O'Reilly Shields Far Right Christian Extremists; Denies Christian Terrorism is a Threat
Denies Norwegian Terrorist Attack Has Political Content
Hides Breivik's Links to US Anti-Muslim Fanatics
With Bill O'Reilly Covering Up for Tucson Shooter; Targeting Sheriff Dupnik for Daring to Connect the Dots with Right Wing Hate Speech; and Joining the Assault on Public Workers and Pensions, It's Time for Oh Really O'Reilly to Return
Stay tuned.
O'Reilly: "No one on FOX ever said you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance"
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Beck: "...I don't have universal health care."
O'Reilly: "No, let's get -- well, you will soon."
Beck: "Or I'll go to jail."--11/13/09, The O'Reilly Factor
On his own f**king show someone said it. Douchebag Glenn Beck, a real low-profile slimeball.
But don't worry, O'Reilly's crack staff researched it, you see.
O'Reilly: "[W]e researched to find out if anybody had every said you're going to jail if you don't have health insurance. Nobody has ever said it"
"...if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time."--Glenn Beck, FOX News,11/12/09
"This is a bill that...puts people in jail potentially, if they don't have health insurance mandated by the government to buy."--Rush Limbaugh, Fox & Friends, 2/4/10
"One of the provisions in the Pelosi bill is you actually can go to jail for not having health insurance."--Dick Morris, FOX News' Hannity, 11/9/09
Don't get me wrong. COSMOS LEFT despises Obama's reactionary, pro-market health insurance scheme. It is coercive; it is punitive, forcing workers to buy expensive premiums from private insurance gangsters or pay a fine. And most of all, it is not universal health care--which would guarantee free health care for all, paid for by the federal government.
The point here is just when you think Bill O'Reilly can sink no lower; just when you think he cannot debase himself more than he has throughout his sordid "career," he stares into the cameras and lies without shame, and then turns around and calls groups that expose his lies with videotape "character assassins."
He is a disgrace. He should be removed from the national stage. He has blood on his hands from Dr. Tiller to millions of Iraqis and Afghanis.
Put him away for the rest of his life in the same cell as Scott Roeder.--April 14, 2010
O'Reilly: Tea Party Racism? Where?
This racist photo was sent from Tea Party activist Dr. David McKalip to other Tea Baggers, accompanied by the caption, "Funny stuff."
O'Reilly's
been spending much time defending the Tea Baggers against charges of
racism. It's not the organization, you see, it's just the loons that
every group is saddled with. He ignores the pervasive manifestations of
racism that have characterized the Tea Baggers since their inception in
an attempt to cover up this cesspool of reaction's DNA and his
connection to it.
But Dr. McKalip is no "loon." He is a
prominent neurosurgeon in Florida and a militant opponent of Obamacare
who falsely believes it represents a "government takeover of medicine."
The
ugliness emanating from the Tea Baggers movement is so obvious that
even O'Reilly is getting defensive and embarrassed. In a recent
Talking Points Memo, he was forced to lecture his more zealous
followers and soldiers: "The Tea Party would be wise to publicly disassociate itself from hateful rhetoric. I gave them this advice six weeks ago: "The Tea Party people themselves should be
careful. Most Americans are not ideologues. They are just folks who
want a fair system and a noble country. Every time a Tea Party person
threatens to overthrow the government or other nonsense, the brand gets
hammered."
Of
course, this hasn't stopped O'Reilly from trying to deny that
Congressman John Lewis was called the "n" word or that Congressman
Cleaver was spat at. While it may have happened, O'Reilly squirmed,
and Lewis is an honorable man and I believe him, there's no proof of
it. It's not on tape.
Meanwhile as O'Reilly is talking the tape
clearly shows Cleaver being spat upon. There are no limits this
pathological liar will go to spin things along his reactionary agenda.
O'Reilly
has yet to tell his audience that the DC police took the spitter into
custody, but was released because Cleaver declined to press charges.
O'Reilly has not mentioned the credible reports from several reporters
that these events took place.
O'Reilly is a racist defending racists.
O'Reilly
Ignores, Downplays, Understates Growing Rightist Violence; Nothing
Incendiary about Palin Putting Democrats in Cross Hairs while chirping
"Time to Reload"; Falsely Equates Rightist Violence with Leftists
Protesting Palin, Coulter, and Rove
O'Reilly:
"There is far too much hatred in America. [Something he's played no
small role in.] That's obvious. It comes from both sides. The Michigan
militia and the Westboro Baptist Church [homophobes who desecrate
soldiers' funerals by applauding their deaths as God's wrath for gays]
are far right nuts, but there are just as many far-left idiots doing
vile things."
Surely O'Reilly will follow that up with evidence of leftist equivalents to violent militias, right? Wrong.
"Thirty-eight-year-old Norman Leboon has been charged with threatening
to kill Republican Congressman Eric Cantor. Apparently Leboon wants to
kill Cantor and his family and is now being held without bail. It looks
like this guy is simply nuts. Ideology might not be in play." [emphasis added]
That leaves out leftist extremists, doesn't it? But it doesn't rule out
extreme rightists. O'Reilly doesn't mention that Leboon likely wanted
to kill Cantor because he's a Jew. And that is ideology, Mr. Harvard Grad O'Reilly.
But the evidence must be coming, right?
Wrong.
"However, a brick was thrown the window of the Michigan Republican Party headquarters on Monday. Obviously that's political."
Of course it is. But O'Reilly offers no proof the attack came from the
left. It may have come from a Leboon type character, or one of those
independent Tea Baggers who hate the Republicans as much as the
Democrats.
And obviously you're a Republican hack, O'Reilly, since to my knowledge
you haven't said a word about the brick throwing attacks on multiple
Democratic offices across the country and the vile threats against
Democrat Louise Slaughter and her children; nor a word about Michael
Vanderboegh, the patriotic Alabama militiaman who's publicly taken
credit for the brick attacks and is linked with the ultrarightist Oath
Keepers (O'Reilly did interview one of these creeps a while back).
The "Left" is not Committing Violence, O'Reilly Your Allies on the Right Are
O'Reilly: What racism? What violence from the right?
Washington man arrested for threatening to kill Senator Patty Murray for voting for Obamacare
"I do pack, and I will not blink when I'm confronted...It's not a threat, it's a guarantee...
"There's a target on your back now. It only takes one piece of lead. Kill the f***ing senator!...Now that you've passed your health-care bill, let the violence begin.
"I hope somebody puts a f***ing bullet between your f***ing eyes...I do believe that every one of you f***ing socialist democratic progressive (f**ks) need to be taken out. I want to f***ing kill you."
That's Glenn Beck talking. Suspect Charles Alan Wilson was directly inspired by Glenn Beck, whose daily rants against eliminating progressives are driving deranged ultrarightists to threats of assassination and violence and acts of violence.
In defending Beck, O'Reilly is guilty of inciting violence too.
Congressman John Lewis gets voicemails from man who rants: F**k that goddamn n***** and his socialist healthcare
Suspect regurgitating Limbaugh/Beck TalkingPoints
The extreme right, the Christian right, are committing violence, killing people, throwing bricks. And by downplaying and understating this face, in falsely equating the Left's lack of violence with the very real violence coming from people who basically agree with O'Reilly, the Factor host is at least in part responsible for that violence and the climate producing it.
Tea Bagger Leader Dana Loesch "absolutely" wants to abolish Social Security
That's all working people need to know about the Tea Baggers and Loesch, a talk show personality from St. Louis who's beginning to make her bones peddling reactionary and antilabor bullshit. O'Reilly gave her a platform recently; expect more of that in the days ahead.
Loesch is clearly crafting herself as a hybrid of Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter. Lovely. She's like a Wicked Witch of the Midwest touring the nation on a Tea Bagger Tornado.
We'll have more to say about Loesch soon.--April 1, 2010
O'Reilly Ally Scott Roeder Gets 50 to Life for Murdering Tiller
Good job, judge. Now if only O'Reilly could be his cell mate.
More Coal Miners Sacrificed on the Altar of Private Profit
Massey Energy has long record of exploiting and killing miners, polluting environment
Massey Hired Private Thugs Against Striking Miners in 1984
What say you, O'Reilly? Feel like sticking up for the folks in West Virginia? Didn't think so, given the fact that Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship contributed over $1 million to sponsor last year's Labor Day Tea Party!
O'Reilly: There's no evidence Cleaver was spat upon
In recent days, O'Reilly has actually shown the video below which clearly shows a punk spitting on Cleaver while stating authoritatively that no such evidence exists.
Once again, O'Reilly reveals himself to be not a journalist but a pimp and apologist for the growing cesspool of reactionaries populating the Tea Baggers.
The True Face of US Imperialism in Iraq: Leaked Video Shows Cold-blooded Sadism of US-trained Psychotic Killers
Unarmed civilians, journalists murdered by US assassins
"Ha ha, I hit em' "Look at those dead bastards" "Light 'em all up. Come on, fire!" "Keep shoot'n, keep shoot'n."
This is an example of the "noble effort" that Bill O'Reilly has been dogmatically calling the Iraq war for years. This is the same military that O'Reilly blindly supports no matter how heinous the atrocities its members commit in the name of democracy. This the kind of war crime that O'Reilly has been covering up for years.
Speaking of war crimes cover ups that O'Reilly routinely engages in...
Special Forces commandos conducted execution-style killings of 3 women, 2 of them pregnant mothers with 16 kids, and 2 men.
This is the true face of O'Reilly's noble war on terror. This is what he publicly calls for. This is what makes him a war criminal and why he should be in the dock.
Ridiculing Victims of No Health Insurance, Millionaires Beck, Limbaugh, and Malkin Reveal the Rightist Scum They Are
March 17, 2010--In a historical novel about the early days of the coming US socialist revolution, Beck, Limbaugh and Malkin are executed for crimes against the people after being convicted by revolutionary workers tribunals.
Taking Their Cues From Beck and Company, Tea Baggers call Congressman John Lewis "nigger" and Congressman Barney Frank "faggot" at anti-Obamacare Protest
What Kind of Animals Are These?
Clueless, disoriented idiots continue to direct their anger in all directions but where they should--capitalism
These fools think they're so tough. A lot of them are going to get their asses kicked at the barricades.
The coming US socialist revolution is going to make the Russian Revolution look like the Boston Tea Party.
What Kind of Animals Think it's Evil for the Government to Provide Health Care to its People?
Not that Obama's Plan Does, but Socialist Governments Would!
"Whoever expects a 'pure' social revolution will never
live to see it. Such a person pays lip-service to revolution
without understanding what revolution is.
"The Russian Revolution of 1905 was a bourgeois-democratic
revolution. It consisted of a series of battles in which
all the discontented classes, groups and elements of
the population participated. Among these there were masses
imbued with the crudest prejudices, with the vaguest and most fantastic aims of struggle; there were small groups
which accepted Japanese money, there were speculators and
adventurers, etc. But objectively, the mass movement
was breaking the back of tsarism and paving the way for
democracy; for this reason the class-conscious workers led it.
"The socialist revolution in Europe cannot be anything
other than an outburst of mass struggles on the part of all and
sundry oppressed and discontented elements. Inevitably, sections
of the petty bourgeoisie and of the backward workers will
participate in it—without such participation, mass
struggle is impossible, without it no revolution is
possible—and just as inevitably will they bring into the
movement their prejudices, their reactionary fantasies, their
weaknesses and errors. But objectively they will
attack capital, and the class-conscious vanguard of the
revolution, the advanced proletariat, expressing this objective
truth of a variegated and discordant, motley and outwardly
fragmented, mass struggle, will be able to unite and direct it,
capture power, seize the banks, expropriate the trusts which all
hate (though for difficult reasons!), and introduce other
dictatorial measures which in their totality will amount to the
overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the victory of socialism,
which, however, will by no means immediately 'purge' itself of
petty-bourgeois slag." [emphasis in original]
Obviously and
unfortunately, there does not yet exist in the US a class conscious
revolutionary vanguard, but it is coming. Ask Glenn Beck. For all his
ignorance, he knows it's coming--which is why he rails against it every
day.--February 19, 2010
COSMOS LEFT Takes on NJ Tea Bagger
The following editorial mildly critical of the Tea Baggers appeared in the January 28 edition of the Asbury Park Press, a moderately conservative Republican newspaper "serving" Ocean and Monmouth counties:
"Tea-ing off is not enough"
"Give the Tea Party a little credit. Its supporters have made their mark on the public debate. They've garnered attention by adopting the successful strategies of extremists on both sides of the political aisle — yell loud and make outrageous claims, as they have in town hall meetings and various forums across the nation. "The latest local example occurred Monday night in Marlboro, when Tea Party members shouted down Democratic Rep. Rush Holt to try to steer the discussion toward their complaints about health reform and job creation, among other things.
"While the Tea Party movement has an undeniable conservative bent, it's most of all an anti-establishment group sick of just about anything and everything government does.
"But at some point all this bellowing and bluster has to turn into more thoughtful discussion about actual solutions, or the Tea Party is destined to become nothing more than a footnote — a tiny one at that — in the political history books.
"In short, the 'outrage' schtick and the labeling of all Democrats as evil socialists has become terribly stale. If members are serious about making a meaningful difference, it's time for them to grow up a little.
"The underlying Tea Party concerns about their pet issues are in many cases valid ones. It is certainly fair, for instance, to question the cost and management of health reform or the proper use of stimulus funding.
"But in keeping with standard political discourse, circa 2010, these reasonable ideas too often manifest themselves in petty insults and manufactured anger that creates more division and hardens the positions of those they criticize.
"Moving forward, the Tea Party needs more game than it has showed so far. To start, it would be nice to know a little more about how it plans to save the republic."
On February 12, the following letter to the editor from a Tea Bagger offended by the Press' editorial was printed:
"I resent what the Jan. 29 editorial 'Tea-ing off not enough' had to say about Tea Party members. The Press' left-wing 'progressive' bias is showing.
"To address the specific charges:
"1. 'Yelling loudly.' Yes, some members show the frustration we all feel when the people we elect to represent us are not listening to us. Their elitist attitude is that they know what's good for us and we are the stupid, unwashed masses.
"2. 'Outrageous claims.' Outrageous? I think not. We see what's going on in Washington, the back-room deals, buying votes, the Marxist Czar Van Jones and others in Obama's 'court.'
"3. 'Marlboro shouting down Rush Holt.'- See Item 1 above.
"4. 'Anti-establishment.' Not true. We want our representatives, who are supposed to work for us, to be men of honor and integrity. We want them to follow the Constitution, the law of our land.
"5. 'All Democrats are socialists.' True. Progressives want unlimited government and the Constitution is ignored. If others are not socialists, why don't they say so and not back the party programs.
"6. 'Petty insults.' That goes both ways. We have been labeled 'Astroturf', a 'swastika-carrying mob' and worse.
"7. 'Manufactured anger.' There's nothing manufactured about how we feel.
"We don't want trillions in debt, an unconstitutional mandate forcing us to have a health insurance package rammed down our throats, cap and tax, government takeovers, bailouts and more failed 'stimulus' bills, redistribution of wealth or class warfare between the rich and poor.
"We want separation of powers and we want our country back."
COSMOS LEFT REPLIES TO JERSEY TEA BAGGER
This is a reply to Doris Cauda’s 2/13 letter “Teed off by editorial on Tea Party Members,” which addressed “7 specific charges“ in the Press 1/29 editorial, “Tea-ing off not enough.” But before discussing these points, Cauda revealed all we need to know about her perspective when she claimed the editorial proved its “left-wing ‘progressive’ bias.” This alone reveals just how right wing and politically disoriented Cauda is. The Press is neither left wing nor progressive. It is a conservative Republican publication, evidenced by its enthusiastic support of conservative Republican governor Christie’s draconian budget that slashes social services.
“1. Yelling loudly./3. Marlboro shouting down Rush Holt.”
The anger and frustration is understandable. You’re being shafted by a tiny clique of Wall Street billionaires. One day a revolutionary workers movement in the US will win over significant layers of the ruined middle classes with a resolute anticapitalist program and will abolish this unrepresentative capitalist government that puts profits before needs and replace it with a workers government that does the opposite. In the meantime, supporters of this working class perspective are all for debates and a genuine exchange of ideas. We want to take on apologists for big business—particularly when recent events are showing that the profit system isn’t working very well for the people. Unfortunately, in justifying the shouting down of Rep. Holt, Cauder is defending totalitarian and mob rule tactics. She’s also carrying out the harassment strategy leaked in a memo by Bob MacGuffie, who works with the FreedomWorks website, “Tea Party Patriot”: "be disruptive early and often; try to rattle him to avoid an intelligent debate."
“2. Outrageous claims.” Sorry Doris, calling Obama a socialist, communist, and fascist who is Muslim and not an American citizen qualifies as outrageous. Channeling Glenn Beck’s rhetoric about “Marxist Czar Van Jones” is a McCarthyite smear that will not win you political credibility and won’t work as it did 60 years ago.
“4. Anti-establishment.”
Not true, Doris replies. Tea Baggers just want their elected representatives to work for them, to be “men of honor and integrity.” This is the 21st century. That would be “men and women,” Ms. Cauda. This antiquated, historically obsolete outlook can be explained by her very next statement: “We want them to follow the Constitution, the law of our land.”
That’s where Cauda and her Tea Bagger friends want to take this country—200 plus years backwards, to the time when slavery was legal and Blacks were considered to be 3/5ths of a person, when there were no expensive entitlements like Social Security and Medicare that might cut into the profits of the rich propertied classes. Cauda’s Tea Baggers are “strict constructionists”, that is, they think the Constitution is a dogma whose every word was meant to be strictly followed for eternity, much like the Bible is a dogma to many of these same folks, whose every word is meant to be literally interpreted.
Except the Constitution was never meant to be a strictly construed dogma two centuries later. It is and always has been a living, breathing document that reflects the progress and change generated by real life struggles and the evolving relationship of class forces.
Cauda, like Tea Bag convention speaker Tom Tancredo, no doubt longs to return to the days of literacy tests and poll taxes, unconstitutional measures used for years to deny Black the right to vote in the South.
Further, the sudden reverence for the Constitution rings hollow coming from Tea Baggers, who never said boo when George W. Bush was trampling on the Constitution by illegally invading Iraq, ordering the torture of illegally held detainees, and illegally wiretapping millions of Americans.
And if you’re looking for honor and integrity in the Congress, I refer you to Mark Twain, because you’re barking up the wrong tree: “There is no native criminal class except Congress.” The truth is both parties are owned by the corporate elite.
“5. All Democrats are socialists.” Tea Baggers keep making asinine, ahistorical remarks like this and then wonder why they are ridiculed. I’m not an elitist looking down on you, Doris. I just think you’re seriously misguided and don’t understand American or world history, so you don’t have the right to shut down anyone, even a rotten capitalist politician.
The Democrats are a capitalist party. Democrat Max Baucus prevented doctors supporting a single payer system of health insurance from testifying at a congressional meeting. A socialist would not do that. Obama has forked over trillions to Wall Street bankers. A socialist would nationalize the banks, run them as public utilities, and confiscate the money they’ve stolen from the people to fund jobs, health care and education for all. Obama’s health care plan is totally beholden to the profits of the insurance companies and drug industry. A socialist wouldn’t do that, Doris.
Many Democrats are themselves millionaires; some, the so-called “blue dogs,” are universally recognized as conservative Democrats who frequently vote with the Republicans.
“6. Petty insults.” Doris doesn’t think that people carrying swastikas are insulting anyone. But the Nazi signs have been pervasive at every Tea Bagger mobilization. Calling Obama a Nazi is more than a petty insult. So are signs depicting Obama as a witch doctor with a bone in his nose; or those that say Obama is for enslaving whites.
“7. Manufactured anger.”
I agree the anger is real. The question is where you direct that anger. Cauder claims she’s not anti-establishment, but everything about the Tea Baggers’ politics indicates their anger is directed against only one part of the corporate establishment—the liberal Democratic establishment. While the anger is not manufactured, the orchestration of that anger into the Tea Bagger camp was largely a creation of the right wing media led by FOX, conservative leaders and operatives such as Dick Armey, Newt Gingrich, racist ex-CongressmanTom Tancredo, Texas governor Rick Perry, former UPS and FedEx executive Mark Skoda
Cauder is being manipulated by big business operatives to misdirect her anger away from the corporate elite and toward the weak sister political party of that elite—the Democrats, along with immigrant workers and Blacks.
Cauder concludes: “We don’t want trillions in debt…”
She’s right, but is admitting that capitalism is bankrupt; tax the rich, abolish the war budget, and cancel the debt to the rich bondholders is the answer, but Cauder’s affinity for the profit system eliminates those solutions.
“…an unconstitutional mandate forcing us to have a health insurance package rammed down our throats…”
I agree; Obama’s plan is part of the ruling rich’s attack on workers’ living standards; the answer is a single payer plan, financed by the government by taxing the rich, not workers or the middle classes; no need to force anyone—free, universal health care available for all.
“…cap and tax…”
A reactionary plan because it relies on the “free market”, designed to put the profits of the energy companies before the safety of the people, again proving Obama is not a socialist!
“…government takeovers…”
That is what’s needed for the benefit of the people; Obama’s plan is a boon for the private insurance companies; again the confusion and disorientation.
“…bailouts and more failed ‘stimulus’ bills…”
Yes, it is outrageous that both political parties have allowed Wall Street to plunder the US Treasury and make the people pay for their crimes and financial manipulation. The answer is to nationalize the banks and run them as public utilities, confiscating the wealth they stole from the people and using it to fund jobs, health care, infrastructure, etc. But Cauder’s disorientation, love of free enterprise and hostility to socialism preclude her from supporting those measures, hence her objection to “redistribution of wealth or class warfare between the rich and poor.”
Finally, I’ve used “Tea Bagger” instead of “Tea Party” to avoid dignifying today’s flag-waving bigots with the honorable and revolutionary legacy of the American colonists who threw the British ship’s tea into the Boston Harbor. The Tea Baggers are in the service of reaction, of capitalism in decline. The Boston Tea Party triggered the American Revolution, when the American capitalists had a historically progressive role to play. Choke on that, Glenn Beck.--February 24, 2010
O'Reilly Speaks the Truth: "This show is a disorder! Deduct it"
I couldn't agree more. After viewing The Factor for more than a decade, 8 years of which as the foundation for this O'Reilly watch page, I agree that enduring this foul individual's moral depravity for so long while exposing his lies and thuggish anti-democratic militarism is a public service meriting a tax deduction.--February 11, 2010
Palin: Obama should "play the war card" against Iran
COSMOS LEFT: Palin is a mortal threat to the US working class
We don't oppose Palin because she's historically ignorant and intellectually bankrupt. It's not her phony folksy, "you betcha" charm. It's not her propensity for selective victimhood. It's not how she's used her kids as a political prop. It's not her hypocrisy regarding misuse of state funds for private purposes. It's not that she used her power as governor to harass private enemies.
We urge workers to reject Palin because of her pro-capitalist, prowar, proZionist, antilabor politics.--February 11, 2010
Palin: We need another American revolution
COSMOS LEFT: We sure do, but not the kind you're talking about, Palin
We need a workers revolution, a socialist revolution, an anticapitalist revolution that puts the working class in charge of the government and organizes the economy based on social and human need, not private profit.
You, quitter Palin, for all your false populist demagoguery, are militantly procapitalist, pro-free market, and pro-private profit. You're for big business. You want to gut Social Security and Medicare. You want to slaughter as many Iranians as possible on behalf of the US and Israeli capitalist classes.
Yes, many workers aren't happy with Obama's hopey, changey thing. Because it's more of the protect the financial elite's interests and screw the working people. But that's no argument to go running back to Palin's hopey, changey "thing."
It's an argument to end this 2 party shell game and break the capitalist stranglehold on political power. It's an argument to reject Palin and Obama and form a socialist party that would fight to strengthen and expand Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. We don't need no stinkin' Palin.--February 11, 2010
FOX, O'Reilly Initially Underreported, Ignored Haiti and O'Keefe's Louisiana Caper
Late January-early February 2010:
Big surprise. Both are extremely embarrassing to US imperialism and its leading media cheerleader. The Haitian earthquake has illuminated the history of US domination and forced underdevelopment of Haiti while simultaneously exposing Washington's criminal neglect of the nation's suffering, despite all of Bill O'Reilly's efforts to ignore that history and distort the stinginess of US relief efforts.
As for O'Keefe, the incredibly stupid antics of the latest in a long series of GOP dirty tricksters and felons has FOX, Beck and O'Reilly visibly uncomfortable. For good reason. O'Keefe was their hero when his O'Reilly-like gutter "journalism" consisting of posing as a pimp to entrap ACORN workers prompted a McCarthyite campaign against the community organization that resulted in a loss of federal funds.
O'Keefe. What a pathetic sack of shit. Inspired no doubt by earlier Republican dirty tricksters like Donald Segretti amd Karl Rove, the Drudge offshoot and Matthew Modine look-alike now turned his sights on Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. O'Keefe and his co-conspirators and possibly future felons cooked up a brilliant scheme to pose as phone repairman to fix the "jammed" phone lines in Landrieu's office. O'Keefe theorized that Landrieu was refusing to answer the deluge of calls from voters angry about the senator's acceptance of pork money from Obama in exchange for voting yes on his health care bill.
What a moron. It apparently didn't occur to O'Keefe that "jammed" just might have meant Landrieu was getting deluged with calls. Beck and O'Reilly are trying to distance themselves from O'Keefe; O'Reilly glibly dismissing him as a pinhead. But you can't hide, O'Reilly. Months ago you declared O'Keefe should get a medal for his "expose" of ACORN. Except he exposed nothing but the fact that O'Keefe is a slimy fraud who tried to entrap ACORN workers and failed. And until this day, O'Reilly is lying about that story.
O'Keefe's intellectual capacities rival those of his hero O'Reilly's, who's been screaming that a civilian trial of KSM would cost $200 million a security, which over 3 or 4 years' time would amount to nearly $1 trillion.
The World Socialist Web Site article, "US: Republican activist behind Acorn smear campaign faces felony charges" [1/30/10] did a good job providing the political context for this GOP hack, pimp and dirty trickster:
"A pattern has taken shape in recent decades and nearly 40 years
after Watergate it continues and deepens. The ultra-right takes the
offensive against its bourgeois political opponents, using such
techniques as talk radio to launch McCarthy-type denunciations and
setting the stage for provocations such as the latest one. The media,
especially since the rise of Fox News, takes the ammunition that is
supplied to it and manufactures a scandal. Fox sets the precedent and
the more 'moderate' sections of the media follow obediently, as they
did in the case of the campaign against CBS anchor Dan Rather back in
2004, and on numerous other occasions since. And the Democrats meekly
fall in line.
"This is exactly what took place in the Acorn 'scandal' last year. After some failed efforts, O’Keefe apparently
found some Acorn staffers who could be captured on video saying things
that would embarrass the parent organization. One of these people later
claimed she thought the incident was a joke. The use of video equipment
without permission appears to have been in violation of the law, but
the titillation and scandal of the performances overrode other
considerations, at least at first.
"The Democrats
panicked―failing, of course, to expose the political reasons for the
Republican tactics and defend democratic rights in a principled
fashion. They ran for cover, with the House and Senate overwhelmingly
passing legislation to ban federal funding of Acorn. Last December a
federal judge ruled that this legislation was an unconstitutional 'bill
of attainder,' directed at punishing a single organization that had not
been found guilty of any misconduct.
"The Acorn escapade
had the desired effect of further emboldening the ultra-right and
besmirching the very idea of community action and the registration of
poor and minority workers to vote. Acorn, a liberal protest group,
became a target because its voter registration efforts tended to enroll
voters more likely to cast ballots for the Democrats. The campaign
against Acorn never revealed a single instance of voter fraud, but only
the fact that in massive voter registration drives individuals often
sign up using false names."
O'Reilly Reflects US Rulers' Fears Over KSM Trial
Bill O'Reilly is so freaked out by the prospect of a trial that would illuminate the torture O'Reilly supports but won't admit happened and that might illuminate the relationship between US intelligence and 9/11, he can't even do simple math! $200 million a year over 3 or 4 years does not amount to nearly $1 trillion. That would be $1 billion, idiot.
Obama Again Caving in to Military/Intelligence Complex Over NYC 9/11 Trial of KSM
Al Qaeda Has US Government on the Run Al Qaeda is a part of the US Government--CIA
Hysterical Campaign to Move Trial's Venue or Prosecute KSM in Military Tribunal Shows Weakness of US Democracy
American bourgeois democracy so brittle it can't handle due process and Constitutional rights
Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky once characterized the United States of America as the most frightened country in the world [WSWS, 2/1/10]. We're seeing that fear unfold as the US political establishment runs from its own Constitution as fast as it can. As the Socialist Equality Party put it in its recent national report, "This [Trotsky's] ironic observation, written when the United States was the greatest industrial power, is timelier than ever. The American ruling class sees challenges, threats and mortal danger in every corner of the globe. And yet, the greatest threat to its dominance lies in the mounting social tensions within the United States itself. The extraordinary degree to which massive wealth is concentrated in a very small percentage of the American population is not compatible with social stability. The ever-more obvious fact that gross inequality is a basic feature of American society is leading to profound and enduring changes in social consciousness among broad layers of workers. [Changes that O'Reilly and Beck are working overtime to reverse!] The ability of the reactionary trade unions to suppress working class resistance to exploitation and injustice is reaching its outermost limits. A new period of explosive social struggles is rapidly approaching."
This is what O'Reilly and increasingly Glenn Beck is worried about. Then you'll see communists winning more influence in the working class, Beck. Then you'll see us everywhere. Then you won't be punching at shadows, moron. Then we'll kick you and your legions' asses at the barricades.
