Is there a bad time to spew right-wing propaganda?

The recent wildfires that raged across Southern California are of particular interest to me. As a resident of Los Angeles, a graduate of Rancho Bernardo High School in San Diego, and the son of wildfire evacuees, this story touches very close to home. That is why I find it so abhorrent when politicians and media figures use the fires as a springboard to advance extreme right-wing claims. Certainly no one is suggesting that the Right should not be allowed a forum for free speech, only that, considering the 1,500 homes destroyed, 500,000 acres burned, and 950,000 people evacuated, a more opportune time certainly would have presented itself. And considering how outlandish some of these far right claims are, perhaps they should be permanently bottled up.

The first perpetrator of this nonsense was none other than Fox News. On October 24th, the Fox & Friends morning program (shown above) reported an alleged link between al-Qaeda and the wildfires. (video here)

The alleged "link" turned out to be a 4-year old FBI memo, detailing a purported al-Qaeda plot to start wildfires in several Western U.S. states. The plot was suggested by an alleged al-Qaeda detainee, and California was not one of the states mentioned. And while the the exact cause of all the fires is not yet known, the evidence is not at all hinting at any kind of coordinated effort. Thus far, fires have been attributed to fallen power lines, an overturned semi-truck, a boy playing with matches and arson. So, what we really have here is not a concerted effort on the part of an international terrorist organization to kill Americans, but a concerted effort on the part of a national news organization to frighten Americans. What makes Fox's "reporting" so heinous is the fact that suggesting al-Qaeda involvement in a natural disaster is pure, unadulterated propaganda. If the White House had chosen, I don't know...Belgium instead of al-Qaeda as the medium by which to scare Americans into relinquishing their civil liberties, taking on massive national debt, and watching soldiers come home from battle dead or wounded, then Fox News would be telling us Belgium was responsible for the California wildfires.

Conservative blogger/columnist Michelle Malkin, appearing on Fox News, blamed the wildfires on illegal immigrants. (video here) Discussing with Neil Cavuto the possibility of one of the fires being started by a Central American immigrant, Malkin stated :

Of course, massive, uncontrolled immigration touches every aspect of life, particularly in Southern California. So whether you're in an emergency situation like they are now with the wildfires, or in regular everyday life, illegal immigration and massive, uncontrolled immigration has an impact....It's enough to deal with the problems that are "native born" in Southern California without having to import more headaches.

Just a couple of problems with Malkin's analysis:

1. The immigrant suspect in question was in fact in the United States legally.
2. Michelle Malkin is, herself the daughter of legal immigrants
3. Nowhere in her anti-immigrant rant does Malkin actually explain what immigration has to do with the forest fires.

With no evidence tying the California wildfires to illegal immigration, it is clear that Fox News and Michelle Malkin were simply exploiting a terrible situation to advance their own xenophobic agenda.

But by far the most despicable example of the politicization of the California wildfires is Conservative TV and radio host Glenn Beck. The smug, ill-informed, and almost comically un-funny Beck has long had some ethereal disdain for all things liberal. I'm actually surprised that this is the first time Beck's mug has graced the pages of my blog, as he is as agenda-driven a water-carrier as any that exist among the GOP's media enterprise.


On the October 22nd edition of The Glenn Beck Program, Beck took a cheap shot at the fire victims. Tastelessly tacked on to the end of a pro-war, anti-healthcare, anti-education rant, Beck added:

We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn't mean you hate America. I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.

I could maybe ignore yet another refrain of the conservative mantra that "all liberals hate America." Perhaps I could overlook the fact that among the wealthy San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernadino County residents effected by the fires, liberals are likely a small minority. If Beck intended his liberal-bashing "joke" (as he later described it) to be aimed at Hollywood, well, he missed. What makes Beck a poor American (and a lousy comedian) can be summed up in one word: timing. It's probably not the best idea in the world to use fire victims as a punchline to some lame effort to smear Hollywood liberals. And it's definitely not a good idea to question one's status as a model American, while in the same breath mocking your fellow American for having his/her home burned to the ground.

