GLENN BECK REBORN AS JOE MCCARTHY, TARGETS SCHOLAR, Code Pink Tries to Arrest Rove

March 30th, 2010 - by: danny

BECKISM SUPPLANTS MCCARTHYISM: Glenn Takes Up Joe’s Mantle

New Activist Assault on Scholars The Right Wants to Trash As Part of Their New War On Progressivism

I have known Frances Fox Piven and her late colleague Richard Cloward for years. They have been brilliant and commited advocates of empowering the poor and have engaged in supporting community organizing and progressive social policies as intellectuals and activists. Suddenly, Frances has been thrust into the crosshairs of Glenn Beck’s latest smarmy crusade as a personality to be targeted, discredited and destroyed.

This is a vicious and dishonest effort focusing on an article from l966 and then tying it to a smear of the Obama campaign for Capital S Socialism/Communism/ Fascism and worse. It has focused around the the use of another one of those ACORN-like trash videos in which a righteous right-winger named Kyle Olson talked his way into her home and then videotaped her following her release from the hospital. This was a form of elder abuse among other things.

Clearly, Frances was not aware of the way Beck’s storm troopers and shock troops operate. They are using a Keywikiblog, a fake wiki platform to launch the tea party type assault against her and Cornell West, among others.

Here’s the video they are circulating in their offensive ideological offensive.

Here are articles that respond to this

HUFFINGON POST

THE NATION

More You Tube on BECK’s Assault…

Velvet Revolution

Frances Fox Piven Responds:

THE NEXT PHASE?

dKOS: “With health insurance reform passed, do you think the town hall meetings during spring recess will be as confrontational as they were last summer?”

At this writing, 62% of dKOSters leaned yes, 34% leaned no, and 5% weren’t sure or had no opinion.

* Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader heads up Freedom Works and is a lobbyist for DLA Piper. Americans for Prosperity is run by Tim Phillips, who was Ralph Reed’s former partner in the lobbying firm Century Strategies. The group is funded by Koch family foundations – a family whose wealth is derived from the oil industry. Indeed Americans for Prosperity has coordinated pro-drilling ‘grassroots’ events around the country.

Also see Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, a $20 million operation that’s running a national campaign to kill progressive health care reform; Club for Growth, founded by Steven Moore who pushed for ending all assistance to low-income Americans, and Americans for Tax Reform, founded by Grover Norquist.

CODE PINK SEEKS TO ARREST KARL ROVER. HE DENOUNCES “AUTHORITARIAN LEFT”

Why I Tried to Put the Cuffs on Karl Rove

Alternet: We could not allow this war criminal to tout his book around the country and get away with describing anything tied to Bush as courageous.

He wanted to do a book signing and she wanted to arrest him,” was the lead on KCBS TV in Los Angeles. Dozens of activists attended the book signing in Beverly Hills of Karl Rove and his new book, Courage and Consequence.

After almost an hour of his lies I leapt up with a set of handcuffs and my full page arrest complaint followed immediately by the event security. I managed to get very close to Rove, even tricking the security to let go of me, causing Rove to dash away while I reached for his wrist with the hand cuffs. My words followed him. But he only went a few steps and was greeted by Dede Miller, her nephew Casey Miller, son of Cindy Sheehan was killed in Iraq 6 years ago April 4th. She told him his lies killed her nephew while holding up a photo of Casey. Patricia Foulkrod, director of the Ground Truth stood by him with an Arrest the War Criminal banner as the event unraveled and he announced to the organizers it was over.

We at CODEPINK could not allow this war criminal to tout his book around the country and get away with describing anything tied to Bush as courageous. Not to mention that there has been no consequence for his constant lies. Serious lies. Lies that led the US to invade an innocent country at the cost of over 100,000 US casualties and an estimated million Iraqi lives and another 4 million displaced. Not to mention the two elections he shamelessly stole. We can’t sit back and allow him to continue to spread more lies; we heard many more of them last night. Until these war criminals face justice, until they are held accountable for their crimes, the lies continue to spread creating an unreality that is at the root of the teabaggers’ anger…read entire article at Alternet.net.

Whither Privacy Online?
Obama faces major online privacy test
By Declan McCullagh – CNET News

“When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency in 2008, he
promised that as president, he would ‘strengthen privacy protections
for the digital age.’

“[A coalition including Google, eBay, Microsoft, AT&T, the ACLU, and
Americans for Tax Reform] is calling for a federal law requiring police
to obtain search warrants before tracking Americans’ cell phone
locations or accessing their e-mail and documents stored in the
cloud–positions that place its members squarely at odds with the Obama
Justice Department.”

Harold Feld: Advocates of More Broadband Under Attack

When big media companies couldn’t get the special treatment they wanted from the FCC to disable millions of TVs and DVRs, they wrote a bitter letter (PDF) blaming Public Knowledge. When cable companies attacked an FCC plan to make set-top boxes something you could buy rather than rent, they attacked the “Public Knowledge” plan.

And it seems like every day, industry and the think tanks it funds go on the war path to attack us as “socialists” (PDF) for pushing the FCC to adopt rules that make broadband affordable for everyone. They call us “pirates” because we don’t want telephone and cable companies to block your downloads, and they call us “radicals” because we think its crazy for the Justice Department to devote more resources to stopping illegal file sharing than to stopping human trafficking.

YES MEN TYPE ACTIONS SPREAD: TWO NEW ACTIONS FROM JUST THIS LAST WEEK!