Clueless O'Reilly Doesn't Realize His Equation of Haiti and Chicago's South Side Is an Indictment of US Capitalism
The laws of capitalism are what's behind the impoverishment of both areas, and the fact that there are pockets of Third World like conditions in the richest capitalist nation in the world is an indictment of the free market. But on an other level, this glib equal sign between Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and an overwhelmingly rural nation, and a depressed urban neighborhood in an advanced industrialized society, once again shows the emptiness between Bill O'Reilly's ears.
US Halts All Relief Flights Out of Haiti
Florida Governor Whines About Not Enough Money
Richest Country in the World Can't Provide Hospital Care to Suffering Haitians
Tax the Rich--starting with Bill O'Reilly
What was that you were saying about US generosity, O'Reilly?
The American people are generous. Working people individually are
donating in record numbers. But the government that misrepresents the
American people is showing the world what a motley collection of
stingy, miserly Scrooges it really is.--January 31, 2010
O'Reilly Crows Over Poll Showing FOX Most Trusted News Station in America
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that in a period when Obama's political approval ratings have plummeted, more viewers are flocking to the most anti-Obama media corporation in the country.
Trust in FOX a Distorted Reflection of Diseased Body Politic
There is no mass socialist movement or press to answer the lies of the most reactionary capitalist propaganda outlets like FOX News. The influence of FOX is a key reason why there is so much political disorientation and confusion among broader layers of the public. We saw this when polls revealed a connection between the false belief that Iraq was behind 9/11 and relying on FOX for information.--February 5, 2010
O'Reilly: KSM Civilian Trial Would Be "Stupid" More soon.
Imperialist Mouthpiece Bill O'Reilly Spews Racist Lies About Haiti While Misinforming Viewers
Hides History of Washington's Haitian Interventions and Exploitation of Haitian Workers and Peasants by US Corporations
O'Reilly flip-flops on UN; vehement critic now asks UN to "impose some discipline" there
As if brutal US-backed and sponsored Papa and Baby Doc dictatorships did not do enough damage to the Haitian people
O'Reilly's
Scrooge-like call for intense scrutiny of Obama's $100 million pittance
is miserly, stingy and callous for a so-called Roman Catholic
From the January 14 Talking Points Memo, "$100 Million of American Tax Money Heading to Haiti":
"...Already, thousands of American military are going to Haiti trying to save lives and impose some kind of order there."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
The
truth is the nature of the US "aid" in Haiti has been more of a
military occupation than a genuine relief effort. 12,000 US armed
forces are already in Haiti. As of January 18, the world's richest
capitalist nation has sent a grand total of 265 medical personnel to
Haiti; Cuba, with far less resources and an overwhelmingly rural
population, had already treated 376 Haitians and provided 344 medical
workers and 2 field hospitals by January 13, according to Juventud
Rebelde as reported by the Militant (Jan. 25, 2010).
As reported
in the World Socialist Web site article, "US military tightens grip on
Haiti," the US military actually blocked access by humanitarian flights
after it had taken over Port-au-Prince airport, denying permission to
such airborne missions from UNICEF, Brazil, Italy and France.
The
WSWS accurately states that the US military intervention in Haiti is
"disguised as a humanitarian rescue operation" whose actual objective
is to "build up the necessary firepower to terrorize the masses into
accepting a shocking lack of treatment without protest."
O'Reilly: "Thursday, President Obama pledged an enormous amount of money." [$100 million]
Oh Really O'Reilly? That's a pittance--less than one
hour's spending for the Pentagon, less than what Washington spends in 5
hours for occupying Afghanistan and Iraq, and less than 1% of the $18
billion that Goldman Sacks bosses raked in this year. [International Action Center]
O'Reilly:
"Since 1992, the beginning of the administration, the USA has given
Haiti close to $3 billion in assistance. And billions more have been
donated by other countries."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
The
truth is the "aid" given by Washington to Haiti was in the form of
building capitalist profits in Haiti, not genuine assistance to the
toilers paid slave wages by US corporations and their Haitian
capitalist junior partners. Since 1992, US policy has been directed
toward destroying Haiti's export industries, forcing Haitian
agriculture away from the production of grain and toward a dependence
on food imports, mainly from the US. It was US food producers who
profited from US "aid" to Haiti, not the Haitian people. They were
ruined by it. Foreign capitalists reaped super profits from the super
exploitation of Haiti's workers and peasants. Haiti used to grow its
own rice. US policy forced it to import nearly all its rice.
The
truth is Haiti has been bled dry by imperialist-imposed debts for
decades. The Duvaliers, installed by Washington, stole millions from
Haiti and ran up hundreds of millions in debt to US banks. If O'Reilly
truly cared about Haitians, he would demand the immediately
cancellation of every penny of debt Haiti owes to imperialist banks.
O'Reilly
neglected to inform his audience that the Bush administration
"systematically starved" Haiti, as the World Socialist Web Site put it,
by cutting off US aid and blocking aid from other countries from
reaching Haiti in order to isolate then president Aristede, whose great
crime was thinking of his people before kissing George Bush's
imperialist ass.
O'Reilly:
"...Yes we should send aid immediately, but President Obama should not
just promise $100 million with no accountability. Every dollar needs to
be managed. And if that means the USA calls the shots, 'Talking Points' says good. And I believe the Haitian people would say good as well." [emphasis added.]
So says the white colonialist to the brown-skinned savages.
Like
I said, O'Reilly is the chief propagandist for the US imperialist
military machine.] Here he arrogantly asserts the right of a colonial
power to further violate the sovereignty of a nation it has brutally
dominated for nearly a century.
Despite his occasional
fascist-based demagogic rant against the oil companies, O'Reilly would
not be so concerned about accountability if it meant supporting the
socialist demand of opening the books of the oil companies (and banks,
insurance companies, etc) to democratically controlled committees of
working people. Billions of dollars disappeared from the Pentagon on
the eve of 9/11. We've never heard one word about accountability from
O'Reilly about that. Billions more vanished in Iraq under US
occupation. Nothing about managing every dollar from O'Reilly on that
score.
I think most Haitians would concur with this sentiment: Stick your accountability up your ass, you racist colonialist pig.
While
Bill O'Reilly tries to hide his mean-spirited, stingy vindictiveness
toward the Haitian masses with self congratulatory revelations of his
charitable donations to the ravaged country. He even urges viewers to
send donations to groups like Doctors Without Borders. O'Reilly
neglected to tell his audience that Doctors Without Borders recently
protested that "hundreds of lives were lost" because its flights
carrying medical supplies were denied landing rights at the Port-au-Prince airport by the US military. If
he were a principled journalist truly dedicated to a fair and balanced
approach to reporting, O'Reilly would tell his viewers that a Doctors
Without Borders spokesman is troubled over "the extreme confusion of
distributing food with a gun."
But Bill O'Reilly is not an honest journalist. He's a pimp for the US imperialist military.
The
truth is the US military is blocking relief supplies from reaching
Haitians. Whatever coverage you've seen on TV showing soldiers giving
aid are photo-ops; the exception, not the rule. While O'Reilly
ignorantly makes fun of Cuba's aid to Haiti, the truth is it is Cuba
that sends real humanitarian aid to Haiti's workers and peasants. It is
Cuba sending doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to Haiti. It
is Cuba that has been training Haitian doctors for years. They don't
send soldiers to block relief supplies in order to secure the country
for even more ruthless exploitation. And unlike O'Reilly, Cuban aid is
not a tax deduction.
And Fidel, unlike O'Reilly, is quite clear
that you don't distribute food with a gun. You don't shoot starving
people from trying to feed themselves.
O'Reilly: Pelosi, Reid Should Be Kidnapped; Pelosi Should Be Waterboarded
O'Reilly: Chicago's South Side "like Haiti"
O'Reilly's comments echo those of capitalist mouthpiece Time magazine,
which said in a recent article entitled "Will Criminal Gangs Take
Control in Haiti's Chaos?": "As Haitian and international officials try
to coordinate an effective responde to what is probably the worst
disaster ever to hit the western hemisphere's poorest country, they'll
need to be mindful of the human rats that come out of the capital's
woodwork at times like these...criminal bands from poor neighborhoods
like Cite Soleil and La Saline are almost certain to try to exploit the
security void."
And from O'Reilly's January 14th Talking Points
Memo: "There is no central authority there. The police are corrupt.
There's no army and many politicians are thieves. In slums like Cite
Soleil, neighborhoods are run by drug dealers, voodoo priests or common
extortionists...Odds are as soon as the relief person leaves, a thug
will steal the charity from the poor person. Block by block in Haiti,
gangsters rule..."
The
truth is it's American corporate gangsters who have been stealing
billions from Haiti for almost a century. Bill O'Reilly talks like this
history has never occurred. He assumes his audience is too stupid to
research this history for themselves. His and Time magazine's contempt
for Haiti's workers and peasants echo their contempt for working people
from Chicago's South Side.
As the January 16 Miami Herald
reported, Haitian workers, fed up with the lack of coordinated aid
getting through, began organizing rescue efforts on their own in a
disciplined manner.
“As encampments sprung up throughout the island, Haitians grew tired of
waiting for international relief and took matters into their own
hands—providing security, and rationing what little they have....Twenty young men patrolled the rocky soccer field and
surrounding community keeping vigil over the hundreds of homeless who
had camped out night after frigid night in the Marie Therese
neighborhood of Port-au-Prince.”
Similarly,
the NY Times reported that Haitian youth brought order to a gathering
crowd of starving Haitians who had surrounded an aid truck that had
arrived: "...within five minutes, the people had been arranged in three
neat lines."
O'Reilly: Massachusetts Election Proves US Moving to the Right
It
proves no such thing, liar. First of all, in a country where both
parties are capitalist and working people are disenfranchised, election
results are at best a distorted reflection of political reality. The
capitalist monopoly on political power prevents any substantive
opposition to state policies from finding expression. In other words,
working people have no way to go. Obama and the Democrats are losing
support from the left, from the left wing base that feels betrayed by
Obama's continuation of Bush's policies, both domestic and
international.
Beck: The communists are out there, there're everywhere
For once, Beck's right. We are out here. We're all over the world.
Marxism is not dead. As long as there is an international working
class, there is Marxism, which nothing but the revolutionary ideas and
program of that working class. But we're not in the White House, fool.
Keep boxing at phantoms, Beck. We're not yet a large, organized,
conscious political movement. But we will be. And then you'll really
have something to cry about. Keep throwing punches at shadows, you
repulsive ignoramus. Because when the ideas and program of Marx take
root, particularly in the US working class, you and your ilk will be
crushed. At the barricades. By the Red Guard of the US communist
movement.--January 31, 2010
Beck: SEIU chief Stern's recitation of "workers of the world, unite" proves he's a communist
Except Beck left out Stern's next sentence: "Well, the good news is communism's dead."
Some labor leader. Some communist. Stern only proves that Beck is more correct than the so-called labor leader, even if the clown prince of America's fascist movement is throwing punches at phantoms, at a movement that is currently dormant.--January 31, 2010
O'Reilly: Obama not Torturing Enough Muslims to Keep America Safe
Falsely
Claims Obama Has Dismantled Bush's War on Terror in halting "coercive
interrogation techniques", closing Guantanamo Bay, and prosecuting
terror suspects in civilian courts
From O'Reilly's Talking Point Memo: "Another Victory for Al Qaeda":
"When
you think about it, the underwear bomber is kind of pathetic. A
23-year-old loon allowing himself to be used, willing to give up his
own life to kill innocent civilians."
Yeah, one has to indulge
in deep thinking to conclude the underwear bomber is "kind of
pathetic." As a leading media pimp for the US military/intelligence
establishment, O'Reilly faithfully avoids digging beneath the
stench-filled surface to ask just who the Nigerian would-be bomber
allowed himself to be a patsy for.
O'Reilly Becoming Unhinged Before Entire World
Maybe he can't handle the fact that upstart Glenn Beck is pushing him aside and connecting with the disillusioned, disoriented, backward middle class masses in a way O'Reilly has always dreamed of.
According to Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, who devoted a great deal of his life to analyzing fascism in the 1930s despite being hounded by Stalin's murderous henchmen, and who possessed a significantly higher political IQ than Glenn Beck, fascism is the mass mobilization of disoriented, ruined layers of the middle classes and backward workers during periods of intense capitalist crisis; layers susceptible to demagogic leaders who exploit the fears and worse instincts of these folks, employing scapegoating and hateful fear mongering against the most vulnerable and exploited elements of the working class and oppressed; a demagogic mobilization facilitated by the failure or weakness of the working class movement to provide answers to society's economic and social decline.
Ultranationalism, jingoism, nativism, militarism, racism, white power, anti-Semitism and right wing religious politics are essential ingredients of any fascist movement.
These fascist-minded layers act, often unconsciously, to advance the interests of finance, monopoly capitalism, yet they are in truth used by big capital as the last weapon in their arsenal to definitively defeat the working class, crushing the trade unions. In order to attract conservative, backward workers, fascists often employ anticapitalist rhetoric to prevent those workers from turning to socialism.
Think of the above analysis by Trotsky. Then think about what we've witnessed in recent times; the composition and political character of the Tea Baggers and Beck's 9/12 Project; think of the hatred directed against immigrants, gays, unions; think of O'Reilly's occasional diatribes against Big Oil and commodity speculators.
O'Reilly Can't Hide His Anti-Muslim Bigotry
Only Muslims Are Terrorists in the No-Spin Zone
"Did he [Holocaust museum shooter] yell 'Allah Akbar'? If he yelled 'Alla Akbar' and emailed an Al Qaeda in Yemen, I'd call him that, Ms. Quinn."
In an exchange with the Washington Post's Sally Quinn about the Fort Hood murders, O'Reilly revealed again his anti-Muslim bigotry when he responded to Quinn's "You can call the guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum a terrorist" with "Did he yell 'Allah Akbar'? If he yelled [that] and emailed an Al Qaeda in Yemen, I'd call him that. Ms. Quinn."
Got that? Only Muslims are terrorists in O'Reilly's racist, twisted brain. You have to yell "Allah Akbar" to be a terrorist. It's the religion, stupid.
O'Reilly on 9/11 Trials in NYC: "I don't care about the Constitution!"
Of course you don't, you fascist thug. You have nothing but contempt for the US Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights, where most of the document's democratic rights are found.
After Fox legal analyst Andrew Napolitano tried to explain the Constitution mandates that the trial be held where the crime occurred, O'Reilly replied: "The Constitution isn't here. You are. Don't be a pinhead."
Think about the mentality on display here. "The Constitution isn't here." In other words, it's a worthless piece of paper. It's not here. It means nothing. This from a self proclaimed historian, a charlatan who claims he's a patriot but contemptously dismisses the governing charter of the American Revolution.--November 18, 2009
O'Reilly on the coming "tax revolt": "Pelosi will be bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor"
When you say something so outrageous it merits an admonition from extreme right lunatic Glenn Beck ("Uh, I don't think that's necessary"), you know you're coming apart at the seams.
Again, the incendiary rhetoric used by O'Reilly and Beck is contributing to a climate of hate that has directly inspired violence and will continue to do so. If something happens to Pelosi, her blood will be on both of these fascist demagogues.
O'Reilly Uses Ft. Hood Massacre to Boost Declining Public Support for Afghanistan, Iraq Wars The bodies of the slain US soldiers were still warm and O'Reilly was already exploiting their deaths to defend US bloody, predatory colonial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sees 9/11 Connection--But not for the Right Reasons
There is a connection--in both cases, the official story is bullshit. And with both 9/11 and Ft. Hood, O'Reilly parrots the government's official story to support Washington's imperialist war drive in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Scoffs at post-traumatic stress syndrome, ignores growing suicide and murder rates among soldiers
Jimmy Carter's got More Balls than Obama
And more cajones than most of the bourgeois media for having the courage to state the obvious: much of the political opposition to Obama is racist. All it takes are eyes, brains, and the balls to say so publicly. President Carter has these prerequisites. Obama, the Democrats, and most bourgeois pundits do not.
Speaking of lack of courage...
O'Reilly Receives "Media Courage Award" from Right Wing Scoundrels at "Values Voter Summit"
Except O'Reilly's speech to this pig pen was "closed to the press."
It's an Alice in Wonderland world.--September 20, 2009
Earth to Beck and his Anti-Czar Crusaders: Lenin and the Bolsheviks overthrew the Russian czars in the October Revolution
Glenn
Beck, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk are trying to link Barack Obama to
Lenin and the Russian Communist Party by calling his cabinet officials
"czars"--the Russian word for kings and emperors, you know, like the
Romanovs, who were overthrown by the Russian Revolution in
1917. You're in good company, Beck. Comrade Lenin hated the tsars,
too. So did Russia's workers and peasants.--September 18, 2009
Joe Wilson was right: Obama is lying, about health care, the economy, Afghanistan, Iraq, and just about everything else
But Joe Wilson, Confederacy lover, you lie too!
You lie, Pelosi lies, Limbaugh lies, O'Reilly lies,
Coulter lies, Ingraham lies, even Olbermann and Maddow lie when they
tell Americans that Obama is really trying to reform health care on behalf
of America's working people. Every single representative of the
American capitalist set-up lies.
The entire US political establishment is a lie.
The
question is, what do we do about it? There are solutions from the left
and solutions from the right; solutions from the working class and
solutions from the capitalist class. Right now, because of a lack of
working class leadership, because there exists no mass socialist party,
the only solutions we're hearing are from the right, from the
capitalists, from the fascists who have re-discovered the US Constitution and are perverting the Revolutionary War slogan, "Don't tread on me."
US Census Worker Murdered in Kentucky
Found hanging from a tree, with the word "Fed" scrawled on his chest
COSMOS LEFT holds Glenn Beck responsible for this despicable, cowardly act. As we predicted a while ago, Beck is rapidly replacing Bill O'Reilly as the most dangerous individual in America. Beck's hysterical rants against the federal government are creating a climate conducive to this kind political assassination.
In a novel being written about the coming US socialist revolution, Glenn Beck is summarily executed by a firing squad after a revolutionary tribunal by the socialist workers government for his crimes against humanity.
And the world cheered.
In a perverted historical analogy, watching the aging Bill O'Reilly talk to Beck brings to mind Joe DiMaggio reluctantly passing the baton to Mickey Mantle in the early 1950s.
O'Reilly, Beck Promote Bogus Sting Against ACORN
Report ACORN Employee's Fib She Killed Hubbie as Fact
Why let a little thing like fact-checking get in the way of their jihad against ACORN?
Hannity: "Have you ever checked to see if she had her husband killed?"
Fake Hooker Hannah Giles: "We're working on it."
Two conservative activists pose as hooker and pimp to entrap ACORNer into helping child prostitution ring
O'Reilly, Beck silent over the very real child prostitution/sex slave scandals involving Dyncorp and Halliburton No sting setups or entrapment involving Dyncorp and Halliburton. A fair and balanced approach would include these shocking stories long covered up by O'Reilly. While railing against ACORN's alleged corruption, O'Reilly would routinely dismiss charges of corruption involving Vice President Cheney and Halliburton.
O'Reilly: " 'Conservative media' is hurting Obama by connecting him to ACORN"
As if he weren't part of the "conservative media", despite his perfunctory nod toward fair and balanced, (eg, O'Reilly's 1995 legal representation of ACORN a "legitimate deal"; Bush failed to move against ACORN, too, etc)
"The Collapse of ACORN": "...let's take a look at the ACORN-Obama connection.
Shortly before ACORN endorsed him, Barack Obama issued this statement:
"I've been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career. Even before I was an elected official, when I ran the Project Vote voter registration drive in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the middle of it, and we appreciate your work."
O'Reilly selective cites physicians poll results; ignores finding that majority support public option
What's behind GOP crusade against ACORN?
ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is an organization that tries to help poor people register to vote, fight foreclosures, attain decent housing and make a livable wage. Any individuals who have committed improprieties have been fired by ACORN.
By definition, ACORN is a reformist outfit. Republicans and other reactionary procapitalist scoundrels hate ACORN because its existence illuminates the failure of the free market. ACORN's enemies are greedy, vicious, mean-spirited scoundrels who hate any group that may cost their selfish asses a few dollars.
COSMOS LEFT does not endorse ACORN's liberal, reformist politics, but we defend it against vicious attacks coming from the likes of Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly.--September 16, 2009
Right-wing Beckites Mobilize in DC Against Obama
As usual, the World Socialist Web Site does a good job capturing the political essence of a political event:
"The march, organized by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey’s group, FreedomWorks, attracted an extremely confused social
layer, combining demands for lower taxes and less government spending
with fanatical anti-abortion and anti-immigrant politics. Reflecting
views promoted by fascistic talk show commentators [Glenn Beck, Rush
Limbaugh], many denounced Obama for attempting to introduce
'socialism'' in America, while others likened him to Hitler and
questioned his status as a US citizen." Joe Keshore and Barry Grey,
9/14/09 [emphasis added]
It's true many protesters are confused,
politically disoriented, resentful, frustrated and angry; some of it
actually justified or understandable, given the diseased body politic.
But it's also true that many of the 9/12 protesters are not confused at
all. They are consciously pro-capitalist and anti-socialist
(although it's no doubt true many have no idea what socialism is, also
understandable, given how Stalin masqueraded as and perverted genuine
Marxism, and indeed, carried out a political counterrevolution against
it in the Soviet Union); they are consciously racist,
jingoistic, ultranationalist; they are of a piece with that shameful
crowd in Red Bank, New Jersey, that heckled a wheelchair bound woman
afflicted with autoimmune disease.
While a sliver of these
folks can be won over to the revolutionary workers side when it is
built, most will be met at the barricades.
Keshore and Grey continue: "Attendance
was not very large. According to media reports, those marching numbered
between 15,000 and 30,000. The protest was far smaller than the massive
anti-war demonstrations that preceded the invasion of Iraq in February
of 2003, but this weekend’s demonstration has been given vastly
disproportionate coverage in the US media, particularly on cable
television. It hardly represents a mass popular uprising, as claimed by
the organizers and media promoters."
Careful comrades, some of
those photos looked like 100,000 or more responded to Armey and Beck's
call to march on Washington against Obamacare. COSMOS LEFT thinks the 1
and 2 million figures that were circulated were exaggerations and
fabrications by some combination of a motley crew of Freedom Works,
Michelle Malkin, ABC or CNN. It was almost comical watching these
clowns do their best imitation of Chuck Berry's "It wasn't me!" when
their whopper was exposed.
"Nevertheless, the mobilization does
raise the danger of the growth of extreme right-wing forces. This
danger does not stem from the existence today of a mass base for
right-wing and fascistic politics in the United States. In fact, the
majority of the population supports universal health care, increased
taxes on the rich, and other egalitarian social policies."
Again,
COSMOS LEFT believes the WSWS is underestimating the danger NOW. Glenn
Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, and last but not
least the Godfather, Bill O'Reilly, bringing a veneer of
"respectability," are currently assembling "a mass base for right wing
and fascistic politics in the United States."
"In fact, the
majority of the population supports universal health care, increased
taxes on the rich, and other egalitarian social policies."
A slim majority, impressive enough given these policies are not a part of the national political discourse.
"Rather,
the danger arises fundamentally from the subordination of the working
class to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration, and thereby
to the US ruling class. The political disenfranchisement of the working
class is maintained through the political monopoly exercised by two
right-wing parties of big business.
"Whatever the denunciations
of a 'government takeover of health care,' Obama’s plan represents an
attempt to scale back government spending and lower corporate health
care expenses."
"As Obama declared in his speech on Wednesday,
'Our health care problem is our deficit problem.' His speech has
shifted discussion within the political establishment even more
directly to finding new ways to cut costs. His proposal, requiring
individuals to purchase bare-bones coverage from private insurers, has
as its ultimate aim the phasing out of employer-provided health
care—saving corporations billions—and substantially reducing the costs
of Medicare and Medicaid."
"There is entirely legitimate anxiety
among broad sections of the population over the future of health care.
Senior citizens and others are justly worried that the cost-cutting
will lead to cuts in services, and Obama’s overhaul as a whole will
lead to a vast expansion in the power of the insurance industry over
the US health care system.
"However, this popular opposition
finds no expression within any section of the political establishment
or either of the two parties. The subordination of the working class to
Obama and the Democrats blocks the development of a progressive
alternative. The Republican right seeks to make gains by exploiting the
political vacuum—as far as the broad masses can see—on the left."--Joe
Keshore and Barry Grey, WSWS, 9/14/09
Just a few examples of the political sophistication and grasp of issues evident at the 9/12 DC rally:
"You want socialism? Go to Russia!" Uh, try keeping up with current events, genius. Russia's been capitalist for about 17 years.
"Stalin called. He wants his policies back" Uh, if Stalin were in power, you'd be dead for insulting him.
Signs reading "Don't Barney Frank Me!" showing 2 animals humping Real classy stuff, shitheads.
"Thank you FOX for keeping us infromed" Enough said.
"Don't Take My Mall Money!" A true daughter of capitalism. Spend, baby, spend. It's the credit card, stupid.
"Bury Obamacare with Kennedy" F**k you, clown. Death to Israel, too.
"The Zoo Has an African [Lion] and the White House has a Lyin' African" "Cap' Congress and 'Trade' Obama back to Kenya!"
But no, there's no racist component to these right wing protests. President Carter must be crazy.
Constitution's Commerce Clause too Deep for Harvard Graduate O'Reilly
"Total B.S." that "gives him a headache"
In a recent discussion about constitutional objections that have been raised to Obama's individual mandate plan with FOX News' legal analysts Liz Wiehl and Megyn Kelly, Bill O'Reilly started off all excited and giddy that opposition to Obama's legislation might have the legitimacy and respectability of the US Constitution.
"This is new, this constitutionality thing. But I think it's a serious play."
As the discussion unfolded, O'Reilly's enthusiasm and tolerance for Article I, Section 8's Commerce Clause clearly waned. When he heard from both Wiehl and Kelly that the clause probably gives Obama enough constitutional cover to justify his health care plan, the Harvard graduate became bored and intolerant of one of the Constitution's principal clauses, and he seemed to retreat from the position that the Constitution is a "serious play."
O'Reilly's idea that Obama's health care legislation might be unconstitutional was inspired by those Town Hallers who claimed that since health care is not mentioned in the Constitution, it can't be legal. Like their ally on the Supreme Court, ultrarightist Chief Justice Scalia, their view the Constitution in the same way they see the Bible--religious dogma, instead of the living, breathing document that has evolved over two centuries of struggles and expanded the scope of constitutional rights.
Fascist Beck Drums Van Jones From White House "Green Jobs" Post
Deranged FOX commentator wages vicious, McCarthyite smear campaign
Gutless Obama caves into Beck's red-baiting
And just what were Jones's crimes? What paved the way for Glenn Beck's red-baiting crusade?
Apparently Jones was a communist in his youth. That was the best time of his life. His political development went downhill from there. When you start as a revolutionary and "[d]evolve" into a careerist who supports a capitalist politician, don't be shocked when a fascist demagogue brings you down.
Jones's other transgression that upset Beck was that he signed a "9/11 Truth Statement" that questioned the official US story about the attacks and called for an independent investigation. Given the fact that polls have showed 50%-70% of Americans agree, many suspecting the government allowed the attacks to occur to carry out long-planned wars, it is Glenn Beck who is marginalized and out of step with most Americans.
Besides, Beck is in no position to castigate anyone for believing in "conspiracies," given his penchant for crackpot notions that a procapitalist president is really a closet socialist trying to turn America communist, or that the capitalist bastion Rockefeller Center is filled with Marxist symbols. Beck should check his history. In 1934, Nelson Rockefeller refused to allow Mexican painter Diego Rivera's mural of Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin to be displayed in Rockefeller Center.
There's another reason for Beck's crusade against Jones--the organization he founded, Color for Change, just happened to have organized the ongoing advertising boycott against Beck for the racist vitriol he spews on a daily basis.
Beck Guest Michael Scheuer: "The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and to detonate a major weapon" in the US
An event of this magnitude is required to spark a grass-roots movement that will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary," in other words, a military dictatorship that will suspend the Constitution and commit mass murder around the world, according to the twisted logic of this CIA thug.
Beck agreed. "Which is why I was thinking this weekend that if I were him that's probably the last thing I would do right now."
Beck has recently fantasized about poisoning Nancy Pelosi. In 2005, he articulated an impulse to murder Michael Moore.
It is Beck who should go.
O'Reilly Guest Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on US soldier Bergdahl captured by Taliban: He's a liar and deserter; the Taliban should do us a favor by executing him
O'Reilly: Yeah, he's crazy
CIA Report: Agency Tortured, Murdered Detainees From Iraq to Afghanistan Doesn't Even Include Secret CIA "Black Site" Prisoners Hundreds have been murdered in US custody since 2002
Bush and Obama Suppressed Inspector General Report for 5 Years Release forced by American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit--Still heavily redacted
Sleep deprivation continued until 2007
Torture no doubt continues under Obama
Prisoner
threatened with power drill, gun (Gangsters seem to like the power
drill; no doubt the CIA punk was inspired by the Colombian thugs in Scarface)
CIA threatened to kill Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children
A detainee was informed that CIA agents would rape his mother in front of him
Agent repeatedly pinched neck of prisoner, causing unconsciousness
US "Debate" Over Healthcare "Reform" Reveals Deepening Class Polarization and a Diseased Body Politic
You ain't seen nothing, yet. Right now,
it's still a one-sided class war. Wait until a revolutionary socialist
workers movement gets going. Wait until a class struggle left wing
takes off in the labor movement and either transforms the existing
trade unions from their current role as tools of the capitalists into
instruments of revolutionary struggle, or this militant rank and file
upsurge will bypass the unions and form independent committees of
struggle.
