KeepHip.com

I'm going to spend this weekend watching FOX News.

"Only 1.38 percent of Fox News’ primetime viewers are African-American."

"The Left Hates Conservatives" says Dennis Prager:

From Karl Marx to today, the Left has always hated people on the Right, not merely differed or been angry with them.

The question is: why?

Here are three possible answers.

First, the left thinks the right is evil.

Granting for exceptions that all generalizations allow for, conservatives believe that those on the left are wrong, while those on the left believe that those on the right are bad, not merely wrong. Examples are innumerable. For example, Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic Party said, "In contradistinction to the Republicans ... (Democrats) don't believe kids ought to go to bed hungry at night."

Or take Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., who, among many similar comments, said, "I want to say a few words about what it means to be a Democrat. It's very simple: We have a conscience."

Has any spokesman of the Republican Party ever said anything analogous about Democrats not caring about the suffering of children or not having a conscience?

This is an excellent chance to take a trip down memory lane!

Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.

-- Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), referring to President Clinton

We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs.

-- Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX)

Environmentalists are a socialist group of individuals that are the tool of the Democrat Party. I'm proud to say that they are my enemy. They are not Americans, never have been Americans, never will be Americans.

-- Rep. Don Young (R-AL)

Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God.

--Rep. Robin Hayes (R-NC)

This whole thing about not kicking someone when they are down is B.S. Not only do you kick him, you kick him until he passes out, then beat him over the head with a baseball bat, then roll him up in an old rug and throw him off a cliff into the pounding surf below.

-— Michael Scanlon, Chief of Staff for Tom DeLay (R-TX)

"A 'Slap in the face' -- in 1981."

And on a related note:

"Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege" by Senator Jim Webb starts out with:

The NAACP believes the tea party is racist.

Actually, no, they don't:

Today, NAACP delegates passed a resolution to condemn extremist elements within the Tea Party, calling on Tea Party leaders to repudiate those in their ranks who use racist language in their signs and speeches.

So many people getting this wrong is telling. The NAACP asked the Tea Party to repudiate racists within its ranks, without accusing the whole of the Tea Party of being racist. Which isn't to say the NAACP (probably) doesn't think organizations (like say, the KKK) can be racist at the core. The difference between the KKK and the Tea Party is that the NAACP leadership probably thinks the KKK needs to die out, while the Tea Party needs to clean up its act. The NAACP even seems to think the "Tea Party leaders" will be willing to do so, something they'd never ask a Grand Dragon to do.

The problem here isn't what the NAACP said, which was limited in scope and appropriately worded, but what people heard, which was "the NAACP is ragging on white folks again."

(Previously.)

"NAACP Pledges to Issue Statement Condemning Racist Attacks on Black Conservative":

On the July 17 edition of “Geraldo At Large” on the Fox News Channel, Borelli appeared on a panel discussion about race and politics with NAACP senior vice president Hilary Shelton.

During the discussion, Borelli asked Shelton if the NAACP would issue a statement condemning those who expose her to race-based abuse because she is an outspoken black female with views.

Here's that video again:

Shelton added that the NAACP repudiated past assaults on Bush Administration cabinet members General Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

Borelli has been called the n-word by liberal critics, as well as other epithets such as “house negro,” “Stepin Fetchit,” “Sambo,” “Uncle Tom,” “Auntie Tom” and a “pitiful excuse of a human being,” among many others.

Project 21 will send a detailed letter to Shelton chronicling some of the past racist statements made against Borelli and other Project 21 members.

Dollars to donuts this list of insults will be from anonymous letter writing cowards, no name bloggers, and various other insignificant miscreants that no political junky has never heard of. While I found someone calling Borrelli a "house negro" on the second page of my Google search, it turns out that the first page of hits was conservatives whining about the name-calling.

And remember, Borelli's think tank of black conservatives - Project 21, will cozy up with white supremacists, lists Jesse Lee Peterson as an advisory board member.

I bet you never thought you'd see a Republican get a campaign ad posted here, unless it was for the express purpose of critisizing it. NOT SO buddy boy!

Can't get enough of Sam Seder:

"The RNC, a 'Civil War,' and a hidden debt."

Steve's wrong, this doesn't have "the potential to be a very big deal," it will be a very big deal. Wait and see.