If this episode of political "hitting below the belt" weren't enough, Beck later took a swipe at environmentalists. Beck has long been in the 10-15% of Americans that comprise the global warming skeptics. I guess "skeptic" is a nice way of putting it. The word "skeptic" implies that there is some lack of empirical evidence preventing one from embracing a widely held belief. Evidence like, I don't know...melting polar icecaps, more frequent and destructive hurricanes, devastating forest fires! So call him what you will, but Beck's stance on the environment is basically as far right as possible, just shy of actually going out and burning down trees and slaughtering bunnies. I think Beck may actually HATE rainforests.

So Beck's comments from the October 23rd broadcast of his cable TV program on Headline News should really come as no surprise. With assistance from R.J. Smith, environmental analyst from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Right-wing, oil-funded think tank, Beck claimed that environmentalists were actually to blame for the California wildfires:

...[T]he environmentalists, the same ones that going to tell me it’s my fault because I have an SUV, these same damn environmentalists are the ones that have stopped people in California from clearing brush on their own property.

Beck has apparently conflated liberal opposition to deforestation with opposition to property owners clearing brush near their homes. With Beck, it's almost as if the more ridiculous the claim (i.e., environmentalism creates forest fires), the more likely he is to advance it. Of course, no green-bashing orgy would be complete without an assault on global warming theories. To do this, Beck, in the same segment, also employed another CEI fellow, Chris Horner, to downplay global warming as a factor in the fires. In a bizarre menage a trois, cleverly disguised as some kind of debate, the anti-environmentalist Beck and the two Big Oil think-tankers put the blame for the California wildfires squarely on the shoulders of the greens. It really is a must watch. Beck introduces his two guests as if they were two polar opposites, ready to square off in a heated debate, when in fact Horner and Smith likely have adjoining offices at CEI.

So in summation, we can clearly see that anytime is a good time to advance the conservative agenda. What makes the talking heads even more disingenuous in this case, is not so much the inappropriate timing of it; From Jerry Falwell's post 9/11 comments to Barbara Bush's post-Katrina remarks, we have come to expect national disasters to be a green light for conservatives to launch into anti-liberal tirades. The insincerity in the California fire comments stems from the fact that, in each case, the media figures in question did not offer any unique political perspective on the fires, but simply echoed their own previous ideologies, disguised (with the exception of Glenn Beck) as concern for the fire victims. Fox News traditionally likes to ramp up fears about Islamic terrorist organizations. Michelle Malkin is a noted opponent of almost all forms of immigration. Glenn Beck is perhaps the leading champion of the global warming deniers movement.

I guess that those on the left don't really expect conservatives to stop making ridiculous statements. We just hope they might better pick their moments, so as not to make it seem as though they are exploiting disaster victims for their own political benefit.

SCHIP: More Hypocrisy from the Right

Less than one week after asking congress for an additional $190 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, President George W. Bush has vetoed a bill expanding SCHIP (State Children's Health Insurance Program) by $35 billion. The program, which would be funded entirely by an increase in cigarette taxes, would extend health coverage to over 4 million more children.

Now this veto alone is not really cause for alarm or cries of hypocrisy. Conservatives have long sought limited government and lower taxes, and expanding SCHIP does not jive with this vision of small government. Where the disingenuous underbelly of the conservative leadership comes to light is in the PR spin in support of the veto. Now I am not particularly fond of politicians using children to support their political agendas. No Child Left Behind and Bush's Stem Cell Veto quickly come to mind as largely Republican agendas bolstered by the use of children as visual aids. The supporters of the SCHIP bill certainly were guilty of this as well, parading out 12 year-old SCHIP recipient Graeme Frost to speak of the benefits of the program. If a program or a bill has merit, then I don't see the need to have children endorsing it. Call me crazy, but I actually trust most politicians to be better at making and interpreting legislation than children.

So say what you will about using children as political props, but if you are going to criticize Democrats for their employment of this tactic, you had better damn well have never employed it yourself. Yet, in a twist of irony that would make O. Henry jealous, Republicans quickly went on the attack following young Frost's address. A spokesman for congressman John Boehner (R-OH) said on Sept. 28:

“To use an innocent young child as a human shield and misrepresent the position of the president of the United States is, frankly, beyond the pale."