Rightist Scum Mobilize at Town Hall Meetings to Defeat Obama's Free Market Plan
Minions of Beck, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, Coulter, Malkin Respond to Call, Reflect Embryonic Fascist Movement
Insurance companies, GOP, FOX demagogues organize disruptive Town Hall protests
Death threats; Congressmen hung in
effigy; unconcealed guns; misinformation steeped in hysteria, fear,
racism and xenophobia rampant at Town Halls; Beck jokes about poisoning
Nancy Pelosi; Dobbs ponders driving a stake through heart of that
"bloodsucking leftist, Howard Dean"; white supremacist militias on the
rise; two Democratic congressmen receive faxes of Obama photo reading:
"Death to all Marxists"; New Hampshire protester wants "illegals" sent
home with bullet in their head"; Black woman ejected from McCaskill
Town Hall for the crime of bringing in pictures of Rosa Parks
And
there was the spineless McCaskill, pandering and apologizing to the
rightist mob for allowing the 2 Black women to bring in photos of
Parks. Nothing could better illustrate the weak sister nature of the
Democrats as a capitalist party; in contrast to the Republicans, the
alpha capitalist party not constrained by civility and law.
COSMOS
LEFT has no problem with the anger, disrespect for authority, and
distrust of politicians being expressed at the Town Halls. Obamacare does suck; many accurately sense that it is
a fraud. While a minority of the Republican workers and middle class
folks railing against Obama at the Town Halls can be won over to a
fighting, socialist labor movement, most appear too far gone, too
ideologically up the free market rectum; many, not all, appeared to be
racist, xenophobic, Christian fundamentalists, consciously
pro-capitalist, antilabor and anticommunist.
In an August 12
World Socialist Web Site article, "What is behind the opposition to the
Obama health plan," Patrick Martin wrote:
"The right-wing
attack combines hysterical distortion of the provisions of the Obama
plan (frequently, and falsely, branded as 'socialized medicine') with
an appeal to the concerns of wide layers of the American population who
sense, quite correctly, that the healthcare restructuring being
promoted in Washington will come at their expense and will benefit only the big corporate interests." [emphasis added]
While
it may be true that wide layers of the US population sense that
Obamacare will come at their expense and only benefit big corporate
interests, the majority of the Town Hallers support big corporate
interests--that is, corporations making as much profits as possible.
They are consciously pro-free market. They support private profit. They
are against helping the poor; they despise illegal immigrants. For the
most part, they will be on the other side of the barricades in the
coming fight for a revolutionary socialist workers government.
Town Hallers Packing Heat at Presidential Town Halls from New Hampshire to Pheonix Sensing
a weak president, feeling the wind in their sails, many Town
Hall fascists are brazenly showing up at Obama Town Halls brandishing
all kinds of firearms, including assault weapons. Some have connections
to ultraright militia groups. They say they are breaking no state laws
and are merely exercising their Second Amendment right to bear arms. In
fact, they are part of the rising tidal wave of hatred, intolerance and
violence-baiting on display at the Town Halls; they are contributing to
a political climate conducive to the assassination of Barack Obama,
particularly given the fact that assassination threats against this
president are at a record high.
Remember
the protests at Bush rallies? People were arrested for wearing
anti-Bush shirts. Demonstrators were restricted to "free speech zones"
at great distance from Bush. Can you imagine what would have happened
if antiBush protesters tried to exercise their Second Amendment right
to bear arms?
Revolutionary socialists are opposed to gun
control laws, which would disarm working people and leave guns in the
hands of the capitalist police state, white supremacist militias, and
fascist-minded goons. But we are opposed to political assassination and
all acts of terrorism. We support the right of working people to defend
ourselves from capitalist and fascist violence.
Town Hallers' patriotism is mean-spirited and selective That's
because they've internalized the values of the capitalist class they
wish to join. They just love the big government that sends working
class youth to kill and die in wars for Wall Street profits. No problem
with that intrusion into our lives by big government. But big
government that provides healthcare to its people? (Which Obamacare
does not do!) Dastardly! Then these Town Hallers aren't so in love with big government. Then they're not so patriotic.
Of course, as Samuel Johnston once said, patriotism is the last refuge
of scoundrels. Patriotism is the con job US capitalists use to con
working people into supporting brutal and predatory wars of imperialist
aggression that has nothing to do with defending US shores and
everything to do with defending US corporate profits.
As the US working class becomes more internationalist, we should shed
all forms of capitalist patriotism--alien class values--and adopt
proletarian internationalism, as Karl Marx urged when he said "workers
of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains."
After 8 Years of Tolerating George Bush
Trampling on the Constitution with illegal wars, illegal electronic
surveillance, and illegal torture, Town Hallers Emerge as Born-Again
Constitutionalists
The most
backward, xenophobic, demoralized, racist layers of working and middle
classes warming up to serve as shock troops on behalf of US capital
against the class struggle left wing labor movement that inevitably
will form
If
they stopped drinking Beck and Limbaugh's Kool Aid, if they were
capable of putting aside their dogmatic antisocialist ideology, the
rightist protesters would see that Obama's "reform" leaves intact the
dominance and profits of drug companies and insurance companies, that
the National Association of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers have endorsed
Obama's plan, something they wouldn't do if it was a government
takeover.
They're 21st
century McCarthyites. But at least in the 1950s, there
were communists everywhere, if not under every bed (although most reds
had already been drummed out of the labor movement). These days, when
ultrarightists see socialists everywhere, they're shadowboxing at
phantoms. Oh, we're still around, though not in mass numbers--yet. It's
just that Obama, Pelosi and the NY Times are not Marxists.
The
fact that militant procapitalist ilk are talking so much about
socialists and communists only demonstrates the strength, relevance and
vitality of Marxist politics.
We're small now. But our ideas
will take root. It's not un-American. One million Americans voted for
Eugene V. Debs for president in 1920 while he sat in prison for
opposing World War I. In 1919, Seattle longshoremen supported the
Russian Revolution while conducting a general strike. In the 1930s,
communists of various stripes were in the leadership of the titanic
battle for industrial unionism.
In 1917, Lenin told the Bolsheviks, "We must patiently explain. The masses will turn to us. They have no alternative."
But
in
August 2009, we're not a mass force. A void exists in the national
discourse. There is no working class alternative participating on the
national level. The existing political system is so decrepit,
undemocratic, and beholden to private profit that anything close to
real reform of healthcare, like a single-payer system, is impossible.
It will take a fighting labor movement that mobilizes all workers,
union and nonunion, students and activists to break from the Democratic
Party and build a mass socialist party that can generate the political
power to win healthcare as a basic human right.
From the August 17 World Socialist Web Site article by Patrick Martin, "Healthcare and the social crisis in America":
"For the Republican Party, the vast dimensions of the social crisis in
America are an inconvenient distraction from its ongoing efforts to
mobilize ultra-right and fascist-minded elements against the Obama
administration. Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Fox News & Co. prefer
fanning hysteria over 'death panels' and other such mirages to
confronting the reality that tens of millions of working people lack
access to needed healthcare because they have no insurance or no money."
Town Hall Protests Oppose Obamacare from the Right
COSMOS LEFT Opposes Obamacare from the Left
There is much
wrong with Obama's "reform." It is a reactionary, punitive measure that
forces workers to purchase insurance they can't afford due to the
severe recession. It will leave 18 million uninsured. It is all about cutting costs, not expanding decent health care for all citizens. It will deepen the class-based health care system. Whatever meager "public option" that emerges will
be a dumping ground for those workers who can't afford private
insurance plans and accelerate the cut-rate, rationed healthcare for
tens of millions of workers. It will pave the way to erode Medicare and Medicaid. Capitalist politicians are
going after Social Security. One doesn't have to accept the validity of
"death panels" to suspect that Obama's pledge to slash "unnecessary"
medical tests will have an adverse effect on the health of all
Americans, particularly seniors.
Insurance companies, free market worshippers petrified of competition from public option
Haven't
we always heard how capitalism is all about competition? You'd never
know it, judging from these same chicken-shit free marketeers shaking
in their boots over the prospect of competition from a public insurance
plan. Turns out competition isn't so great after all, when it may
threaten private insurance firms' profits.
This is not to make
a free market argument for the public option; it merely illuminates the
internal contradictions in the free market intellectual arsenal.
Gutless Democrats cave in to Palin's hysteria about "death panels" "End-of-life counseling" removed from House bill Palin's Facebook message TKOs Obama's entire PR campaign
While
clueless liberal pundits and politicians laugh at Palin, US workers
ignore this demagogue at our own peril. Palin is a significant
antilabor political force who represents a mortal threat to the US
working class.
Right wingers whine about SEIU defense guard at St. Louis Town Hall They
ain't seen nothing yet. Union bureaucrats in the Service Employees International Union mobilizing the ranks on
behalf of the capitalist Democratic party is not the kind of Red Guard
that revolutionary socialists advocate. But it's a start.
Initial reports that SEIU member assaulted conservative African American not so black and white
Well, well, it turns out that as usual,
rightist demagogues like Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are wrong again,
getting things ass backwards and misleading viewers with their Alice in
Wonderland-like inversion of reality. Antilabor millionaires like
O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh were quick to slander the SEIU memgers who
showed up to prevent Town Hall fascists from disrupting the meeting as
"thugs," but it turns out that it was conservative Black activist
Kenneth Gladney who assaulted SEIU organizer Elston McCowan.
US Workers Should Reject This Entire Healthcare Debate Framework
It is a debate among factions of the capitalist class. The
working class needs to hammer out our own health care program, one that
puts human need before private profits of the insurance industry and
pharmaceutical companies.
It's Up to Socialists to Lead the Fight for Free Universal Healthcare for All!
Decline in support for Obamacare from both ends of the political spectrum
Obama's in trouble because his plan is procapitalist and he can't appeal to, let alone mobilize, the working class to support it.
Free, Universal Healthcare for All!
Including Undocumented Workers!
No More Medicine for Profit!
Health Care is a Human Right!
Reproductive Rights for Women! Free Abortion on Demand!
Repeal the Hyde Amendment!
Tax the Rich! Abolish the War Budget, and Fund Human Needs
Nationalize the Pharmaceutical Industry and Health Insurance Companies!
Make Them Public Utilities Democratically Owned and Run by Working People!
Take
the profit motive out of health care. It's killing us. It's holding us
back. It's preventing the resources and technology of the most advanced
capitalist nation in the world from providing the best healthcare for
all. Socialized medicine in the US would not mean rationing. It would
expand the best healthcare for all, not restrict it. It would keep Grandma alive as long as possible. It would be free
for all, as a human right, paid for by taxing the rich, nationalizing
the banks and corporations, including the drug companies and insurance
firms.
Major Advertisers Flee Glenn Beck's Program
Beck's
derangement in calling Obama a racist and simulating the poisoning of
Nancy Pelosi was apparently too much even for US capitalists.
The Cop Meets the Scholarly Brother: Racial Profiling, Cop Arrogance and Obama's Relationship to the Capitalist State Power
Whether
you're a Harvard professor or the president, in the eyes of the ruling
class and its racist power structure, you're still a n****r
Obama's
mistake was saying Officer Crowley acted "stupidly." Crowley wasn't
being stupid. He was doing his job as a cop--harassing a Black man.
Cops are institutionally
racist. Crowley couldn't help it--it's in his nature, as the scorpion
told the frog in Aesop's fable. Cops have been a hostile, foreign,
violent occupation force in America's cities for decades; it's been
open season on Black youth for years; cops routinely get away with
murder, bashing Black kids heads against cars, shooting 12 year old
boys to death because the cops thought he that candy bar was a gun.
Sometimes it got so bad that the Blacks organized self defense
political organizations like the Black Panthers in the 1960s.
One
can barely keep up with the epidemic of cop brutality and corruption
against the working class in general and oppressed national minorities
in particular. Lately the use of Tasers appears to be in vogue among
the thugs in uniform.
Crowley, like all cops, when you strip
away all the bullshit, is in business to protect the profits of the
rich, of the capitalist class. The job of cops is to intimidate,
repress, terrorize the working class, including its most oppressed
layers.
Gates' mistake was he got too uppity for Crowley, who
could not handle a Black man standing up for himself in the sovereignty
of his home. When Gates gave Crowley shit for harassing him in his own
home, the professor was consciously or not channeling the collective,
cumulative rage of the US African American population.
This is
what fueled Obama's criticism of Cambridge cops; as a Black man, he
couldn't help instinctively articulating the anger and frustration
pervasive in the African American community over police brutality and
racial profiling. But Obama has a different position and role in the
political elite than Gates. Obama is the commander-in-chief of the US
capitalist state apparatus, the "special bodies of armed men," as
communist leaders Frederick Engles and Vladimir Lenin put it. This not
only includes the military, it applies to the most local special bodies
of armed men that constitutes the capitalist state apparatus--the
police.
Officer Crowley, arrogant and representative cop that he
is, expects Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates and the President of
the United States to genuflect in front of his authority as a police
officer. This is of the same piece as the increasing glorification of
the military accompanying the growing militarism that dominates US
society.--July 29, 2009
July 30 Update:
Contrary to Crowley's report, 911 caller never described burglary suspects as African American Instead, she said she saw 2 suitcases and that the men may have lived there and been locked out.
Cop to cop solidarity: Boston cop calls Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" And we're supposed to respect police authority?
Gay DC attorney arrested for saying he doesn't like cops After a cop used a gay slur against him.
"Mr. Green" Goes to Switzerland: How Bill O'Reilly Spent his Summer Vacation
O'Reilly's
favorite vacationland, home of eugenics, racial purity, Gypsy
extermination--and a favorite haven for Nazis' plunder and looted gold
Bill O'Reilly
returned from his summer vacation positively giddy about Switzerland,
land of the Alps and the Matterhorn. During his July 6, 2009 "Reality Check" feature, O'Reilly proclaimed Switzerland as "the cleanest country in the world" after driving hundreds
of miles without seeing any litter on the street.
A
like-minded individual writing on the white supremacist website
stormfront.org put it this way: "Anyone who has been to switzerland
knows it's safe and clean. let's hope it stays that way."
"Mr. Green" O'Reilly then gave a nod of approval to Switzerland's environmental policies:
"And
I went there to look at the Swiss environmental approach. The place is
stunning. [It helps when you're blessed with the Matterhorn!] There are
7.5--there are 12.5, I should say, million people living in
Switzerland, 22 percent foreign-born, but apparently they are all
green. This, according to the environmental performance index.
Switzerland is No. 1 in the world, and it shows."
It helps when there are no natural resources to pollute, Mr. Harvard Man.
Then O'Reilly gets to the crux of the matter--keeping as much money in his rich wallet as possible.
"Health care is mandatory for the Swiss, but the government does not pay. The worker and the company do. However, the poor receives subsidies from the government. You can choose your own doctor there.
"Retirement is also funded by workers, not by the government. By law, retirement contributions are deducted from all paychecks. Companies are also required to pay into retirement accounts. [This sounds like Social Security--CL.] [emphasis added]
"If
you want to become a Swiss citizen, they don't want you. [Sounds like
paradise to a national chauvinist like O'Reilly] It takes 12 years or
longer, and you can be rejected without a reason. You sneak in there,
they will boot you right out. [O'Reilly's kind of place; he leaves out
how Switzerland turned away many tens of thousands of Jewish refugees
fleeing Nazi persecution; speaking of which, his stormfront.org co-thinker quoted above was thrilled about the electoral fortunes of the ultrarightist political organization called the Swiss People's Party because they advocate a law that would evict entire immigrant families if a child violates national laws and featured a poster of 3 white sheep kicking a black sheep out of the country]
"Income taxes top out at about 40
percent, just about like here. There are a number of other taxes, like
here. But very little poverty, not like here. Only three percent of
Swiss citizens are on welfare....So the country works, and our leaders
should be studying it..."
This country of 7 million is due to exceptionally favorable historical circumstances one of the most advanced and prosperous capitalist economies. But there's still a class structure, there is a working class, there is a Swiss Communist Party, and it will be part of the international socialist revolution. Listening to O'Reilly's endorsement of Switzerland's pension and health care policies, one would swear that he is describing Social Security and Obama's health care plan!
Sounds like Switzerland needs a socialist revolution, too.
One wonders if Professor O'Reilly's curriculum of Swiss studies would include how cozy Switzerland's government was with the Nazis during World War II; how so much of Nazi's looted gold ended in Swiss banks; how the first European law on sterilizing the mentally ill came from the Vaud Canton in 1928; how the Swiss government applied Nazi-style methods to exterminate a half million Gypsies during World War II; how Swiss scientists and psychiatrists helped the Germans draft many laws of the Third Reich, including forced sterilization of alcoholics and the mentally ill.
One wonders if part of O'Reilly's affinity for Switzerland has to do with its historical infatuation with racial purity, eugenics, and forced sterilization of "undesirables."--July 18, 2009
Right Wingers Show Their Ignorance
Beck: "The president is a Marxist...setting up a class system"
The above tidbit of historical nonsense from fascist clown prince Glenn Beck was made right after saying this:
"[Obama] could bail out Wall Street...or [he] could bail out Main Street. Why did we pick Wall Street?"
Uh, Marxists don't bail out Wall Street, moron. They nationalize, expropriate and confiscate Wall Street to provide jobs, free health care and free education for all.
And Obama didn't set up a class system. It's been there since the American Revolution.
For more on this idiotic, ahistorical claim that Obama is a socialist, see "A reply to Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and all other extreme right wing capitalist ideologues who think Obama is a socialist" below.
Pat Buchanan: "This has been a country built, basically, by white folks"
Given that Chinese labor built America's railroads and Black slave labor built the cotton industry, I'd say America's white working class had some help.
The pending nomination to the Supreme Court of that wise Latina has unleashed Buchanan's racist politics. Buchanan is on the wrong side of history because he correctly senses that the tide is turning, that America has become a multilingual, multicultural land inhabited by workers of all colors from all countries.
Laura Ingraham: Obama "channeled his best Jeremiah Wright accent" in speech to NAACP
Real sophisticated intellectual argument there, Laura, one that confirms to O'Reilly that you're a logical guest host for him when he's absent. "Channeling" must be Ingraham's answer to O'Reilly's illuminating "body language" segment featuring body language "expert" Tanya Reiman.
Ingraham argues that Obama is using the "race card" to advance his "left-wing" agenda and that his Jeremiah Wright accent was a "cheap attempt to pander to an audience that already supports him."
Now if Ingraham were a clear thinking, astute capitalist supporter, she'd appreciate how Obama is such a useful tool for the capitalists; she'd grasp it's that ruling class which is using the race card to advance its class war agenda against Blacks and all working people; she'd understand, as World Socialist Web Site writer Tom Eley wrote in "Obama's speech to the NAACP," how Obama "was very early on picked up by powerful political and financial interests that ultimately shepherded him to the White House" and that "[b]ecause of his particular ethnic background, he was seen as someone who could better sell right-wing policies." [emphasis added]
But Ingraham is not a clear-thinking, enlightened capitalist pundit. She's an ultraright ideologue whose dogma blinds her to the above reality and drives her to instead focus on Obama's alleged Jeremiah Wright accent, which she describes as a "cheap attempt to pander to an audience that already supports him."
Ingraham could learn something from Eley, a smart working class journalist who gave a far more insightful explanation of the dynamic between Obama and his NAACP audience:
"From his largely well-heeled audience, this passage [heralding the number of Black CEOs, mayors, governors since the civil rights movement] received an enthusiastic response. For this social layer, the essence of the civil rights movement was to create a layer of 'black CEOs' and politicians. For the needs of black workers, they have only contempt."
Just like you, Laura.
Eley reports accurately that Obama gave a reactionary speech at the NAACP convention--one that like comedianBill Cosby, blames African Americans for their problems and not the racist system that is capitalism. As Eley put it, "Obama adopted all the right-wing nostrums about 'personal responsibility' that have been used to justify the gutting of social programs, exacerbating the crisis confronting broad sections of the working class." [emphasis added]--July 18, 2009
RIP, Michael Jackson
And Don't You Say a F***ing Word, O'Reilly
You Tried to Convict Michael by Undermining His Presumption of Innocence
Your Gutter Journalism Tried to Ruin Him
So Shut the F**K Up! Unless it's to issue a public apology to Jackson, his family and his friends--an act that's very unlikely since it requires grace, humility and humanity.
All Michael Jackson Fans Should Piss on O'Reilly's Grave on the Glorious Day he Dies!
Bill O'Reilly had no right to lecture Michael Jackson about settlements, given the approximately $25 million FOX News had to pay Andrea Mackris to drop her sexual harassment suit against O'Reilly.
Congressman Peter King Slanders Jackson as a "pedophile," "pervert," "lowlife" and "child molester"
This from a self appointed guardian of morality and civilization who has consistently and unabashedly supported torture. And given that torture included the raping of Iraqi boys in front of their mothers, King is in no position to levy baseless charges of pedophilism and perversion against anyone, including Michael Jackson.
Jackson was acquitted of all such charges in a trial that only revealed the prosecution was bogus and the charge a scam to extort money from him.
One can only hope that the Jackson family sues this scoundrel for slander.--July 6, 2009
O'Reilly Thinks King's Slander Against Jackson is Funny
Laughingly reports it as an aside on his "Reality Check" feature; describes King as a "no-spin" kind of guy
Follows up with Talking Points Memo defending King against racism charge
O'Reilly: "And if you disagree with honoring Jackson the man, watch out. Congressman Peter King called Jackson a pedophile, an assessment not uncommon, and was immediately branded a racist. NAACP official Hazel Dukes and Congressman Bobby Rush both said vile things about Mr. King. [emphasis added]
"The message is very clear: If you criticize Michael Jackson, you hate black people. Nonsense, un-American and unacceptable."
The message is indeed very clear: King--and his political ally Bill O'Reilly--are racists. The "vile things" were political statements that King is a racist. And I'll go with a veteran NAACP official over "Mr. Gee, Harlem restaurants have knives and forks too" O'Reilly in judging whether someone is a racist. King, like O'Reilly, vigorously supports racial profiling, as documented in this excerpt from a Kingwatch blog:
"King's Ethnic Profiling Reactions Around the Web "Peter King's Profile Must Go "Newsday reports today: "House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King has endorsed requiring people of 'Middle Eastern and South Asian' descent to undergo additional security checks because of their ethnicity and religion. NY NAACP president Hazel Dukes calls it right: 'We are all concerned about safety but to target any group for nationality or religion is unconstitutional. African-Americans understand racial profiling. We won't support any targeting of a group. The practice is just un-American.' "It's time for Congressman King to go."
Really. King is the same scoundrel who thinks there are too many mosques in this country. King is a rabidly prowar, protorture, racist conservative Republican--O'Reilly's kind of guy.
Clueless O'Reilly Whines: Where is the racial component in all this? Why is he an African-American icon? He has white kids and he bleached his face white! I don't get it!
Gee, Mr. Educated at Harvard, maybe it has something to do with the fact that African-Americans are proud of the little Black kid from Gary, Indiana, who grew up to be the biggest, best and most popular entertainer in the world; maybe it has something to do with the fact that Michael's Thriller video made him the Jackie Robinson of the music video industry; maybe it has something to do with the fact that Jackson's career was launched at Harlem's iconic Apollo Theater; maybe it has something to do with the fact that a message of condolence was sent to the public memorial by Nelson Mandela, who led the revolution that overthrew South Africa's system of white supremacy known as apartheid.
Perhaps, too, Jackson is revered by Black folks from Harlem to Soweto because he wrote songs like "They Don't Really Care About Us" that contains lyrics that resonate in the African community such as:
"...I am the victim of police brutality, now/I'm tired of bein' the victim of hate...black man, black mail/Throw your brother in jail/Some things in life they just don't wanna see/But if Martin Luther was livin'/He wouldn't let this be"/Skin head, dead head/Everybody gone bad/Situation, segregation/Everybody allegation..." [emphasis added]
Where's the racial component, O'Reilly asks?
Switzerland!
O'Reilly's favorite vacationland, home of eugenics, racial purity, and Gypsy extermination; a favorite haven for Nazis' plunder and looted gold
LA Times: Bush surveillance "went beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program...encompassing additional secretive activities that created 'unprecedented' spying powers"
This revelation contradicts O'Reilly's consistent assertion that Bush's surveillance was limited to Al Qaeda and was essential to protecting America. In dogmatically defending this program, O'Reilly was helping Vice President Cheney keep this secret from the American people.
NY Times: CIA's "secret counterterrorism program" kept hidden from Congress for 8 years
Two to one this was Cheney's secret hit squad that carried out overseas assassinations that Seymour Hersh reported on a while back.
Hersh: “It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. ... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. … Congress has no oversight of it.”
Bush to Blair: "Eh, eh, maybe we can send up a U2 plane painted in UN colors to provoke Saddam"
More evidence that Bill O'Reilly has been lying and covering for these war criminals for 7 years in insisting poor Bush was misled by bad intelligence and that "everyone" thought Hussein had WMD.
Film Critic Ebert: O'Reilly Reminiscent of 1930s Fascist Father Coughlin "The same techniques were used during the late 1930s to study
another prominent voice in a war-era, Father Charles Coughlin. His
sermons evolved into a darker message of anti-Semitism and fascism, and
he became a defender of Hitler and Mussolini. In this study, O'Reilly
is a heavier and less-nuanced user of the propaganda devices than
Coughlin."
Thumbs up, Roger. We've been saying that for 7 years.--June 25, 2009
Mounting Fascist Violence Overwhelming O'Reilly
Ignores Murder by White Supremacist at Holocaust Museum for 32 Minutes into Show
O'Reilly: Other media decide reporting based on ideology, we decide based on what's important
O'Reilly, Town Hall's Carpenter Laugh at Cop Tasering 72-Year-Old Woman
And O'Reilly was to the left of Carpenter on this one.
O'Reilly: Now why would pro-choice women hide their faces on an "I am Dr. Tiller" Website?
Maybe because they're afraid that some murderous fascist inspired by your incessant hatemongering will shoot them dead, that's why, you stupid f**k.--June 11, 2009
Fascists get a little uncomfortable when a white supremacist Nazi murders a Holocaust Museum security guard.
O'Reilly, Megyn Kelly Whitewash Holocaust Museum Murder
This week O'Reilly brought on FOX "legal analyst" Megyn Kelly to help him downplay and dismiss the murder of the Museum security guard by Nazi James Von Brunn.
The verdict was predictable: the "lone nut" theory. Nothing more to see here, folks. Move along. What a waste of a human life. Perfunctory crocodile tears for the victim. Thank you, Megyn. Good job, counselor. You would have done beautifully at Stalin's Moscow Trials, Megyn.
The closest Kelly came to reality was a passing reference to Von Brunn's "lifetime of hate" and connections to white supramacist groups. If O'Reilly was truly a journalist and his sidekick a better legal investigator, they would have provided viewers a more fair and balanced report.
Missing from Kelly's "lifetime of hate" description was the specific tidbit that Von Brunn walked into the Federal Reserve Board in 1981 armed with a revolver, knife and sawed-off shotgun, with plans to kidnap Paul Volcker, then the chairman of the Fed. Perhaps if Kelly had done her job, she would have asked O'Reilly to explain how Von Brunn was able to possess guns after serving 6 years in prison for attempted violence against the government.--June 12, 2009
"....Largely unexplored in the media coverage of the attack on the Holocaust Museum is the extensive network of political links connecting the 88-year-old killer to much more officially 'respectable' right-wing circles.
"He has long-time connections to two prominent American fascists: Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby, and William Pierce, leader of the National Alliance, whose novel of race war in America, The Turner Diaries, is one the main white supremacist texts, frequently cited as an inspiration by individuals such as right-wing mass murderer Timothy McVeigh.
"Both Carto and Von Brunn backed the 1968 presidential campaign of George Wallace, the Alabama Democrat who ran as an independent pro-segregation candidate. Carto later founded the Populist Party, which ran national presidential campaigns in the 1990s, and supported the political campaigns of former KKK leader David Duke, who won the Republican nomination for governor of Louisiana during that period.
"According to a report in the Washington Post Thursday, Von Brunn regularly associated with a former Reagan White House aide, Todd Blodgett, in the 1990s and early 2000s. Blodgett was a co-owner of Resistance Records, which distributed racist music, but also worked as a paid informant for the FBI, an indication that the agency was well aware of Von Brunn’s return to fascist circles after his release from prison. One recent activity bringing Blodgett and Von Brunn together was a fundraiser in Arlington, Virginia to benefit the fascist organization in Britain, the British National Party."-- "American Nazi kills guard in attack on Holocaust Museum," Patrick Martin, 6/12/09
Walsh to O'Reilly: "I don't have blood on my hands, you have blood on your hands...Don't demonize me, my friend, or you'll be sorry"
I hope Walsh sues O'Reilly's ass, just like the 9/11 truther who is suing O'Reilly's cohort Glenn Beck for linking 9/11 truthers to Nazi killer Von Brunn.
While at times Joan Walsh's liberal politics prevented her from effectively responding to O'Reilly's demagoguery, she did show gumption and courage against the bully, refusing to let him intimidate her. After O'Reilly had Walsh on the defensive with his straw man, leading question, "Do you believe late term fetuses have any rights in this country?", Walsh rebounded by reminding O'Reilly that his writings were found in the car of liberal hater Jim David Adkisson, who shot people to death in a Tennessee church last year. Finding herself in the exchange, Walsh then nailed O'Reilly:
"And look, Bill, you crusaded against him [Dr. Tiller], he had been shot twice already, his clinic had been exploded, his place had been attacked, bombed, vandalized --
O'Reilly: "I'm sorry about that. I'm sorry about that. [No he's not. Like everything else regarding Tiller, this is perfunctory lip service, not genuine empathy.] But my constitutional right says, I can say what I say, you can what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. [emphasis added] You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero, when he killed late-term babies for casual reasons." [emphasis in original]
But he would never condemn Walsh for expressing her constitutional right to her opinion!
