?

well, either 100 more parents would be dead in tanks attempting to rescue those kids and maybe dozens more kids would have survived.

but at least those parents would not have felt absolutely friggin helpless.

do something
anything.

and most of the time it doesn't matter if it really helps at all.

at least you tried to help your child.

because I would die trying.

and the parents in south korea were prohibited from trying.
Why did the US stand by and watch this tragedy unfold ?

wasn't there SOMETHING we could do to help ?


April 26, 2014 4:41 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I suggest you stop self-medicating with booze for your insomnia, T.

April 26, 2014 7:54 AM  
Anonymous just ask ol' Nate what's gonna happen said...

what new evidence do we have of the incompetence of Barack Obama?

well, this week there's his failure to negotiate a trade agreement with Japan, the fact that applications for mortgages is down 50% and slowing the housing recovery, more extensions to comply with the poorly designed ACA, the Russians and casually breaking their agreement negotiated by Kerry and laughing it up, oh, and they closing the dinosaur hall at the Smithsonian for five years to clean the bones

that's right folks

five years to clean a roomful of dinosaur bones

wonder it cost as much as the four year design extravaganza of healthcare.gov?

April 26, 2014 6:38 PM  
Anonymous just ask ol' Nate what's gonna happen said...

oh yeah, I almost forgot

his attacks on the middle class in America and socialist policies have now resulted in the Canadian middle class being wealthier than the American one

but, of course, that's not incompetence

the destruction of America is part of the agenda of our first foreign President

April 26, 2014 6:46 PM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Bad anonymous, as American conservatives constantly criticize, Canada is much more socialist than the United States. That's why the Canadian middle class is number one - we tax wealthy people more and give more benefits to the middle class, you know like free healthcare paid for by the federal government.

Its because of Republican policies that the American middle class has fallen behind. 95% of the new income in the United states has gone to the top 1% while middle class income has remained flat despite a near 100% improvement in productivity You can thank Republican policies that favour the rich such as the Bush tax cuts republican insisted on keeping for the drop in your middle class.

What the American middle class needs is more Canadian style socialism. Our 1% aren't as rich as the American 1%, the gap between the rich and poor is a great deal smaller and this benefits the vast majority of citizens.

If Republican hadn't stood in the way of the American Jobs acts that economists said would have created 2 million jobs, forced huge cuts to government employment, refused to extend unemploymnet insurance benefits and refused to expand medicaid all of which would have stimulated the economy and resulted in millions more jobs the American middle class would be doing much better.

You've got no one to blame but yourself. You voted against your own best interests.

April 26, 2014 7:16 PM  
Anonymous svelte_brunette said...

Whoa! Where did all that come from said:

“YOu would have had dozens and dozens of armed americans who would hold up scuba shops, insist on purchasing lanterns and lamps, are PADI certified taking to the waters ON THEIR OWN risk and maybe dying, but saving large numbers of those children. if you had a ferry capsizing off of America, do you think you would have had the mass deaths that will be present here ?

NO.”

On this planet, cops, firemen, the National Guard, and other emergency authorities keep non-trained civilians away from accidents and disasters for their own safety, the safety of the rescue crews, and to keep them from making the problem even worse. Desperate, poorly trained parents getting in the way are the LAST thing rescuers need in an emergency situation.

If American parents want to do something though, that’s wonderful. Why not work on keeping your kids stable, sane, and productively engaged with their classmates so we don’t have another Newtown or Columbine, or any one of the other 177 school shootings since 1999:

http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/12/newtown_columbine_school_shootings_list.php

When’s the last time you heard of a school shooting in South Korea?

Have a nice day,

Cynthia

April 28, 2014 10:48 AM  
Blogger Priya Lynn said...

Tornadoes ravaged the United States this weekend. So much for the alleged slowdown in severe weather.

April 28, 2014 3:11 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Police investigating Cliven Bundy-related threats to Harry Reid

"Federal law enforcement officials are investigating threats made against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in the aftermath of his sharp-edged attacks against Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, sources said Monday.

Reid has not minced words about Bundy’s battle with the Bureau of Land Management, referring to Bundy’s supporters as “domestic terrorists” and the rancher himself as a “hateful racist.” As he’s stepped up his criticism, Reid has been the subject of threats himself, prompting an increase in his own security detail in recent days, people familiar with the matter said Monday.

Shennell Antrobus, a spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, declined to comment on the number of security personnel assigned to Reid or the nature of the threats against the Democratic leader. But he confirmed that the police are investigating “threatening statements” made against the majority leader.

“We are currently looking into threatening statements made against Sen. Reid as part of an ongoing investigation,” Antrobus said.

Reid spokesman Adam Jentleson declined to comment.

It’s not unusual for a politician in such a position of power to be the subject of threats; federal officials routinely investigate threats made against leaders of all stripes.

But the Reid inquiry comes as other Democrats are raising security concerns over the Bundy episode.

Rep. Steven Horsford — a freshman Nevada Democrat whose district spans the region outside of Las Vegas where Bundy is battling the BLM — expressed serious concerns Sunday that out-of-state “armed militia groups” were exerting undue influence and scaring residents in Bunkerville, Nev., and the surrounding areas, about 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

In a Sunday letter to Clark County Sheriff Douglas Gillespie, Horsford alleged that armed groups have created checkpoints requiring individuals “to prove they live in the area before being allowed to pass” and have established “a persistent presence” around highways, local schools and churches.

“We must respect individual constitutional liberties, but the residents of and visitors to Clark County should not be expected to live under the persistent watch of an armed militia,” Horsford said in the letter..."

April 29, 2014 11:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Happy in Bethesda

April 30, 2014 8:06 AM  

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