The GrassCity Gazette

Discussion in 'Politics' started by AK Infinity, Apr 10, 2009.

  1. Tue, Apr 7, 2009 10:49am ET

    [​IMG]

    Glenn Beck and the Rise of Fox News' Militia Media

    by Eric Boehlert

    After a night of drinking, followed by an early-morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared a Pittsburgh apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.

    In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Specifically, Poplawski, as one friend described it, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was "going to see the end of our times."

    We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the website of 9-11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that's the name of Jones' new documentary DVD) and how President Obama is bound to destroy America.

    Who's Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a "freak" who's popular with "the tin foil hat crowd." Like with Poplawski, apparently.

    Jones might be a "freak," but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News, as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.

    During a March 18 webcast of FoxNews.com's proudly paranoid "Freedom Watch," Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away." And with that, he welcomed onto the show "the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," who began ranting about "exposing" the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging "global government."

    "I appreciate what you're exposing," Napolitano assured his guest.

    Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News webcast viewers about Obama's "agenda" for "gun confiscation" and the new president's plan to "bring in total police-state control" to America.

    Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News' Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. "It is great!" cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that "the Second Amendment is under fire.") Concluding the interview, Fox News' Napolitano announced "it's absolutely been a pleasure" listening to Jones' insights.

    We don't know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones' star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on? By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.

    What Fox News is now programming on a daily (unhinged) basis is unprecedented in the history of American television, especially in the form of Beck's program. Night after night, week after week, Beck rails against the president while denouncing him or his actions, alternately, as Marxist, socialist, or fascist. He felt entirely comfortable pondering whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule. (It wasn't until this week that Beck was finally able to "debunk" the FEMA conspiracy theory.) And that's when Beck wasn't gaming out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against Obama-led tyranny. In just a few shorts months, Beck raced to the head of Fox News' militia media movement.

    Just prior to the Pittsburgh massacre, Beck's often bizarre on-air performances, in which his rants against the Obama administration's dark forces were mixed in with his tearful proclamations of love of country, had turned him into a highly rated laughingstock. "That is a shaky cat," Dennis Miller recently giggled while describing Beck. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough broke into hysterics after a montage of Beck's most weepy moments. And TV satirists have had a field day at the Fox News host's expense. (Stephen Colbert: "Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!")

    But I'm not sure people should be laughing.

    The consequences of Fox News' doomsday programming now seem entirely predictable. As Jeffrey Jones, a professor of media and politics at Old Dominion University, recently explained to The New York Times in regard to Beck's rhetoric, "People hear their values are under attack and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something."

    People like Richard Poplawski? FYI, weeks before his deadline shooting spree, Poplawski uploaded a video clip of Beck ominously referencing the FEMA camps on Fox News.

    It's true that Beck, in response to mounting criticism, made this statement on his show:
    BECK: Let me be clear on one thing. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the truth behind 9-11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those people we don't seem to recognize anymore -- you know, the ones who kill in the name of Allah.
    But look at the very next two lines of his monologue: "There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth." That doesn't sound like Beck was backing away from his rhetorical call to arms to fend off the Marxist -- no, wait -- fascist Obama administration.

    And let's drop the idea -- pushed hard by Beck himself -- that he's simply a modern-day Howard Beale, from the classic film Network, just an angry, I'm-mad-as-hell everyman lashing out at the hypocrisies of our time. Nonsense. Beale's unvarnished on-air rants from Network targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates, and the propaganda power of television. ("This tube," he called it.) Beale's attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.

    Here's a sampling of what Beck's been drumming into the heads of viewers, a portion of whom likely (and logically) hear his rhetoric as a call to action. That the government is a "heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state." That it's indoctrinating our children; that we have "come to a very dangerous point in our country's long, storied history." Beck's concerned that the "Big Brother" government will soon dictate what its citizens can eat, at what temperature their house can be set, and what kind of cars they're allowed to drive.