O'Reilly continues to do what he's paid for and does best--lie. Tiller never killed babies. Fetuses are not babies. They are not people if they are still in the womb. They are fetuses. And to directly, unambiguously answer the question which O'Reilly believes in his deluded mind trumps Walsh and all of Tiller's defenders--late term fetuses do not have legal rights. Females--and all other human beings who leave the womb and are born into this world--have legal rights.
Deepening crisis of capitalism causing ultrarightists to unravel
Fascist demagogues like Limbaugh and Beck call Von Brunn a leftist
Claim Hitler's National Socialist Party Proves He Was a Lefty too
Yeah, that's why the first thing Hitler did was imprison leaders of Socialist and Communist Parties, when they were mass workers parties. That's why 130,000 communists died in concentration camps. That's why Hitler immediately smashed the powerful trade union movement. That's why he blamed the Reichstag fire on the Communists. That's why Hitler told a German audience in 1933 that "Never, never will I depart from the task of eradicating from Germany Marxism and its accomplishments. One must be the victor here: either Marxism or the German people!"
That's why Hitler did all these things. Because he was a communist. And a socialist. And a fascist. His contemporary apostles--Glenn Beck comes to mind--are so politically disoriented they throw these terms around interchangeably, assuming they're audience is as historically ignorant as they are.
This is a pathetic, ahistorical attempt by today's fascist minded elements to deflect attention away from their own fascist propensities as manifestations of fascist violence are spreading like wildfire.
Clueless Letterman Allows Demagogic Palin to Pose as Defender of Women's Rights
Hey Letterman, if you can't do intelligent satire, shut the f**k up!
We don't need jaded unfunny liberal comics to make Palin look good and put wind in fascist sails. Palin can be mocked politically for vetoing funds for sex/ed programs and pushing abstinence; she can be attacked as a hypocrite for parading her kids in front of the nation, manipulating and exploiting them to advance her reactionary political agenda--then feigning victimization when her children are dragged into the political discourse, whining invalidly about a double standard vis a vis the Obama family.
Besides, we didn't hear Palin object when her running mate John McCain opined that Chelsea Clinton was so ugly that Janet Reno was her father.
O'Reilly on Fascist Border Vigilante Minutemen: "Talking Points applauds the Minutemen. They are in the great tradition of neighborhood watch groups"
Fascist, xenophobic vigilante groups like the Minutemen are not the kind of neighborhood watchdogs working people should have anything to do with. Minutemen are mortal enemies of the working class. Our kind of neighborhood watchdog group exists in Cuba in the form of the Committees in Defense of the Revolution--an organization form that flowed from the Cuban Revolution which toppled capitalism in that island nation.
Why Does Michael Savage Beat Out Bill O'Reilly Today as the Biggest Moron in the World?
Savage: Media Matters is "Stalinist"
I'm getting sick and tired of these fascist demagogic idiots throwing around terms they know nothing about. As if Stalin was big on sponsoring independent media watch groups to keep an eye on Pravda.
Hey, Savage, you and your friends O'Reilly and Beck were born in the wrong century. Back in the 1800s, you could have joined the Know Nothing Party and felt very much at home
Savage and O'Reilly slander Media Matters because the liberal watchdog group has the audacity to actually keep track of the hate, bile and lies they spew on a daily basis.
That's why Savage is using one of O'Reilly's tried-and true vigilante tactic: threatening to post the names and addresses of Media Matter employees so the more demented of his fascist fanatic followers will commit violence against those employees. It is a blatant attempt to intimidate Media Matters into refraining their exposes against Savage.
And the hits keep on coming from fascist media scumbags...
Turner: "Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions."
Turner said the 3 judges should be made "an example" of to send this message to the federal judiciary: "Obey the Constitution or die."
Turner then continued the inglorious tradition of his fellow media fascists like O'Reilly, Savage and Michelle Malkin--he posted the judges' photographs, phone numbers, and work addresses.
A reply to Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and all other extreme right wing capitalist ideologues who think Obama is a socialist:
A while back a COSMOS LEFT reader forwarded one of those right wing emails that can usually be instantly debunked by a quick fact check with Snopes.com. This one contained a statement allegedly made by the 20th century Socialist Party leader, Norman Thomas, that the Democratic Party had so successfully co-opted the Socialist program that the American people will adopt socialism unknowingly in the form of the Democratic Party. This historical "proof" is presented for the purpose of dovetailing with the erroneous claim that President Barack Obama is leading America down the path of socialism.
The quote is as follows:
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of 'liberalism,' they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nature without knowing how it happened."
He went on to say: 'I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democrat Party has adopted our platform.'
A while back, I read Eugene Debs: Citizen and Socialist, a biography of Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs, who received 1 million votes during the 1920 Presidential election while sitting in jail for opposing the first imperialist world war of the 20th century. Motivated and inspired by the fact that Debs received these votes as a Socialist, not as a liberal, I thought it would be a good time to reply to “WOW!!!!! Was Thomas a Prophet?”
First, the accuracy of the quote has not been independently and credibly confirmed. No surprise, given the political character and integrity of the disseminators. More likely it originated from a paraphrasing of either the 1951 letter that famed socialist author Upton Sinclair wrote to Thomas or Thomas’s response. Sinclair wrote, “the American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them.”
It appears that Ronald Reagan played a role in this fabrication when he falsely attributed the “American people will never knowingly adopt socialism…” quote to Norman Thomas without referencing it. But then facts were always stupid things to the Great Leader.
In the interests of clarifying the relationship between the Democrats and socialists and the confusion surrounding it, manifested in this delusion among ultraconservatives that Obama is a socialist, I’m going to analyze the alleged Thomas quote as if it were true.
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism.”
Do the "Obama is a socialist" morons think the 1 million Americans who voted for Socialist Party leader Eugene Debs while he sat in jail for opposing WW I did so knowingly?
“But under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
Since the Republicans are about to pass a resolution asking the Democrats to rename their party the “Democratic Socialist” Party, the time has come to clarify the confusion and ignorance so pervasive among many Republicans and conservatives, although before I do, it must be noted much of this is conscious, deliberate, desperate “red-baiting” tactics by a political organization in desperate straits. Republicans aren’t as dumb as they may sound.
There is no homogeneous, monolithic “socialism.” Instead, there are two principal socialist camps. One is the “democratic socialist” stripe [note the lower case “d”], sometimes known as reformist, or parliamentary, socialism. These folks believe that capitalism can peaceably reform itself, piecemeal, into socialism; that socialism can be voted into power without a socialist revolution; that the capitalist class will voluntarily allow itself to be nationalized, expropriated and confiscated by the working class; that the capitalists will without resistance allow the workers to seize and collectively own the means of production so that the economy will be set up for human and social need instead of the accumulation of private profit. In other words, democratic socialists ignore a little historical tidbit called the class struggle. Which is why their position is so bankrupt, and why the other major socialist tendency, or revolutionary socialists, have been battling the democratic socialists for many decades.
Make no mistake about it, we revolutionary socialists intend to win the majority of US workers away from their illusions in reforming capitalism and to the perspective and program of revolutionary Marxism. We don’t deny the class struggle that is unfolding all around us, and we’re more confident than we’ve been in a long time, because it’s becoming increasingly clear that capitalism cannot be reformed and peaceably evolve into socialism.
This axis of reformist and revolutionary socialism is reflected in the history of the four “communist international” movements that have existed since Marx and Engels first replaced utopian socialism with scientific socialism. In 1864, they founded the “First International,” also called the International Workingmen’s Association, in London, basing the international workers movement on the tenets of The Communist Manifesto written in 1848. But the First International, reflecting the infancy of the industrial working class, was primarily concerned with the initial organization of the toilers into unions.
In 1870, the Parisian workers gave the first historical confirmation of Marx and Engel’s theories when they seized power in the French capital and established the first workers government, called the Paris Commune. The Commune showed the world a glimpse of what workers rule would look like; it was the first Soviet government, at least in its embryonic form. But this workers rule was limited to Paris; the socialist revolution was not extended throughout France, and the French bourgeoisie was able to summon the powerful French army from the entire country and drowned the Paris Commune in blood.
This crushing defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871 led to the collapse of the First International in 1873.
The Second International got going around 1875 in Germany. In 1880, Belgian and German socialists called for an international socialist congress, which was held in 1881 and included delegates from Germany, France, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary and even the United States, where a PJ McGuire, General Secretary of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, represented the Socialist Labor Party of North America.
In 1889, another International Socialist Congress, this time represented by 20 countries, formally established the new Second International in Paris, formally embracing the principles of the 1864 International Workingmen’s Association. The Second International also became known as the Social Democracy—the genesis of the relationship between democratic and socialism. This retreat from openly acknowledging “communism” was a reflection of the historical defeat of the working class at the Paris Commune, as a kind of recoiling from the word was in play.
Over the next few decades the Second International, or the international Social Democracy, organized into political parties and among the working class in the fledgling unions. During this time Social Democrats split into right wing and left wing factions; the latter sticking close to Marx, Engels and revolution, while the former gravitated to the views of German Social Democrat Edward Bernstein. Bernstein, influenced by a short-term stabilization of the capitalist economy, argued that Marx was wrong and that capitalism could peaceably reform itself into socialism.
In 1903, the Russian Social Democracy split into two factions on the question of revolution—the Bolsheviks (Majority) and Mensheviks (Minority). In Germany, the most powerful capitalist country with the most powerful working class and Social Democracy, the split between Bernstein’s reformists and communists like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg deepened.
The onset of WW I in 1914 ended the conflict within the Second International, as the Social Democrats in one European nation after another voted to go to war against workers in other countries on behalf of their respective bourgeoisies. In other words, the Second International ceased functioning as a viable working class movement—it was dead. Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolsheviks said, “we’re out of here. Time for a Third International!” And out of the ashes of the imperialist world war, the Bolshevik’s led Russia’s workers and peasants to power. The Third International was born. Lenin renamed the party as the Russian Communist Party in a direct rebuke to the Social Democrats and the moribund Second International.
The Third International lasted only as long as Lenin and Trotsky’s leadership: 1917-1922. Stalin’s ascension to power meant the death of the Third International, because the petty bourgeois bureaucratic caste that he represented was counterrevolutionary and nationalist, while the proletarian leadership of Lenin and Trotsky was revolutionary and internationalist. Unlike Trotsky, Stalin claimed that socialism could be built in one country. This was his way of consolidating the privileges of the bureaucracy that he sat atop. Worldwide, Communist parties that were pro-Moscow subordinated the interests of workers and the goal of extending the socialist revolution to the dictates of Stalin; in short, they were class collaborationist, not revolutionary. Stalin formally dissolved the Third International during the 1930s, after liquidating the entire generation of Old Bolsheviks.
In 1938, Trotsky and his followers founded the Fourth International, after realizing as far back as 1933 that Stalin had accomplished a political counterrevolution in the Soviet Union, that the Communist Party was bankrupt and could not be reformed, that the Third International was dead as a revolutionary workers organization, and that a new international needed to be constructed.
This is not the forum to go into the history of the Fourth International, but to this day, revolutionary Marxists, revolutionary socialists, agitate under the banner of Trotskyism as we attempt to build an international revolutionary communist organization and solve the crisis of working class leadership.
Speaking of working class leadership, or more accurately, misleadership, brings us back to the Second International, to Social Democrats. When I said earlier that it was dead, I meant it had ceased functioning as a revolutionary, internationalist working class organization. Unfortunately, the Social Democrats of the Second International has continued to function as a pro-capitalist tendency that with the help of Stalinists has strangled socialist revolutions and sold out workers in struggles throughout Europe and the United States. This is the International of Norman Thomas, Upton Sinclair and even Eugene Debs. Debs was on a different level than the others, having led the 1894 Pullman Strike and supported the Bolshevik Revolution.
Unlike in the US, European Socialist parties are mass workers parties, but they are socialist in name only. Programmatically, they are class collaborationists, as are the pro-Moscow Communist Parties historically. In the US, the Socialist Party was much stronger in the early years of the 20th century; as late as 1920, as stated earlier, Debs received 1 million votes in the 1920 presidential election while sitting in jail for his socialist opposition to WW I.
In the ensuing years, under the impact of the Russian Revolution, the Socialist Party’s influence declined in the US, particularly among working people. During the powerful labor ups urge of the 1930s, it was the Stalinist Communists of the dying Third International and the Trotskyists from the embryonic Fourth that played key leadership roles in the most important strikes of 1934—Toledo auto workers, Minneapolis truckers, and San Francisco longshoremen.
But it’s also true that during the first 2 decades of the 20th century, the Socialist Party of the US enjoyed significant support from intellectuals and workers; the right wing of Berger and Hillquit favored the more conservative craft unionism, while the left wing of Debs oriented more toward industrial unionism, which allied him with the revolutionary syndicalists in the new union called the Industrial Workers of the World, or the IWW.
At this point, it is worth pointing out a few things. First, political parties represent economic classes. Second, for close to a century there have been 2 major capitalist parties in the US: Republicans and Democrats. This two party shell game has worked extremely well in ensuring a political monopoly for American capitalists. Now obviously, the Republican Party of Lincoln was a different animal than the Republican Party of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. Lincoln’s Republicans represented the industrial capitalists of the North at a time when they still had a progressive, even revolutionary role to play—crushing the Confederate slavocracy and unifying the nation under capitalist rule.
In those days, the Democrats were the more reactionary political institution.
But the Russian Revolution, the Great Depression and the mighty labor upsurge it spawned, and FDR’s New Deal completely changed the American political landscape. The division of labor had changed for the propertied ruling class. Now the Republicans were the party of big business, and the Democrats were more for the working class. But FDR was no more a socialist than Obama is. Like Obama, he was an enlightened political representative of capital who recognized that if substantial concessions were not given to the combative working class, a socialist revolution was possible. The Russian Revolution was still young, Stalin’s crimes were not yet known, and the US working class was mobilizing, fighting for its rights, breaking through the stranglehold of the AFL’s craft organizational framework and forging a mass industrial union, the CIO.
Every capitalist supporter should love FDR. Only the most hardened, dogmatic, and ignorant capitalist forces opposed FDR and called him a socialist. In fact, the most fascist minded of the capitalist elite actually plotted to stage a military coup against him in 1934. Today, it isn’t hard to fathom a military coup if Obama goes too far in challenging the military intelligence apparatus.
FDR had a lot of help in preventing a socialist revolution in the US. Both the democratic socialists of the Second International and the pro-Stalinist gravediggers of the Third International used their influence among US workers to derail the kind of politically independent working class movement that was sorely needed to go all the way.
Since the 1930s, the Socialists of the Second International and the pro-Moscow Communists have oriented toward the Democratic Party, an orientation that has included giving electoral support to the Democrats. The Socialists were motivated by their reformist political perspective and their fear of an independent workers movement. The Stalinists’ motivation was subordinating the workers’ interests to the wishes of Moscow, which sought to make deals with Washington, not extend the socialist revolution.
Both of these political tendencies practiced a common thread to keep working people trapped in capitalist politics. It is called class collaborationism. We are now witnessing the tragic, dead-end consequences resulting from decades of class collaborationism as we watch the auto bosses with the help of the White House and the UAW impoverish the auto workers.
This is the source of all the red-baiting directed against the Democratic Party. This is why you find democratic socialists and the entire Stalinist milieu tied to the “left wing” of the Democrats. This is why that photo of Che Guevera inside a Houston Obama campaign office showed up in one of those right wing e-mails last year. They have nowhere else to go. Their political perspective rejects independent working class political action. And that it precisely the job of the Democratic Party—to serve as a safety valve for political dissent, to keep workers trapped in the 2-party shell game.
But this does not make the Democratic Party a socialist party, because it does not change the pro-capitalist program of the Democrats or the class interests they serve. And it does not make Obama a socialist, either. If he were, Wall Street wouldn’t have bankrolled his candidacy. If he were, Wall Street wouldn’t still be backing him. Obama’s an enlightened, shrewd capitalist political leader. But he’s not a socialist. I’m a socialist. A revolutionary socialist, to be precise. I know socialists. And Barack Obama is no socialist.
An examination of Obama’s policies since he’s been president shows that above all else, Obama is a loyal servant of finance capital, every bit as committed to defending capitalist profits as Bush, only smarter, which is why most capitalists are with him. They know a loyal servant when they see one, just as I know a socialist when I see one.
Whether it’s the mortgage and credit crisis, dictating the bankruptcy of GM and dismantling of the auto industry, bailing out Wall Street, the massive war budget, credit card “reform,” everything Obama is doing helps finance capital exploit wage labor and makes workers pay the price for the crisis in the profit system. Socialists don’t loot 11 trillion dollars of the US Treasury to bail out Wall Street. Socialists wage 2 imperialist wars on behalf of US corporate hegemony. Socialists don’t fork over trillions to the private sector with no demands for the rich to sacrifice, while demanding autoworkers take steep cuts in wages and benefits.
One might object, “What about GM? What about the feds owning 60% of GM’s stock? Isn’t that socialism?”
No, it isn't. Because once the government can guarantee sufficient profits, it’ll sell the company back to private investors at a steal. Further, management of the company will remain in private hands. Socialists don’t allow that either. And socialists wouldn’t say what Obama just did: “What we are not doing—what I have no interest in doing—is running GM…will be run by a private board of directors and management team. They—and not the government will call the shots and make the decisions about how to turn this company around. The federal government will refrain from exercising its rights as a shareholder….In short, our goal is to get GM back on its feet, take a hands-off approach, and get out quickly.”
That is not the revolutionary socialist program. If Obama were a socialist, he’d mobilize the working class to nationalize the auto industry and convert it into a public utility to be run democratically by working people. He and his “socialist” Democratic Party would urge workers to form independent rank and file committees to coordinate an international fight back with autoworkers around the world. We don’t see Obama doing that. Because he’s not a socialist. He’s a capitalist politician driven to partially and temporarily nationalize GM due to the utter failure of GM and the free market.
Got that, all you teachers of bourgeois economics? Nationalizations, or partial nationalizations by the capitalists are qualitatively different than nationalizations by the working class under a revolutionary socialist leadership.
Let’s conclude by returning to the quote allegedly attributed to Norman Thomas. Obviously Thomas or someone else put those words together. Today they’re being used to taint Obama with the brush of socialism; the latest example of McCarthyite red-baiting. As a revolutionary socialist, let me dissect the quote made by someone posing as a Marxist.
“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”
A revolutionary socialist could never utter these words. We don’t engage in such deception and subterfuge. We openly proclaim our program to working people: a workers and farmers government that nationalizes, expropriates and confiscates the big capitalists, starting with the banks, finance capital, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, auto industry, mines, communications, transportation, big landlords and real estate moguls, polluters, etc, a workers and farmers government that will Institute a democratically planned economy; a workers and farmers government consisting of democratically run workers councils organized at the local, regional, and national levels; free, universal education, health care and pensions for all, cradle to grave; full employment at union wages; strengthening Roe v. Wade; strict separation of church and state; union-scale unemployment benefits for any workers temporarily displaced due to the transition economy; 100% tax on the super rich; no taxes on working people; workers control and workers management led by strong, independent rank and file union committees; a revolutionary government that will dismantle the imperialist military, including all 700 bases around the world, abolish its budget, and end all aid to Israel; unilateral nuclear disarmament; finally, this United Socialist States of America will coordinate with the international federation of socialist republics the transformation of the global economy along socialist lines—ending the profit system, creating a new society based on equality , producing and utilizing the planet’s resources to meet human needs rather than private profits.
This is our program. It is not the program of liberals; it could never be passed off as liberalism; and liberalism will never touch it with a ten-foot pole, let alone adopt every fragment of it. Revolutionary socialists will agitate, educate, organize and mobilize around this program until we will the strong majority of working people to its banner. And when this occurs, everyone will know how it happened.
I think it’s safe to say Obama will not be a part of this socialist revolution. Rather, he is an implacable foe of working people, a savvy capitalist politician with additional political capital due to his being the first African American president. The capitalist rulers love him because he’s the perfect politician to start dismantling Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, those dreaded programs that are “entitlements” and privileges to capitalists and fundamental human rights to most working people.
Since the 1970s, when long term profit rates began declining resulting in a deepening capitalist crisis, the entire axis of capitalist politics has shifted to the right, including liberals. Liberalism today is not our grandfathers’ liberalism.
Something else needs to be said about nationalizations, statism, government intervention to clarify this confusion regarding socialism and not just the Democrats but the other capitalist party, the Republicans, because as we’ve seen with Bush, the GOP is not immune to big government and bailouts either. And believe it or not, we can turn to none other than Karl Marx for this clarification.
Marx explained that the seeds of socialism would be planted in capitalism; that under the pressure of the contradiction between the social character of production and the private ownership of the means of production, the private sector’s profit accumulation, and production for private profit. Both the failure of the free market and the struggles of workers would force the capitalist government to begin socializing, grant concessions to workers, regulate the private sector, manage the money supply, etc. That is the source of unemployment insurance; Social Security; Medicare; Medicaid; and all the other components of the rapidly eroding “safety net” that right wingers hysterically describe as “socialistic.”
In a sense, they are right. These reforms under the capitalist system are the result of Karl Marx and socialism. The seeds of socialism are planted while capitalism is still around. Such is the dialectic of history.
This leads into some final words about the Marxist position on reforms, on the relationship between reform and revolution. While we are militantly opposed to reformism as a political strategy for workers, that is, the notion that the program of socialism can be voted into office, that capitalism can be abolished without a socialist workers revolution, this does not mean we are opposed to whatever reforms and concessions workers are strong enough to wrest from the capitalists and their government.
Revolutionary socialists are for every reform and every improvement that betters the lot for working people under capitalism. But we say honestly that capitalism has failed; that it cannot be reformed through the electoral process; that reforms are never enough, because the capitalists will always demand that we give back those reforms; that the Democratic Party is a capitalist party that will never evolve into a socialist party; that for our own survival we need a government that represents our class interests—a workers government.
To sum up: The Democratic Party, including Obama, is not socialistic. It is one of the two major capitalist parties in the US. Since the major political realignment of the 1930s, the division of labor between the two parties to ensure capitalist political hegemony is such that it falls to the Democrats to serve as a safety valve and dilute working class discontent in order to prevent workers from challenging the profit system. That's why Social Democrats and the Stalinists are actually agents of the ruling class, of imperialism.
To all supporters of capitalism and the free market: Fear not Obama, the Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers; fear not political representatives of the moribund Second International or the gravediggers of the Third International. They are your friends, your agents.
Fear instead revolutionary socialists, revolutionary Marxists, communists. Because contrary to what some crowed in 1990, history is not dead; the class struggle is not dead; Marxism is not dead. Its spectre haunts you still. Because the international working class is not dead. And we reds have not gone away.
Rightist fanatics like Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter and all fascist-minded ilk who think Obama's a socialist only reveal their own desperation, ignorance and fanaticism, and how unhinged, disoriented and demoralized they've become since the latest titanic failure of the free market and the election of not just a Democrat, but the first African American in the nation's history.
One final point. Norman Thomas was a pacifist. A revolutionary socialist cannot be a pacifist. We’ve always held that workers have the right to defend ourselves against the violence employed by the capitalists to defend their system of profit and privilege. As the class polarization accelerates and the class struggle heats up, socialist workers will organize a Red Guard to defend ourselves against the likes of Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller, and all the legions of fascist scum eager to be unleashed against a genuine socialist workers movement.--June 2009
One of O'Reilly's Biggest Targets Murdered
Late-term abortion doctor George Tiller Shot Dead in Church
O'Reilly's "Tiller the Baby Killer" Assassinated in Wichita
Two to one the killer was a loyal O'Reilly supporter.
"...And if the state of Kansas doesn't stop this man, then anybody who prevents that from happening has blood on their hands as the governor does right now, Governor Sebelius."--Bill O'Reilly, June 12, 2007
You have the blood of Dr. Tiller on your hands, O'Reilly. You helped create "...the moral climate in which a deranged individual or a fascist-minded terrorist would target Dr. Tiller for assassination..." as the World Socialist Web Site aptly put it. Just like the blood of every US soldier, every Iraqi, every Afghani is on your hands.
"If
I could get my hands on Tiller...Well, you know. Can't be vigilantes.
Can't do that. It's just a figure of speech."--Bill O'Reilly, Radio
Factor, 2006
COSMOS LEFT's been saying it for 8 years: Bill O'Reilly is the most dangerous man in America. In a just world, he would be sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labor, if he received a leniency that he would not deserve.
Just like Operation Rescue founder Randall Terry, O'Reilly will try to distance himself from Tiller's murder with perfunctory regret. But he will fool no "clear-thinking" American.
There is no "common ground" with these antiabortion fanatics. We don't need gutless, reactionary sermons from Obama that falsely equate those who would deny citizens their democratic rights and those who want to defend and extend them. There is no common ground between women's legal rights and doctors who provide abortion and those who want to murder them.
Obama repeated this travesty in his relatively obligatory statement on Tiller's murder that failed to condemn the murderer and his allies in the right wing media like O'Reilly and those fanatical Christian fundamentalists who advocate such violence and believe murder suspect Scott Roeder is a hero.
In her June 3 article, "The assassination of Dr. George Tiller," Kate Randall of the World Socialist Web Site writes:
"Like the Democratic Party as a whole, Obama is cowed by these forces. He is unwilling and unable to state the obvious: this noxious combination of political, religious and media organizations is incubating a home-grown fascist movement in America. [emphasis added]
And as COSMOS LEFT has been saying for more than 7 years, Bill O'Reilly has served as the godfather of that home-grown American fascist movement. That is why the Oh Really O'Reilly page of this site was begun in the first place. The World Socialist Web Site has been a remarkable source of Marxist analysis of the US political scene, but over the years it has underestimated Bill O'Reilly's role in cultivating that home-grown fascist movement. It was good to see O'Reilly made it into Randall's commentary:
"Bill O’Reilly of Fox News has ranted against Dr. Tiller dozens of times on his talk show, declaring him guilty of 'Nazi stuff' and warning ominously that he would face 'Judgment Day.'
"O’Reilly defended his attacks on Tiller in the aftermath of the doctor’s murder. Dismissing his critics, he wrote, 'Every single thing we said about Tiller was true.'
"The services provided by the Women’s Health Care Services clinic where George Tiller was medical director are protected by law and have been upheld by the US Supreme Court."
In O'Reilly's June 1 Talking Points Memo, "The Murder of Dr. George Tiller," O'Reilly tried to deflect blame for his own culpability in the murder by taking pot shots at his critics, including Tiller supporters and defenders of women's rights:
"...if these people were so compassionate, so very compassionate, so concerned for the rights and welfare of others, may they might have written something -- one thing -- about the 60,000 fetuses who will never become American citizens. Or am I wrong?"
Well, since you asked, yes, as usual, you are wrong. O'Reilly's wrong because unlike women's rights defenders and courageous physicians like Tiller, the Factor host elevates the rights of unborn fetuses over the rights of real live human beings.
O'Reilly and his new sidekick, Glenn Beck, the clown prince of the home-grown fascist movement, tried to deflect attention away from their culpability in Tiller's murder by equating his death with the murder of a military recruiter in Arkansas by a Muslim man furious over the million plus Muslims killed by the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
These two geniuses claim that since MSNBC routinely calls America a torture nation, one could argue that the station's anti-American coverage drove the Muslim man to murder; but since this is ludicrous, so are those connecting O'Reilly to Tiller's assassination. In other words, it's the lone nut theory in both incidents; case closed, no media inspiration involved in either murder.
There are a number of problems with this pathetic, despicable spin of O'Reilly and Beck's: a) MSNBC was one of hundreds of worldwide news outlets reporting the widespread and systematic torture by US forces against Muslims in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other prisons throught Iraq and Afghanistan; b) NBC and the rest of the corporate media were just as guilty as FOX News in helping Washington lie their way into Iraq and Afghanistan; c) NBC is helping Obama facilitate the ongoing violations of domestic and international law regarding illegal detentions, rendition, military tribunals, illegal domestic spying, "state secrets," and continued torture at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, etc; d) NBC did not specifically incite Muslims to kill US soldiers, unlike O'Reilly, who on multiple occasions incited violence against Tiller by calling him a baby killer, irresponsible talk of Judgment Day, a special place in hell for Tiller, and getting his hands on Tiller.
If anything, NBC has helped cover up the extent of the war crimes committed by the illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, including the extent of the casualties and victims of that aggression.
Major General Antonio Taguba has publicly accused the Bush administration of war crimes, including torture. Taguba has openly he has seen videos of US soldiers raping and sodomizing Iraqi detainees, male and female. General Patraeus recently said the US violated the Geneva Convention, civilian courts should try terrorist suspects, and Camp Gitmo should be closed.
Yet we don't hear O'Reilly attacking Taguba and Patraeus for weakening the US. No doubt because they aren't running programs alongside O'Reilly and competing for the night-time market.
O'Reilly tried to defend constantly calling Tiller a "baby killer" by saying it wasn't him saying it, that he was only "reporting" what anti-abortion groups were calling the doctor. Media Matters did a good job refuting this lie, documenting the multiple instances when it's quite clear the term "baby killer" is coming from Bill O'Reilly directly, not from his "reporting" what others were saying. Besides, in O'Reilly's own words, he's a commentator, not a reporter. --June 3, 2009
Working people should demand that the federal government defend every abortion clinic and provider in the United States. Washington should end all aid to Israel and immediately withdraw all military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and every one of the 700 plus bases around the world. Take that money and personnel to defend all abortion and Planned Parenthood clinics in the US.
