Shine A Light

From Michael Tomasky, a blogger at the Guardian UK:

“You see what we’re up against”

Every once in a while, something happens that gives us a clear picture of just how insane and malevolent some figures on the American right are. Few acts of God have the power to do this more than a devastating earthquake that kills as yet untold thousands of humans who just happen to have black skin.

Pat Robertson, a “religious leader” with a tremendous following in this country and still a fair amount of political influence, although not what he had 20 years ago, said:

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it,” he said on Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The 700 Club.” “They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”

True story. Can you imagine? As I recall things, Haiti won its independence in 1804, and Louie Napoleon, i.e. Nap the Third, didn’t take power until after the 1848 revolutions. And rather more importantly, there’s that devil business.

Then there’s Rush Limbaugh:

Limbaugh also seems to feel we’ve done enough already for Haiti: “We’ve already donated to Haiti. It’s called the U.S. income tax.”

International friends, this is what we’re up against here. No event is beyond politics. Everything that happens in the world — a tragedy that destroys a country and kills little children — is to be put to a political purpose and reduced to an us versus them frame. All the better when the “them” are black, which at this point in history they don’t even need to say. They know their listeners will get it.

Limbaugh couldn’t have suffered a heart attack. He’d have to have one first.

While Dick Cheney is accusing the president of acting as if we are NOT at war, other voices are saying well, no, actually, we aren’t. And what did Cheney do about it when he had a chance, anyway?

from Matt Corley at Think Progress:

In February 2008, Eric Burns, who had worked at Fox News since the network launched in 1996 and served as “the closest person Fox had to an ombudsman” as the host of Fox News Watch, “was told he would be terminated within the next two months.” Since his firing, for which he said “he was not given a reason,” Burns has largely avoided discussing his former employer. In a September 2008 blog post about MSNBC’s opinion shows, Burns wrote that “Fox is a topic for another article, and another writer.”

Burns has ended his Fox News silence, writing on the Huffington Post that he used to work for a “right-wing partial-news-but-mostly-opinion network.” In particular, Burns takes aim at Glenn Beck, who he calls “a problem of taste as well as ethics”:

I speak out now because it is the time of year when one is supposed to count blessings. I have several. Among them is that I do not have to face the ethical problem of sharing an employer with Glenn Beck. Actually, Beck is a problem of taste as well as ethics. He laughs and cries; he pouts and giggles; he makes funny faces and grins like a cartoon character; he makes earnest faces yet insists he is a clown; he cavorts like a victim of St. Vitus’s Dance. His means of communicating are, in other words, so wide-ranging as to suggest derangement as much as versatility.

Comparing Beck to Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and John Birch, Burns asks himself “what I would have done if I worked at Fox now.” Noting that Jane Hall — who had regularly appeared on his Fox Show — recently left the network partially because of Beck, Burns admits that he might not have acted “as admirable as” she did:

I ask myself what I would have done if I worked at Fox now. Would I have quit, as the estimable Jane Hall did? Once a panelist on my program, Hall departed for other reasons as well, but Beck was a particular source of embarrassment to her, even though they never shared a studio, perhaps never even met. I think…I think the answer to my question does not do me proud. I think, more concerned about income than principle, I would have continued to work at Fox, but spent my spare time searching avidly for other employment. I think I would not have been as admirable as Jane Hall. I think I would not have reacted to Beck with the probity I like to think I possess.

It is interesting that Burns would compare Beck to John Birch, considering that before he joined Fox News, Beck told a spokesman for the John Birch Society that they were “starting to make more and more sense” to him.

At the conclusion of last week’s Bill Moyers Journal, Moyers offered his own words regarding the health care reform battle. Here’s what he said:

The editors of THE ECONOMIST magazine say America’s health care debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American. Well, that’s charitable. I would say it’s more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American. Those crackpots on the right praying for Obama to die and be sent to hell — they’re the warp and woof of home-grown nuttiness. So is the creature from the Second Amendment who showed up at the President’s rally armed to the teeth. He’s certainly one of us. Red, white, and blue kooks are as American as apple pie and conspiracy theories.

Bill Maher asked me on his show last week if America is still a great nation. I should’ve said it’s the greatest show on earth. Forget what you learned in civics about the Founding Fathers — we’re the children of Barnum and Bailey, our founding con-men. Their freak show was the forerunner of today’s talk radio. Speaking of which: we’ve posted on our website an essay by the media scholar Henry Giroux. He describes the growing domination of hate radio as one of the crucial elements in a “culture of cruelty” increasingly marked by overt racism, hostility and disdain for others, coupled with a simmering threat of mob violence toward any political figure who believes health care reform is the most vital of safety nets, especially now that the central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive.

So here we are, wallowing in our dysfunction. Governed — if you listen to the rabble rousers — by a black nationalist from Kenya smuggled into the United States to kill Sarah Palin’s baby. And yes, I could almost buy their belief that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, only I think he shipped them to Washington, where they’ve been recycled as lobbyists and trained in the alchemy of money laundering, which turns an old-fashioned bribe into a First Amendment right. Only in a fantasy capital like Washington could Sunday morning talk shows become the high church of conventional wisdom, with partisan shills treated as holy men whose gospel of prosperity always seems to boil down to lower taxes for the rich. Poor Obama. He came to town preaching the religion of nice. But every time he bows politely, the harder the Republicans kick him. No one’s ever conquered Washington politics by constantly saying “pretty please” to the guys trying to cut your throat.

Let’s get on with it, Mr. President. We’re up the proverbial creek with spaghetti as our paddle. This health care thing could have been the crossing of the Delaware, the turning point in the next American Revolution — the moment we put the mercenaries to rout, as General Washington did the Hessians at Trenton. We could have stamped our victory “Made in the USA.” We could have said to the world, “Look what we did!” And we could have turned to each other and said, “thank you.” As it is, we’re about to get health care reform that measures human beings only in corporate terms of a cost-benefit analysis. I mean this is topsy-turvy — we should be treating health as a condition, not a commodity.

As we speak, Pfizer, the world’s largest drug maker, has been fined a record $2.3 billion dollars as a civil and criminal — yes, that’s criminal, as in fraud — penalty for promoting prescription drugs with the subtlety of the Russian mafia. It’s the fourth time in a decade Pfizer’s been called on the carpet — and these are the people into whose tender mercies Congress and the White House would deliver us?

Come on, Mr. President. Show us America is more than a circus or a market. Remind us of our greatness as a democracy. When you speak to Congress next week, just come out and say it. We thought we heard you say during the campaign last year that you want a government run insurance plan alongside private insurance — mostly premium-based, with subsidies for low-and-moderate income people. Open to all individuals and employees who want to join and with everyone free to choose the doctors we want. We thought you said Uncle Sam would sign on as our tough, cost-minded negotiator standing up to the cartel of drug and insurance companies and Wall Street investors whose only interest is a company’s share price and profits.

Here’s a suggestion, Mr. President: ask Josh Marshall to draft your speech. Josh is the founder of the website talkingpointsmemo.com. He’s a journalist and historian, not a politician. He doesn’t split things down the middle and call it a victory for the masses. He’s offered the simplest and most accurate description yet of a public insurance plan; one that essentially asks people: would you like the option — the voluntary option — of buying into Medicare before you’re 65? Check it out, Mr. President.

This health care thing is make or break for your leadership, but for us, it’s life and death. No more Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. President. We need a fighter.