    Beck's sure "[d]epression and revolution" are what await America under Obama, and fears moving "towards a totalitarian state." The country today sometimes reminds Beck of "the early days of Adolf Hitler." Beck thinks that Obama, who has "surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life," is now "addicting this country to heroin -- the heroin that is government slavery."

    And it's not just Beck. Appearing on Fox News, Dick Morris recently made a wildly irresponsible comment that looks even worse in light of the Pittsburgh law-enforcement slayings: "Those crazies in Montana who say, 'We're going to kill ATF agents because the UN's going to take over' -- well, they're beginning to have a case."

    And it's not just Fox News. Radio nut Michael Savage recently claimed that "we have a naked Marxist for president." And high-profile conservative blogger Erick Erickson contemplated the beating of politicians: "At what point do [people] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?"

    Of course, the right-wingers at Free Republic are way ahead of Erickson as they fantasize about Obama's assassination: "And let's face it: all the speculation about Obama being the actual Antichrist will either be confirmed or denied if someone gets off a lucky shot at the SOB."

    "Go Kill Liberals!"

    I wonder if Glenn Beck knows who Jim Adkisson is. Adkisson made headlines on July 28, 2008, when he brought his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and, after whipping it out of a guitar case, opened fire on parishioners while a group of schoolchildren performed songs up by the altar. Adkisson killed two people and wounded several others.

    Adkisson, a 58-year-old unemployed truck driver, brought 70 shotgun shells with him to the church and assumed he'd keep killing until the police arrived on the scene and shot him dead as well. Instead, some members of the congregation were able to wrestle him to the ground and hold him for police.

    When investigators went to Adkisson's home in search of a motive, as well as evidence for the pending trial, they found copies of Savage's Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O'Reilly Factor, by Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. They also came across what was supposed to have been Adkisson's suicide note: a handwritten, four-page manifesto explaining his murderous actions. The one-word answer for his deed? Hate. The three-word answer? He hated liberals.
    The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done. If life aint worth living anymore don't just Kill yourself. Do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals!
    What Adkisson especially hated about liberals ("this cancer, this pestilence") and what he hated about candidate "Osama Hussein Obama" was that they were marching America toward ruin: "Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they're Marxist, socialist, communists." Adkisson seethed over the way liberals were "trying to turn this country into a communist state" and couldn't comprehend why they would "embrace Marxism."

    Sound familiar, Glenn?

    John Bohstedt was one of the Unitarian church members who tackled Adkisson after the first round of gunfire went off inside the sanctuary. Two months ago, Adkisson pleaded guilty to the murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison. At the hearing, Bohstedt told the Associated Press he didn't think the killer had been insane, but rather had been manipulated by anti-liberal rhetoric.

    "There are a lot of people who hate liberals, and if we stir that around in the pot and on the airwaves, eventually there will be people (like Adkisson) ... who get infected by the violent rhetoric and put it into violent action," Bohstedt said.

    He remained worried about future violence: "Do you think there are other Jim Adkissons out there listening to hate speech? I do."

    Me too.

    © 2009 Media Matters for America.
    All rights reserved.

    [Note: I thought I'd start this thread as a sticky and allow the daily stories and the discussions surrounding them to build, also I thought it would cut down on the need to make a thread for ever issue that comes up. Feel free to post the stories that matter to you or that you think other blades should be informed about. I start with the article above.]
     