While we make this principled demand on the federal government, we place no confidence in its ability or will to comply. Workers know that we have to begin preparing self defense against fascist outfits and individuals. As the class struggle heats up, a Red Guard will be formed for this purpose.--June 1, 2009
What if the new Torture Photos Show Prison Guards Raping Boys in Front of Their Mothers?
Seymour Hersh's report about young boys' bloodcurdling screams inside Abu Ghraib has been circulating for 5 years:
"The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above
all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your
government has. They are in total terror. It’s going to come out.” [emphasis added]
And
when it does, the US government and its apologists for torture,
particularly Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter,
Michael Savage, Lou Dobbs are really in trouble. These are the elements
that are endangering the lives of US soldiers.--May 24, 2009
US Ruling Class Cracking Up
Divisions Over Torture Tearing Apart US Political Establishment
Clueless
Pundits Wonder, "Why is Cheney hanging around?" "Why isn't he following
protocol on criticizing existing presidents?" "Why is he so actively
defending torture?"
Because
Richard Cheney is the head of the "state within a state," the military
intelligence complex that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of before
leaving office. And these are not ordinary times. Obama bows to the
military on torture, military tribunals and waging colonial wars
because he knows he's toast politically if he doesn't.
The
spectre of a military coup and dictatorship should not be dismissed.
Many Americans are not aware that a coup against FDR almost occurred in
1934. Right here in these United States.
Is Cheney's
"confessional tour" an attempt to prepare a political defense against
the eventual criminal indictments for the torture he authorized?
Perhaps, although legally everything he's admitting to can be used
against him.
But Cheney may not care about such matters. He may
have bigger things on his mind. His statements that Obama has weakened
the US against terrorist attacks may be a set-up to blame Obama for the
next 9/11 that Cheney may know is coming, precisely because he is the
head of the state within a state that either directed the 2001 attacks
or permitted them to occur.
Hey Cheney, you shut the f**k up
about keeping Americans safe and defending these shores. You were
responsible for the military stand-down that was in effect on September
11, 2001. You issued the order not to shoot down Flight 77 as it headed
for DC.
Cheney, his daughter, Obama, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck
and all the rest with blood on their hands can shut the f** up about
pretending to care about the safety of US armed forces. They are the ones who have put soldiers in danger by sending them to illegally invade and brutally occupy sovereign nations. They are the ones responsible for every soldier's death, including the 5 killed by John Russell at Camp "Liberty," Iraq.
You
care about them, Obama? Bring them home immediately. Otherwise, you and
all other representatives of the capitalist political establishment
should shut your mouths. You're polluting the air. Even Beck admitted
that.--May 17, 2009
And after O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh should get in line. Sean Hannity has already shown he's too cowardly to accept Keith Olbermann's challenge to be waterboarded.
O'Reilly accused the NY Times of "throwing around words like gruesome and brutal to describe water-boarding and cold rooms."
Okay, douchebag, put your mouth where the water is and prove it's not gruesome and brutal.
COSMOS LEFT hereby challenges O'Reilly to invite former Navy SEAL and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura on The Factor to debate whether waterboarding is torture. I don't O'Reilly has the balls.--May 23, 2009
O'Reilly--Chief Media Propagandist for US Capitalist State Violence
Mouthpiece for Capitalist Axis of Evil: US Military Torturers and US Cops
May 21, 2009--Whether it's US soldiers slaughtering civilians and blowing away wounded soldiers, or sadistic cops tasering victims and bashing their heads into cars, Bill O'Reilly is there to defend, apologize for, deflect away, all violence committed by the American capitalist state power, from Iraq to New York, from the imperialist war command to the most local level of capitalism's "armed bodies of men"--cops.
From "Hating America," Talking Points Memo, 5/19/09:
"....That vile organization [the ACLU] believes the USA is a bad place desperately in need of an overhaul. The ACLU sympathizes with The New York Times, but takes the situation much farther.
"If you don't believe me, consider what is happening here in New York City. Once riddled with violent crime, New York is now largely safe, thanks to aggressive policing instituted by Bill Bratton and Rudy Giuliani. Thousands of lives have been saved because the cops here are pro-active. They try to stop crime before it happens by keeping close tabs on the bad guys. From the jump the ACLU opposed that, insisting the police only be reactive, responding after the damage was done.
"Recently, the New York chapter of the ACLU filed a complaint against the police, charging they were stopping black people more than white people for questioning. The ACLU says this is bias, their usual charge. But a study by the Rand Corporation shows that 69 percent of New York City violent crime victims describe their assailants as black. Five percent are described by victims as white. So if you are investigating or trying to stop crimes, to whom would you be talking?"
Oh Really O'Reilly?
From "Ex cop publishes tell all book," Claudia Cruz, 4/29/09, The Queens Courier:
"New York’s Finest don’t look too fine in a new book launched this week by a former cop. Charlie Castro, an officer fired in 1998 after almost 18 years in uniform, has written a book entitled, NYPD BLUE Lies: The shocking true story of racism, corruption, cover-ups and murder in the NYPD, that unguardedly blames the department’s top brass for perpetuating a culture of discrimination against Black and Latino officers but also claims that the same attitude has been responsible for the death of many New Yorkers of minority descent like Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell.
" 'The last 30 people killed by the NYPD have been people of color,' said Castro, who lived in Astoria and worked in the 114, 103, and 115 Precincts. 'They treat Black and Latino police officers different than they do the white officers. They treat us like garbage. They way they treat people out on the street is even worse.' "
Cheney, O'Reilly Help Build Socialist Movement When They Drag Pelosi Down With Them
May 13, 2009--When Dick Cheney and Bill O'Reilly try to defend torture and their culpability for it by implicating House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the scandal, they are unwittingly proving revolutionary socialists' point--the entire US government and political establishment are guilty of war crimes! US workers need to break from the capitalist 2-party straitjacket by building a mass socialist party that will overthrow capitalism and establish a workers government.
Cheney: Waterboarding Saved Hundreds of Thousands of Americans
He's a liar. Cheney lied when he said Hussein had WMDs. He lied when he claimed Hussein definitely had nuclear weapons. He lied when he said Iraq was connected to 9/11; Mr. "Muhammed Atta Met Iraqi Spy in Prague"--Dick Cheney.
Cheney and Bush tortured to extract false confessions that Iraq was behind 9/11, and they tortured to break the Iraqi insurgency movement defending the country's sovereignty against an illegal foreigninvasion.
"...[Cheney] is a man with the closest ties to the military-intelligence apparatus..."
And Bill O'Reilly is the media whore with the closest ties to the military-intelligence apparatus.
Which makes Richard Cheney and Bill O'Reilly two of the most dangerous individuals in the US and mortal enemies of the working class.--May 13, 2009
No Limits to Lies O'Reilly Tells to Defend Capitalism
May 8, 2009--From the May 4th, 2009 Talking Points Memo insultingly and ironically entitled, "Why You Cannot Trust the American Press" [which, the last time I looked, Bill O'Reilly belongs to]:
O'Reilly: "In early March, reports out of Sacramento said a homeless camp featuring hundreds of people damaged by the recession was a very important situation..." O'Reilly next showed video clips of NBC's Matt Lauer, an unidentified male, and an NPR correspondent talking about the growing homeless rate that's accompanying the current severe recession.
O'Reilly then dismissed this fact as "bogus." His evidence? The following excerpt from The Economist that stated:
"The tent city had actually been around for close to a decade."
Proving only that homelessness did not start yesterday, you f***ing moron.
"There may have been a foreclosed homeowner or two among its denizens ... (but) almost all of the people there have problems with mental health, drug abuse, or both."
O'Reilly obviously doesn't consider people with mental health or drug abuse problems as human beings. In so doing, he's only revealing his own lack of humanity, another byproduct of his Catholic education, one might speculate. Too many raps on the knuckles, no doubt.
O'Reilly: "Again, it took a British magazine to tell the truth about a false story generated by the U.S. media. So you can see the propaganda on the wall."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Homelessness is not a false story generated by the U.S. media, and as we pointed out above, The Economist only confirmed its veracity. You can see the propaganda on the wall by listening to O'Reilly, who in his never-ending, dogmatic defense of the free market, is falsely denying that homelessness is a major problem in the richest capitalist nation on earth. To admit that homelessness exists in that nation would conceded that the richest capitalist society cannot meet society's basic needs.
From an article entitled "Economic Casualties Pile Into Tent Cities" by Emily Bazar in the May 5th edition of USA Today:
"...The unemployed Detroit autoworker [Jim Marshall] moved to Florida last year hoping he'd have better luck finding a job. He didn't, and he spent three months sleeping on sidewalks before landing in a tent city in Pinellas County, north of St. Petersburg, on Feb. 26.
"Marshall is among a growing number of the economic homeless, a term for those newly displaced by layoffs, foreclosures or other financial troubles caused by the recession. They differ from the chronic homeless, the longtime street residents who often suffer from mental illness, drug abuse or alcoholism." [emphasis added]
"....Tent cities and shelters from California to Massachusetts report growing demand from the newly homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness predicted in January that the recession would force 1.5 million more people into homelessness over the next two years. Already, 'tens of thousands' have lost their homes, Alliance President Nan Roman says...."
"'We're hearing from shelter providers that the shelters are overflowing, filled to capacity,' says Ellen Bassuk, president of the National Center on Family Homelessness. 'The number of families on the streets has dramatically increased.'
"Pinellas Hope, the tent city run by Catholic Charities here since December 2007, has been largely for the chronically homeless, some of whom suffer from mental illness or struggle with drugs or alcohol.
"About 20% of its 240 residents became homeless recently because of the economic downturn, says Frank Murphy, president of Catholic Charities, Diocese of St. Petersburg.
"'We're seeing a change in the population. … We're seeing a lot more that are just plain losing their jobs and their homes,' says Sheila Lopez, chief operating officer of the charity. 'A lot are either job-ready or working but have lost their home because they were laid off, or their apartment, and now can't go to work because they're not shaven, they're not clean, they're living in a car, or they're living on the street.'"
Bazar then gave examples of other communities throughout the US experiencing similar problems, including Massachusetts, where a record number of homeless families need emergency shelter; Reno, where officials closed a tent city in October after making more shelters available, only to find new tent cities appearing along the nearby Truckee River, according to Kelly Marschall of the Reno Area Alliance for the Homeless, who testifies that "a startling number of first-time homeless" have emerged, many from construction, the housing industry, and real estate. "There was a direct correlation to the housing market crash." [emphasis added]
O'Reilly: "These days we can't believe what we hear or read."
Exactly. Especially when we're hearing or reading Bill O'Reilly.
Bill "Looking Out for the Folks" O'Reilly Reveals his Contempt for Them
Asks "How Dumb Are We Americans?" in Talking Points Memo
When Bush was president, Americans were fair-minded and reasonable. With Obama as president, Americans are dumb in the No-Spin Zone. No, you're not a partisan Republican, O'Reilly. You're fair and balanced. It shows up in a sampling of recent Talking Points Memo titles, such as "Open Season on the Republican Party"; "How the Republican Party Can Make a Comeback"; "Can the Republicans Find a Leader?"; "Is President Obama Up to the Job?" and my favorite, "Is President Obama Selling Out America?"
What prompted O'Reilly to ask the question "How Dumb Are We Americans?" were Rasmussen poll results that showed only 31% think Obama is a liberal.
O'Reilly: "According to the data, 34 percent of Americans strongly approve of the president's job performance, while 32 percent strongly disapprove. So that's why the debate over Barack Obama is so raucous. He may be a popular guy, but the country remains divided on the job deal."
Already he's spinning and distorting. Figures don't lie but liars can figure. The country remains divided on the job deal? Obama's overall approval ratings are in the low 60s, considered high by historical standards. O'Reilly tried to obfuscate that fact by comparing 34% versus 32%, that is, it's a wash. But that's comparing strongly approving and strongly disapproving, not his overall approval rating.
In truth, one can argue that a measure of Americans' political backwardness was when 70% of Americans thought Iraq was linked to 9/11, long after that had been proven wrong. FOX News, led by Bill O'Reilly, was principally responsible for this confusion due to the daily bombardment of propaganda emanating from its airwaves.
O'Reilly then announces the finding that 73 percent of Americans now expect government spending to rise. Big surprise, given that government spending, fueled largely by military expenditures and paying interest on the national debt to rich bondholders, has been rising for decades, skyrocketing under Obama's predecessor.
O'Reilly criticizes the 31% of Americans who believe Obama is a moderate, not a liberal.
"President Obama really believes the federal government has an obligation to insure a certain quality of life for everyday Americans."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
After just 3 months in office, the one thing that Obama really believes is that the federal government has an obligation to insure the survival and profits of finance capital. His intervention in the auto industry crisis revealed what he has in store for the rest of the working class--slashing wages, pensions and jobs. His policy of giving trillions of taxpayers' m oney to Wall Street is another example of w hose side Obama is on.
O'Reilly: "He really believes he can convince the world to help us fight evil people by using logic and reason."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Any Capitalist Who Doesn't Support Obama is an Idiot
Any US Worker Who Does Support Multimillionaires Limbaugh, Beck Has Confused Class Consciousness
Note: In a historical novel being written about the early days of the coming US socialist revolution, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Mark Stehn, among others are shot by firing squads after being convicted by revolutionary workers tribunals.
Military Training Agency's 2002 Documents Prove O'Reilly Wrong on Torture Joint Personnel Recovery Agency Warned Pentagon's Top Lawyer: Methods used are "torture" Waterboarding is "unreliable"
CIA Inspector General: No proof waterboarding "or other harsh interrogation techniques" stopped any "specific imminent attacks"
O'Reilly cherry picks National Intelligence Director Blair's Views on Torture In his April 22 Talking Points Memo, O'Reilly quoted this excerpt from Blair's April 16 statement:
"High value information came from interrogations in which (harsh) methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the Al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country ... I do not fault those who made the decisions at the time ..."
But O'Reilly left out another part of Blair's statement:
"Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear
graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both
CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those
techniques in the future. I like to think I would not have approved
those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the
decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried
out the interrogations within the orders they were given." [emphasis added]
O'Reilly also failed to mention what Blair said in a clarifying letter the next day in the NY Times:
"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some
instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information
could have been obtained through other means.... The bottom line is these
techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have
done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and
they are not essential to our national security."
[emphasis added]
Now COSMOS LEFT is no supporter of Blair, who is an enemy of US working people. We do not share the political perspective contained in the above excerpt. We print this quote not to endorse every facet of the politics contained in the statement, but to reveal O'Reilly's dishonest and unprincipled "journalism."
In Same Talking Points, O'Reilly Also Cherry-picks Polls to Falsely Claim Most Americans Back Him on Torture
From that same April 22, 2009, Talking Points Memo, "Presidential Leadership and the Interrogation Controversy":
"According
to a new FOX News/Opinion Dynamics poll, most Americans want tough
interrogations of top terror killers. When asked if they would support
using torture on Usama bin Laden to get information, 56 percent say
they favor doing that, including 42 percent of the Democrats polled.
Thirty-nine oppose. So there is little doubt that most Americans
believe, in rare cases, tough interrogation is necessary."
First,
like most FOX News/Opinion Dynamics polls, this one is not credible
because the questions are loaded, crafted in a way to generated desired
results. Second, bin Laden cannot be tortured because he's probably
dead and has been for years. Third, US torture was not confined to
"rare cases" or "top terror killers." It was widespread, systemic, and
specifically authorized by Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld. It is
clear that many innocent and mentally ill detainees, like Abu Zubaydah,
were subjected to the torture ordered by the highest levels of the US
government.
O'Reilly posits the FOX poll as if it's the only
barometer of the country on the issue. Let's see if he reports on the
latest Washington Post/ABC poll, taken from April 21 to April 24, which
showed a majority backing Obama's decision to release the Justice
Department memos, 53% to 47%. Americans are split down the middle on
Obama's position that Washington will never use torture: 49% agreed,
while 48% believe it should be considered in O'Reilly's "rare cases."
Further, 51% support an investigation of Bush on torture; 47% are
opposed.
Many Americans have been influenced [terrorized] by the "ticking bomb", Jack Bauer 24
scenario. The poll numbers have been zigging and zagging for the last 5
years on the issue. The issue of torture as a state policy gets to the
heart of which class should hold the reins of society--the capitalists
or working people. Americans are learning every day about the moral
caliber and character of the capitalist government lording over us. Our
position on torture is evolving. We will be further influenced by the
pending release of new photographs depicting the abuse that was
conducted in the name of the people of the United States.
But
the principal, and principled response to O'Reilly's cherry-picking of
polls is this: it doesn't matter if 20% or 80% say they support abuse
and torture. Torture is illegal under US and international law. Period.
More Cherry-picking by Bill O'Reilly
From the April 24 Talking Points Memo entitled, "President Obama Does the Right Thing":
"With
polls showing nearly 60 percent of Americans do not want a witch hunt
surrounding the Bush administration's anti-terror policies, President
Obama now says he is not supporting an investigation."
It's not
about a witch hunt. It's about enforcing the law. You do the crime, you
do the time. Ask your friend Dog the Bounty Hunter, O'Reilly. And they
weren't "Bush's anti-terror policies." They were Bush's pro-terror
policies, in that the torture he authorized consisted of acts of
terror which also swelled the ranks of terrorists looking to strike
back. Bush, Cheney, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Beck, Ingraham, Malkin and
their ilk have endangered the lives of Americans.
Let's get back to the Post/ABC poll that directly contradicts the above-quoted O'Reilly statement. To the contrary, that poll found that nearly 60% of Americans believe torture should never be used, no matter the circumstances.--April 27, 2009
Each passing day reveals Factor host's sadism and lack of humanity O'Reilly should do time for his role in facilitating torture
As evidence grows that Bush administration ordered and directed torture, And the pressure mounts to indict Bush and fellow torturers for war crimes, O'Reilly's ties to this torture become clearer, Reducing him to repeat mantra: "Harsh interrogation techniques" worked! They prevented attacks and kept us safe for 7 years!
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Exactly which attacks are you referring to?
O'Reilly: "The LA Airport!"
He means the alleged Al Qaeda plot to crash a plan into the LA Library Tower--another fairy tale concocted by Washington that was discredited years ago by military and intelligence officials, one of whom claiming Bush was "full of shit" when he announced it on February 9, 2006. Back then the government claimed the information was gleaned from electronic surveillance. Today it came from the CIA's torture. These liars make things up as they go along. This was one of the plots "confessed" to by Khalid Sheik Mohammad under torture, which included threats that his wife and children would be tortured unless he told the CIA what they wanted to hear.
Another small problem with O'Reilly's thesis: The "LA attack" was "disrupted" in 2002. Mohammad wasn't captured until 2003.
O'Reilly: "[the, the, the] Brooklyn Bridge!"]
Oh Really O'Reilly? You mean the "plot" that was tortured out of Abu Zubaydah based on the Godzilla movie, when the monster trashes the Brooklyn Bridge?
Information from torture is unreliable. People being tortured will say anything to make the agony stop. Torture doesn't work. And it doesn't matter. It's illegal under US and international law. Period.
O'Reilly Still Denies Waterboarding is Torture
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Then how come the US prosecuted Japanese soldiers for committing the very offense against US personnel? How come Washington prosecuted US soldiers for waterboarding North Vietnamese prisoners? How is it possible waterboarding was used in the Spanish Inquisition? You know, the Inquisition that tortured.
You're in good company, O'Reilly. Pol Pot thought waterboarding was effective, too.--April 25, 2009
Hey O'Reilly, Bush didn't torture to prevent another attack
Bush tortured to extract false confessions connecting Iraq to 9/11
Which is no surprise, given the fact that according to Senator Carl Levin's comment on the Senate Armed Services Committee report just released, US torture techniques were based on tactics used by the Chinese against American soldiers during the Korean War in order to elicit "false confessions for propaganda purposes."
O'Reilly Parrotted Powell's Lie, but Never Reporter Tortured Detainee's Retraction
April 26, 2009--While the waterboarding of Mohammed and Zubaydah 266 times failed to give Bush the desired result that linked al Qaeda and Iraq, Ibn al Sheikh al Libi gave the torturers what they wanted after he was repeatedly beaten and confined to a small box for 17 hours: he "confessed" that Saddam Hussein had trained al Qaeda in chemical weapons. Al Libi subsequently retracted this torture-induced confession, and even the CIA would reject it as unreliable. But that didn't stop then Secretary of State Colin Powell from telling the UN Security Council in February 2003: "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al-Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story."
Mohammed Waterboarded 183 times in March 2003; Zubaydah waterboarded 83 times in August 2002
CIA agents waterboarding Zubaydah told Agency it was not working; Washington replied: "keep doing it"
Little wonder the CIA destroyed 92 tapes of these "interrogations"
O'Reilly
keeps saying only "far-left loons" oppose torture, ignoring lawyers and
military, intelligence and FBI interrogators who quit in disgust
O'Reilly should listen to his FOX News colleague, Shepherd Smith.
Finds Ward Churchill fired for political reasons, that is, O'Reilly's McCarthyite campaign against him
With a straight face, O'Reilly parrots university's lie that Churchill was terminated for academic misconduct and plagiarism
As law professor Stanley Fish wrote in his blog, " 'I had read the committee’s report and found it less an indictment of
Churchill than an example of a perfectly ordinary squabble about
research methods and the handling of evidence. The accusations that
fill its pages are the kind scholars regularly hurl at their polemical
opponents. It’s part of the game. But in most cases, after you’ve
trashed the guy’s work in a book or a review, you don’t get to fire
him. Which is good, because if the standards for dismissal adopted by
the Churchill committee were generally in force, hardly any of us
professors would have jobs.'"
From the World Socialist Web Site: "The jurors were clearly able to overcome any lingering prejudice
against the ponytailed former professor, engendered by the rabid media
campaign led by right-wing TV pundits like Bill O’Reilly. Their
decision demonstrates a willingness to stand up for basic democratic
rights that is both courageous and encouraging."--Patrick Martin, WSWS, April 9, 2009
May these victories by Churchill and Franken accelerate O'Reilly's eternal appointment with his grave.
While CNN shills for Obama, FOX shills for Tea Parties
After watching Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham condemn CNN reporter Susan Roesgen for arguing with a Chicago Tea Party protester on behalf of Obama, there was a Media Matters video of FOX Business' Cory Willard covering Boston's Tea Party, whining, "Guys, when are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating this country?"--April 15, 2009
US Imperialism's Chief Media Propagandist Threatens Spain with Boycott if 6 Bush Aides Indicted for Torture
There are no peoples on this planet whom Bill O'Reilly is not itching to inflict pain on behalf of Wall Street.
O'Reilly: "The president says he wants to improve
the USA's image in the world. So he must stand up against Spain, which
wants to damage America."
America was damaged by the illegal torture authorized by US government officials. If anything, Spain wants to help America become a stronger capitalist leader in the world by reversing the lawlessness of the Bush administration.
"The Spanish government will soon decide
whether or not to formally investigate former Attorney General Alberto
Gonzalez and other members of the Bush administration for human rights
crimes.
"Of course, this is an outrage, a
transparent attempt to put the USA on trial and make us the villain in
the terror war. It also diverts attention away from the true evil:
Muslim fascist killers."
There's nothing transparent about it. Spain's lawyers want to put not the USA on trial, but the rogues and war criminals who violated international law by authorizing torture. It is O'Reilly who is trying to divert attention away from the true evil: the US imperialist war machine, which has slaughtered far more innocent people than "Muslim ... killers". Fascism has nothing to do with any variant of Islamic fundamentalism.
"It is time for President Obama to state his
objection to Spain's intrusion, just as he stated he does not want a
witch hunt against the Bush administration here in the USA. Mr. Obama
should be forceful with Spain. His job is to protect Americans, even
those who worked in the Bush administration. Silence is not an option
here, Mr. President."
Obama's job is to enforce US laws and ensure Washington's adherence to international law. His job is not to protect American officials who violated those laws. Obama's already a war criminal for not prosecuting the Bush administration and for presiding over the abuse that continues at Guantanamo, Cuba and Bagram, Afghanistan.--April 15, 2009
They're coming for you next, O'Reilly
Spanish Court May Indict Bush Officials for Enabling Torture
The court's going after former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez, former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, and Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, along with Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.
Spanish law permits prosecution of torture and war crimes outside of its territory because they involve universal principles of human rights. It's embarrassing to the United States, and in particular Barack Obama, that another nation has more respect for international law and common decency than his government. Obama, in fact, is now an obstacle to the prosecution of Bush, Cheney, Rice and other high ranking governmental officials. Obama himself is now a war criminal.
But let's get back to O'Reilly, who's foaming at the mouth over the announcement by the Spanish court and expressing the US capitalists' humiliation over the fact that former officials have to worry about traveling abroad. O'Reilly should be losing sleep at night too. He was not just another journalist enthusiastically endorsing torture as a policy. He was an integral part of the governmental machinery that practiced torture. As we stated 5 years ago in discussing a World Socialist Web Site article by David Walsh, the Nuremberg principles apply to Bill O'Reilly just as they did to Nazi media propagandist Hans Fritzsche.
Substitute O'Reilly for Fritzsche in this excerpt from the Nuremberg prosecutor's summary, and you get a sense of why O'Reilly should be losing sleep:
"Fritzsche
is not in the dock as a free journalist but as a propagandist who
helped substantially to tighten the Nazi stranglehold over the German
people, who made the excesses of the conspirators palatable to the
German people, who goaded the German nation to fury and crime against
people they were told by him were subhuman.
“Without
the propaganda apparatus of the Nazi State, the world would not have
suffered the catastrophe of these years, and it is because of
Fritzsche’s role in behalf of the Nazi conspirators, and their
deceitful and barbarous practices, that he is called to account before
the International Military Tribunal.
“For
the correct definition of the role of defendant Hans Fritzsche it is
necessary, firstly, to keep clearly in mind the importance attached by
Hitler and his closest associates (as Goering, for example) to
propaganda in general and to radio propaganda in particular. This was
considered one of the most important and essential factors in the
success of conducting an aggressive war."
In Nazi Germany, “propaganda
was invariably a factor in preparing and conducting acts of aggression
and in training the German populace to accept obediently the criminal
enterprises of German fascism. ...
“For
the correct definition of the role of defendant Hans Fritzsche it is
necessary, firstly, to keep clearly in mind the importance attached by
Hitler and his closest associates (as Goering, for example) to
propaganda in general and to radio propaganda in particular. This was
considered one of the most important and essential factors in the
success of conducting an aggressive war.”
In
Hitler’s Germany, the reply to the verdict continues, “propaganda was
invariably a factor in preparing and conducting acts of aggression and
in training the German populace to accept obediently the criminal
enterprises of German fascism. ...
“The
basic method of the Nazi propagandistic activity lay in the false
presentation of facts. ... The dissemination of provocative lies and
the systematic deception of public opinion were as necessary to the
Hitlerites for the realization of their plans as were the production of
armaments and the drafting of military plans. Without propaganda,
founded on the total eclipse of the freedom of press and of speech, it
would not have been possible for German Fascism to realize its
aggressive intentions, to lay the groundwork and then to put to
practice the war crimes and the crimes against humanity. In the
propaganda system of the Hitler State it was the daily press and the
radio that were the most important weapons.”
O'Reilly better be looking for a high-priced attorney, one that will pauperize him hopefully. Because it'll take more than Andrea Macklin-type hush money to save his hide this time.--March 30, 2009
Think Progress Turns Tables on O'Reilly's "Ambush Journalism"
Supporters convince UPS to quit being O'Reilly advertiser
This after O'Reilly's punk producer, Jesse Watters stalked, harassed and ambushed Think Progress managing editor Amanda Terkel after she had the audacity to question a rape survivor group's decision to pick O'Reilly to speak at a fundraiser given his well-documented history of insulting rape victims and blaming them for their plight.
Regarding the rape and murder of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore, O'Reilly called her "moronic" for wandering the streets of New York drunk late at night before adding "She ...was wearing a miniskirt and a halter top with a bare midriff. Now, again, there you go. So every predator in the world is gonna pick that up at 2 in the morning."
And then O'Reilly and Watters have the balls to accuse Terkel of causing "pain and suffering" to rape victims and their families. She did no such thing. Neither was she attacking the Alexa Foundation. She was attacking Bill O'Reilly for his insensitive, insulting remarks. COSMOS LEFT, however, is attacking the Alexa Foundation for poor judgment in picking O'Reilly as a speaker.
The following is the text of the email press release issued by UPS:
"Thank you for sending an e-mail expressing concern about UPS
advertising during the Bill O’Reilly show on FOX News. We do consider
such comments as we review ad placement decisions which involve a
variety of news, entertainment and sports programming. At this time, we have no plans to continue advertising during this show."
Since O'Reilly's been giving so much air time to fellow ultrarightist Glenn Beck, COSMOS LEFT will be focusing its fire on this latest Fox News fascist.
Beck: "I'm a rodeo clown...if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot"
No argument here.