For those that are unaware, this guy with the impeccable tan is John Boehner:

This is also John Boehner (circled in red) at the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act:




This is also John Boehner, handing out school computers for Visa:


No one is saying that giving kids laptops on behalf of a major financial institution is necessarily evil, nor is posing with kids for the signing of a controversial educational program, essentially a thinly-veiled effort to dismantle the public school system in the United States. But similarly, having a child speak on behalf of a very beneficial social program like SCHIP (however you may feel about this political tactic) is not in any way devious in and of itself. What is devious is the fact that Republicans would attack Democrats for employing a tactic that has become a staple of conservative policy making in recent years.

As if it weren't enough for the GOP to call the kettle black, they have now launched an all-out attack in an effort to discredit the 12-year Frost as a child of privilege and luxury. Conservative bloggers have led the way. Freerepublic.com's icwhatudo posted the discovery that Graeme and his sister both attend private schools. Freerublic.com is the self-touted "premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web." What was left out of that scathing report was the fact that Graeme attends the school almost entirely on scholarship. His sister, permanently disabled from a car accident, attends a special-needs school, the entire cost of which is paid by the state.

In addition, the Frosts's Baltimore home has been the subject of much scrutiny, as estimates of it's value have ranged from $400,000 to $500,000. Now, as a resident of Los Angeles, the first thing I say is, "yes...and?" $400,000 here gets you a two-bedroom, 1-bath, hardly enough to house the 6-member Frost household. In Baltimore, $400,000 buys you a pretty decent home. But the bloggers fail to mention that the Frosts actually paid about $55,000 for the home in 1990, and inflated real estate markets, an improved neighborhood, and improvements made to the home have increased the home's value. The value of the Frost's home is really insignificant as it relates to a family's ability to pay for private health care. It's not as if the house is some liquid asset, that can be converted into cash whenever the family needs it. For a family of six taking home a reported $45,000 per year, it's not really a mystery that a major car accident involving multiple children could cause financial hardship.

The right-wing's attack on the Frost family is wrong in several ways:

1. Graeme Frost is 12 years old.
2. Most of the claims made against the Frost family have been found to be completely false or conveniently incomplete
3. Attacking a single child in no way refutes the value of SCHIP.

So, clearly, the Frosts are not what we would think of as "dirt poor." The point of all this is that in the United States, the nation with the most expensive healthcare in the world, you don't have to be dirt poor to be unable to afford to insure the health of your family.

What the Right doesn't want you to know is their real concerns behind SCHIP, and why the have embarked on such a fervent attack to stop it's expansion. The American Right sees the expansion of SCHIP as the first phase in an effort to bring about a national socialized healthcare system. What the Right fails to mention (or come to grips with) is that 72% of Americans favor the expansion of SCHIP.

But, come on, that's just health care for kids, right? Everyone wants healthcare for kids, don't they? Well, no they don't. The big-business neo-conservatives don't want healthcare for kids. Big Pharma and Big Healthcare don't want healthcare for kids. And, sadly blind followers of President Bush, even when it would be to their benefit, don't want healthcare for kids. Also it's not only that most Americans want healthcare for kids, but a majority of Americans favor a universal healthcare system for all Americans, even if it means higher taxes.

The SCHIP debate is just the latest in a vast right-wing effort to shrink government to the point where it serves essentially no function. The preamble of the U.S. Constitution reads:

"We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

While the preamble is not a binding document, it should be noted that the founding fathers saw fit to include "promot[ing] the general Welfare" in the introduction to laying out the foundation of law in the new nation. In recent years, conservative ideology has sought to promote the welfare of only an elite few. Conservatives would have you believe that those unable to afford health insurance have no one to blame but themselves. Yet, as estimates of the uninsured in America approach 50 million, one has to believe that in reality, it is the nation's leadership that has failed these people.

GOP in '08: Pinning Their Hopes on Symbolic Patriotism

How can hundreds of the Right-wing's most decorated brass hide behind a 3/4" square piece of, well, decorated brass? When it's the hundreds of pro-war Republican congressmen and Bush administration officials taking safe refuge by donning the ubiquitous American flag lapel pin.

Recently, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama explained in a campaign speech that he no longer wears his American flag lapel pin because of what it had come to symbolize.

