Thursday, August 13
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Geico, Lawyers.com, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance and SC Johnson all pulled their ads from Glenn Beck’s Fox show this week after he called President Obama a “racist” during a July 28th broadcast. True Capitalism at its finest. Teabag that for while, Beck.
Fox News’ Glenn Beck loses advertisers | Entertainment | People | Reuters.
Some gems from a brilliant post by Bill Maher in the Huffington Post:
“This country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything.”
“Here’s one fun fact you can take away: did you know only about half of Americans are aware that Judaism is an older religion than Christianity? That’s right, half of America looks at books called the Old Testament and the New Testament and cannot figure out which one came first.
“James Madison wrote that “pure democracy” doesn’t work because “there is nothing to check… an obnoxious individual.” Then, in the margins, he doodled a picture of Joe the Plumber.
“A smart guy named Chesterton once said: “My country, right or wrong is a thing no patriot would ever think of saying… It is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ To which most Americans would respond: “Are you calling my mother a drunk?”
Excerpts From – Bill Maher: New Rule: Smart President ≠ Smart Country.
I was having dinner at my friend Dave’s house and caught this segment that Rachel Maddow did exposing men and money who represent themselves as “average Americans”.
“Maddow: This is what these groups do. They’re experts at fake grass roots campaigns that promote corporate interests. Americans for Prosperity is the group that ginned up anti-stimulus rallies earlier this year. They also organized what they called the “Hot Air Tour” to campaign against the whole idea of global warming. They were the ones who sent Joe the Plumber around the country to rail against the Employee Free Choice Act, which is pro-labor legislation.
This oil industry and Republican operative billionaires club is according to the Republican party spokesman today, just average middle class Americans. Just regular American folks sitting around the kitchen table thinking about whether they can get away with saying that the government, continuing its long standing policy of encouraging living wills, is really a secret plot to kill old people.
One other thing about Americans for Prosperity, their most visible spokesman, is a man named Tim Phillips. He is the President of the organization and we’ve asked him to come on the show to talk with us about the group. Tim Phillips got his start in fake grass roots with a firm called Century Strategies, run by Ralph Reed. Century Strategies is famous for having duped Christian groups into lobbying for energy deregulation. You know, like the Bible said.
They were doing that at the behest of Century Strategies’ client, Enron. Tim Phillips and Ralph Reed were later made even more famous in the Jack Abramoff scandal, for duping Christian groups into lobbying against gambling. But only in areas where these guys happened to have competing gambling interests as clients.
These guys are the pros. This is an industry. Americans are showing up at these events to shout down the discussion, to chase their Congressmen, and they are enraged. And they’re enraged at least in part because they’re being riled up by over the top, fabricated conspiracy theories about health care. And they’re being directed and orchestrated by the corporate interests that do this for a living and do it very well.
RecessRally.com is not some organic outgrowth of American anger. This is how corporate America creates the illusion of a grass roots movement to support their own interests. This is what they do. They are professionals. This is an industry.
To talk about these town hall events as some organic outpouring of average American folks who have concerns about health care is to be willfully blind to what is really going on, which is professional P.R. operatives generating exploitative, manufactured, strategically deployed outrage in order to line their own pocket.
These P.R. spin misters get paid a lot of money for doing it. The corporations they work for get to kill legislation that would hurt their profits. And the real people who they launch into these town hall settings after they’re told that health care reform is a secret commie plot to kill old people and to mandate sex changes, those real people get more, and more, and more and more angry, and more, and more, and more alienated, and ultimately they get left, like the rest of us, with a health care system that is broken and doesn’t work in the interest of the American people, but does work in the interest of the corporations that profit from the way the system is now.
This is professional, corporate funded Republican staffed P.R., and it should be reported as such.”
Very informative and enlightening blog that takes the majority of the right-wing “conservative” criticisms (that are funded by the insurance lobby) and compares them to the actual wording of the current health care proposals before congress. Not an easy read but well worth it…
Please Cut the Crap!: Deconstructing the Right Wing Lies on the Health Insurance Bill — Pages 1-500.
In 1959 a man named Alan Abel hatched an elaborate media hoax, beginning with a story on the Today Show about movement called the Society for Indecenty to Naked Animals (SINA). SINA’s mission was to clothe naked animals throughout the world (their tagline: “A nude horse is a rude horse“). Abel and SINA “spokeman”, Buck Henry (of SNL fame and writer of “The Graduate”), appeared on many television and radio shows including the CBS Evening News.
Flash forward to present day: Orly Taitz. Lawyer, Real Estate Broker, Black Belt, Dentist, Mother of three and Obama Birther. In fact, she’s quickly become the face of the Birther “Movement” (although I don’t actually think it qualifies as a movement).
A Birther is the meme for someone who believes that President Obama was not born in the United States and therefore shouldn’t be eligble to be president. Taitz has allegedly filed one or more lawsuits related to this belief. For more on the “birthers” go here: Meet the Birthers
I first heard of Dr. Taintz…er…Taitz last week, when she appeared on The Colbert Report.
At first I thought it was a bit (like when Colbert interviewed David Cross portraying the fictional “Liberal Talk Show host, Russ Lieber“).
But then I saw this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32274609#32274609
C’mon…she has to be a joke, right?
Her first name is Orly. O RLY? ????