But don't let that self-deprecating buffoonish demeanor fool you. Glenn Beck is every bit as dangerous as Bill O'Reilly, obviously out to take the fascist torch from the aging The Factor host.--March 30, 2009
Glenn Beck on 9/11 victims' families:
"You know, it took me about a year to start hating the 9/11
victims' families. It took me about a year. Um, and I had such
compassion for them and I really, you know, I wanted to help them, and
I was behind -- let's give them money, let's get them started, and all
of this stuff. And I really didn't -- all the 3,000 victims' families,
I don't hate all of them, I hate about, probably about ten of them. But
when I see 9/11 victim family, you know, on television, or whatever,
I'm just like, 'Oh, shut up.' I'm so sick of them. Because they're always complaining. And we did our best for them. And again, it's only about ten." [emphasis added]
You can bet that included in Beck's ten were Kristen Breitweiser, Mindy Kleinberg, Lorie Van Auken and Patty Casazza, the "Jersey girls," who didn't buy the government/media's official explanation of 9/11 and pressured Washington to establish the 9/11 commission. These courageous ladies earned Beck's wrath precisely because they didn't swallow the establishment's fairy tale hook, line and sinker.
Beck's hateful remarks were part of a broader tirade against New Orleans' Katrina victims, in which he called those abandoned "scumbags."
As an ultranationalist, flag-waving, jingoistic patriotic scoundrel, Beck hates 9/11 survivors families and Katrina victims because they illuminate the failures and bankruptcy of US capitalism, which is all Beck really cares about. The unfolding decline of US capitalism and its empire is what is behind Beck's creepy weepy whining that is rapidly becoming his journalistic "schtick."
Beck's recent tribute to Beverly Eckert, the 9/11 widow who was killed in that Buffalo plane crash, means nothing and did equally zilch to erase his scurrilous attack on 9/11 families.
Beck: Our government is marching toward socialism
Beck: "I was wrong. Our government is not marching down the road towards communism or socialism...they're marching us to a brand of non-violent fascism...towards 1984"
"I'm a rodeo clown...if you take what I say as gospel, you're an idiot"
Workers should be wary of this admitted rodeo clown. Obama's a socialist, a communist, oops, wrong turn, now he's marching toward fascism. Beck will never be accused of being the brightest bulb in the room. He's here, he's there, he's everywhere, he's nowhere. He throws terms around and he has no idea what the fuck he's talking about.
O'Reilly disputing Beck's contention US moving toward fascism:
"My personal freedoms...have not been impugned at all..."
Of course not, you idiot. You're not trying to exercise democratic rights to organize resistance against capitalist policies of war and repression. You are a fascist-minded demagogue. The capitalist rulers do not want to muzzle you. They want you to have as much freedom as possible to mislead and disorient working people!
Beck the Hypocrite: With a Democrat in power, he rails against the government's plans for FEMA concentration camps. Back in 2006, he was agreeing with extreme rightist David Horowitz that the US military should be used against domestic enemies who posed a "physical threat."
Beck, O'Reilly Distort US History to Advance Their Rightist Defense of US Capitalism
Utter disgrace how Fox News gives these two morons a platform to disorient viewers on the Founding Fathers and the history of our country
Beck: total government on one side, socialism, fascism, communism on one side; no government on other side
The Founding Fathers were close to anarchy, the Articles of Confederation didn't work, and they moved slightly toward big government.
Following Beck's twisted logic, the Founding Fathers were the first to put America on the road to fascism.--April 4, 2009
April 5 Update:
Well, well, well. We found this You Tube clip in an article entitled "Complaints Flood CNN After Beck Smears Ron Paul Supporters as Terrorists." The video shows a FEMA official telling local cops in July 2001 that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Paul Revere and the rest of the Founding Fathers were terrorists.
They were revolutionaries and freedom fighters. One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist. Which is not an endorsement of terrorism. Marxism has nothing to do with terrorist attacks like 9/11. They are despicable, reactionary, and only serve the interests of imperialism. Marxism is about mobilizing the working class to fight for a workers government, not killing scores of innocent civilians with cowardly 9/11-type attacks, most of which are the work of imperialist intelligence agencies anyway.
Rasmussen Poll Shows Americans Viewing Socialism More Favorably
Before Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh and O'Reilly and FOX Nation get too
giddy over Tea Bag Day, they should mull over the results of a recent
poll by Rasmussen Reports, which found that just 53% of Americans think
capitalism
is the best system; 20% favor socialism; and 27% are undecided. Even
more ominous for the rabid anticommunists are Rasmussen's results for
Americans under 30: 33% prefer capitalism, 33% favor socialism, and 30%
are undecided.
What
makes these results particularly remarkable is the fact that Scott
Rasmussen, the founder of Rasmussen Reports, is a conservative
ideologue who once wrote a column for ultraconservative website
WorldNetDaily, supports privatizing Social Security and is cozy with
the rightist, libertarian think tank, Cato Institute.
Given the lack of a socialist movement in the US, the paucity of
knowledge about socialism, and the decades of anticommunist propaganda,
FOX Nation and its little band of imperialist mouthpieces should be
running scared. Conditions have never been better for building a mass
socialist party.--April 19, 2009
2001 Socialist Article on McVeigh Describes April 15 Tax Protest to a "Tea"
"Certain sections of the petty bourgeoisie—from the ranks of small
businessmen, middle managers, civil servants, professional
employees—particularly in the decaying industrial states, and
disoriented, disaffected working class youth like McVeigh, deprived of
a relatively secure life in the factory by economic dislocation, come
together out of desperation and frustration. In the final analysis,
fascism involves the whipping up of the disoriented petty bourgeoisie
against the working class in the interests of big capital."
This is a more accurate description of the Tea Bag protests than all of
the commentary and analysis from FOX, CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS and the rest.
O'Reilly asks: is Obama selling out America pursuing "global justice jihad"?;
is fear
driving Obama's numbers down? [maybe among some working people, but
Wall Street is loving Obama now that they see every policy coming from
this president puts their class interests first]
O'Reilly
quotes Danish leader, "must develop new progressive ways to achieve
global justice, Karl Marx could not have said it better; global justice
requires one world government seize private property, distribute it so
that everyone has the same amount of resources; Moros, Reid, Pelosi,
Sanders, Poedesta, does Obama want global justice? is he down with
jihad? no hard evidence, but hasn't repudiated it either, til he does,
speculation will rage!
[also wants to lessen power of America, sign up for one world combine of governance"]
O'Reilly: "Some conservative pundits believe Obama is a "star chamber guy"--a man who secretly wants to turn America into a progressive country modeled on western Europe"
Another example of a bourgeois ignoramus throwing around terms he knows nothing about, despite his Harvard education.
Webster's
defines "star chamber" as follows: "a court existing in England from
the 15th century until 1641; characterized by secrecy and often being
irresponsibly arbitrary and oppressive."
Hey, Mr. Harvard, that more accurately describes Bush's military tribunal framework that you passionately supported.
Think
O'Reilly and Beck will attack Richard Poplawski, the white supremacist
who just killed 3 Pittsburgh cops, with the same passion that
accompanied their tirade against Lovelle Mixon, the Oakland parolee who
killed 4 Oakland cops?
Not in O'Reilly's history
O'Reilly's Historical Ignorance Exposed Again
April 23, 2009--Once again, Bill O'Reilly has demonstrated the benefits of his Harvard education. During his debate with Alan Colmes on the propriety of Obama talking with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the following exchange occurred:
Colmes: "What do you, ignore somebody standing right next to you? Do we -- because he touched him, put his hand on his shoulder, shook his hand? Do these people have a problem with Mao and Nixon? And of course, you worked for Richard Nixon. I mean, Nixon goes to China, do you have a problem with -- "
O'Reilly: "It was Zhou [China's then Prime Minister] and Nixon. Mao was not involved."
Colmes: "There was -- "
O'Reilly: "Yeah, Zhou....All right, but -- OK, all of those are valid points, as long as you realize it was Zhou Enlai, not Mao Zedong."
Take a look at the photo to the right.
Another historical lie brought to you by the same clown who once turned history on its head by claiming it was US soldiers who massacred German prisoners at Malmedy during World War II. Oh Really O'Reilly exposed that historical lie in an article entitled, "O'Reilly Defames WWII American Soldiers: While Defending Abu Ghraib Torture, O'Reilly Accuses 82nd Airborne of Nazi War Crime," an essay found on Oh Really O'Reilly (2005).
From that same piece, written on October 12, 2005: "....But O'Reilly would have been wrong even if he had
cited Malmedy's aftermath, Dachau or Sicily to justify Abu Ghraib.
Because unlike the earlier episodes, the genesis of Abu Ghraib lies
in a paper trail of memos and executive orders leading directly to
Rumsfeld and the White House. It is out in the open now: torture is the
official policy of the Bush regime. In addition to the documents
approving torture that were written by Gonzalez, Yoo, Boybee, Rumsfeld
and Bush, we now have Bush's threatened veto of Sen. John McCain's
amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that prohibits Washington
from ever torturing again. Bush's language echoes what Factor viewers
have heard many times--the US needs torture to protect America and wage
its war on terror.
"Bullshit.
Washington's torture is part of its war OF terror on working people
everywhere, particularly those where huge oil deposits sit in the
ground. And its insistence on torturing innocent people is only
generating a palpable desire for revenge against anything American.
Besides, torture is illegal under US and international law--under any
circumstances. NOTHING justifies torture. Period."
O'Reilly Revives 4-Year-Old "wall" Myth to Demand Prosecution of Holder for 9/11!
April 23, 2009--Back in 2005, Bill O'Reilly was frantically trying to deflect responsibility for 9/11 away from George Bush and toward Bill Clinton. He did this by parroting the Republican talking point that 9/11 succeeded because Janet Reno's deputy, Jamie Gorelick, wrote a memo that supposedly constructed a "wall" prohibiting communication between the FBI and CIA.
During a recent "debate" with Ellis Hennican, O'Reilly erroneously stated that Obama's attorney general Eric Holder was "second in command to Janet Reno" when the "wall" was created. Actually, Holder replaced Gorelick as Reno's deputy attorney general in 1997--two years after Republicans say the wall was built.
Oh Really O'Reilly also covered this four years ago:
"O'Reilly refuses to
consider the possibility that a section of the US political, military
and intelligence apparatus allowed the attacks to occur in order to
build the political climate needed to invade oil-rich Middle East and
Central Asian countries.
"Instead, the Army was
prevented from telling the FBI because of a 'policy instituted by
Attorney General Janet Reno and her deputy Jamie Gorelick. The women
erroneously believed that potential criminal activity could not be
pinpointed by any U.S. military intelligence operation. That's insane.'
"No, what's insane is
to fall hook, line, and sinker for the "picture presented of miitary
and intelligence officials hamstrung by lawyers and legalisms"--as
Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site put it in his Aug. 19
article, '9/11 Commission Told of Atta cover-up.' Martin continued: 'The $40 billion US intelligence apparatus is the most ruthless and
aggressive in the world, engaged in illegal surveillance, killing,
torture and murder. If American intelligence kept quiet about Mohammed
Atta, it was because higher interests of state required it, not because
of any scruples about civil liberties.'
"In order to bolster
his spin, O'Reilly says nothing nothing about the context and origins
of this so-called 'wall,' preferring to leave his viewers with the
impression that the entire US intelligence community was paralyzed by
this memo from Jamie Gorelick's brain in 1995. O'Reilly fails to tell
his audience that this largely symbolic 'wall' between intelligence
gathering and law enforcement resulted from the Church Committee's
1970s' investigation of the pervasive spying, assassinations, dirty
tricks, and political harassment carried out by the CIA and FBI. It was
in essence a public relations stunt designed to give the impression the
government was reining in the 'excesses'--including murder--uncovered
by Senator Church's probe.
"9/11 Commission
testimony showed that the wall was essentially mythical because
information sharing between intelligence and law enforcement continued.
Any 'black' or psy-ops job could always remain a secret to maintain
official deniability.
"Media Matters reports
that a joint congressional intelligence committees' report into Sept.
11 intelligence 'failures' stated that the 'wall' was 'constructed over
60 years,' and that a 2002 ruling by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court of Review declared that the wall began 'at some
point during the 1980s.' That's a long time before Janet Reno and Jamie
Gorelick. O'Reilly adds to his deceit by leaving out the fact that the 'wall's' guidelines were reauthorized by Bush's Attorney General
Ashcroft and continued until after Sept. 11.
"When O'Reilly tried to
tell 9/11 commissioner and former Republican senator Slade Gorton that
the 'culture' of the wall began with Janet Reno, Gorton sternly
replied, 'No....There was a policy established by Congress and by
judges that you couldn't use intelligence information gotten through
one kind of -- you know-- of subpoena or wiretap in criminal
prosecutions. It had nothing to do with sharing among agencies.'
"Then Gorton lectured
O'Reilly 'that the wall was created by laws sponsored by the Church
Committee back in the 1970s. And they went all the way through until
after 9/11 was over. And that nothing Jamie Gorelick wrote had the
slightest impact on the Department of Defense or its willingness or
ability to share intelligence information with other intelligence
agencies.'
"Indeed, Gorelick's
1995 memo was aimed at clarifying decades long unwritten limitations
on information sharing between the FBI and the Department of Justice.
It had zero to do with the military's capacity to share information
with other intelligence agencies. Gorelick was out to clarify the
guidelines in order to 'go over the wall' and ensure a maximum number
of convictions.
"O'Reilly's targeting
of Gorelick and the 'wall' is nothing but the latest Republican talking
point designed to divert culpability for 9/11 from Bush to Clinton as
well as remove all legal restrictions on the governmental spying and
repression."[Oh Really O'Reilly (2005)]
Obama, like Bush, is bankrupting this country by spending trillions to wage two wars: Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama's military spending, excluding Iraq and Afghanistan, is projected to rise from $557 billion this year to $689 billion in 2012. Over the next 10 years, total US military spending is expected to reach $8 trillion!
Peacetime spending, O'Reilly? Tell that to the million Iraqis who are dead, maimed or refugees, or the tens of thousands of dead Afghan civilians, or the 4,000 US soldiers dead and countless more maimed.--March 18, 2009
O'Reilly: "Take a look at the cover of Newsweek, just out Monday. Another in a long line of Rush Limbaugh expositions, this one written by conservative David Frum, who basically ruminates about the future of the Republican Party."
The far left media led by conservative pundit Frum is out to get poor Rush Limbaugh. O'Reilly doesn't even attempt to explain this transparent absurdity. Frum must be allowing himself to be used by the left wing media, who were nice enough to let him ruminate about the GOP's future. Of course, O'Reilly doesn't want to talk about the substance of Frum's ruminations about the Republicans, because they deal with the very real political divisions within the Republican camp, specifically, between Limbaugh and Frum. Nice piece of journalism there, O'Reilly. Great job filling in the details for the folks. Division in the conservative camp just does not fit into the No-Spin Zone, whose focus these days is to do everything possible to frame public opinion against Obama while rebuilding the GOP so it can regain power.
But Obama's election and Bush's disgrace have completely unraveled O'Reilly. He is incapable of making a coherent argument; unable to notice the obvious contradiction between his assertion that the far left media is smearing Limbaugh when his Exhibit A to back that notion is an article by a leading conservative.
While O'Reilly has never been a true journalist--merely a hack, stooge, pimp and propagandist for capitalism and its wars--his "skills" are deterioriating by the day. He is a joke, a discredited charlatan steeped in lies and scandals, mindlessly spewing forth spin, babble, and hate. For years I've written this page to expose his lies because I viewed O'Reilly as the face of US fascism consciously trying to divide and disorient workers to keep them in the capitalist straitjacket. COSMOS LEFT targeted O'Reilly rather than Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc, because we viewed O'Reilly as a phony working class hero, a fascist trying to lay the foundation for a mass base among US workers. Limbaugh and the others didn't go through the motions of posing as friends of labor; they've usually defended capitalism and free enterprise without reservation and the demagogic lip service employed by fascists like O'Reilly.
We've seen this recently in the uproar over the AIG bonuses. O'Reilly described the company's executives as incompetents and screw-ups as a sop to his working class base. Limbaugh unabashedly defends the bonuses while invoking Pat Buchanan by railing against the gathering lynch mob of pitchfork carrying peasants.
But in 2009, Bill O'Reilly's political and "journalistic" skills have diminished. He seems tired and deflated. With Obama's election, the fascist pundit cabal is realigning itself behind the more energized Limbaugh, backed up by the newest addition to the reactionary cesspool at Fox News--Glenn Beck, in addition to his own show is frequently given a platform by O'Reilly, in a thinly veiled passing of the torch.
O'Reilly may be wounded, but he's still dangerous. Same goes for Ann Coulter. Her latest book is not selling. But there are still legions of right wing zealots willing to commit violence at her best against liberals, let alone communists and socialists.
Limbaugh, Beck, O'Reilly, Coulter, Hannity constitute the latest cabal of fascist propagandists in the United States. One individual is only a wanna-be: O'Reilly's frequent guest and guest host Laura Ingraham, who responded to Meghan McCain's blasting Coulter's fanaticism by mocking McCain's weight.
Real classy girl, that Laura. No wonder O'Reilly likes her. She's at the same level of scum he is.--March 17, 2009
We must build a Red Guard to defend ourselves against this rightist scum.
Punk O'Reilly Insults a True Journalist
Compares Helen Thomas to Wicked Witch--Then Lies About it
It happened during a recent interview with Alan Colmes, milquetoast liberal/political eunuch and one-time "sidekick" to Sean Hannity.
O'Reilly: "The White House press corps looked intimidated to me...Except for that, what's her name? The old lady, Helen Thomas." [screeching sound] [emphasis added to illustrate O'Reilly's disrespect]
Colmes: "Is that your Helen Thomas impression?"
O'Reilly: "Yea! [repeats screeching sound]...It's like the wicked witch of the east! If I were Obama, I would've poured water on her and she would dissolve!"
Later, in an interview with Courtney Martin of the Women's Media Center, which demanded O'Reilly apologize to Thomas, the Factor punk went into denial mode: "I didn't call her a witch. I said her voice sounded like -- and I did the voice. That was clear."
What's clear is that O'Reilly's a no-class, sexist, ageist lying sack of shit who isn't one tenth the journalist Helen Thomas is. O'Reilly's mealy-mouthed denial amounted to this: I didn't call her a witch. I just said she sounded like one and should be doused with water to die, just like Dorothy did to the Wicked Witch.
Such parsing of words should make Bill Clinton proud.
There's no mystery what's going on here. O'Reilly's got both a political and professional axe to grind with Helen Thomas. For years he's watched in envy Thomas grill presidents, asking the tough questions, and in the case of George W. Bush, exposing his lies, ignorance, and own lack of class. In other words, Thomas showed O'Reilly up, made him look bad by demonstrating what reporters are supposed to do--challenge the government instead of shilling and pimping for the warmakers as O'Reilly does on a nightly basis.
Let's examine the politics behind O'Reilly's vicious attack against Thomas. You see, he had a problem with one of Thomas's questions (O'Reilly conveniently left out her second question; more on that soon). In response to Colmes's typically tepid defense of Thomas ("Bill, it's not nice to impersonate an older woman like that. That's not nice"), O'Reilly replied: "I know. She's a legend. But she actually asked a question, Do you think the Taliban is hiding in Pakistan? That was her question."
First, that was not her question. This is what Thomas asked Obama:
"Mr. President, do you think that Pakistan and -- are maintaining the safe havens in Afghanistan for these so-called terrorists?"
Despite her stumble, Helen was making a political point while doing what she does best--putting the president on the spot with genuinely tough questions, not the sycophantic obeisant drivel O'Reilly routinely dished up for Bush. Thomas was trying to illuminate Obama's plans to escalate the aggression in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Second, her "so-called terrorists" was a clever formulation that invited Obama to parrot Bush's phony war rhetoric and then challenged that deceptive rhetoric which is the foundation of US imperialism's war drive. The Islamic resistance fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, whether Taliban or any of the Islamist fundamentalist militias, are not terrorists--they are fighting foreign occupiers and aggressors. And they certainly had nothing to do with September 11, which is the context Bush and Obama use the word "terrorists" in order to justify US military invasions.
And Helen's strategy worked. Listen to Obama's response: "Well, I think that Pakistan [and] in the mountainous regions along the border of Afghanistan, that there are safe havens where terrorists are operating." [emphasis added]
Hey Obama, they live there, I think they have more of a right to "operate" there than your troops. So get the fuck out.
And that second Thomas question that O'Reilly forgot to distort?
"And also, do you know of any country in the Middle East that has nuclear weapons?"
That would be Israel. O'Reilly was too gutless to touch that one. Didn't fit into the No-Spin Zone.
But Helen Thomas had the guts to ask Obama that question. She's also got more balls than Bill O'Reilly.
And she's the journalist that O'Reilly could only dream of being.
Case in point.
A while back, O'Reilly was foaming at the mouth that Obama didn't choose John O. Brennan as CIA director because he was "caving in" to the "far left's" objections that he had been supportive of rendition and torture. This just shows how far to the right O'Reilly is on the political spectrum, because genuine "far leftists" don't give tactical advice over who should head the CIA--they call for abolishing the CIA, you stupid clown.
So where is Brennan now, after his far-left imposed exile? He's Obama's adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security and deputy to national security adviser James L. Jones, a former Marine general.
Nice piece of journalism, O'Reilly. Maybe it'll earn you a Peabody Award. Or is that a Polk?
Not content or man enough to bully Thomas by himself, and obviously stung by the torrent of criticism he's received, O'Reilly called on another right wing Zionist punk, one Bernard Goldberg, author of that stirring masterpiece, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, 90% of whom are liberals, Democrats, African Americans; the only reason a few token capitalists and rightists are thrown in--Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Judge Roy Moore, David Duke, and Michael Savage--is because in Goldberg's own words describing Savage, they "give conservatives a bad name by making cruel personal attacks."
So what does Goldberg have to say about Helen Thomas when O'Reilly asked if he was too mean to her?
"Did you hear what question she asked? Could you tell us about the so-called terrorists. Let me say this. Helen Thomas' 15 minutes were up during the Lincoln administration."
Watch your mouth, Goldberg. You're in deep enough shit for inspiring Jim David Adkisson to walk into that Unitarian church in Tennessee last year and shoot 2 people dead while wounding 6 more. As Adkisson himself put it:
"This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book..." [emphasis added]
No Goldberg, it's scumbags like you and O'Reilly who are ruining America by putting wind in the sails of psychos like Adkisson and polluting the national discourse with your coarseness and hate mongering filth.--February 19, 2009
Actress outpoints Harvard grad O'Reilly on Swedish neutrality
Jessica Alba Takes O'Reilly to School in History
In
an exchange with a reporter during inauguration week, gorgeous actress
Jessica Alba needled him for not having the balls to express how he
felt about Obama. "Be neutral. Be Sweden about it."
O'Reilly, in his most hideous condescending way, scolded Alba on his
"Pinheads and Patriots" segment: "That's Switzerland, Jessica. Sweden
is a very nice country [Oh Really O'Reilly? Last week you derided
Sweden as a "socialistic paradise"], but Switzerland is the land of
neutrality. Pinhead? Possibly."
Bill O'Reilly, ignorant asshole? Definitely. In response, Alba referred
him to Wikipedia, which, while not always the most credible source,
gets it right occasionally, this time in its first sentence on Sweden:
"Swedish neutrality refers to Sweden's policy of neutrality in armed
conflicts, which has been in effect since the early 19th century."
Of course, O'Reilly was never any good in history; US, world, or
otherwise. Remember the last time he delved into World War II, he got
everything ass backwards, falsely stating that it was American soldiers
who massacred Germans at Malmedy, when it was the other way around.
O'Reilly got into this trouble in the course of defending US torture at
Abu Ghraib. In so doing, he revealed his fascist connection to Senator
Joseph McCarthy, as we explained in "O'Reilly Defames WW II American
Soldiers"
(http://www.cosmosleft.com/ohreallyoreilly/ohreallyoreilly2005.html).
Back to Jessica, who is all giddy over Barack Obama, and whose politics
we don't endorse. But she did publicly humiliate Harvard grad O'Reilly
by proving she's smarter in history than him. Jessica also called
O'Reilly an asshole, musing he was perhaps born that way.
Which makes Jessica Alba today's best person in the world.--January 29, 2009
Give it up once more for Wrong Again O'Reilly, who did his master's bidding by dutifully echoing Bush's lie he was only wiretapping phone calls involving terrorists.
Ralph Kramden: "Nobody's 100%, Alice." Alice Kramden: "You are. You've been wrong every time."
Don't worry, O'Reilly. We know it's killing you that Obama's president. We hope it literally puts you in your grave. Soon. Just like Lars-Erik Nelson dropped dead while watching Bush steal the election in 2000. History will call it even then. But before you leave this earth, take solace in the thought that you have something in common with Ralph Kramden, who's more representative of a working guy than you'll ever be in your wildest dreams, whether you were born in Levittown or Westbury.--January 22, 2009
O'Reilly: "The far-left media [translation: NY Times, a prowar paper that, like O'Reilly, helped Bush lie about Iraq] has succeeded in convincing the world that the USA nation is a nation of torture, a country that sadistically inflicts pain on both the innocent and the guilty."
No, just the innocent. No tortured detainee was ever found guilty in a fair trial. And no, it's not the USA nation that tortured. The US government did.
Earth to O'Reilly: The world didn't need the NY Times to be convinced that the US military was torturing detainees on Bush and Rumsfeld's orders. A picture is worth a thousand words. And hundreds of pictures are proof-positive. And it's well-documented that the orders came from the White House and Rumsfeld.
O'Reilly: "When Barack Obama takes office in
January, he will face an illegal alien situation that remains out of
control and is becoming increasingly brutal."
What's out of control and increasingly brutal is the racist, barbaric, draconian immigration policy carried out by Washington and local governments like Suffolk County that has resulted in totalitarian raids on workplaces throughout the country; racist attacks and beatings against Mexican immigrants from Farmingville, Long Island to Arizona; firebombings of Latinos' homes; laws prohibiting landlords from renting to undocumented workers and contractors from hiring day laborers; a 40% increase in attacks against immigrants [AP/11/16/08]; abuse by employers; immigrants dying from heat and suffocation in the desert.
O'Reilly: "On
Long Island, New York, seven high school students are charged in the
murder of a 37-year-old Ecuadorian man, who was here legally in this
country,in a crime that was born out of hatred, pure and simple.
According to authorities, these boys were looking for a Hispanic to
terrorize, and they found Marcelo Lucero." [emphasis added]
Now where does that "hatred, pure and simple" come from?
It is pumped out on a daily basis from xenophobic stooges like Bill O'Reilly, Lou Dobbs in the media and politicians like Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy--a Democrat--who play the divide and conquer game on behalf of their corporate masters that attempts to blame immigrant workers for the rising unemployment, low wages, foreclosures and credit crisis that in truth are caused by the capitalist system that puts private private before social needs.
O'Reilly mouths a perfunctory condemnation of the racist murder of Marcelo Lucero, conceding that even the New York Times and Newsday ("two liberal papers") legitimately covered the Lucero murder "extensively, as they should. It is a horrible crime, and seven young men may pay a steep price for being violently stupid. But the Times and Newsday have pretty much ignored the deaths of the two women."
That's because you're comparing apples and oranges in pushing your nefarious, reactionary political agenda, O'Reilly. The two women O'Reilly refers to were killed by an Afghan citizen who "apparently came to the USA illegally when he was just 6 years old" and who was "allegedly driving drunk." This is a completely unrelated tragedy. Lucero was the victim of a hate crime; murdered by hate filled, confused youth looking for a Mexican to "f**k up." This was a conscious, deliberate act by immature boys influenced by politicians and media demagogues to blame their economic woes on immigrants from Mexico. The two women were killed by an apparently drunk driver who happened to be "illegal"--a transgression that began when he was all of 6 years old. This was an accident; not a conscious act. Drunk driving does not discriminate between legal and illegal.
O'Reilly then stated that the Houston Chronicle reports that ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) "has lost control of violent aliens in Harris County, and the result has been a frightening crime wave."
The sources of this crime wave are Washington's barbaric immigration laws and policies and the deepening crisis of capitalism in the United States.
COSMOS LEFT agrees with one statement from this Talking Points Memo.
"Zero tolerance for Americans whose hatred leads to violence."
Exactly. Which is why O'Reilly should be off the air and in the Big House.--December 3, 2008
The hate crime that resulted in Lucero's murder is the byproduct of the racist, xenophobic scapegoating of immigrant workers by hatemongers in the press like Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs and politicians like Steve Levy and Hazlelton, Pennsylvania Mayor Louis Barletta on the local level aligned with Tom Tancredo on the national level. When the capitalist media and government demonize immigrants from other lands, usually of a different color and belonging to an oppressed national minority, this is institutionalized racism. This demonization is heightened during economic crises such as what we're experiencing, with foreclosures, bankruptcies unemployment and low wages on the rise. Political Neanderthals like O'Reilly and Levy either don't know, don't care or are incapable of understanding that it is the crisis of world capitalism which is bankrupting Mexico and many other countries, forcing their workers to immigrate to the wealthiest capitalist economy in the world.
In this process, the immigrant workers coming to the US is both changing and strengthening the composition of the US working class, while illuminating that we are all part of an international proletariat. Immigrant workers are increasingly on the front lines of the class struggle. They are in the middle of most of whatever fightbacks are taking place in the US class struggle. The 2,000 strong mobilization that occurred on November 14 in Patchogue, Long Island, to condemn the racist, vigilante lynching of Marcelo Lucero is not an isolated event. I'm not just talking about the massive protests by immigrant workers that have occurred in the last few years all across the US. I'm talking about the fightbacks taking place in meatpacking plants throughout the US that are being led by predominantly Latino immigrants, particularly struggles to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
This is the text of the sign that O'Reilly believes threatens Western civilization, the one that Washington Governor Christine Gregoire, following the law of the land as codified in Supreme Court decisions, permitted to stand next to the Nativity scene in the state capital building:
"At this
season of THE WINTER SOLSTICE may reason prevail. There are no gods, no
devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world.
Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves
minds."
O'Reilly thinks Gov. Gregoire is "hiding behind a shoddy legal analysis," that is, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the US Constitution, in allowing the peaceful coexistence of the two displays. Gregoire stated: "...Once government admits one religious display or viewpoint jonto public property, it may not discriminate against the content of other displays, including the viewpoints of non-believers."
O'Reilly then referred to "a legal case in her state" that requires displays to be "consistent with the intent and decorum of the seat of state government and the appropriate, non-disruptive use of public facilities." O'Reilly argued that the sign attacking religion during the Christmas season was inappropriate and improper decorum for a government building.
O'Reilly's Less Than Balanced Fingerpointing on Subprime Mortgage Crisis
Slick Willie throws vein-popping hissy fit at Barney Frank while understating Bush's role
Bill
O'Reilly is well aware that his primary job as The Factor host--even
bigger than shilling for Bush and the GOP--is to defend the capitalist
system in the eyes of US workers. O'Reilly employs many ways of
accomplishing this: hate- and fear-mongering, scapegoating the most
vulnerable layers of the oppressed and exploited such as gays and
immigrants, jingoism, national chauvinism, etc. The principal objective
here is to throw dust in workers' eyes and divert their anger over
their increasingly desperate economic plight by channeling that anger
against individual CEOs and politicians. It's not the exploitative
social system known as capitalism; it's not the subordination of human
needs to private profit; it's not the innate anarchy and irrationality
of the free market; it's not the crisis of overproduction. It's the
failings of individuals; the same line of thinking that drives O'Reilly
to claim that there's no longer any institutionalized racism in this
country. If Blacks aren't making it, it's their fault.
Witness
how this blame the individual, not the system has played out in the
No-Spin Zone in recent months. Sensitive to the obvious charge that he
has been a shill for George W. Bush and the Republicans, Slick Willie
is shrewd enough to mouth perfunctory, obligatory criticism of Bush for
not warning Americans that the subprime mortgage crisis was about to
sink the US housing industry and trigger the financial and credit
meltdown that threatens the entire world capitalist economy.
From Policing the Fat Cats, Talking Points Memo, 9/22/08:
"The president, the head of the SEC, Sen. Chris
Dodd, a Democrat, Congressman Barney Frank, a Democrat, all should have
publicly warned the folks that companies like Merrill Lynch and Lehman
Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were trafficking in bad loans. But
we can find no public warnings by those men, none, even though they all
knew risky loans were rampant." [emphasis added] Note the omission of the word "Republican" to describe Bush and SEC boss Cox.
From Talking Points Memo, "Is it Time to Panic?" 9/23/08:
"Now the White House says President Bush called
for mortgage reform many times over the years, and he did. But like
Senator Clinton and every other politician, not loud enough. The
president didn't use his bully pulpit to warn the folks their
investments were at risk. He didn't name names like Merrill Lynch and
AIG. He should have.
"Likewise, Barney Frank, who heads the House
banking committee, yes, he introduced tougher oversight in the bill,
but it died in the Democratic-controlled Senate. Did Frank scream about
that? Did he come on 'The Factor?' No, he didn't go anywhere."
With the Democrat Frank, O'Reilly demands screaming. With Republican Bush, he's patted on the back for calling for mortgage reform, only not loud enough.
From "Economy Pounding John McCain," Talking Points Memo, 10/07/08
"Now somehow most believe that President Bush
is being blamed for the economic collapse and by extension John McCain.
But the Democrats control Congress and Barney Frank, Senator Dodd and
Speaker Pelosi are all right in the middle of the economic meltdown.
But it is true that most Americans don't know them but everybody knows
the president." Apparently the public is to be blamed for thinking the buck stops with the president. And most Americans know Frank, Dodd, and Pelosi because O'Reilly's been railing against them on a nightly basis!
"The only way John McCain can stop
the bleeding is to get mad like I did last week with Barney Frank, who
refused to take any responsibility for the meltdown of the government
mortgage agencies even though Frank's job is to oversee them. [emphasis added]Frank's responsibility for the meltdown pales next to the captains of Wall Streetand the natural workings of capitalism in its death agony.
"As
a citizen, I'm furious that I and other honest Americans are being
punished by the incompetency of Mr. Frank and a number of other
politicians, including Republicans, who are supposed to be looking out
for us." [emphasis added]
Honest? This web site, among others have been chronicling O'Reilly's lies for 7 years. Note again how he leads with Democrat Frank's main course of "incompetence" before mentioning the left-overs, "including" Republicans. Frank's job is not to look out for us. Frank's job is to help the capitalists make as much money as they can. O'Reilly's doing a disservice to working people, he's throwing dust in our eyes, in pushing the myth, the illusion that the capitalist government's supposed to look out for the folks. That's precisely what O'Reilly's being paid to to in the service of the ruling elite.
"It's simply wrong to allow Wall Street greed-heads
to run wild, and that is what happened on Barney Frank's watch, on
Senator Dodd's watch and President Bush's watch.
Democratic congressman, Democratic senator, Republican president.
From "America Moves to the Left," Talking Points Memo, 10/27/08:
"There is no question that the Republicans
stood by and allowed corrupt corporate gangsters to loot the economy,
but Democrats did the same thing. For the past two years, Barney Frank
and Christopher Dodd held power in the financial arena in Congress and
did nothing. Excuse me, Dodd did something. He took a sweetheart
mortgage from a company on the verge of bankruptcy.
"But few are holding the Democrats responsible for the mess we are in, even though it's partially their fault."
You know, in a Talking Points Memo entitled "America Moves to the Left"--an accurate formulation--it is no surprise that O'Reilly actually says something resembling the truth.
From "Big Bailout Almost Here," Talking Points Memo, 9/25/08: "Before the 9/11 attack, few Americans knew of the
danger Al Qaeda posed. Even though Presidents Clinton and Bush were
fully aware of the growing terror threat, they chose not to make a big
deal out of it."
Yes, few Americans knew of the danger coming. But George Bush was warned as late as August 6, 2001, that Al Qaeda was about to hijack jets and crash them into Washington and New York. Actually, Clinton officials specifically warned Bush and Cheney that Al Qaeda was planning a major attack on US soil, but the warning was brushed off. COSMOS LEFT is no supporter of Clinton, but different presidents have different relationships with US intelligence agencies. Clinton missed killing bin Laden by an hour with a cruise missile. Bush disbanded the FBI's bin Laden unit.
Of course, Al Qaeda is a shadowy organization created and nurtured by US intelligence. And the US never produced a shred of evidence proving bin Laden or anyone else was behind the attacks. Torture confessions don't count.
From "Who's Really Looking Out for You, Talking Points Memo, 9/28/08: "We were not informed before Al Qaeda attacked us
on 9/11."
Lie. Bush had multiple specific warnings of the looming attack, including the August 6 presidential daily briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Plans Strike on US Soil"
"We didn't know what Al Qaeda was."
Lie. "We", meaning US intelligence, spawned and nourished Al Qaeda, beginning with the US support for the Afghan Islamists guerrilla war against the Moscow-backed Kabul regime in the early 1980s.
"We were not informed that
the economy was in this much peril because of irresponsible lending
schemes."
"They warned us: US was told to 'expect foreclosures, expect horror stories' "
From Associated Press Writer Matt Apuzzo, December 1, 2008:
"The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on
no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy
collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have
now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the
financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of
regulatory documents."
Not a word from Bill O'Reilly on this. Fair and balanced? More like less than balanced fingerpointing on the subprime mortgage crisis from The Factor's Spin Zone.--Jan. 22, 2009
Smearing exrement on a bound naked detainee is torture. O'Reilly's even more full of shit in denying this.
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Torture Orders Came From White House
Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld Guilty of War Crimes
As is Bill O'Reilly. He's not just a journalist expressing his First Amendment opinions. O'Reilly was--and remains--a willing, conscious, enthusiastic cog in the protorture propaganda machine. He is still defending torture and advocating its continuation.--December 13, 2008
Still playing semantic games: it's "enhanced interrogation techniques," you see
O'Reilly's presumably referring to stress positions, sensory bombardment, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, terrorization by dogs, and other practices that qualify as torture under international law.
Further, "enhanced interrogation techniques" in German translates to the Gestapo term, Verscharfte Vernehmung, which was precisely used as a euphemism for forture, according to Joe Kay in a February 7 World Socialist Web Site article.
O'Reilly still denying waterboarding is torture
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Then why did Theodore Roosevelt court-martial a General for allowing his troops to waterboard after the Spanish-American war of 1898? Why was a major court-martialed and sentenced to 10 years hard labor for waterboarding a detainee? Why did the US prosecute Japanese soldiers for war crimes for waterboarding US soldiers? Why was a US soldier court-martialed for waterboarding a North Vietnamese POW?
Waterboarding is a heinous practice that's been used by barbarian since the Spanish Inquisition, an era Bill O'Reilly would have been quite comfortable in. It has been considered torture by legal experts, war veterans, intelligence officials, Navy Seals subjected to waterboarding during training, international law and and human rights organizations. Forcing water into lungs causes mental and physical suffering.
What O'Reilly consistently omits in his less than fair and balanced reporting on the issue of torture and waterboarding is the fact that so many military intelligence officers, FBI agents, soldiers have condemned Washington for torturing detainees. For instance, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that he thinks waterboarding violates Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
But these facts never make it on to The O'Reilly Factor because they don't fit into the host's ultrarightist, militarist spin.
O'Reilly continues to peddle the lie that enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding are justified because they save lives, just like Jack Bauer does on the TV show 24.
First, this is bullshit. The wild plots confessed by the three detainees subjected to waterboarding, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri prove nothing. Those tortured do not give reliable testimony. The 31 plots allegedly confessed to by Mohammed are laughable. Besides, how do we know what they said? Because known liars Bush, Cheney, and their flunky CIA director, Michael Hayden say so? The only truthful information from Hayden was his admission in November 2005 that the CIA destroyed the videotapes of Zubaydah and al-Nashiri's interrogation. No doubt because they compromised the role of US intelligence in 9/11.
Second, there is no "special circumstances" justification for waterboarding. Article 2 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, signed by Washington, states, "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
The US tortured detainees, and no amount of O'Reilly's denial or pitiful attempt to throw dust in our eyes can change that fact. We've seen the photographs of Abu Ghraib; we know that FBi agents left Guantanamo in disgust after what they witnessed there; we've seen the documents emanating rom the White House authorizing what our own eyes have seen; we know Bush's lawyers redefined torture for the purpose of limiting it to death or serious organ damage, precisely to avoid future war crimes prosecutions for violating domestic and international law.--December 4, 2008
O'Reilly to US Autoworkers: Drop Dead!
Blames Union for Crisis Accuses UAW of "strangling" auto companies
Despite Bill O'Reilly's phony populist demagoguery attacking the Big 3 auto executives flying to DC on their private jets, the multimillionaire Factor host's procapitalist, antilabor stance came through in his November 19 Talking Points Memo, "No Auto Bailout":
"Now, there is no question the auto company
bankruptcies would directly harm millions of Americans, but billions of
taxpayer dollars are not going to solve the problem. That's because the
U.S. carmakers pay higher salaries and benefits than the foreign car
companies do. So the American car people can't compete in the global
economy. It's as simple as that.
"The auto union continues to say no givebacks. So the situation will stay dire, loans or no loans."
O'Reilly is lying about the auto union saying no go to givebacks. In fact, the Big 3 executives praised the UAW for the massive concession 2007 contract that slashed wages, benefits and jobs; concessions they testified, that virtually ended labor cost differentials with their Asian and European rivals operating non-union plants in the US.
O'Reilly's antibailout position represents the faction of the capitalist class that believes forcing the auto companies into bankruptcy is the best way to cut the wages and conditions of auto workers, rip up union contracts that would terminate health care and pensions for millions of retired workers. This ruthless restructuring of the auto industry would further impoverish auto workers and return them "to conditions of unbridled exploitation not seen since the 1930s." [WSWS, Nov. 19, 2008, "Senate hearing on US auto bailout signals new attackson workers," by Jerry White]
"Strangling the auto companies?"
Oh Really O'Reilly?
You're a liar. The truth is that "Workers are not responsible for the collapse of the US auto industry. They have no say in the business decisions taken by the owners and top executives, who preside over a corporate dictatorship and then blame workers when their greed and incompetence lead to disaster." [WSWS, Nov. 21, 2008, "Auto bailout provides pretext for assault on US workers," by Jerry White]
So much for O'Reilly's "looking out for the folks."--November 21, 2008
Obama's Victory: "... a massive repudiation of the Bush presidency, the Republican Party and nearly three decades of right-wing domination of American politics" (World Socialist Web Site, "The election of Barack Obama," 11/05/08)
That includes Bill O'Reilly.
You have been repudiated, O'Reilly. That's why Keith Olbermann is getting higher ratings. There's no need for a federal investigation to figure out why.
The only thing sweeter would be if Al Franken wins the recount for the US Senate seat in Minnesota. Just imagine the sound of Bill O'Reilly uttering "Senator Al Franken." Priceless.--Nov. 5, 2008
COSMOS LEFT TO O'REILLY: IT'S CAPITALISM, STUPID
It's not just greedy individual CEOs. It's not just corrupt capitalist politicians (and in O'Reilly's less than fair and balanced world, most corruption is Democratic; lip service is given to Republican graft). It's not just this or that SEC chairman. It's deeper than Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank, though they are part of the same corporate elite that includes Bill O'Reilly.
It's the capitalist system of production for private profit. It's the system of the "free market" and "free enterprise." It's the system of private ownership of the means of production. The same system that pays O'Reilly handsomely to confuse and disorient and politically disarm enough US workers to perpetuate the exploitation, plundering and swindling that constitute capitalism. Because O'Reilly's not one of "the folks." He's part of the financial elite. He's part of the problem.--October 10, 2008
O'Reilly (7/7/08): "Is America a Nation in Decline?"
O'Reilly: 9/25/08: Yes!
Back in July, Bill O'Reilly, the #1 media apologist for US capitalism, waxed indignant over the notion raised in the NY Times and other sources that the US is a superpower in decline. We'll dissect that pathetic, futile attempt by O'Reilly to deny the obvious soon. For now, let's forward to last week, as US capitalism teetered on the brink of collapse, and listen to O'Reilly unwittingly sing a different tune:
"If the government does not bail out the financial
industry, foreign investment will cut and run. That will lead to a
worldwide depression. You might lose your job. You will certainly lose
value in your house and investments. Ideological theory has to walk
when faced with that...."
Oh Really O'Reilly? Uh, when a certain superpower capitalist economy is so dependent on foreign investment that it collapses when foreign investors leave because they don't think their money is safe, that superpower is in decline, and its apologists like O'Reilly are in denial. When the world's biggest creditor becomes the world's biggest debtor, that superpower is in decline. When that superpower is driven to use its military supremacy to compensate for its relative economic decline, that superpower is in decline.
O'Reilly: "Foreign investors can ruin our way of life. That is life in the global economy."
Oh Really O'Reilly?
Foreign investors have been propping up the US economy, you stupid f**k. You just admitted that if they pull out, your precious US free market collapses. An objective observer would say you're an ungrateful bastard. And an ignorant windbag. The truth is its good old American investors ruining the way of life for many tens of millions of working class Americans. And its American capitalists who are causing catastrophes for hundreds of millions of toilers across the planet.--Oct. 10, 2008
Move Over, O'Reilly--There's a New Fascist Demagogue in Town
Palin replaces O'Reilly as the most dangerous political figure in America Because she's a youthful force in the political arena a heartbeat away from the presidency. O'Reilly's a whining, grumpy old man in the media; a very important place to be for a fascist for sure, but his influence has waned after defending the disaster known as George W. Bush for so many years.
Palin's demagogic, dishonest attempt to connect Obama to Ayers a classic McCarthyite slander
Palin's trying to link Obama to acts Ayers committed when Barack was 8 years old. Ayers was a member of the Weather Underground, an urban guerrilla warfare group that targeted symbols of the US imperialist war machine that was slaughtering millions of Vietnamese peasants--the US Capitol and the Pentagon. A NYC cop died in another Underground bombing. Add the 3 Weatherman who blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village bombing, and that adds up to 4 deaths caused by the Weather Underground. When Ayers said on September 11, 2001, that he wished he'd done more, he meant done more to prevent the slaughter of millions of Vietnamese by the illegal US aggression.
The Weather Underground was composed of frustrated petty bourgeois radicals, Maoists to be specific, who turned away from the mass movement that was being built against the Vietnam war. Instead, they oriented toward the ruling class, thinking their ultra-left actions would influence the US warmakers to stop the war. After years as a fugitive from federal charges against him, Ayers later turned himself. He was not charged or convicted of any crime.
Over time, Ayers's orientation to the ruling class manifested in a different way. As part of his rehabilitation, Ayers became a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a public advocate of education reform. Along the way, Ayers crossed paths with Obama while serving on conservative billionaire Walter Annenberg's education reform board, and later on the board of directors at the Woods Fund of Chicago, a community antipoverty group. Ayers hosted a coffee party for Obama's first run for office 13 years ago, and in 2001 he donated $200 to Obama's Illinois State Senate reelection campaign.
So what? Obama wasn't pallin around with Ayers when the latter was involved in an urban guerrilla warfare group that targeted symbols of a war machine committing state terrorism against the people of Vietnam. Thirty to 40 years later, they crossed paths in the arena of Chicago educational reform and activism. While Ayers admitted in 1995 to still harboring communist views, that's not illegal, and that's not endorsing bombing. Ayers evolved into a liberal reformist, not unfamiliar terrain for an individual immersed in Maoist or Stalinist politics and the class collaborationism flowing from that perspective.
Obama hasn't been pallin around with a domestic terrorist, Palin. He's been pallin around with another liberal!
You, on the other hand, Ms. Palin have been pallin around with ultraright extremists, with fascist types like those in the Alaska Independence Party, which supported the secession of Alaska and formed the Alaska chapter of the Constitution Party. You, Palin, even quoted the founder of this fanatic Christian fundemantalist outfit, Joe Vogler, who died in 1993 by blowing himself up with plastic explosives. Kind of like how those Weather Undergrounders died in Greenwich Village.
Palin's "kill him", "off with his head" supporters akin to O'Reilly inspiring church killer Adkisson (see "COSMOS LEFT Nails O'Reilly Connection to Church Killer" below).
Hey Palin, Americans should worry aware about your connection to fanatical right wingers in Alaska
Not to mention your own pastor problems, Princess Palin
At least Obama's not associated with a f**cking witch doctor!
Hey Palin: Quit using the derogatory term "Joe Six Pack" in posing as a working class hero. You're a f**cking millionaire related to Princess Diana.
McCain, Palin's McCarthyite Rhetoric, Fear and Hatemongering Bring Most Backward Political Layers to Surface
Reactionary, ignorant, racist scum emerges from bile to star at GOP rallies Anti-Obama shouts of "Kill him!"; "Off with his head"; "Traitor" OK with Palin
Hey, she's got nothing to lose. She knows she's emerging as the nation's leading political fascist figure after the election.
When O'Reilly rants against Barney Frank and Chris Dodd for their coziness with Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, he's only proving socialists' point!
That the Democrats are every bit as committed to defending the interests of the corporate elite as the Republicans are!
That workers have to break from this two-party shell game of a capitalist monopoly of political power and form a labor party that fights for workers interests!
Guess McCain was for ACORN before he was against them
Hey Palin, who's your running mate pallin' around with?
McCain didn't just pal around with ACORN, he spoke at their 2006 convention, telling its participants they are what make America special!
COSMOS LEFT is no political ally of ACORN, which is a liberal reformist community organization that supports the Democratic Party. But to anti-democratic, semi-fascistic, antiworking class GOP partisans like Palin, McCain and Bill O'Reilly, ACORN's real crime is that they dare to register millions of working class and poor folks to vote, and most will vote Democratic.
These gutless hypocritical phonies are afraid of poor people, afraid of working people, because they know that given the lack of a socialist alternative, these voters will vote for the Democrats.
Obama/O'Reilly Interview Shows US Workers Disenfranchised in '08 Election
Obama's Prowar Stance Allows O'Reilly to Corner Him on Surge
Cowering Obama agrees surge has worked
And
what exactly do they mean by the "surge has worked"? Not just O'Reilly
and Obama, but the entire national dialogue about the surge working?
What are the consequences of the surge working?
By the surge
working, the imperialist media and political establishment mean the
"success" of the US conquest of Iraq. It means the US has violently
subjugated the people of Iraq. It means Washington has successfully
pacified Iraq. It means the US has broken the resistance to its
murderous and illegal invasion.
The surge working also
legitimizes the slaughter of about 1 million Iraqis; the destruction of
a country and indeed, a civilization; the illegal detention of
thousands of Iraqis in prison and torture chambers. The surge working
also validates the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis in Baghdad carried out by
the US-backed Shiite government.
Other factors ensured the
"surge working": Bush is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to
fight US forces; neighborhood cleansing ended mixed neighborhoods; al
Sadr held back the Medhi Army, helped significantly by Tehran.
The
surge also worked because US forces killed hundreds, perhaps thousands
of civilians, in Sadr City, still more war atrocities added to
Washington's resume. And, according to Bob Woodward's latest book, the
surge is working because the US continues its reign of terror through
sophisticated technology and its network of quisling spies.
"The secret to the supposed success of the surge is plain to
see. If you kill over a million people, wound and maim perhaps
three times that many, turn five million more into exiles or refugees
in their own land, round up tens of thousands of the young men
who have survived this slaughter and imprison them without charges
in detention camps, it is possible to achieve a temporary suppression
of popular resistance." [emphasis added]
But it will rise again.--September 9, 2008
The Difference Between Palin and Islamic Fundamentalists?
Bill
O'Reilly has functioned as the consigliore of the Christian
fundamentalist extreme right for some time now. Of course he'll never
admit it, incessantly trying without success to distance himself from
the likes of James Dobson. But his politics are essentially the same.
O'Reilly proves this every time he asserts falsely that the US was
founded as a Christian nation, every time he rails against godless
secularists, every time he trumpets traditional values, every time he
opposes a woman's right to choose, every time he attacks homosexuality.
That's
why O'Reilly, like the rest of the Republican extreme right Christian
base, is just tickled pink over the selection--and initial impact--of
Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate. Palin's connections to the
extreme right Alaska Independence Party, which advocates secession and
the dissolution of the federal government. The AIP is also the Alaskan
chapter of the Constitution Party, a theocratic fascist outfit
committed "to restore American jurisprudence to its original Biblical
common-law foundations."
Sound familiar, consigliore O'Reilly?
This "Biblical common-law foundations line" is of a piece with
Christian fundamentalism's "dominion theology," which calls for all
governments to bow before the altar of Christian fundamentalism,
supports the criminalization of other religions, forbids atheism,
supports the death penalty for gays and doctors who perform abortions,
and, oh yes, all you adulterers out there. And, how shocking Palin's
Constitution Party would abolish the minimum wage, Social Security,
public education, health and safety regulations, and most everything
else that helps working people.--Sept. 9, 2008 (Thanks to Bill Van
Auken's reporting on the AIP, World Socialist Web Site, Sept. 4, 2008)
Oh Really O'Reilly
COSMOS LEFT
believes FOX talk show host Bill O'Reilly has emerged as one of the
most dangerous individuals in this country. There are other bourgeois
pundits more personally obnoxious than O'Reilly--Hannity, Colter,
Limbaugh--but none of these cretins pretends to be working class
heroes. O'Reilly does claim to speak for workers, as fascist demagogues
usually do.
COSMOS LEFT
will expose this liar as a deadly enemy of working people; a demagogic
windbag railing against the weak and bankrupt liberal elites who refuse
to discipline unruly Black kids in public schools, and won't militarize
the borders to keep out those damned illegal Mexicans.
The
overriding theme of OH REALLY O'REILLY is that behind O'Reilly's
politics of resentment with a smile lies the face of American fascism.
"There are
dozens of them—the Krauthammers, Coulters, Sowells, Wills, etc.,
secreted out of the pores of an elite increasingly insulated from the
general population and hostile to democratic rights. Their vocation,
for which they are handsomely paid, is pumping out lies and filth on a
daily basis. They are incapable of principled or reasoned discussion.
There is no dialogue with them. They stand on the opposite side of the
political barricades."--World Socialist Web Site
COSMOS LEFT places Bill O'Reilly at the top of that list.
Screw that. Send him to jail for aiding and abetting US war crimes from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo to Haditha.
Excellent
web site from Robert Greenwald, whose home page is adorned with "Oh
Really O'Reilly." Great minds think alike!--August 11, 2008
O'Reilly's Iraq War Propaganda Exposed Every Day
1 by 1, Every Lie He Told Has Unraveled
There's nothing left but the Iraqi and US blood on his hands--and the harsh justice he deserves
Suskind: Bush ordered forgery to sell war
Told CIA to forge back-dated letter from Iraqi intelligence boss to Hussein linking Baghdad to al Qaeda
Also
reports Habbush told White House "that there were no weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq-intelligencey they received in plenty of time to
stop an invasion."
From Ron Suskind's The Way of the World:
"Over the next few days, the Habbush letter continued to be featured prominently in the United States and across the globe. Fox's Bill O'Reilly
trumpeted the story ... on 'The O'Reilly Factor,' talking breathlessly
abouyt details of the story and exhorting, 'Now, if this is true, that
blows the lid off al-Qaeda-Saddam." [emphasis added]
Must be one of those white workers who isn't bitter and doesn't cling to guns
COSMOS LEFT Nails O'Reilly Connection to Church Killer (see News Flash below)
Man Opens Fire in Church for its Liberal Policies, Kills 2
Cop: Adkisson frustrated over unemployment; hatred for liberal movement drove him to murder
Two to one he's a premium member of The O'Reilly Factor
The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church:
Advocates for women's rights (O'Reilly target)
Advocates for gay rights (O'Reilly target)
Provided sanctuary for undocumented workers (O'Reilly target)
Fed the homeless (O'Reilly target)
Founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (O'Reilly target)
Jim Adkisson: hated blacks (O'Reilly target)
Adkisson
said in a police affidavit "that he had targeted the church because of
its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed
because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the
Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had
ruined every institution in America with the aid of the major media
outlets."
Every
reason Adkisson gave is a talking point for right-wing demagogic hate
mongerers such as
O'Reilly ("You [Al Qaeda] want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead"),
Ann
Coulter ("We need to execute people like John Walker in order to
physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be
killed, too"),
Sean Hannity ("I'll tell you who should be tortured and killed at Guantanamo--every filthy Democrat in the U.S Congress"),
Michael Savage ("kill 100 million Muslims"),
Rush Limbaugh ("take that bone out of your nose and call me back"),
Glenn Beck ("I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore").
Every one of them has the
blood from the Unitarian-Universalist Church on their hands.
Adkisson, out of
work, politically backward, embittered and resentful was no doubt
whipped into a murderous frenzy by the most dangerous individual in
America: Bill O'Reilly.--July 28,
2008.
News Flash--Adkisson connection to O'Reilly, Hannity confirmed!
July 31, 2008 Update:
"At Adkisson’s house police said they found books by right-wing
media personalities, including Bill O’Reilly of Fox News
as well as talk show hosts Michael Savage and Sean Hannity." (World Socialist Web Site, 7/31/08, "Knoxville, Tennessee: Unemployed man targets liberals in church shooting," by Shannon Jones) [emphasis added]
O'Reilly: "Enough is enough with this torture nonsense...[it's] rank anti-American propaganda" to say US tortures
Pro-torture
scoundrels Bill O'Reilly and Laura Ingraham are upset with Senator
Barack Obama for telling a massive Berlin crowd that his administration
would "reject torture and stand for the rule of law."
Ingraham:
"He got up there in front of 200,000 people and he glommed on to one of
the most ridiculous and one of the hateful stereotypes about America,
which is that we torture. The fact that he did that on foreign soil I
think is absolutely atrocious." [What's atrocious is Washington
torturing human beings on foreign soil.]
It's not nonsense. It's
not propaganda. It's not hateful stereotypes. It's a fact. The US
government tortures. It tortured in Guantanamo. It tortured in Abu
Ghraib. It tortured in Camp Cropper. It tortured in Bagram. It and its
puppets tortured detainees in dozens of secret torture chambers around
the world under the policy known as "rendition."
Now we learn from
Justice Department and CIA memos that senior figures in the Bush
administration sanctioned torture, this on the heels of reports that
hundreds of FBI agents witnessed torture at Guantanamo, and that the
details of sadistic torture methods were planned by the "Principals'
Committee" (Rumsfeld, Powell, Tenet, Ashcroft and Rice).
These
are facts, not stereotypes. In my view, O'Reilly and Ingraham are not
mere journalists exercising their 1st Amendment right of free speech.
They are willing accomplices to the crimes, crimes that call for the
death penalty under US law. They belong alongside Bush, Rumsfeld,
Powell, Tenet, Ashcroft and Rice in the dock.--July 26, 2008
"...And
now, they're coming for your Social Security money...they want your
retirement money...they want it back, so they can give it to their
criminal friends on Wall Street...and you know something, they'll get
it...cause they own this fucking place, it's a big club, and you ain't
in it...you and I are not in the big club..."
But
don't let him fool you. As dumb as he is, he's not that stupid. He's
well aware the invasion of Iraq has been about oil, despite his empty,
demagogic rants against Big Oil's profiteering.
That's a US general, O'Reilly. Not far left loons, the ACLU, godless secularists, terrorist sympathizers, or communists.
Feel
the noose tightening, O'Reilly? Metaphorically speaking, of course.
