Fox News host Sean Hannity last night told guest, pollster Frank Luntz that Osama Bin Laden would still be alive if President Obama “had his way.” Adding that he had tape recordings to prove his false, malicious assertions.
HANNITY: I know the president will say, ‘Well, we got bin Laden.’ Putting that aside…
LUNTZ: And the public gives him credit for that.
HANNITY: They do. The public does give him credit for that. But it wouldn’t have happened if he had his way, and I think that can be proved as well on tape.
Did Sean miss the part where Obama had Navy Seals kill Bin Laden? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down. [ READ MORE HERE ]
Fox’s ‘Syphilitic Liar’ Sean Hannity Says That ‘Obama Didn’t Want Bin Laden Dead!’
As Media Matters for America has demonstrated time and again, Fox News’ Sean Hannity has been a prolific and influential purveyor of conservative lies and misinformation.
In the 2008 presidential race — he was tops in lying at the Fox News Republican propaganda machine. Day after day, Hannity devoted his two Fox News shows and his three-hour ABC Radio Networks program to “demonizing” the Democratic presidential candidates, starkly explaining in August 2008: “That’s my job. .. I led the ‘Stop Hillary Express.’”
By the way, now it’s the “Stop Obama Express.”
“Hannity’s “Stop Obama Express” has promoted and embellished a vast array of misleading attacks and false claims about Obama.
Along the way, he has uncritically adopted and promoted countless Republican talking points and played host to numerous credibility-challenged smear artists who painted Obama as a dangerous radical.
When he is not going after Obama, Hannity attacks members of Obama’s family and other progressives, and denies all the while that he has unfairly attacked anyone.
Hannity has been caught numerous times doctoring videos or polls to make President Obama and the Democratic look bad.
He is a liar and smear artist of syphilitic proportions.
PLAYLIST: Sean Hannity – The Sickest MFER on TV
——————————————- Elsewhere, the anti-Obama, anti-Dem lies, racism and bigotry continued to flow from right-wing America unabated:
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Culture Wars Politics: How America Got into The Current Destructive Birth Control Mess
Mad men? Markos Moulitsas questions the effectiveness of race baiting in election ads
Worst Persons: Rick Berman, Tim Wildmon and Rachel Burgin
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Meanwhile, an Arizona Republican has called for a “White Appreciation Day“: Arizona is the gift that just keeps on giving. First its immigration policy took center stage, then its governor wagged her finger in the face of the President, and now one of its lawmakers is suggesting that Arizona needs a holiday for white people.
Rep. Cecil Ash, a Republican (of course) from Mesa, spoke on the House floor about the need for a white people’s holiday.
It all started when Rep. Richard Miranda suggested that the state adopt a Latino holiday.
After some heated exchanges, Rep. Cecil Ash took the floor.
“I’m supportive of this proposition. I just want them to assure me that when we do become in the minority you’ll have a day for us,” Ash said.
When questioned about his proposition, Ash defended his statement by saying, “Yes, I think it was appropriate. It was appropriate for the mood that was in the House and I think that if and when the Caucasian population becomes a minority, they may want to celebrate the accomplishments and the contributions of the Caucasian population the same way.”
It would seem that we already have white appreciation day because, in all honesty, what day isn’t a good day to be white and appreciated?
Obama tangles with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer over immigration book
ByDavid Nakamura
PHOENIX — President Obama is used to tangling with Republicans in Congress. Last Wednesday, he sparred with one on a tarmac.
Arriving in this Southwestern city on the second stop of his post-State of the Union tour, Obama descended the stairs of Air Force One and was greeted by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who was among the local politicians waiting for him in a customary receiving line.
Such moments are designed photo ops designed to burnish the image of the president and the politicians. This time, it quickly turned into a dust-up in the desert.
Brewer attempted to hand Obama a letter, which she later told reporters was an invitation to sit down with her to discuss “Arizona’s comeback” and to tour the U.S.-Mexican border with her.
“I thought we probably would’ve talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another,” Brewer said later. “Our country is upside down. Arizona was upside down. But we have turned it around. I know again that he loves this country and I love this country.”
That’s when things went sour. Obama and Brewer engaged in what reporters described as an “intense exchange,” with the Republican governor pointing her finger at the president and the two appearing to talk over each other.
The exchange ended when Obama abruptly walked away as Brewer appeared to still be speaking, according to a summary provided by reporters in the press pool that shadows the president on his trips.
