Wingnut Week in Review: O'Reilly proves himself the ultimate hypocrite

Wingnut Week In Review: Papa Bear Roars: Feb. 27, 2015

Terrance Heath

Papa Bear Roars

Anyone with a YouTube account knows by now that Fox News Host Bill O’Reilly has a bit of a temper.

When NBC news anchor Brian Williams falsely claimed that his helicopter was nearly shot down, as he covered the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, O’Reilly unleashed a fusillade of righteous anger against a national media that he said, “isn’t half as responsible as the men who forged the nation.” Lamenting the “culture of deception” in the “liberal media,” O’Reilly said the Williams affair should prompt questioning of other media “deceptions.”

It did, but not in the way O’Reilly probably imagined. Late last week, Mother Jones’ David Corn and Daniel Schulman reported that “for years, O’Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don’t withstand scrutiny.” Here are a few:

• “War Zone” Reporting. O’Reilly has claimed over and over that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war in 1982, and even face combat. Thus, when “Papa Bear” speaks of war, he does so with the understanding of one who’s seen it up close.Except that O’Reilly was never a war correspondent, nor did he experience combat. O’Reilly was 1,000 miles away, in Buenos Ares. He covered one protest that turned violent, endangering his cameraman in the process, and getting himself yanked out of Argentina. CBS released O’Reilly’s 1982 footage, which confirmed that O’Reilly’s been spinning a yarn for years.
• El Salvador, Too. In 2012, O’Reilly claimed to have witnessed the Salvadoran national guard execute three nuns and a lay worker on December 2, 1980. The statement contradicts O’Reilly’s own books and previous comments, that he didn’t arrive in El Salvador until 1981. So, O’Reilly claimed he was really referring to being shown images of the murders.
• The JFK Connection. In his book, Killing Kennedy, O’Reilly claimed that he heard the gunshot when George de Mohrenschildt, a friend of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, committed suicide at his daughter’s Florida home. “He was in Dallas,” said Tracy Rowlet, a former colleague of O’Reilly’s at Dallas station WFAA said. “Bill O’Reilly’s a phony — there’s no other way to put it.”

Meanwhile, O’Reilly claimed that criticism of his record is based on “professional jealousy,” because “We are putting tremendous pressure on the Obama administration to fight the terror savages.”

The Fox Network, which has stood by O’Reilly thus far, fell strangely quiet after the JFK revelation. O’Reilly has taken to threatening reporters. In response to the Mother Jones article, O’Reilly said, “I expect David Corn to be in the kill zone. Where he deserves to be.” 

O’Reilly also threatened a New York Times reporter, because he didn’t like a Times article detailing Fox’s defense of O’Reilly, while he lied to the public for years. “I am coming after you with everything I have,” O’Reilly said. “You can take it as a threat.”

O’Reilly’s been in the media long enough that surely he knows this is not the way to kill a story. (The most effective method would have been to ignore it.) Maybe he just can’t help himself. He has a long history of attacking reporters.How much trouble is O’Reilly in? Things have gotten so desperate that O’Reilly is now defending President Obama. Days after lashing out at the liberal media for smearing him, in the guise of advising would-be GOP presidential candidates, O’Reilly told his audience that the president’s policies may be “controversial,” but there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

CPAC 2015

It’s that time of year again. The Conservative Political Action Conference is in town. Things went awry before the conference even started, when CPAC organizers decided to open the virtual floor to questions from Twitter, via the #CPACQ hash tag.
It didn’t take liberals long to start having some fun with it.
And if that’s not bad enough, CPAC’s official mobile app can’t tell the difference between presidential hopeful Ben Carson and North Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.
At first, styling CPAC 2015 after “The Avengers” seemed like an odd choice.

But the speeches so far show that the right-wingers at CPAC thing we are all in danger, and they’re going to save us, by leading us in to a with ISIS.

• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker assured conservatives that if he could “take on a hundred thousand” union protesters, he could more than handle ISIS. Turns out, even conservatives aren’t keen on comparing American protesters with terrorists.
• Former Texas governor Rick Perry donned his “smart kid” glasses to tell the CPAC audience, “ISIS represents the worst threat to freedom since communism.”
• Donald Trump offer his stragegy for dealing with ISIS: “Hit them so hard and so fast that they wouldn’t know what happened.”
• Ben Carson was a bit more specific about how he would defeat ISIS: Tell the military to do it!
• Newt Gingrich warned the audience of extremists at CPAC that Islamic extremists were trying to “penetrate” America by supporting Hillary Clinton.