But, like Bush, Cheney, and Rice [let's not be sexist], you are headed
for the dock at an international war crimes tribunal.--June 21, 2008
Suggests McClellan is a weasel; denies Bush did anything "sinister"
Spouts
long-discredited line that a) Bush was misled by bad intelligence and
b) Clinton, Blair and CIA chief George Tenet thought Hussein was a "big
danger" to US
June
3, 2008--Of course O'Reilly says Bush didn't lie. In defending Bush,
O'Reilly's defending himself. He--and the rest of the capitalist
media--helped Bush lie and spread the war propaganda the US rulers
needed to win public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
O'Reilly shows a video clip of former CIA director George Tenet: Tenet:
"Let me say something very clearly to everybody. We believed he had
weapons of mass destruction...I believed it going back to my time in
the Clinton administration when we were concerned about Iraq. I
believed on the basis of 10 years of following it, data that we'd seen,
his deception, his denial, his thwarting of the U.N...."
Well,
there you have it. Case closed, according to Bill O'Reilly. Clinton,
Blair and Tenet thought Hussein had WMD. That proves Bush wasn't lying,
doesn't it?
Oh Really O'Reilly?
"Salon exclusive: Two
former CIA officers say the president squelched top-secret
intelligence, and a briefing by George Tenet, months before invading
Iraq."
"CIA director George Tenet briefed President Bush in the
Oval office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have
weapons of mass destruction, according to two former senior CIA
officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this information from the Iraqi
foreign minister, a member of Saddam's inner circle, althought it
turned out to be accurate in every detail. Tenet never brought it up
again."
Even
this whitewash by the US Senate Intelligence Committee is forced to
concede that Bush falsely linked Al Qaeda to Hussein to win public
support for the invasion of Iraq.
It's also more evidence that
Bill O'Reilly has helped Bush lie for over 5 years and is an accomplice
to the war crimes committed by Washington against the people of
Iraq.--June 19, 2008
This must be how O'Reilly won the Polk Award. Or was it the Peabody?
Off-camera, on-camera, Bill O'Reilly's vicious temper and thuggishness
dovetail nicely with his broader political views that endorse torture,
wars of aggression and the slaughter of innocent civilians who happen
to get in the way of US imperialism's strategic objective of
controlling natural resources.
We recall O'Reilly's infamous inquisition of guest Jeremy Glick back in
February 2003. On-camera, O'Reilly's temper toward Glick is permanently
captured in the transcript. Off-camera,
O'Reilly allegedly threatened to smash Glick's face into little pieces.
Glick, whose father, a Port Authority worker who died in the World
Trade Center, earned O'Reilly's wrath for not drinking the Factor
host's Kool Aid regarding Washington's invasion of Afghanistan; for
having the audacity to state that America's foreign policy had
something to do with 9/11; for mentioning the word "imperialism."
Such more for O'Reilly's version of free speech and a rigorous exchange
of ideas. So much for O'Reilly as a human being.--May 12, 2008
McCain: US Invaded Iraq for Oil; O'Reilly Fails to Ask Him About It
Factor Host Also Fails to McCain About Keating 5
"My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about,
which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that
will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."--John McCain
That
was on May 2. On May 9, the Republican nominee to be sat down for an
interview with Bill O'Reilly. One would think a responsible journalist
would put aside the softball questions and ask McCain to explain his
war for oil statement. But Bill O'Reilly is not a responsible
journalist. He's a propagandist for war aware that to ask that question
would have embarrassed he and McCain. O'Reilly no doubt knows that when
true journalists did ask McCain to explain his remarks, Mr. Straight
Truth Express replied that he was talking about the first Gulf war in
1991. Sure you were, John.
All that does is reveal that oil was the true motive for Washington's aggression in 1991 and 2003.
O'Reilly
asked all of ONE question about Iraq: "...So how much more does America
have to absorb for a government that is inefficient and corrupt?"
[Absorb? Iraq's lost 1 million; Washington's lost 4,000. Iraq didn't
invade the US.]
Yes, puppets tend to be inefficient and corrupt,
particularly when the imperialist masters who installed them are
helping to cover up that corruption, as former US State Department
officials are alleging.
Maybe
O'Reilly can call McCain back for a follow-up interview to discuss this
topic further. While they're at it, perhaps O'Reilly can ask McCain
about Doug Goodyear, the lobbyist who will manage the GOP convention
this summer who is also the CEO for the firm that was paid $348,000 in
2002 to represent Burma's military's dictatorship.
If O'Reilly was a responsible journalist and truly cared for the folks, he'd then ask McCain why he was a member of the Keating 5.
Which
is precisely why Bill O'Reilly's April 18th Talking Points Memo praised
Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos for "doing their job"!
The
fact that Stephanopoulos was helping to advance this reactionary agenda
no doubt played a role in O'Reilly's failure to remind his viewers that
Stephanopoulos served as communications director in the Clinton
administration--an obvious conflict of interest that explained why this
Clinton flunky acted like an "overly ambitious intern helping out at a
subcommittee hearing," as TV critic Tom Shales accurately described it.
This
also explains why O'Reilly had nothing to say about the fact that his
fellow fascist and FOX colleague Sean Hannity had given Stephanopoulos
the question about Weatherman Bill Ayers when the ABC "journalist" had
appeared the day before on Hannity's radio program.
"Is that a question you might ask?" Hannity demanded.
O'Reilly Revels in Wright Hurting Obama, Bitter Democratic Factionalism
As
a mouthpiece for those capitalists who see continued Republican rule as
the best way to wage imperialist wars and roll back democratic rights,
Bill O'Reilly's happier than a pig in shit watching the Democrats self
destruct and Reverend Jeremiah Wright damage Barack Obama's candidacy. While
the Factor host vows to "be fair to Obama" as he gleefully joins the
McCarthyite attack on Wright's provocative views, a quick review of his
Talking Points Memos since the story broke reveals where O'Reilly's
head is really at:
"Race Hammer in Play Again" (March 13, 2008) "Obama Pastor Controversy Continues (March 16, 2008) "Obama Replies to Pastor Controversy" (March 17, 2008) "Obama Speaks on Rev. Wright and Race in America" (March 18, 2008) "Race in America, Starring Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson" (March 19, 2008) "Obama Strikes Back" (March 20, 2008) "Uncivil War Within Democratic Party" (March 24, 2008) "Shooting at Hillary Clinton" (March 25, 2008) "Barack Obama's Comeback" (March 31, 20080 "Worse Missteps: Obama or Clinton" (April 1, 2008) "Sticking up for Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan" (April 3, 2008) "Martin Luther King, Jeremiah Wright and Hollywood" (April 6, 2008) "White Backlash Against Rev. Wright and Racist Accusations" (April 7, 2008) "Playing Gotcha With Obama" (April 17, 2008) "Hating ABC News" (April 18, 2008) "Showdown in Pennsylvania" (April 21, 2008) "Long March Continues for Democrats" (April 23, 2008) "Racism and the Democratic Presidential Contest" (April 24, 2008) "Comeback of Rev. Jeremiah Wright" (April 25, 2008) "Reverend Jeremiah Wright's Excellent Adventure" (April 28, 2008)
We'll respond to excerpts from several of the above examples of O'Reilly's McCarthyism shortly.
In
the meantime, O'Reilly's "reporting" might have more credibility if in
the spirit of fair and balanced he devoted equal time to the remarks of
McCain supporter John Hagee, the extreme right televangelist who called
O'Reilly's Catholic Church a "whore" and believes that Hurricane
Katrina was God's way of punishing the people of New Orleans for their
tolerance of homosexuality.
This
contemptible wretch just can't wait to show the world how much balls
she has by slaughtering 65 million people on behalf of Wall Street and
Zionist Israel.
In a just world, she'd be tried and convicted
before an international war crimes tribunal and sentenced with no
mercy, joining Bill O'Reilly at the gallows pole where they could pray
to their maker in unison. How touching that would be.--April 25, 2008
And
wins the endorsement of Richard Mellon Scaife's newspaper, the
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The same ultraright publisher who led the
campaign to impeach her husband in 1998. She has no principles, no
scruples, no values, no shame. This is not ambition. This is a lust for
power.
Meanwhile, Clinton has blamed her dismal showing in many
state caucuses on MoveOn.org, the group which was founded to defeat
that impeachment drive, whining that its members "flood[ed] the
caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually
show up to support me." Hillary also falsely accused MoveOn of opposing
Washington's invasion of Afghanistan.
Sit-down reveals strategic agreement between multimillionaires
Differences on taxes, wars, torture only tactical
Clinton proves her populism is phonier than O'Reilly's
Clinton: "...And I really don't think the United States government was behind AIDS."
O'Reilly:
"Obviously, Rev. Wright is delusional. There's not a shred of evidence
to back up that nutty statement." [Talking Points Memo, April 3, 2008]
Speaking
of which, it's more and more troubling to keep hearing that the only
way Clinton can win is if something bad happens to Obama, like "an act
of God" in Tim Russert's words, or if "something drops on Obama's
head," as Bill O'Reilly so eloquently put it; let alone former
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckaby's sick joke about
someone "aim[ing] a gun" at Obama.
Whatever you do, Obama, do NOT choose Clinton as your running mate!--May 8, 2008
This
cretin just can't hide his racism. As the Scorpion told the Frog in
Aesop's fable after stinging him ensured their deaths: "I can't help
it. It's in my nature."
If
this
were a prizefight, it would have been stopped. Reverend Michael
Pfleger's command of history and the facts knocked O'Reilly's flunky
right out of the ring. Particularly satisfying was how Pfleger shot
down Mr. Ambush's attempt to falsify and rewrite history by painting
Martin Luther King Jr as a harmless Uncle Tom who would have joined
Clarence Thomas in opposing affirmative action. [See "Their King and
Ours" on page 1 of this site, A Tribune of the People.]
"Dr.
King I believe would cry today... if he saw the plight of poor people,
saw us in a war that's immoral, founded on a lie...saw the conditions
that exist today... I think Dr. King would be considered by you, by Mr.
O'Reilly, and your viewers... as an angry madman..."
Right you
are, Reverend, particularly after King's 1967 anti-Vietnam War speech
in which he condemned Washington as "the greatest purveyor of violence
in the world today."
When O'Reilly's flunky tried to peddle
King's "judge a man by the content of his character and not the color
of his skin" line as an example of how he preached loved while Wright
preaches hate [it's also a thinly disguised attempt to falsely brand
King as an affirmative action opponent], Pfleger set the record
straight: "... read the first part of that speech, when he talked about
the injustices of America, read his speech about the Vietnam war, you
like to take Dr. King and repackage him into this wonderful little
loving sweet guy who had this olive branch in his hand [trans: Uncle
Tom] that's not Martin Luther King...cause I knew him too, and Martin
Luther King spoke truth to this country, and that's why he's dead, too,
because they decided he had to die..."
O'Reilly Hit Man: "Well,
thank you very much..." he stammered, fully aware by now that both he
and O'Reilly are not in Pfleger's league--intellectually or politically.
Stooges with financial ties to military contractors
FOX, O'Reilly in middle of scandal
Arm-twisting,
ass-kissing, profiteering, censoring, and manipulating shamelessly
carried out by representatives of a kept press to hoodwink US workers
to die for Big Oil and capitalist profits
"In turn, members of
this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes when
when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some
analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared
jeoparding their access.
"A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis. [emphasis added]
"
'It was them saying, "We need to stick our hands up your back and move
your mouth for you," 'Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and
former Fox News analyst, said."
" '...We knew we had
extraordinary access,' said Timur J. Eads, a retired Army lt. colonel
and Fox analyist who is vice president of government relations for
Blackbird Technologies, a fast-growingmilitary contractor.
"Like
several other analysts, Mr Eads said he had at times held his tongue on
television for fear that 'some four-star could call up and say, "Kill
that contract." '....
"Some analysts said that even before the war started, they privately had questions about the justification for the invasion but were careful not to express them on air." [emphasis added]
"Mr.
Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst [and frequent O'Reilly guest], was among
those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq's purported
stockpiles of illicit weapons. he recalled asking the briefer whether
the United States had 'smoking gun' proof.
" 'We don't have any
hard evidence, ' Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said
he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. 'We are looking
at ourselves saying, "What are we doing?" '
"Another analyst,
Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel..."concluded that
the analysts were being 'manipulated' to convey a false sense of
certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Br. Bevelacqua
and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public." [emphasis added]
"Mr.
Bevelacqua and another Fox analyst, Lieutenant Colonel Bill Cowan, had
formed the wvc3 Group, and hoped to win military and national
contracts."
" 'There's no way I was going to go down that road
and get completely torn apart,' Mr. Bevelacqua said. ' You're talking
about fighting a huge machine.' "
....Still, even the mildest of
criticism could draw a challenge. Several analysts told of fielding
telephone calls from displeased defense officials only minutes after
being on the air.'"
"On Aug. 3, 2005, 14 marines died in Iraq.
That day, Mr. Cowan, who said he had grown increasingly uncomfortable
with the 'twisted version of reality' being pushed on analysts in
briefings, called the Pentagon to give 'a heads-up' that some of his
comments on Fox 'may not all be friendly,' Pentagon records show. Mr.
Rumsfeld's senior aides quickly arranged a private briefing for him,
yet when he told Bill O'Reilly that the United States was 'not on a good glide path right now' in Iraq, the repercussions were swift." [emphasis added]
Cowan was fired from the analysts group the next day.
Of
course, the Times has blood on its hands as well, since its editorials
and reporting, including that of the wretched Judith Miller, played a
huge role in helping Bush lie to the American people about the
aggression Washington committed against Iraq.
O'Reilly's role
proves what we've been saying on this site for 6 years: O'Reilly's no
mere journalist who expressed his First Amendment views on the issue.
No, he was a conscious, willing, enthusiastic participant in the
systematic web of deceit planned and executed in the White House,
Pentagon, and board rooms of the major capitalist news organizations
that was designed to facilitate the illegal, murderous invasion of a
sovereign country.
Bill O'Reilly is no journalist. He's a war criminal who deserves to meet his maker at the gallow's pole.--April 22-24, 2008
O'Reilly's Partisan Spin Again: Demands Obama
Denounce Wright's 9/11 Comments, Lets McCain off Hook for Hagee's Claim
Katrina Was God Punishing New Orleans for Homosexuality
Pastor Wright's 9/11 Remarks Unnerve O'Reilly and Entire US Political Establishment
Whatever
Wright's confused formulations, they express the awareness--and
anger--among broad layers of Americans that the terrorist attacks on
September 11, 2001 were connected to US foreign policy. This Bill
O'Reilly, Chris Matthews and their ilk cannot tolerate. They know that
despite all their efforts on behalf of the US ruling class to cover up
their murderous intrigue, tens of millions smell the stench of 9/11.
Propagandists, mouthpieces and spinmeisters like O'Reilly and Matthews
are well aware of the subversive--even revolutionary implications of
9/11, because once you know that "your government" either sponsored or
allowed terrorist attacks to occur in order to win public support for
military aggression in oil rich nations, then it's time for that
government to go, to be dumped in the trashbin of history, as Russian
revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky would say. Hell, the Declaration of
Independence demands that of its citizenry.
O'Reilly and
Matthews, obedient lapdogs for the capitalist class they serve,
immediately dismissed Wright's remarks as lunatic before distorting
them without seriously analyzing a single word.
O'Reilly: "...Jeremiah Wright has been exposed as an anti-American hater."
No
he hasn't. Wright hates US government foreign policy, not "America." He
doesn't hate his city. He doesn't hate his community. He may hate
racist warmongers like O'Reilly. But he doesn't hate "America."
Wright's problem is that he's limited by his political flaws; he's a
bourgeois religious figure and member of the urban petty bourgeoisie
who lacks a proletarian, internationalist perspective that would
prevent him from saying "we" bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "We" the
American working class--didn't bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They--the US capitalist class--bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With that as a qualifier, let's do the fact check that media whores O'Reilly and Matthews failed to do.
Wright: "We bombed Hiroshima." True.
Wright: "We bombed Nagasaki." True.
O'Reilly: "He believes the USA is no better than Al Qaeda."
Wright didn't say the USA is no better than Al Qaeda. He said the USA has slaughtered more civilians than Al Qaeda.
And that's a fact.
Wright: "And we nuked far more than the thousands in New Y ork and the Pentagon...." True.
Wright: "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africans." True.
Washington did support apartheid South Africa and it still supports
Israel's state terrorism against the Palestinians. That's a fact that
unfolds before our eyes every day.
Wright: "And now we are
indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now been brought
right back into our own front yard."
Again, Wright's got his "us
and thems and we's" confused, but amidst his confusion is the
fundamental truth that Malcolm X expressed long ago when he
characterized Kennedy's assassination as the "chickens coming home to
roost." Wright is expressing what tens of millions of African Americans
and many other Americans know--you commit that much violence and mayhem
around the world as the US government has done, and well, what goes
around comes around. In other words, Washington has turned America into
a bloody deathtrap for its inhabitants.
When Wright damns
America, he's damning American imperialism and the crimes it has
committed against humanity since the Filipino war; he's damning
Washington for killing millions of Vietnamese, Koreans, Japanese,
Iraqis, Central Americans, and Indonesians, among others; he's damning
racist lynchings of Black Americans; he's damning Washington giving
syphilis to Blacks at the Tuskogee Institute in the 1930s.
O'Reilly: "At this point, the story tells us more about the media than Senator Obama."
Yeah, starting with you, media boy.
O'Reilly:
"You'll remember the very liberal New York Times attacked John McCain
for associating with a lobbyist nobody ever heard of. The Times put the
story on page one and the liberal media ran with it. The McCain story
was about association and judgment, was it not?...But the NY Times
buried the pastor's story. The paper must think its readers are stupid."
The
"very liberal" NY Times lied for Bush and helped him wage a brutal,
illegal war and occupation. The very conservative Bill O'Reilly has
buried the story of another controversial pastor, John Hagee, a McCain
supporter who said that "Hurricane Katrina was the judgment of God
against the city of New Orleans for planning a homosexual parade on the
Monday that Katrina arrived." O'Reilly must think his viewers are
stupid.--March 18, 2008
O'Reilly on Media Exploitation of Spitzer Scandal: New Meaning to the Pot Calling the Kettle Black
"New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in Big Trouble" (March 11, 2008) "Far Left and Spitzer Scandal" (March 12, 2008) "Governor Eliot Spitzer Quits" (March 13, 2008)
A
Democratic governor ruined by a tryst with a call girl? That's Music to
O'Reilly's ears at a time when Bush is loathed and conditions are
favorable for a Democratic sweep.
"Keep in mind that every time
a Republican or a clergyman gets into trouble, these same far-left
loons gleefully join in the witch-burning. Hypocritical doesn't even
begin to cover it." ("Far Left and Spitzer Scandal," Talking Points
Memo, March 12, 2008)
Pot calls kettle black, O'Reilly style: "Keep in mind that every time a Democratic gets into trouble, these far right loons [like O'Reilly] gleefully join in the witch-burning. Hypocritical doesn't even begin to cover it."
From the same
Talking Points segment: "Eliot Spitzer broke the law, so he has to
resign as governor. There's no comparing what he did to any civil or
private action, including the situation of Presidents John F. Kennedy
and Bill Clinton. When you are the chief law enforcement officer of a
state and you violate criminal law, you've got to go."
Here the
right-wing spinmeister apologist for Bush proudly displays his
hypocritical selective double standards. The truth is as follows:
"George W. Bush broke the law, so he has to resign as president.
[Actually he should indicted and convicted for war crimes,with no mercy
shown due to the gravity of his crimes and complete lack of
remorse.There's no comparing what he did to any civil or private
action, including the situation of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill
Clinton, or the situation of Eliot Spitzer.]
"When you are the chief law enforcement officer of a nation and you violate criminal law, you've got to go."
Bush
violated federal and international laws against torture, federal laws
prohibiting spying on American citizens; he violated the constitution
in undermining habeas corpus and due process when he arrested Americans
without charges or evidence. He violated US and international law when
he illegally invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, war crimes that have killed
over a million Iraqis and Afghans. It's Bush who has to go. Along with
Bill O'Reilly, the number 1 aider and abettor of Bush's crimes against
humanity in the capitalist media.--March 16, 2008
O'Reilly: "Something is disturbing about that because so
many innocent folks are hurt in any scandal, but we Americans like the
action and the press lives for it, so that's not going to change." [emphasis added]
Hey
O'Reilly, don't lump the rest of us in with your sick mind; don't drag
all Americans into your pit of salacious envy. You and your ilk like
Chris Matthews live for it. You overpaid, parasitic ruling class
scribes are paid millions precisely to "substitute scandal-mongering
and character assassination for any genuine and open debate of policy
and issues...." (WSWS, "Politically
directed dragnet snares New York Governor Spitzer", 3/13/08). Your
"hand-wringing and feigned outrage over the personal sexual conduct of
this or that politician" and your contribution to the "media's
dissemination of lurid details--all have the effect of debasing the
political environment."
O'Reilly: "There's no sympathy here for Eliot Spitzer, but his family is another
matter. How awful." [Crocodile tears from a dangerous, powerful hypocrite]
But
that isn't stopping O'Reilly from doing his part to drag Spitzer's name
through the mud and plastering television screen and his website with
all the lewd and lavicious details videos like "Psychology of
Prostitution" ["Gov. Spitzer's costly call girl revealed. How does one
get involved with prostitution?"] and "Big Business: Ex-call girl
details life inside world of prostitution"]
Humiliate kids, desecrate their religion, throw puppy off cliff
It's all part of O'Reilly's noble mission in Iraq. Must be just a few more of those few rotten apples.
On
one level those soldiers are working class victims of the US capitalist
political/military command; their demented behavior a result of the
barbaric, dehumanizing training ordered by that imperialist war
command. On another level, these particular soldiers, stupid enough to
be consciously caught on video, are war criminals in their own right,
perhaps there are IED's with their names on them.--March 8, 2008
What's Behind O'Reilly's Knee Jerk Defense of McCain-- WAR
February 24, 2008--It should surprise no one that Bill O'Reilly jumped
to Senator John McCain's defense against allegations of impropriety
raised in a recent NY Times article. It is no mystery why O'Reilly
ignored the questions and contradictions
already surfacing regarding McCain's categorical denial of any
impropriety. O'Reilly spins for and defends McCain for the exact same
reason he does for George W. Bush--the war in Iraq and the imperialist
wars to come.
Mounting Calls for O'Reilly's Resignation Over Lynching Comment
George W. Bush: "Lynching should not be used in any way, even in jest."
We'll track it down? Lynching party? Boasting about the legions of fascist goons you know you have at your beck and call, O'Reilly?
We've
said it many times: Bill O'Reilly is a repulsive racist. Even by George
W. Bush's illustrious standards, O'Reilly should be yanked from the
airwaves immediately. Then he should be thrown before the mercy of an
international court for his role as an accessory to US imperialism's
war crimes in illegally invading and occupying Iraq. But no mercy
should be shown.
O'Reilly's comment is at least as offensive as
Don Imus's "nappy-headed ho's" slander against the Rutgers' women's
basketball team. Given the recent spate of noose-related incidents
involving the Jena 6, Golf magazine's cover and Kelly
Tilghman's bimbo-like remark about lynching Tiger Woods in a back
alley, O'Reilly showed his usual sense of class and good judgment. As
he himself said, "Context is everything." Of course, the racist buffoon
just can't help himself. As the scorpion once told the frog, "It's in
my nature."
We've also said that Bill O'Reilly is the most
dangerous man in America, in that he represents the face of American
fascism today. This fact was recognized in an astute article
by the Huffington Post's Bob Cesca, who in his call for O'Reilly to
resign in disgrace wrote, "...unlike you and your Stalking McCarthyite
Schutzstaffle--your Lynching Party--we're not a mob out for vengeance."
While
Cesca correctly illuminates the nexus between the fanatical followers
of O'Reilly, Malkin, Coulter and Beck with the recent death threats
levied against Obama, he's wrong when he says O'Reilly "clearly doesn't
understand the repercussions of this kind of race-baiting language. And
that indicates a staggering lack of understanding about what sorts of
reactionary people are dialed in."
Bullshit. O'Reilly is well
aware of the repercussions generated by this race-baiting language, and
he knows full well the sorts of reactionary people are dialed in.
Because they're his people. He's the fascist leader; they are the
brain-dead, Kool Aid guzzling followers. And in time, the US working
class will forge a Red Guard to defend ourselves against the
ultrarightist violence unleashed by the scum coalescing around Bill
O'Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter,
Glenn Beck and Michael Savage.--February 20-24, 2008
"Al Qaeda is isolated in Pakistan, and the Taliban gets pounded in every engagement. "
Oh
Really O'Reilly? Is that why US Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently
stated the US is "ready, willing and able" to send US combat forces
into Pakistan? Is that why Pakistani President Musharraf was recently
seen begging for continued Western support for his hated regime?
Is
that why two recent US military reports warned that Washington faced
failure in Afghanistan? Is that why one report began: "Make no mistake,
NATO is not winning in Afghanistan"? Is that why the German foreign
minister rejected Washington's request to send more troops to southern
Afghanistan to fight the Taliban? Because "the Taliban gets pounded in
every engagement" Then why's Bush asking for more help from Germany if
things are going so well.
O'Reilly: "Back here in the USA,
people like Michael Moore call the presence of American forces in Iraq
evil." Tens of millions more Americans than just Moore have witnesses
the horrors that have been inflicted against Iraqis in Americans' name,
and those Americans have had enough. They agree with their working
class brothers and sisters in Iraq--they want the US forces to go,
because the Bush-ordered aggression has destroyed their country.
O'Reilly: "A dishonest media trumps up stories about returning soldiers killing people."
The
stories about returning soldiers killing people and exhibiting other
manifestations of post traumatic stress disorder caused when you
brutalize soldiers in their training and then throw them into another
country as occupiers. The result will be dead people--from Iraq to
America. And their blood is on Bill O'Reilly's hands. He deserves a
guilty verdict as much as Bush and Cheney at the coming international
war crimes tribunals with their names on them.
O'Reilly: "Hollywood pinheads make movies disrespecting the armed forces."
Whatever
flaws that may exist in these films made by O'Reilly's "pinheads," if
he's referring to Brian DePalma's "Rededacted," the revolting
atrocities of murder ad rape by US soldiers against an innocent Iraqi
family chronicled in "Redacted" are factual representations of what
happened. The only people "disrespecting the armed forces" are those
who trained and ordered those soldiers to treat all Iraqis as the
enemy, the soldiers who willingingly and enthusiastically followed out
those immoral orders, and war propagandists like Bill O'Reilly who
unflinchingly defends US imperialisms "noble effort" in Iraq--one that
slaughtered about a million Iraqis, destroyed much of the country,
killed and maimed thousands of Americans--and one that was based on
documented lies.
Take a seat at the coming war crimes tribunal with your name on it, Bill O'Reilly.--February 11, 2008
Which
means O'Reilly belongs in the dock alongside Bush, Cheney, Rice,
Rumsfeld, and their ilk. O'Reilly wasn't merely a journalist
exercising his 1st Amendment rights. He was an integral part of
a murderous war machine who consciously propagandized and lied on
behalf of it.
Bill O'Reilly is guilty of international war
crimes. He should receive the severest punishment for his aiding and
abetting in US imperialism's war atrocities.--January 23, 2008
"We're still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges..."
This
is what happens when your job is to spin for George W. Bush and the US
imperialist war machine he commands. The more O'Reilly spins for Bush,
the more he wallows in his own shit, the more he disrespects those
soldiers he claims to speak for so hypocritically and self righteously.
Confronted with VA facts on veteran homelessness, O'Reilly beats cowardly retreat
After
Keith Olbermann and others called him out on the facts, the punk sang a
different tune the following night. Yeah, there may be 200,000 homeless
vets, but it's their fault because they're drug addicts and mentally
ill. It's not the economy. It's not the capitalist system. It's not
Bush. It's individual failings--an echo of his racist argument that
there's no more racism in the US; if Blacks aren't succeeding, it's
their fault for being lazy and undisciplined.
Moments
after contemptuously downplaying reports of violence committed by US
veterans, what does O'Reilly cover in his next segment?
One Marine accused of murdering his Marine wife!
F**K THE "CLOUD OVER BASEBALL"!
It's
the cloud over Washingon and its media whores like Bill O'Reilly that
we should be outraged over. Their lies resulted in the deaths of a
million Iraqis and Americans.
A Catholic's Prayer to the Lord about Bill O'Reilly
Lord,
if you do exist, please take Bill O'Reilly now, before he causes more
pain and death to more innocents. He has abused and distorted your
teachings in the name of war, persecution, and hatred long enough.
He is unrepentant, completely without remorse, and appears hell bent on
bombarding Americans with repackaged lies on behalf of Washington's
imperialist war machine. He is a satanic wolf in Christ's toga.
Take him now. Much of the world would rejoice and sing your praises.--Jan. 15, 2008
If
O'Reilly were a serious and professional journalist interested in
providing his viewers with a fair and balanced perspective, he would
tell them about the well documented business connections between
Cheney's Hallibuton in Iraq and Iran, and Bush's decades-long
relationship with the Bin Laden family.
But since O'Reilly is
the principal media propagandist for Bush, Cheney and the US
imperialist war machine, his demagogic rant against GE should be seen
trying to boost his network's ratings against a competitor.--Jan. 14,
2008
Apparently the notion
that an African American might actually be elected president is enough
to send the racist Bill O'Reilly over the edge. This egotistical,
demagogic blowhard is so racist and so Republican, he can't stop
himself from revealing what a thuggish GOP dirty trickster he truly
is.--January 6, 2008
