Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly Are Killing Republicans

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and some others are like anchors weighing down the Republican Party. Hiring a black man (Michael Steele) will do little to offset the repeated damage the aforementioned men have done, are doing and will continue to do to the Republican Party. Here is the latest example: A few days after racist Jesse Lee Peterson (racist because he clearly considers whites to be superior to blacks even though he appears to be a black man) went on a racist rampage against black people on Hannity’s Fox News show, he returned … on Beck’s Fox News show. Once again, Peterson was on to do little more than attack black people and attack President Barack Obama. Peterson is too ignorant (or perhaps too drunk on his notoriety) to realize he is being pimped by white conservatives who simply use him simply to attack black people while they believe they’re keeping their own hands clean. Jesse Lee Peterson is like the blacks who were used as slave catchers to do the dirty work of the master’s bidding.

News Hounds:
http://www.newshounds.us/2009/02/08/two_days_after_racist_comments_on_hannity_rev_jesse_lee_peterson_repeats_them_on_glenn_beck.php#more

Fox News Host Gretchen Carlson Makes Idiotic Claim To Slam President Barack Obama … Praise Rush Limbaugh

Fox News, the network of patriots (except when we have a Democrat as president), is at it again attacking our president/commander-in-chief while basically praising conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh. Fox News co-host Gretchen Carlson at least twice took shots at President Barack Obama while drooling over Limbaugh (who was a guest on the Fox News show “Fox and Friends”). Carlson and her co-hosts on the show spent the entire campaign season slamming President Obama about one thing or another while singing the praises of Sen. John McCain. Carlson and her cohorts also spent time talking about media bias against McCain while hypocritically showing media bias against Obama. The bias was so pervasive (to the point that they gleefully made baseless claims that turned out to be completely and sloppily false: That Obama had attended a madrassa, a Muslim school) that it calls into question what the motive behind the bias was for Carlson and her fellow shot hosts.

Here are two comments from Carlson (as documented by Media Matters):

CARLSON: But what I want to ask you when we come back is whether or not Barack Obama should be more concerned with things like the economy and maybe Al Qaeda — if in fact we still are in a war on terror — than you?

CARLSON: Before we went to break, I said something about the fact that in his first week in office, that Barack Obama chose you as his enemy, instead of, like, Al Qaeda, or possibly putting the economy on a higher platform. And so, we came up with this new photo. Did you know that you’re now on Mount Rushmore?

Tha is insulting and idiotic on the part of Carlson (who completely ignores the context of the president’s comment) to even make such a suggestion. But, it does go to the point that she is taking her Republican talking points (this garbage notion that Democrats won’t keep our country safe) and executing them to perfection with Fox News as her platform. What an appalling comment from Carlson, who obviously is trying to appeal to the lowest element in the diversity-challenged (in many different ways even beyond race) and tolerance-challenged Republican Party/conservative community. Carlson is trying to imply Obama somehow is not focused on the enemies of the United States of America and it is an insulting insinuation. But, how could we not expect this from Fox News?

Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200901290023?f=h_latest

Rush Limbaugh Is A Divider … Not A Uniter

Rush Limbaugh, who has long since pissed away any pretense of patriotism by proudly rooting for our new president (Barack Obama) and commander-in-chief to fail. What a great way for “patriots” like Limbaugh to celebrate our great nation. Limbaugh, who has spit in the face of bipartisanship throughout his life and throughout his professional career, is now mocking President Obama as not being the person to bring the nation and the two political parties together. 

“Now this is the great unifier. This is the man who’s going to unify everybody and usher in a new era of bi-partisanship and love.”

The problem is, however, is that Limbaugh does not want to bring people together. He has made a living throughout his career of being a polarizing and hostile figure to those who are not conservative and to those who are not Republican.

Politico:
http://www.politico.com/politico44/perm/0109/limbaugh_strikes_back_cefb1583-6ab1-483f-9dfb-2d564b7a41c6.html

Republicans: Playing Politics, Stupid Or Both With Obama Middle Name Issue

Iowa Congressman Steve King, who said some hateful things toward President-elect Barack Obama during the campaign for the presidency (including proclaiming that terrorists would be “dancing in the streets” if Obama was elected), now has shifted focus (as politicians so often do) to start to criticize Obama for the plan to use his middle name during his swearing in on Jan. 20. 

This is from a Politico story:
After telling the Associated Press last year that Obama’s middle name was among the reasons Islamic terrorists would rejoice over his election, King says he’s since been careful to avoid using it. Thus he found Obama’s decision to allow it be mentioned on the steps of the Capitol “bizarre” and “a double-standard.”