Looney Tunes Legislators

In what may become a regular part of “Wingnut Week In Review,” here are the week’s nuttiest laws and lawmakers:

• Idaho Republican state Rep. Christy Perry said the state had no right to protect children whose parents deny them medical care on religious grounds. “Children do die,” said Perry. “If I want to let my child be with God, why is that wrong?” Perry also claims to be an ardent supporter of a “right to life.”
• Idaho Republican state Rep. Vincent Barbieri asked a doctor if woman could swallow a camera to help a doctor conduct a pregnancy exam. The doctor explained that if a woman swallowed a camera, it would not end up in the vagina.
• Tennessee Republican state Rep. Matt Krause proposed legislation to give fetuses legal representation, when the mother is brain-dead.
• Republicans on Wisconsin’s Senate Labor Committee walked out of hearing on the proposed “right to work bill,” rather than hear from 180 witnesses, most of whom were opposed to the measure.
• North Carolina’s state Senate voted to allow state officials to refuse to marry same-sex couples without fear of being fired.
• Next week, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee will answer this question: “Do you think Idaho should be classified as a Christian state?”
• Texas Republicans had a party to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the state’s same-sex marriage ban, complete with what can only be called an “anti-wedding cake.”
• Texas Republican state Rep. Debbie Riddle proposed a bill mandating up to a year in jail for anyone over 13 caught using the bathroom of “a gender that is not the same gender as the individual’s gender.”
• Now that it’s legal to toke up in the nation’s capital, Republicans are threatening to put Washington, DC’ mayor in jail — for enacting a voter-approved law.

Here’s the best of the worst in wingnuttia this week:

• Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R, Georgia) had a lot to say this week. In one town hall meeting, Loudermilk: said that House Republicans looked into arresting attorney general Eric Holder at the State of the Union address; boasted about not vaccinating his children; opposed using IED’s to stop illegal immigration, “because there’s a lot of Americans who work [there] and kids around the border as well.”
• After ranting last week that America “deserves to be destroyed” if it enacted net neutrality, this week Glenn Beck proved a bit of a sore loser. “You morons! You useful idiots! That’s all you are,” Beck bellowed at net neutrality supporters who were almost certainly not watching his show. “You’re a useful idiot. Read Joe Stalin. You moron!”
• Rush Limbaugh figured out that the arrest of ISIS sympathizers in New York City was really just a ploy to push net neutrality.
• She’s back! Proving that leaving Congress doesn’t mean leaving the spotlight, former Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann told Newsmax’s Steve Malzberg that the shooting of two NYPD officers in December was linked to ISIS.
• Rep. Aaron Schock has hired a PR firm and a lawyer to help him manage the fallout of his fabulous life, after coming under fire for his “Downton Abbey”-themed office, and for using taxpayer and campaign funds to travel on private jets owned by his key donors. Shock’s habit of posting images and videos of his fabulous life on Instagram is what got him busted.
• It snowed in DC again, so Sen. James Inhofe threw a snowball on the Senate floor to “prove” that climate change is a hoax.
• Rep. Sheila Butt (R, Tennessee) wrote in a Facebook post, “It’s time for a Council of Christian Relations and a NAAWP in this Country.” But Rep. Butt assured us that it wasn’t racist, because the W stands for “Western.” The Tennessee Black Caucus wants an apology. So far, House Republicans are standing behind Butt.
• Former congressman Ron Paul told libertarian Lew Rockwell that the Congressional Black Caucus is “really against war because they want all of that money to go to food stamps for people here.” Because of course it’s un-American to prioritize feeing people over killing people.
• Rep. Glenn Grothman (R, Wisconsin) advised constituents to “keep an eye on” the kinds of things people are buying with food stamps.
• Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly complained that there are too many females on college campuses. Her solution? A quota.
• Pat Robertson said women who fantasize over “50 Shades of Gray” are helping fuel sex trafficking.
• Robertson also warned “700 Club” viewers that yoga tricks people into speaking “in Hindu.”

The Essential Uselessness of John Boehner

House Speaker John Boehner. (photo: AP)

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

27 February 15

readersupportednews.org

 

t has long been the opinion of the management of this shebeen that obvious anagram Reince Priebus is the emptiest suit in American politics. I see no reason to change that now. However, as this ongoing brawl between the Republican majorities in the two houses of the national legislature makes painfully clear, Speaker of the House John Boehner is making a strong bid to overtake Priebus, even though their problems are quite nearly the same. Priebus's suit is empty because being the chairman of the Republican National Committee doesn't mean a whole helluva lot when you've got a flock of gozillionnaires willing to finance the campaigns of people that the RNC would rather not see traipsing around the landscape with their underwear on their heads. What power does Priebus have over Sheldon Adelson? Or the Kochs? Or any of the other panjandrums who can construct entire presidential candidacies from deep in their vaults? Similarly, Boehner has no apparent control of his majority because so many of them are from safe Republican districts and can find electoral sustenance from the same new universe of sources on which the presidential candidates can call. It is unimaginable that Boehner would threaten a recalcitrant conservative House member with a primary. He'd get laughed at. The fact is that almost every former source of political power in the Republican party has been rendered largely a figurehead.

Thus does he find himself being outmaneuvered in the ongoing cockfight over tying the funding for the Department of Homeland Security to the president's executive orders on immigration. Thus do we find Boehner looking for a way out and flopping around like a trout in the canoe.

And on Wednesday morning, Mr. Boehner and House Republicans emerged from their private meeting saying they had no plans to act until the Senate actually sent them a bill. "I don't know what the Senate's capable of passing, and until I see what they're going to pass, no decisions have been made on the House side," Mr. Boehner said. "The House has done its job to fund the Department of Homeland Security and to stop the president's overreach on immigration, and we're waiting for the Senate to do their job."