  2. [ame="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/30145811#30145811"]msnbc.com Video Player[/ame]​
     
  3. #3 CannabisInCanada, Apr 10, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 10, 2009
    Obama to seek $83.4 billion for Iraq, Afghanistan wars as costs near $1 trillion
    \tANDREW TAYLOR
    AP News
    \tApr 09, 2009 13:56 EST
    \tPresident Barack Obama is seeking $83.4 billion for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, pressing for a war supplemental spending bill like the ones he repeatedly voted against when he was senator and George W. Bush was president.
    \t \t<br/> \t
    \t \t \t
    Obama's request would push the costs of the two wars to almost $1 trillion since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, according to the Congressional Research Service. The additional money would cover operations into the fall.
    Budget office spokesman Tom Gavin said the White House will send an official request to Congress Thursday afternoon. Congressional aides briefed on the request revealed its overall cost on condition of anonymity since the briefing was private.
    Obama was a harsh critic of the Iraq war as a candidate, a stance that attracted support from the Democratic Party's liberal base and helped him secure his party's nomination. He opposed a war spending bill in 2007 after Bush used a veto to force Congress to remove a withdrawal timeline from the $99 billion measure.
    The upcoming request will include $75.5 billion for the military and more than $7 billion in foreign aid.
    Obama announced plans in February to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq on a 19-month timetable.
    Obama's request would push the amount approved for 2009 to about $150 billion, a drop from the $171 billion cost incurred in 2007 and the $188 billion approved for 2008, when Bush increased the tempo of military operations in a generally successful effort to quell the Iraq insurgency.

    \t \tSource: \t\t \t\t\tAP News

     
  4. Thursday, April 9, 2009

    Yo ho ho ho and a bottle of Chteau Lafite Rothschild


    The venture capitalist; if you ask a Republican they will tell you that this is a forward thinking individual that provides capital for a risky new venture that holds great promise for society. (a compassionate conservative funding the cure for disease for example) While they sometimes actually do this, most new ventures in the past were things like the dot-com bubble.

    What they have been doing the past eight years with current tax laws and total lack of regulation is become nothing less than pirates, plundering and looting across the corporate seas. They take a relatively modest investment and match it with 10 to 1 financing and go out and acquire controlling interest in a business. Then they sell off any marketable assets that the company holds and borrow money against what they can't sell. Then spin off the remaining shell with the entire debt load (including the original loan that they are now no longer responsible for) and take the entire profit as capital gains which are then taxed at a maximum of 15%. The Republicans keep insisting that the capital gains tax rate be reduced to zero to "stimulate business". In the old days (when we were a prosperous nation) short term capital gains were taxed at 66%.

    You might think that a bank wouldn't want to loan money for this purpose since the debt ends up attached to a company that will almost certainly fail in the long term. The trick to that is the loan gets shredded up and mixed with all sorts of other debt and sold as securities. It's even considered high grade debt at the time because it's attached to a long standing corporation with an excellent credit rating; of course now it's called a toxic asset.

    This simple, risk free process has made a lot of rich Republicans into billionaires; in the old days the pirates would have been hunted down by the Navy and hanged from the yardarm. Prairie2 News
     
  5. Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.

    YOU FORGOT TO MENTION THAT HE WAS A WHITE-SUPREMIST,,,AND POSTED ON '' STORMFRONT''.. a racist website,,, full of nut's like him,?

    ..just look at the big tatoo this guy had on his chest,,,

    the way this guy went down is the way these people go '' out'' fighting,,,

    ,, it had nothing to do with what he may have heard a fox. news anchor say..

    ..:cool:
     
  6. He posted a blog from Media Matters... a self-proclaimed ANTI CONSERVATIVE news outlet. This thread is going to go to shit if we use it as a soap box for personal political agendas, which in AK's case is to serve as the valiant defender of the Obama administration and to minimize the argument of opposition.

    If the rule of this thread is to post only news, and no comments, then I think we should encourage as objective a source as possible. Leave your propaganda for the discussion threads.
     
  7. #7 Deutschbag, Apr 10, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 10, 2009
    My Way News - Pirates recapture US hostage after escape attempt

     
  8. #8 AK Infinity, Apr 10, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 10, 2009


    You have a point, I should have broadened the scope a bit, but please feel free to post what you think is relevant to the City, we aren't objective newsies here nor is most news, but let's go with huh?

    Post as you blades see fit. :)
     
  9. I don't see how people hate liberals? :confused_2:
     

  10. I don't see how people hate period
     
  11. Friday, April 10, 2009

    Potatoes for everybody!