Dewayn Wickham Writes: Gov. Jan Brewer Intimidated By President? Really? — Brewer was just the most recent in a growing list of right-wingers to publicly display their contempt for Obama. …..she got up in Obama’s face like an irate mother lecturing an overgrown son…..
…..Brewer’s actions would have been disrespectful to any president, but the fact that Obama is our first black president raises questions of her real motives. That’s because the Arizona governor seemed to be channeling Willa Jean Boswell when she said she “felt a little bit threatened” by the president during her terse exchange with him, which occurred in front of two local mayors, Secret Service agents, a knot of journalists and a small group of people who stood in a nearby receiving line.
Threatened? Really? I don’t think so.
Back in 1951, Boswell, a 17-year-old white girl, had Matt Ingram thrown in jail for something akin to what Brewer claims the president did. Boswell complained the 44-year-old black farmer looked at her in a frightening way. Charged with rape by leering, Ingram was found guilty by an all-white jury that convicted him of looking at Boswell in a way that constituted an assault ? even though he never said a word or came within 75 feet of her. [ READ MORE ]
Obama Gets into a Weird Argument With a Weird Governor – ‘Apartheid’ Arizona’s Jan Brewer (P1/2)
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Meanwhile, El Commandante Fidel Castro last week said — the GOP race for nomination “is idiocy, ignorance.” The Republican presidential race is “the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” former Cuban president Fidel Castro wrote in an opinion piece on las Wednesday.
Castro made his comments in his latest column of “reflections” on a Cuban government website, attacking the Republican candidates two days after their debate in Florida.
Castro was reponding to the comments that Romney and Newt Gingrich made about what they would do if he died.
Romney said he would “thank heavens” Castro had “returned to his maker,” while Gingrich said, “I don’t think Fidel’s going to meet his maker. I think he’s going to go to the other place.” — [ READ MORE ]
—————————————————– In Other GOP Idiocy …….
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Overboard Psycho-Talk: RNC Chairman Reince Priebus Jabs Stupidly at President Obama
Ignorant RNC Chair Reince Priebus Clowns as Romney ‘Stamps on The Corpse of Gingrich’
Ding-Bat LIE: Carlson: “People Say” Keystone XL Would “Create 20,000 American Jobs” [ THE TRUTH ]
The Muppets Attack Fox — Fox is NOT News — Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy hit back at Fox News during a UK press conference following the London Premiere of their new film. Fox had publically criticized the film for supposedly pushing a ‘dangerous liberal agenda’ at kids.
Previously: Fox Business’ Follow The Money Unmasks The Muppets’ Liberal Agenda: “Brainwashing” Your Kids!
Media Matters Goes Light Bulb Shopping — For over a year, conservative media outlets have told (LIED TO) consumers that in January 2012, they would no longer be able to purchase incandescent light bulbs due to federal efficiency standards. A trip to CVS shows that in fact, incandescent light bulbs are available, only now they’re more efficient. [ FOX NEWS -- HELPING KEEP THE STUPID, VERY STUPID ]
[ By: Chauncey DeVega ] One cannot forget that the contemporary Republican Party was born with the Southern Strategy, winning over the former Jim Crow South to its side of the political aisle, and as a backlash against the civil rights movement. This is a formula for a politics of white grievance mongering and white victimology; a dreamworld where white conservatives are oppressed, their rights infringed upon by a tyrannical federal government and elite liberal media that are beholden to the interests of the “undeserving poor,” racial minorities, gays, and immigrants.
In keeping with this script in order to win over Red State America, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates have certainly not disappointed. Both overt racism and dog whistles are delectable temptations that the Republican presidential nominees cannot resist. With the election of the country’s first African-American president, and a United States that is less white and more diverse, the GOP is in peril. In uncertain times, you go with what you know. For the Republican Party, this means “dirty boxing,” digging deep into the old bucket of white racism, and using the politics of fear, hostility and anxiety to win over white voters by demagoguing Obama.
Scaring Up The ‘White Vote’: The G.O.P ‘Southern Strategy’ Lives at Fox News (PART 1)
Racism is an assault on the common good. Racism also does the work of dividing and conquering people with common interests. While the 2012 Republican candidates are stirring the pot of white racial anxiety, this is a means to a larger end?the destruction of the country’s social safety net, in support of vicious economic austerity policies, and protecting the kleptocrats and financiers at the expense of the working and middle classes.
Here are the top 10 racist moments by the Republican presidential candidates so far.