The phrase “O RLY?” (“Oh, really?”) is an Internet meme typically used in a sarcastic manner, often in response to a statement that the speaker feels is obvious, or blatantly false and/or self-contradictory. (apparently it also means “Light” in Hebrew?)
And her last name is Taitz. Which sounds a heckofalot like taints, and everyone knows that taint is the slang term for the perineum (t’aint your balls, t’aint your asshole).
IS ORLY TAITZ REAL? My friend Ty thinks she’s a performance artist in the vein of Borat or Tony Clifton… or perhaps even Alan Abel?
So Diggz decided to do a bit of digging….
Is Orly Taitz a Dentist?
Apparently she is one…in South Orange County, California. According to the Dental Board of California, Orly Taitz has been a licensed DDS since 1989.
Here’s the website of her two Dental offices (one in Mission Viejo and one in Ranch Santa Margarita): http://drtaitz.com. There’s a picture of Orly with her staff on the site.
I called the number of the office (949) 586-8110 and got a recording that sounded very dentist office-like. (I didn’t leave a message)
Here’s a Google street view of the Mission Viejo Office. There is one review on Google Maps written Aug 4th which is obviously a joke.
The Google street view of the other office in Ranch Santa Margarita isn’t very revealing.
Is Orly Taitz a Lawyer?
According to the website of the State Bar of California, a Orly Taitz is a lawyer. The address on the site is the same as her Mission Viejo Dentist Office. But the phone number is different…(949) 683-5411. I called it but it went straight to voicemail (with a man’s voice saying it was Orly Taitz’s voicemail).
Apparently she went to Hebrew University in Jerusalem Israel for undergad. I can’t tell you much about that because much the site is, well, in HEBREW! (go figure).
Ms. Taitz apparently got her law degree from William Howard Taft Univ which is an “online university” not accredited by the American Bar Association.
Where is Orly Taitz from?
The bastion of right-wingish journalistic integrity, World Net Daily says “She was born and raised in Kishinev (also spelled Chisinau), the capital of the Republic of Moldova, a country in Eastern Europe that was formerly part of the Soviet Union.” Of course, it also says she speaks 5 languages (English, Russian, Romainian, Hebrew and Spanish), holds a real estate broker’s license (expired) a second degree black belt (unverified).
I will be expecting her to provide proof of the black belt post haste.
Orly Taitz Melts Down On MSNBC, Blames MSM “Brownshirts” VIDEO
Fascinating interview with Frank Schaeffer who’s father was one of the founders of the “Religious Right”.
YouTube – D.L. Hughley: Frank Schaeffer Author of Crazy for God on What’s Left of the GOP.
After running out of fresh faces, the Republicans tapped Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to give the “Republican response” to Obama’s “not quite the state of the union” address to congress this week.
In his speech, Jindal cited the government response to Katrina as an example of why govenment is bad. It floors me that no one in the Republican party thought that bringing up the Katrina debacle might be a bad idea. Apparently Jindal thought it was a good idea.
But apparently not good enough, because now it appears the cute little anecdote that he used in his speech…you know, the one about the Sherriff yelling over the phone in frustration because the “bureaucrats” wouldn’t let people launch their rescue boats without proof of insurance?
Well, turns out it wasn’t true.
What goes on in these Republican meetings? Srusly
TPMMuckraker | Talking Points Memo | Jindal Admits Katrina Story Was False.
One of my favorite television shows is/was The West Wing, created by Aaron Sorkin (who also wrote A Few Good Men, Charlie Wilson’s War and is now writing a screenplay about Facebook). It was a very smart show…criticized at times for being too “high brow”.
That always made me snicker (and cringe)…calling a serious television drama about the inner-workings of the White House too “high-brow” is funny (and sad) to me. Of course, during the time of the “Bushies”, when “too high-brow” merely meant pronouncing the word nuclear correctly, The West Wing did surprisingly well and stayed on the air for 156 episodes.
It’s been conjectured (by others than myself) that Sorkin’s Deputy Chief of Staff character, Josh Lyman, is based (at least in-part) on the very real Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel.
In the opening scenes of one West Wing episode that aired in 1991 (The Leadership Breakfast), Josh Lyman and Sam Seaborn attempt to light a fire in one of the fireplaces in the White House. As they comically discuss the finer points of how to properly light a fire (“kerosene”) and the quality of the wood (“spruce is a dry wood”), the soon realize that fireplace’s flue’s been welded shut since 1896. Antics ensue.
Flash forward 9 years to a young Obama Cabinet member, Peter Orszag. This guy’s a 41-year-old Marathon-running, Princeton-taught, Marshall Scholar PHD who heads up the Obama’s Office of Management and Budget (how’s that for high brow?). So Dr. Peter Smartypants recently moves into his office and notices some logs neatly stacked in a fireplace. It being a brisk January morning, he decided to light a fire. The only problem: The Secret Service had capped the building’s chimneys. Antics ensue.
So you tell me…is this life imitating art, or is the Obama camp literally sending a smoke signal ‘hat tip’ to Aaron Sorkin? I suppose the former, seeing as it would be taking a mere ‘hat tip’ a bit far –even by Ivy League prank standards– to get the Washington DC fire department involved.
Does anyone else find it a little odd that the the Washington Post presents this as an “Op Ed” piece appearing on page A17? Check the byline at the bottom:
The writer is president of the United States.
Really, Washington Post? REALLY?
Barack Obama – The Action Americans Need – washingtonpost.com.