Thomas Sowell writes about "Race Card Fraud":

Some Obama supporters have long regarded any criticism of him as racism. But that they should have to resort to such a banner to bolster their case shows how desperate they are for any evidence.

You've just got to love Sowell's writing style. Who are these "Obama supporters"? We're left wondering. Then he goes on to talk about desperation and lack of evidence. I get the idea he doesn't know it when he sees it.

NewsBusters attempts to explain why this video isn't proof that the Tea Party has a racism problem:

One man holding a sign is seen at the beginning of the video saying that Obama is "too black to be president." But later, in a longer portion of his statement, he says "it's nothing racial … and if you look at my wife, it's not the color of his skin that troubles me." His wife is black. He also states in a portion of the same video not clipped by Think Progress, "It’s the blackness inside … his heart. He’s a bad guy." In other words, he's not at all racist.

I don't know about you, but I'm sold.

"Americans Voting with their Feet" says Daniel J. Mitchell on the Cato@Liberty blog:

The Financial Times reports that the number of Americans giving up their citizenship to protect their families from America’s onerous worldwide tax system has jumped rapidly. Even relatively high-tax nations such as the United Kingdom are attractive compared to the class-warfare system that President Obama is creating in the United States.

I run into people like this quite often as part of my travels. They are intensely patriotic to America as a nation, but they have lots of scorn for the federal government.

Oh. My. God. The number of Americans giving up their citizenship to protect their families from America’s onerous worldwide tax system has jumped rapidly. Jumped. Rapidly.

If you look at the Financial Times article in question, it's a classic of bad journalism. "unnamed accountants" (no quotes are identified as being from accountants) are relied upon as sources. Only hypothetical connections between the 743 (out of over 300 million) people who comprise this astonishing "trend" are given. We are not told how many of those 743 actually took up residency anywhere in the U.K. There is no indication that any of them gave up their citizenship, even in part, because of taxes.

We are told that people who "live and work" in the U.K. are waiting in line to get British citizenship - despite the fact that living and working in the U.S. would immunize one from any changes in the U.S. tax code. Not that any person would leave the U.S.'s lower tax rate (15-35%) for the higher ones in the U.K (40%).

In the end, it seems that if you're posting on the Cato blog, highlighting any "evidence" that reinforces your libertarian fantasies is necessary to keep up the charade.

"GOP The Party Of George W. Bush" from the DNC:

Interesting clip for the Democratic National Committee to publicize. It seems to be that this ad should have been framed more, if you don't read the title, you don't get their point in publicizing it.

"Rod Blagojevich trial shows spending habits to which he was ill-suited."

We had that threat and we survived it. Later we found out we had another threat to our way of life, and that was al Qaeda. We found that out on 9/11.

But I firmly believe this — it's not just, you know, sort of a dramatic statement that a person would make to get press or something, or ink. I believe this with all my heart. The greatest threat to the United States today, the greatest threat to our liberty, the greatest threat to the Constitution of the United States, the greatest threat to our way of life, everything we believe in, the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the Founding Fathers is the guy that is in the White House today.

--Tom Tancredo, Republican Rep. from Colorado from January 3, 1999 to January 3, 2009.

Glenn Greenwald has really done some excellent blogging over at Salon. His post "Octavia Nasr's firing and what The Liberal Media allows" got me to thinking:

CNN yesterday ended the 20-year career of Octavia Nasr, its Atlanta-based Senior Middle East News Editor, because of a now-deleted tweet she wrote on Sunday upon learning of the death of one of the Shiite world's most beloved religious figures: "Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah . . . . One of Hezbollah's giants I respect a lot." That message spawned an intense fit of protest from Far Right outlets, Thought Crime enforcers, and other neocon precincts, and CNN quickly (and characteristically) capitulated to that pressure by firing her. The network -- which has employed a former AIPAC official, Wolf Blitzer, as its primary news anchor for the last 15 years -- justified its actions by claiming that Nasr's "credibility" had been "compromised." Within this episode lies several important lessons about media "objectivity" and how the scope of permissible views is enforced.