1. Newt Gingrich puts Juan Williams “in his place” for daring to ask an unpleasant question during the South Carolina debate. This was the most pernicious example of old-school white racism at work in the 2012 Republican primary campaign. Newt Gingrich, a son of the South who grew up in the shadow of legendary Jim Crow racist Lester Maddox, is an expert on the language and practice of white racism (in both its subtle and obvious forms). He has ridden high with Republican audiences by suggesting that black people are lazy, and their children should be given mops and brooms in order to learn the value of hard work. With condescending pride, Gingrich has also stated that he would lecture the NAACP–one of America’s most storied civil rights organizations–that they ought to demand jobs and not food stamps from Barack Obama.
‘Food-Stamp’ Racism: Obese Newt Gingrich Blows The Racist Dog Whistle
On Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, under the Confederate flag, in the state of South Carolina, Gingrich defended his racist contempt for African Americans by putting Juan Williams, “that boy,” in his place. During the debate, Juan Williams had gotten uppity and was insufficiently deferential to Newt.
This dynamic was not lost on the almost exclusively white audience in attendance (nor on the white woman who congratulated Gingrich the following day for his “brave” deed). They howled with glee at the sight of a black man, one who dared to sass, being reminded of his rightful place at Newt’s knee. In another time, not too long ago, Juan Williams would have been driven out of town for such an offense, if he was lucky — the lynching tree awaited many black folks who did not submit to white authority.
The symbolism of Newt Gingrich’s hostility to black folks, on King’s birthday, and the personal contempt he demonstrated for Juan Williams, was a classic moment in contemporary Republican politics. This was the “scene of instruction,” when a black man was a proxy for a whole community, a stand-in for the country’s first black president, as Newt Gingrich showed just what he thinks about Barack Obama, specifically and about people of color, in general. In that moment, white conservatism’s contempt was palatable, undeniable and unapologetic.
2. Herman Cain, in one of the most grotesque performances in post-civil rights-era politics to date, deftly plays his designated role as an African-American advocate for some of the Tea Party and New Right’s most racist policy positions. Most notably, in numerous interviews Cain alluded to the Democratic Party as keeping African Americans on a “plantation,” and that black conservatives were “runaway slaves” who were uniquely positioned to “free” the minds of their brothers and sisters. The implication of his ahistorical and bizarre allusion to the Democratic Party and chattel slavery was clear: black Americans are stupid, childlike and incapable of making their own political decisions, as Cain publicly observed that “only thirty percent of black people are thinking for themselves.”
Doubling down, as a black conservative mascot for the fantasies of the Tea Party faithful, Herman Cain also suggested that anyone who accuses them of “racism” (ignoring all available evidence in support of this claim) were in fact anti-white, and the real racists.
‘Pizza Candidate’ Herman Cain Claims Blacks Vote For Dems Because They are ‘Brainwashed‘
Herman Cain’s disdain was not limited to the black public. He also argued that undocumented immigrants should be electrocuted at the U.S. border by security fences, and that Muslim Americans are inherently treasonous and should be excluded from government. Perhaps most troubling, Herman Cain advocated for extreme forms of racial profiling in which Muslims would have to carry special identification cards.
Racism and anti-black sentiment know no boundaries. Herman Cain demonstrates that some of its most deft practioners are (ironically) people of color.
3. Ron Paul argues that the landmark federal legislation that dismantled Jim Crow segregation in the 1960s was a moral evil and a violation of white people’s liberty. Ron Paul’s claim that the rights of black Americans are secondary to the “freedom” of whites to discriminate, is an almost perfect mirror for the logic of apartheid. Ron Paul’s white supremacist ethic is more than a dismissal of one of the crowning legislative achievements of the 20th century: it is the endorsement of a principle that conveniently allows white people to hate and discriminate in the public sphere at will–and without consequence–against people of color. This “freedom” is the living and bleeding heart of white racism.
Ron Paul: Black Males Age 13 and Up are Big, Strong, Tough, Scary and Criminal!
4. Rick Santorum tells conservative voters that black people are parasites who live off hard-working white people. Santorum’s claim that “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money” is problematic in a number of ways. First, Santorum channels the white supremacist classic Birth of a Nation and its imagery of childlike free blacks who are a burden on white society. In addition, Santorum’s assumption that black people are a dependent class is skewed at its root. Why? Santorum presupposes that African Americans are uniquely pathological and lack self-sufficiency, ignores the black middle-class, and directly race-baits a white conservative audience by telling them that “the blacks” are coming for their money, jobs and resources. There is no mention of Red State America’s disproportionate dependence on public tax dollars, or how the (white) middle-class and the rich are subsidized by the federal government.