* CODEPINK pulled off a “Yes-Men-inspired” coup last Monday by making everyone think that AIPAC was suddenly agreeing with the Obama Administration’s criticism of settlements in the West Bank. The action forced AIPAC, which claims to not have a position on settlements, to admit that it disagrees with current U.S. policy and international law. (It also incidentally drew attention to J Street, the much more representative, intelligent, and cool Jewish lobby – which does have a clear position on settlements.) Later the same day, a CODEPINK operative brusquely interrupted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu as he gave lip-service to peace.

* A big shout out to a group in Missoula who made waves in their community last week by widely announcing a shockingly generous “thank you” concert and giveaway on behalf of Macy’s and Smurfit-Stone, two longtime Missoula businesses that had closed just before Christmas, laying off hundreds of workers and leaving the town with millions in unpaid property taxes and debt. (Macy’s CEO Terry J. Lundgren noted that “we improved our profitability” in 2009 by reducing expenses, “enabling us to generate significant cash flow” of $1.6 billion; Smurfit-Stone, whose operations in Mexico and Asia leave them “well positioned for long term growth,” paid out millions in executive bonuses while CEO Sir Michael Smurfit bought a $68 million yacht.) In part thanks t o the “thank you Missoula” action, a bunch more folks in Missoula are wondering why the two companies haven’t thanked the town for sacrificing prospects and jobs for their profits and yachts.

MEDIA NEWS From Iwantmedia.com

AP:Google CEO Schmidt’s Pay is Cut in Half

Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s total compensation fell 52% last year to $245,322 as the Internet search leader cut back on its employee perquisites to help lift its profits during the recession. By Schmidt’s request, Google limited his salary to just $1 for the fifth straight year.

BBC: Martha, Hallmark Mull New Cable Channel

Hallmark and Martha Stewart may be joining forces behind a new lifestyle cable channel. Hallmark parent Crown Media Holdings is in early talks with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia about forming a new venture. If Oprah is getting her own channel, why not Martha?

NY Times: CNN Fails to Stop Decline in Prime Time

CNN continued a precipitous decline in ratings for its prime-time programs in the first quarter of 2010. The audience for long-running 9 p.m. host Larry King dropped 43%. CNN’s talk-show specials with Anderson Cooper have been seen as a trial run for a new 9 p.m. show.

BBC: Russia media criticize Kremlin over Moscow Metro bombs

Amid outrage over suicide bomb attacks on Moscow’s Metro, sections of Russia’s press have been scathing about what they see as the Kremlin’s failure to protect or even inform citizens.

With nearly 40 people dead and 70 injured at stations in the heart of the Russian capital, several newspapers railed at the authorities, criticising the state-controlled TV channels for inadequate coverage.

“Why didn’t senior officials… talk to people through one of the main federal channels to stop them from going into the Metro and to prevent panic?” asked writer Vadim Rechkalov in the popular daily Moskvosky Komsomolets.

“Instead, from the moment when the first blast took place and till 0900 [0600 BST], the leading federal channels showed people singing, dancing, making breakfast and relieving pain with their hands.”

USING THE CRISIS: After two female suicide bombers killed at least 38 people riding the Moscow metro as part of what authorities think is a “deadly new Chechen terror campaign,” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin vowed that the “terrorists will be destroyed.” Experts say the attacks could cause Putin to grab more executive power in the name of domestic security.

CHINA GETS NEW UNIVERSITY

SHANGHAI (AP) — China’s newest university has no football field or fancy library. For inspiration, it looks not to Confucius, but to Ronald McDonald. But Shanghai’s Hamburger U. aspires to be a leader in higher learning for ambitious Chinese managers.

McDonald’s Corp. inaugurated its first Hamburger University in China on Tuesday to train new generations of managers as foreign companies step up efforts to develop and keep Chinese talent.

China is McDonald’s Inc.’s fastest-growing global market, said Tim Fenton, the company’s president for Asia, Pacific, Middle East and Africa. He said the country’s $300 billion-a-year “informal eating out” market is expanding at an annual rate of 10 percent, compared with 2 to 3 percent in the United States.

NETWORKED JOURNALISM

How Al Jazeera Experiments With Networked Journalism

Comment:

Ken Kanavos writes:

“Hard to conclude Conservative fascination with Palinesque-inspired pretzel-logic and misplaced revolutionary ideation won’t conclude with some extraordinarily evil event. This over-the-top Right-Wing hatemongering disguised as first-amendment expression has got to stop. ”

Marty Kaplan, Alternet: Are Americans As Stupid As The Media Thinks We Are?

Last word to/from Andy Borowitz

In Turnabout, Michael Steele Calls Same-sex Unions “Incredibly Hot”
GOP Chairman Changes Positions

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – In what appears to be a reversal of a long-standing GOP position, RNC chair Michael Steele said today that he considered same-sex unions “incredibly hot, especially when the girls are getting it on in a glass case.”

When asked if his comment meant that the GOP now favored same-sex marriage, Mr. Steele clarified his position: “If we’re talking about two hot lesbian girls simulating marriage in a glass case, yes, I am very much into that sort of thing.”

Mr. Steele denied that he had changed positions on same-sex union issue, but added, “There’s nothing wrong with changing positions if you like the new one better.”

The GOP chairman could not be reached for further comment, as a spokesman for Mr. Steele said he was all tied up.

Other Republicans were critical, however, about the GOP chairman’s authorizing close to $2000 for a night out at a Los Angeles sex club, including Sen. John Ensign (R-Nevada): “Why spend that kind of money for something you can see in my office for free?”

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