That dog, he declines to hunt. Boehner knows that he's already got Representative Steve King going after Mitch McConnell's head because the Senate Majority Leader has proposed to decouple the passge of DHS funding from the attempt to defund the president's entirely lawful actions on immigration, because McConnell knows the political stakes of being hung with a shutdown over such a transparently fraudulent equivalence. Boehner knows he can no more control King and the rest of the xenophobe caucus any more than he can make it stop snowing. So he has no choice but to blame the Senate, which must endear him to McConnell.

Several options that members have suggested, said someone with knowledge of the discussions, include a short-term funding measure until the House and the Senate can meet in a joint committee to resolve the differences between their plans; a short-term funding measure until the Senate passes Ms. Collins's proposal; or adding back in language to repeal Mr. Obama's 2014 executive actions, but leaving untouched his 2012 protections for the young immigrants known as "Dreamers." Another possibility is passing a bill to fund the department - but with the condition that the financing would end if a recent ruling by a federal judge to halt the president from implementing his immigration executive actions is overturned. "There wasn't really a clear message of where we're going," said Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho.

This would not be a problem for an actual Speaker of the House. Do you think that Sam Rayburn would take on an issue of this magnitude without having "a clear message" of where his majority was going? Tip O'Neill? Hell, Newt Gingrich? The fact is that Boehner has a majority that is far beyond his control because a) he's not a deft enough politician even to try, and b) he has nothing with which to knuckle his people into line. To wit,

If Mr. Boehner and his leadership team do ultimately try to pass a "clean" funding bill that has no immigration-related amendments, probably with the support of Democratic members, the Republican base "would be extremely angry," said Representative John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. "So this is very, very delicate territory for our leadership."

There is no Republican party any more. There is only a universe of competing power centers, some more influential than others, but all of them operating on their own agendas and by their own standards and for their own purposes. This apparently unwieldy system can exist -- and even, for the moment, prosper -- because of how the Supreme Court has changed the nature of politics in this country. But the natural forces in this new universe are inescapably centrifugal. They pull the politics away from formal central authority. It is going to take politicians raised entirely within this new universe to set the lines of authority within it, and that is most assuredly not John Boehner. Until then, sooner or later, everything is bound occasionally to fly apart.

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GOP thinks pills migrate to vagina

Women's bodies are a mystery to the GOP. (image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Alamy)

Women's Bodies Can't Perform Magic. Someone Please Tell Republicans

By Jessica Valenti, The Guardian UK

25 February 15
readersupportednews.org

 
o Republican men think women are mythical creatures, like unicorns or fairies? It’s the only explanation I can come up with to make sense of the party’s continued insistence that women’s bodies can perform feats of absolute magic.

On Monday, during testimony on a state bill that would ban doctors from using telemedicine to prescribe abortion pills, Idaho Republican Rep Vito Barbieri asked a testifying physician if pregnant women could swallow small cameras so that doctors could “determine what the situation is”.

Dr Julie Madsen – who I imagine must have been suppressing the eyeroll of a lifetime – responded that it couldn’t be done because “when you swallow a pill it would not end up in the vagina.”

Barbieri now says the question was a rhetorical one (that’s the ticket!) but his gaffe reminds us all about just how little Republicans understand about women’s bodies.

Though, again, I’m honored that they think we hold such awesome abilities. After all, who could forget then-Rep Todd Akin’s assertion that women who were “legitimately” raped would not get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Like a superpower! Or Rush Limbaugh’s belief that women’s bodies are so all-powerful that we actually require a birth control pill every time we have sex to keep from getting pregnant. But it doesn’t stop there.

Conservatives apparently also think that women are so magic as to almost be immortal - you see, they don’t believe that abortion are ever necessary to save a woman’s life or protect her health. They’re so sure of this, in fact, that they’ve been willing to bet our lives on it. It was just four years ago that House Republicans proposed to pass a bill that would have made it legal for hospitals to deny life-saving abortions to women who needed them and even deny them transfer to another hospital willing to perform the procedure. Maybe they just think we have nine lives? 

Republicans must think we’re magic – how else do they think we can possibly have all these kids (since we’re not supposed to need or want or get abortions) with no paid maternity leave, no subsidized child care, no livable minimum wage and a culture that thinks we’re supposed to grin and bear it?

Shockingly, all the fairy tale tales conservatives have told themselves about women’s bodies and abilities hasn’t done the Republicans any favors around election time.

And despite trainings for Republican candidates to learn how to talk about gender without saying something idiotic about rape or vaginas, Republican men continue to think stupid things about women and women continue to not vote for them.

So please, keep it up, guys. Talk more about what our vaginas can do, or how getting pregnant after rape is a “gift from god”. The more we watch as men who lack basic knowledge of biology and the human reproductive system make laws about what we can do with our own bodies, the more I believe that maybe women really are magic. We take care of our families as Republicans insist we’re “strong” enough to do with less. We battle back against archaic laws and dinosaur politicians. We do things a lot more impressive than swallowing a pill and having it migrate to our vaginas. That’s just weird. 

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