...I probably haven't worn a flag pin in a very long time. After a while I noticed people wearing a lapel pin and not acting very patriotic....My attitude is that I'm less concerned about what you're wearing on your lapel than what's in your heart. You show your patriotism by how you treat your fellow Americans, especially those who serve. You show your patriotism by being true to our values and ideals. That's what we have to lead with is our values and our ideals.

The truth is that right after 9/11 I had a pin. Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security.

The whole thing is really a non-issue. I mean, it's a lapel pin, and Obama only brought it up because a reporter questioned him about it. It's not as if he called together a press conference or put the word out in a prime time TV ad. Of course, I don't need to tell anyone how Joe Righty felt about Obama's comments:

"Seeing something wrong with a flag pin or the flag ain’t too sharp. What an ASS!!!!!" - comment from stuckonstupid.com

Here's your textbook right-wing kneejerk reaction. "Look, everyone! Obama hates the American flag! I always knew there was something fishy about that guy, what with that weird name and tan complexion."

"Remember, he WAS wearing one after 9/11. Then he feels the need to put out a press release when it takes it off. He's a pandering piece of crap." - comment from RedState.com

First of all buddy, after 9/11, everyone was wearing a lapel pin, sporting T-shirts or driving around with those car window flags. If there was a positive consequence of 9/11, it was the temporary boost in the sale of cheaply produced patriotic merchandise imported from China. But I digress....The point is, if you finally decided to take down those American flags from your car windows, it doesn't make you a hypocrite. It doesn't make you un-American. And as I mentioned earlier, Obama was responding to a question specifically about the pin, so no, lapel pins are not going to be a central issue on the Obama '08 ticket.

"I have no flagpole at the moment to hang Old Glory, but proudly hang my Blue Star flag in my bedroom window until The Man comes home. Also, I place my ‘Support the Troops’ yellow ribbon magnet on the front of my car, so leftist hippie morons know precisely why I am about to run them down." -comment from MichelleMalkin.com

Very nice. Let everyone know what a great American you are right before you threaten to run your fellow Americans over in your car. The right really does it with class, don't they?

"If you cannot display an American Flag lapel pin to show Patriotism, you are NOT worthy of American air." - conservative blog Take Our Country Back

How about this: If you cannot display any patriotism other than displaying an American Flag lapel pin, you are NOT worthy of American air.

Fortunately, not everyone got it wrong. On Redstate.com of all places, a user commented:

"The only country I can think of where citizens are required to wear pins to prove their patriotism and loyalty is North Korea. Look closely at a picture of North Koreans, and you'll see the ubiquitous little lapel pins of Dear Leader.

He's also not wearing a sandwich board that says 'I love my Mom,' but it doesn't mean he doesn't. Let's let the man accessorize in peace."

Many of these flag-impaled lapels adorn suits belonging to some Republicans who have, in recent years, been "less than patriotic" to put it nicely. Some have been downright bad Americans. Yet the lapel pin remains, not as some symbol of one's inner character, dedication to that which is noble or devotion to country, but as a quick reminder that "Hey, you can't question my character or patriotism! See here? See this lapel pin?"

(more to come...)

Bill Clinton: More popular than ever

Approval ratings for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton

(source: ABC News/Washington Post Poll)

As time passes, the Bill Clinton presidency seems to be picking up steam. While his "bump in the polls" isn't exactly staggering, it is significant. According to the above ABC/Washington Times Poll, Clinton's post-presidential approval rating has risen 11 points, from 55% to 66% from 2003 to 2007. What might account for Clinton's increased favorability?

Keep in mind that the poll in question read:

"Thinking back to when Bill Clinton was in office, would you say you approve or disapprove of the way Clinton handled his job as president?"

So we aren't talking about anything he has done since leaving the oval office, but changes in public perception of his abilities as President of the United States while in office. The most compelling evidence for Clinton's approval ratings increase is the seemingly proportionate decrease in the approval ratings of President George W. Bush. As Bush's presidency moves closer and closer to being cemented in history as a colossal failure, it is bound to make previous presidents (especially those most recent) look better by comparison. As the above graph suggests, the approval ratings of Presidents Clinton and Bush have been near mirror images of each other since 2003.

I wonder if Bush realizes that he is making Bill Clinton more popular. Therein lies the power of the Presidency: the ability to effect public opinion of a third party based solely on the public opinion of the President.