Beyond journalism, speech codes concerning the Middle East are painfully biased and one-sided . . . Does anyone ever suffer career-impeding injuries of this type -- the way Nasr and Thomas also just have -- for expressing anti-Muslim or anti-Arab views? No. The speech prohibitions and thought crimes on the Middle East all run in one direction: to enforce "pro-Israel" orthodoxies. Does this long list of examples leave room for doubt about that fact?

In American politics, we had the weird case of Trent Lott taking forever for his racist words and actions to catch up to him. Unless there's a delayed reaction for the anti-Arab sentiment found in the media punditry, Greenwald is spot-on. I don't know whether to find it odd that anti-Arab racism is more acceptable than anti-African American racism or expect that we would be more cognizant of anti-black racism after our long history of slavery, Jim Crow, etc.

"Santa and Frank" by Thomas Sowell represents a gutsy attempt at revisionist history:

It goes like this: Democrats start spending money wildly, handing out goodies to a wide range of people who they want to vote for them, while Republicans complain about deficits and the national debt. Then, when the public becomes alarmed about the debts that are piling up, the Democrats get the Republicans to vote for higher taxes to deal with the debt crisis, in the name of "fiscal responsibility."

The problem there is that this is complete lie. Clinton cut spending left and right, whereas both Reagan and Bush "handed out goodies" to a small range of defense contractors and put it on the national credit card. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both doubled the national debt during their presidencies, whereas Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus. And let's not mention that Reagan was quite fond of raising taxes.

There is already a bipartisan commission set to provide political cover for the Democrats' wild spending that has increased the national debt from 63 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2004 to 83 percent in 2009-- and official estimates of more than 90 percent this year, with more increases in sight.

Another revisionist fairy tale. Spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the lost revenue from the Bush tax cuts, and the financial bailouts caused that increase in the national debt. Of course Sowell supported those wars when Bush was running them, and the budget crises they incurred didn't bother him until a Democrat took office.

"New study documents media's servitude to government":

A newly released study from students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government provides the latest evidence of how thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials. This new study examines how waterboarding has been discussed by America's four largest newspapers over the past 100 years, and finds that the technique, almost invariably, was unequivocally referred to as "torture" -- until the U.S. Government began openly using it and insisting that it was not torture, at which time these newspapers obediently ceased describing it that way.

Another moment in obvious we should spend a minute reflecting on.

The ever entertaining Gateway Pundit says "Obama Flips Boehner the Bird During Racine Speech":

Classy. He just can’t help himself. The child president not only misrepresented GOP Leader John Boehner’s ant comment while giving his campaign speech yesterday in Racine, Wisconsin…
He flipped him off.

You might note that there's no finger being given. You can watch the video he links to too:

See? Still no "bird." But that's not the point of this post. Here's some choice replies from the comment section:

What a dirtbag. He thinks he’s kicka$$ but he just a local neighborhood punk. He won’t flip the bird to Boehner in person, got to do it behind his back.

Barry, We’re coming for your political friends first. Then we’ll come for you. I think you will not serve a full term, and we will have the help of some of your beloved democrats. You sir (I use the term loosely) must go. powder is dry.

Typical Alinsky tactic….what a classless bitch.

n embarrassment to the office of the Presidency of the United States…
What a first class low life – he thinks he’s still on the streets in Chicago where he learned his classless ways-
After watching all these videos, you have to wonder about the poor souls he has for followers…..just saying!

Oh My God how I would love to smack anyone for voting for this juvenile, thug; this thin-skinned snob. His lack of decorum is not just embarrassing, it is offensive.

Perhaps he thought he was honoring the passing of Senator “Big-Bird” with his regal gesture.

The little thin-skinned, insecure sissy can’t keep from erupting in hissy fits of petulance and hubris (flipping the bird, “I won”, etc., etc…) instead of engaging in ADULT-level, intelligent conversation with out threats, implied or expressed.

Oilbama only flips off those who’ve really gotten to him. So, that he’s now flipped off Boehner is a good thing. Way to go, Boehner! Keep it up and you’ll be living rent-free in Oilbama’s head.

It took #21 posts for someone to be the slightest bit skeptical, and 23 before someone with a clue points out the obvious, and he wasn't a liberal. This is why conservative propaganda works so well. The audience has either decided they already hate the guy or they are just incredibility stupid. Hell, it's probably a heaping helping of both.