Hatemonger Rick Santorum Says Obama is Taking ‘White’ Money & Giving it To ‘Blacks’
5. In keeping with the class warfare narrative, and as a way of proving their conservative bona fides, Republican candidates have crafted a strategy in which they repeatedly refer to the unemployed as lazy, unproductive citizens who would “be rich if they just went out and got a job.” In fact, as suggested by Mitt Romney, any discussion of the wealth and income gap in the United States (and the destruction of the middle class), should be done in a “quiet room,” as such truth-telling stokes mean-spirited resentment against the rich. Conservatives have an almost Orwellian gift for manipulating language. The financier class is reframed as “job creators.” Programs that workers pay for such as Social Security are equated with “welfare.” Americans who are victims of robber baron capitalism and structural unemployment are painted as dregs who want nothing more than to “live off of the system.” Despite all evidence to the contrary, unions are painted as bastions for the weak, the greedy, and those who hate capitalism.
Race is central here: Conservatives seeded this ground with their assault on the black poor. The invention of the welfare queen by Ronald Reagan became code for lazy, fat, black women who game the system at the expense of hard-working whites. The Right uses the same framing in order to attack immigrants as people who want to destroy the country and steal the scarce resources of “productive” white Americans. [ READ: Welfare -- A White Secret ]
Efforts to shrink “big government” are closely related to the Right’s observation that the federal government employs “too many” blacks. The Republican Party refined its Ayn Rand-inspired shock doctrine and disaster capitalism through decades of practice on black and brown Americans. The racist tactics that were once used to justify the evisceration of programs aimed at helping the urban poor are now being applied to white folks on Main Street USA during the Great Recession.
6. Mitt Romney wants to “keep America America.” The dropping of one letter from the Ku Klux Klan’s slogan, “Keep America American,” does not remove the intent behind Romney’s repeated use of such a virulently bigoted phrase. While Mitt Romney can claim ignorance of the slogan’s origins, he is intentionally channeling its energy. In the Age of Obama, the Republican Party is drunk on the tonic of nativism. From remarks about “the real America,” to supporting the mass deportation of Latinos and Hispanics, a hostility to any designated Other is central to the 21st-century know-nothing politics of the Tea Party-driven GOP. Romney’s slogan, “Keep America America” begs the obvious question: just who is American? Who gets to decide? And should there be moats and electric fences to keep the undesirables out of the country?
7. Rick Perry’s nostalgic memories of his family’s ranch, “Niggerhead.” You cannot choose your parents (or decide what your ancestors will christen the family retreat before your birth). You can, however, choose to rename the family ranch something other than the ugliest word in the English language.
Rick Perry’s ‘Niggerhead’: Racism is Still The Dirty Little Secret of The Republican Party (P 1/2)
The world that spawned and nurtured Rick Perry’s Niggerhead was none too kind to black people. Jim and Jane Crow were the rule of the land; it was enforced through violence, threats and intimidation. Moreover, Rick Perry grew up in a “sundown town.” These were communities from which blacks were banished by violence, and where white authorities made sure that African Americans would never again be allowed in the area. The whiteness of memory and nostalgia is blinding. While he has finally dropped out of the race, the Niggerhead episode is emblematic of Rick Perry’s obsession with states’ rights, and a broader fondness for the Confederacy and secession. These are traits he shares in abundance with the remaining Republican presidential candidates.
8. Former candidate Michele Bachmann suggests that the black family was stronger during slavery than in freedom. Her claim is not just a simple misunderstanding of history and the importance of family in the Black Experience. No, she is signaling to a tired, white supremacist, slavery-apologist narrative which opines that African Americans were/are not yet ready for freedom, and could only “flourish” under the benign guidance of the Southern Slaveocracy.
The GOP’s Iowa Vow: African American Children Were Better off During 1860′s Slavery Than Today
In a moment when states such as Arizona and Texas are outlawing ethnic studies programs, and when the Tea Party and its allies are leading an assault on educational programs that are not sufficiently “pro-American,” Bachmann’s claims are part of a broader effort to literally whitewash U.S. history.
When married to her belief in a willful lie that the framers of the United States Constitution were abolitionists who fought tirelessly to eliminate slavery (in reality, both Jefferson and Washington were slaveowners), and a defense of slaveholding Christian whites who “loved their slaves,” Bachmann’s ignorance of the facts transcends mere stupidity and slips over to enabling white supremacy.
