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Okay, credit on this one goes to, I’m guessing, a Rosie O’Donnell reader. At any rate, this is posted on her site, and the context suggests that it came from one of her readers. I don’t ordinarily do reposts in this space, but in this case, I’m making an exception — if nothing else, maybe my mom will see the source and give it some serious consideration instead of dismissing it out of hand because I said it:
We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, Now you get mad!?
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.
You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans, drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.
You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark.
You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans…oh hell no!
If you’ve been watching Glenn Beck much lately – something I generally try to avoid, but I inevitably see clips on Countdown, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and/or just about every blog on the liberal side of the blogosphere – you know that the man has been bandying about terms like “Nazi” and “fascist” and “Hitler” pretty freely in connection with progressives generally and President Obama in particular.
Not that President Obama is particularly progressive, but that’s another rant for another time.
Anyway, Beck has been engaged in a lot of ranting and raving and name calling, including some odd combos like “communist fascists,” which apparently is what happens when someone moves so far to the left end of the political spectrum that they end up back around at the extreme end of the right side of the spectrum.
Apparently no one’s ever explained Godwin’s Law to Mr. Beck.
Now, just yesterday, I ran across the following photo from the Washington Post (h/t @chrislhayes, link takes you to the original photo in context):
THIS guy likes to bandy about Hitler comparisons?
I ask you, who does this photo remind you of?
Here’s a hint. Change the flag behind him with another historical flag. One from, say, Germany. Late 1930s – mid 1940s era.
Seriously, dude. Glass houses. Pot. Kettle.
Mind, I’m not calling Glenn Beck a Nazi. Because, hey, I am familiar with Godwin’s Law.*
I’m just saying that, well, if there was a photo of me looking like this floating around on teh internets, I’d really want to avoid mentioning the H-word. Or the F-word. Um, fascist, that is, not the other F-word (which I manifestly have no problem with using when the occasion seems to call for it).
Just a thought.
-jane doe
* I will concede that there comes a point where the comparison to fascism as a system of government may be appropriate, despite the emotional valence of the term. I drafted a couple of posts for this blog during the Bush administration where I speculated about where we as a nation were along the slippery slope leading to fascism, though I don’t remember if I actually posted any of them. I was not alone in speculating about this – see for instance Joe Conason’s It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush.
So, former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino — you remember her, right? Bush administration Kool-Aid junkie? Well, I guess she’s forgotten all about 9/11. Because she was on Fox News recently, distressed that they weren’t calling the Ft. Hood shooting a terrorist attack, and she actually said that there were no terrorist attacks during the Bush administration.
I know. Mind boggling.
Amazingly, it appears her amnesia is some new contagious type, because Sean Hannity doesn’t bother to correct her assertion that “We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.” Guess he forgot about 9/11, too.
Sad, very sad. I hope they get help for that. I wonder what kind of health insurance they have?
On a completely unrelated note, sorry I haven’t been around lately. I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo, and that’s taking a lot of my time. I’m probably going to do some posts in the near future, though.
Next week. After NaNoWriMo ends.
-jane doe
I’ve known this for a long time, but haven’t felt moved to comment on it before today. However, he made a particularly moronic comment today (h/t to Media Matters) that I feel deserves extra attention:
“I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.”
I have a number of problems with this statement.
First, there many people these days who hate America, partly due to our current administration’s policies, partly due to past policies, partly due to dislike of our culture, and partly just to be peevish (mostly the French in that last group). We’ll let that slide, though, because the context makes it clear that what Beck means is that he thinks there are a handful of Americans who hate America. That assertion is what I take issue with.
Second, he implies that liberals hate America. Well, okay, not exactly. Actually, he implies that Southern Californians hate America, since Southern California is the only place experiencing a lot of major fires at the moment, at least that I’m aware of. But everyone knows that Southern California is the home of flaming liberals — that, at least, is what I think he is trying to suggest — right?
Wrong. South of Los Angeles — behind the Orange Curtain, as we used to call it — most of those cities skew pretty Republican. San Diego, where eight or nine of those fires Beck mentioned are burning, has a rather strong Republican bent, between the conservative upper class and all the military folks who live there. And I imagine a lot of those folks would be upset to hear both that Glenn Beck thinks they’re liberal and that he thinks they hate America.
Third, of course, is the fact that he thinks liberals hate America. We don’t. We love this country. We are just scared by or angry about what certain people in power are doing to this country, or in the name of this country.
Fourth, is the smug implicit subtext to his glib little comment, that people in Southern California somehow deserve to lose their homes in a fire because they are liberal, or because they hate America, or maybe just because they live in Southern California. It is beyond inappropriate to make snide little comments like this when more than a quarter of a million people have been evacuated from their homes in the face of these fires.
Ergo, Glenn Beck is an idiot.
I am filing this post under the Faux News category, because I think that Glenn Beck really ought to be on that network, instead of one run by the allegedly neutral CNN. Because really, he should be — every time I happen to run across his show, I have to check the station icon in the corner of my TV screen, just to make sure I haven’t accidentally switched over to Fox. He’s just that blatant a right-wing mouthpiece. And that big an idiot.
Ah, well. It’s all just further evidence of the impending collapse of civilization as we know it.
And furthermore, I think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.
-jane doe
P.S. My thoughts and prayers go out to all those who are affected by the fires in Southern California. A close friend who lives in the San Diego area called me this morning at about 5:30 a.m. west coast time to let me know that they were evacuating and heading up the coast away from the fires. They threw their pets, their important documents, a few changes of clothes, and their laptop computers into the car and took off when the electricity in her neighborhood became unreliable. She said that embers were blowing everywhere, and the fire had jumped across a stretch of freeway that was eight lanes wide because the winds were so strong. At this time, they do not know whether they will have a house to go back to. You can find out how to help people affected by the fires here.
Okay, this should have gone up on Friday, but I was laughing too hard to type when I saw it. Apparently, the Bush apologists over at Faux News dislike the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore (along with a some other people at the UN) for their work to raise awareness about global warming. And really, did we expect anything else from the Faux News people? Of course not. But that’s not why I’ve been laughing so hard I won’t have to do ab exercises for a week.
No, the funny part is who the Faux Brain Trust people proposed as a more appropriate recipient…Gen. David Petraeus!
Strictly speaking, it was apparently NY Sun editor Seth Lipsky who made that suggestion to Faux’s Neil Cavuto, but still…the Nobel Peace Prize? To a general who is leading U.S. troops in a war that has gained nearly universal condemnation, both here at home and among our erstwhile allies? What are they putting in the water cooler over at the Faux Newsroom?
Of course, this is really more a reflection of Faux’s knee-jerk response to anything favorable reported about Al Gore, the man who should have been sworn in as our President back in 2001.
And for those keeping track, Gore has now won an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Nobel Peace Prize, in addition to the 2000 presidential election. Makes you wonder where we would be right now as a nation if he had been allowed to take office by the Supremes, doesn’t it?
And yes, for the record, I still think Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached.
-jane doe
Apparently, Faux News Channel is considering airing a right-slanting version of The Daily Show, with at least a couple of episodes slated for “Saturday nights in late January” according to a story cited by the Huffington Post. As if Faux’s regular fake news coverage weren’t enough of a joke. Seriously, how will their viewers be able to tell when the network’s regular fake news ends and the allegedly satirical fake news begins?
Personally, I can’t wait to see what Jon Stewart has to say about this. Unfortunately, TDS is in reruns this week, so we’ll have to wait for a while on that.
-jane doe