“Is that reserved just for him, not his critics?” King asked.

The congressman says he doubts Obama’s sincerity when he explained that he chose to use his middle name so as to be historically consistent with past inaugurations, when America has heard the full names of its presidents echo from the inaugural stand.

“Whatever his reasons are,” King said, “the one he gave us could not be the reason.”

He continued: “The society is a little strange about this. If you’re speaking the truth and in an effort to be objective, there should be nothing off limits in a free society, [but] there are many biases building and clearly a double-standard.”

It is not “clearly a double standard” as King puts it. In fact, I would ask Rep. King how many times he has used the middle name of Sen. John McCain? I would ask all Republicans how many times they used the middle name of McCain throughout the presidential campaign. As a matter of fact, I don’t even know what McCain’s middle name is or whether or not he has a middle name. I can guarantee you this, not a single Republican would be trying to use his middle name if it was Harry or Howard. But, because it is Hussein, it was seen as a way to use anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism as a weapon against Obama. When Obama has his middle name used, when he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20, I doubt he will be using it as many conservatives were using it (to try and scare Americans with racism).

Politico:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17506.html

Revisionist Historian/President George W. Bush Trying To Repackage Hurricane Katrina Response Catastrophe

President Bush has come under fire for the federal government’s slow response (yeah, I said “slow”) to the catastrophe that was Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. The president was largely viewed as insensitive and out of touch as people suffered in New Orleans and elsewhere from the devastating effects of the hurricane. Watch this video as President Bush becomes ridiculously defensive and probably paranoid about what many people feel as largely hislegacy of failure/inadequacy as president of the United States of America. But, CNN’s Campbell Brown checks the president on his strange contention that the government was now slow in its response to Hurricane Katrina.

Hannity’s Hour Of Hate Doomed To Ultimate Failure

Now that Sean Hannity has essentially been granted his own full 60-minute block of television hate, his new exclusive show on Fox News, he has to be feeling pretty good about himself. Now, the extremist right-wing host will be able to (now completely unchallenged) spew all kinds of hatred toward anything that is either middle of the road or liberal. But, I concur with a popular opinion I’ve already been hearing among many liberals … the show will fast become tired. There is only so much Hannity that most mainstream people (not even just those on the left) can stomach before they will become nauseous (first) and bored (later). This show will eventually pale in comparison to Hannity and Colmes as people will see how talented Colmes was (even if he was much more of a moderate than a liberal and he was far too classy and soft spoken to truly contrast the far more arrogant, extremist right wing and outspoken Hannity). Just as Hannity’s America was a show that made you think it was nap time … Hannity’s new weekday hour will be more of the same.

CNN Runs Story On Racism And Some People Badly Miss The Point

It amazes me how anything related to race makes some people feel so uptight and defensive. CNN has a story today (Jan. 9) on its Web site related to a race-based experiment conducted by Science, a professional journal. The CNN article was titled, “You may be more racist than you think, study says.” The study was designed to take a closer look at the racist feelings that exist inside of some people and how people react to something that is subtly racist more than overtly racist. It was an interesting story, to some extent, but there was nothing groundbreaking in the story or the study. I doubt there was much of anything in the article or study surprising except some of the conclusions about how many people the study indicated have, show or tolerate things that are racist. Here is the passage, “More recent work by Greenwald and colleagues shows that most people — between 75 and 80 percent — have implicit, non-overt prejudices against blacks.” That surprised me and I would want to see more information in regard to the study about what is and is not considered racist. But, with the experiment described in the study, I think the racism was fairly obvious, yet a large number of the people who participated in the study were not so bothered by the racist language and behavior. Now, as is the case with many online stories I read, I was interested in the reader comments. I knew that a number of people would go immediately on the defensive with regard to the story. A large number of respondents criticized the fact that there was no study of black-on-white racism. Some went hysterical and said the conclusion was that all whites are apparently racist, according to the study. It amazed me that some people could read that article and be more bothered by the fact they saw no study of black-on-white racism or some other form of racism. Apparently, some people were more bothered by that than the use of the N-word. It seems you have to be pretty moved by an item or items you’ve read to post something on a message board (even though you are mostly anonymous). Why were some people more bothered by the lack of different studies than the use of racist slurs? That, quite frankly, is puzzling to me. The article should make all of us think about the prejudices that may exist inside of us. It may be prejudices against blacks, Latinos, Asians, whites, immigrants (sometimes code for Latinos), gays, lesbians, trans gender and more that may exist inside of us. We need to examine those feelings without going nuclear and becoming uptight and defensive.

CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/07/racism.study/index.html