9. The Republican Party’s 2012 presidential candidates’ near-silence about how the Great Recession has destroyed the African American and Latino middle-class. This speaks volumes about just how selectively inclusive the Republican Party?which markets itself as the defender of the “American Dream” and of an “opportunity society“?really is. During the Ronald Reagan-Politico debate, the Republican candidates were asked what they would do to address the gross and disparate impact of the Great Recession on black and brown communities. While whites are suffering with an official unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, African Americans have struggled with a rate that is almost two to three times as high. In addition, the black and brown middle-class has seen its income, assets and wealth gutted by the Great Recession, where in 2011, whites have almost 20 times the average net worth of African Americans. As always, when White America gets a cold, Black America gets the flu…or worse.
In that awkward moment, only Rick Perry chimed in and proceeded to recycle the same tired rhetoric about “growing the economy” as a vague cure for all ills. One must ask: how would the Republican candidates have responded if the white middle-class had been devastated in the same manner, and to the same degree, as the black and brown middle-class? I would suggest that for the former, it would be treated as a crisis of epic proportions; for the latter, it is a mere curiosity and inconvenient fact.
Politics is about a sense of imagined community. The Ronald Reagan-Politico debate made clear that while the African American and Latino middle-class is being destroyed, the Republican Party has little concern or interest in remedying such a tragic event. It would seem that the Republican Party’s “big tent” has no room for “those people.”
10. The echo chamber that is Fox News, right-wing talk radio, the conservative blogosphere, and Republican elected officials daily stoke the politics of white racial resentment, bigotry and fear. Ultimately, the Republican candidates would not use racism as a weapon if it were not rewarded by their voters, and encouraged by the party’s leadership. An army travels on its stomach; it needs foot soldiers and shock troops to advance its aims. From the ugly, race-based conspiracy fantasies of Birtherism to the astroturf politics of the Tea Party to a news network whose guests routinely disparage Barack Obama with such labels as “ghetto crackhead” to the bloviating racist utterances by opinion leaders such as Rush Limbaugh, to the common bigotry on display at right-wing Web sites that use monkey, ape, gorilla, pimp, and watermelon imagery to depict the United States’ first black president and his family, it is clear that racism “works” for the Republican Party. To ignore the attraction of rank-and-file white conservatives to such ugliness is to overlook the driving force behind the Republican nominees’ behavior.
About The Author: Chauncey DeVega — Editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes which has been featured by the NY Times, the Utne Reader, and The Atlantic Monthly. Writing under a pseudonym, Chauncey DeVega’s essays on race, popular culture, and politics have appeared in various books, as well as on such sites as the Washington Post’s The Root and Popmatters.
Currents’s Keith Olbermann labels — the College Republicans at UC Berkeley as WORSE; the heckler at President Obama’s fundraiser in Los Angeles as WORSER; and Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., as the WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD for Sept. 27, 2011.
Joe Arpaio is the sheriff of Maricopa County in “Apartheid” Arizona. A filthy bigot and a racist anti-immigrant zealot. He’s also notorious for his harsh treatment of mostly Latino immigrants.
Arpaio also commands a “birther posse” “looking for President Obama’s birth certificate.”
In a recent interview with a local news station KNXV-TV of Phoenix, Arpaio was asked “why” he is “racist against Latinos.”
Apartheid Joe responded: “Well, I’m not going to get into my personal life, and grandkids and daughter in laws.”
The fallout from Sen. John McCain’s(R-AZ) patently false statement that undocumented immigrants were responsible for the destructive wildfires in Arizona continued last Friday, as his fellow Arizona senator Jon Kyl(R) and Maricopa Sheriff Joe Arpaio entered the fray. “Sheriff Joe,” as he’s called, may be the most notoriously ruthless law enforcement official in the country.
John McCain’s Wildfire Accusations: Sen. McCain said there was “substantial evidence” linking wildfires in Arizona to illegal immigrants. The increasingly racist Arizona senator accused in particular — Mexican immigrants of starting wildfires.
Arpaio is known for cramming detained immigrants into inhumane outdoor “tent cities” he proudly likens to concentration camps, and for parading prisoners around in pink underwear, in addition to his numerous legal violations. [ READ MORE ] [ MORE ON ARPAIO ]
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Meanwhile, with the renewed national focus on immigration reform, Fox, the Republican propaganda machine and right-wing HATE-RADIO — are busy revving up their anti-immigrant lying campaign.
MMFA: Fox News has spent the past several weeks misleading on the issue and slanting its news coverage to paint immigrants in a negative light. [ READ MORE ]
Hate-Talker Michael Savage: “Most” Latinos In America Are “Illegal”
One cannot forget that the contemporary Republican Party was born with the 