    The New Jobless Claims Report dipped slightly this week but the total number of people continuing to receive benefits set another new record. This means that the jobs continue to disappear and not just to out-sourcing; imports are down; the economy is just falling in on itself. A European company just canceled an 80 million dollar windmill plant scheduled for construction in the US this year. This adds to a long list of similar cancellations and this should be no surprise, since we have no way to pay them. We, can't print our own Euros.

    We have an economy that is based on giving each other haircuts and minimum wage jobs selling Chinese goods we can't pay for. The morning infotainment shows are running segments on people digging up their front yards to plant gardens. While this is good thing, it illustrates the "every man for himself" situation we find ourselves in. We were told that if we got rid of the small family farms we could feed the world. Corporate agribusiness is only capable of producing pesticide-laden corn and meat marinated in antibiotics. Increasingly even this comes from China where they can use drugs that are banned here and more and more Americans can't even afford that.

    We are increasingly becoming like the Irish of the 1840's who had to try to grow food on the little plot around their huts while the powerful few at the top controlled the land and everything else for their own enrichment. We need to emigrate to America for a better life.... Wait, we've got a problem.
     
  12. Drilling Ban Revisited

     
  13. April 13, 2009

    U.S. Captain Held by Pirates Is Rescued

    By R.M. SCHNEIDERMAN

    [​IMG]
    U.S. Navy, via Reuters



    The captain of an American cargo ship held hostage by armed Somali pirates was rescued on Sunday by United States Navy personnel, who killed three his captors, government and shipping officials said.

    Richard Phillips, 53, had been held for more than four days by the pirates.

    “This is truly a very happy Easter for the Phillips family,” said Alison McColl, an official with the ship's owner, Maersk Line, Limited, who has been representing Captain Phillips' family. “They are all just so happy and relieved.”

    Maersk was told at 1:30 p.m. Sunday that Captain Phillips had been rescued, the company said in a statement. “John Reinhart, President and Chief Executive Officer of Maersk Line, Limited, called Captain Phillips' wife, Andrea, to tell her the good news,” the statement continued. “The crew of the Maersk Alabama was jubilant when they received word.”

    Captain Phillips was rescued and placed aboard the United States Navy destroyer Bainbridge, CNN reported. He was then flown by helicopter to another Navy ship, and has contacted his family and received a routine medical examination.

    “Maersk Line, Limited is deeply grateful to the Navy, the F.B.I. and so many others for their tireless efforts to secure Richard's freedom,” the company said.”

    Only three pirates were in the motorized lifeboat where Mr. Phillips was being held because one had surrendered early this morning, according to a Kenyan maritime official who had been monitoring the situation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    Mr. Phillips was being held in a covered part at the back of the lifeboat, the official said, and one pirate typically stayed with him under cover. The lifeboat had gotten as close as 20 miles to shore, drifting after running out of fuel, off Gara'ad, Somalia.

    On Saturday night, the Navy fired warning shots at the lifeboat, followed by a brief exchange of fire, the official said. Hours afterward, one pirate who was either injured or scared jumped off the boat and surrendered to Navy personnel, the Kenyan official said.

    Around 7 p.m. Somali time, just after dark, U.S. Navy personnel opened fire, killing all three pirates, the official said.

    The Justice Department will be reviewing evidence to decide whether charges will be brought against the surviving pirate, a Justice Department official told CNN.

    In Underhill, Vt., Captain Phillips' hometown, Ms. McColl said that Andrea Phillips had talked on the phone with her husband since his rescue.

    Minutes before Ms. McColl made her statement, a car pulled up to the house and three youngsters jumped out and ran into the house in jubilation.

    Mr. Reinhart, Maersk's president, will hold a media briefing in Norfolk, Va., later on Sunday.

    The pirates - demanding $2 million in ransom - seized Mr. Phillips on Wednesday and escaped the cargo ship in a motorized lifeboat.

    A standoff between the pirates and the United States Navy then ensued until Saturday when negotiations between American officials and the pirates broke down, according to Somali officials, after the Americans insisted that the pirates be arrested and a group of elders representing the pirates refused.

    The negotiations broke down hours after the pirates fired on a small United States Navy vessel that had tried to approach the lifeboat not long after sunrise Saturday in the Indian Ocean.

    The cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, a 17,000-ton cargo vessel, pulled into port at 8:30 Saturday evening in Mombasa, Kenya, with its 19 remaining American crew members.

    When the crew members heard that their captain had been freed, they placed an American flag over the rail of the top of the ship. They whistled and pumped their fists in the air, The Associated Press reported.

    In Somalia, Abdirahman Muhammad Faroole, president of the Puntland region, where some of the pirates were thought to be from, said that on Sunday afternoon, American officials whom he'd been talking to throughout the crisis abruptly told him to stop pursuing negotiations with tribal elders affiliated with the pirates. Mr. Faroole was told the Americans “had another action,” and said it was no longer necessary for him to work with the elders, he said.

    More than 250 hostages are being held by various Somalian pirate groups, including the 16 crew members of an Italian tugboat captured on Saturday.

    One pirate named Ali, in Galkaiyo, Somalia, said the American Navy rescue won't discourage other Somali pirate groups at all.

    “As long as there is no just government in Somalia, we will still be the coast guard,” he said, adding: “If we get an American, we will take revenge.”

    Reporting was contributed by Serge F. Kovaleski from Underhill, Vt.; Mark Mazzetti from Washington; and employees of The New York Times from Somalia.
     
  14. Fine work by our Navy.
     
  15. Marry a Farmer

     
  16. Monday, April 13, 2009

    Plant your bubble garden


    Two different versions of reality are circulating in the mainstream media. One version is the "news" dutifully read on air from press releases put out by the large banks. From what is being read from the TelePrompTers you would think that there wasn't any problem with the banks and after the slight hiccup in the economy they are making billions again and ready for business as usual.

    The other version is coming out in drips and drabs in the print media. People who attended White House meetings with bankers say that the encounters have been heated with Banking Regulators in favor wholesale firings and a crack down on executive pay. The bankers want to continue collecting billions in salary and perks from banks that are losing, well, billions, and not just investors money (that's long gone) but now taxpayer money as well.

    The bankers contend that they are solvent but to make that claim they are valuing their toxic assets at 91% of original value. Nobody will give them anything like that and never will, but when your weekly salary is measured in millions you must be smarter than everybody else. Right? (yeah right) They are really operating like any other chronic gambler who is sure that if they just keep going back to the table they will win it all back. Of course they aren't gambling with their money; it's our farm they are betting on an inside straight; they win no matter how much we lose.

    But that's the "free market", right? How dare Obama and a bunch of bureaucrats at the Treasury Dept. interfere in the "free market". Just keep printing the money and handing it to them and everything will be all right. Just keep repeating: everything will be all right, we just need to keep printing money, printing money, printing, printing....

    The bankers are creating the public illusion that the "free market" is working everything out and the Government is putting undo burdens on them. This may make it difficult for Obama to convince Congress to authorize further action. If they prevail and are able to just go back to business as usual, then what we will get is another bubble. This one won't take long to run its course and when it bursts things really will get bad. Everybody should follow the President's example and plant a garden.
     
  17. Gov. Perry Backs Resolution Affirming Texas’ Sovereignty Under 10th Amendment


     
  18. Ron Paul's response to Obama's economic speech today. Ron Paul just lays out the facts about how we are becoming economically fascist and are just creating inflation.

    [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TS7Jf6XBjQ&eurl]YouTube - ron paul: barack obama is "preaching inflation...economic fascism"[/ame]
     
  19. #20 AK Infinity, Apr 14, 2009
    Last edited by a moderator: Apr 14, 2009

Share This Page