YET ANOTHER RIGHT WING LIE EXPOSED: Creator of Planned Parenthood Videos Indicted in Texas

David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, had posed as a biotechnology representative to infiltrate Planned Parenthood affiliates and surreptitiously record his efforts. (photo: Charles Ommanney/WP)

We knew from the start it was BS, but how sweet that the perpetrators got caught

By Sarah Ferris, The Hill

26 January 16
readersupportednews.org

 
n investigation into Planned Parenthood took a bizarre twist on Monday after a grand jury brought charges against the pair of individuals claiming to expose the group instead.

A grand jury in Houston, Texas announced criminal charges against a pair of anti-abortion activists, David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt, for their roles in creating now-viral videos attacking Planned Parenthood, according to multiple local reports.

The jurors had spent two months reviewing undercover footage produced by Daleiden’s group, the Center for Medical Progress, at the request of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R).

Daleiden claimed that his footage showed Planned Parenthood officials haggling over the price of aborted fetal organs as part of the organization's fetal tissue donation program in some states.

As Patrick announced the criminal probe last August, he was deeply critical of Planned Parenthood, suggesting that the group was “dismembering aborted babies” and “selling babies fully intact.”

“The people of America and the people of Texas will not accept this callous attitude toward human life, and I will not accept it,” Patrick said during a press conference at the State Capitol in August, according to local news station KXAN.

But jurors said Monday they did not find evidence of illegal activity by Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast.

Instead, Daleiden was indicted for “prohibition of the purchase and sale of human organs.” He and Merritt were both indicted for “tampering with a governmental record.”

"It is an affirming day for Planned Parenthood," Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast spokeswoman Rochelle Tafolla said, according to the Houston Chronicle. "We feel vindicated."

Planned Parenthood has repeatedly accused Daleiden of breaking the law to create his videos, including falsifying government IDs to enter restricted areas like conferences for abortion providers.

The Center for Medical Progress issued a statrement Monday night:

The Center for Medical Progress uses the same undercover techniques that investigative journalists have used for decades in exercising our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and of the press, and follows all applicable laws. We respect the processes of the Harris County District Attorney, and note that buying fetal tissue requires a seller as well. Planned Parenthood still cannot deny the admissions from their leadership about fetal organ sales captured on video for all the world to see.

Earlier this month, Planned Parenthood went on the offensive against Daleiden by filing a lawsuit in federal court accusing the Center for Medical Progress of unlawful behavior ranging from secret taping to trespassing.

A Republican-led committee in Congress charged with investigating Planned Parenthood has said it will not back down even as other states have cleared the group of wrongdoing. The leader of that panel, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), did not immediately respond to the grand jury decision on Monday.

A national spokesman for Planned Parenthood, Eric Ferrero, wrote in a statement that Daleiden and Merritt “broke the law to spread malicious lies” about the group in their effort to make abortion illegal.

“We're glad they're being held accountable," he said.

Comments

+8 # indian weaver 2016-01-26 09:22

OK. Let's call Carly Fiorina next and ask her why she publicized this criminal act as if it were real. Will she answer? She'll run away and hide, like all the GOP clowns do when asked a simple but important question. I hope this news is broadcast far and wide to the idiots who oppose Planned Parenthood and the entire nation so everyone can see what liars like Fiorina are really inside - twisted, warped and dangerous liars.

It's not about terrorism; it's about our response

  GEORGE TEMPLETON  

        COMMENTARY        

By George Templeton
Gazette Columnist
 
Fearful

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me…” 

A new Texas law allows licensed gun owners to openly carry their weapons in any place that does not expressly prohibit it.  The 2500 member First Baptist Church of Arlington, merging guns and God, has jumped on the bandwagon.  It should not be a problem for their principled congregations.  Guns are a status symbol, associated with manhood and courage.  Legitimizing them in the public square teaches children by example.  It will help to craft a brave new world.  Come Easter, those spiffily dressed in their “Sunday go to meeting” bulletproof suit will need to find a compatible holster.  The ladies will want pink assault rifles to match their bonnet.

The Arizona culture warriors, mixing God, guns, and the Constitution are at it again!  HB2170 permits concealed weapons on campus, but HB2186 restricts that to faculty.  HB2494 offers state tax refunds to pay for concealed weapon permits required in other states and settings.  SB1063 requires public buildings without gun lockers to allow weapons inside them.  HB2339 allows guns even when lockers are available.  HB2320 allows government agencies to be gun free only when there are metal detectors and guards at each entrance.  HB2431 prevents background checks before selling a gun.  Arizona, since 2010, allows concealed carry without a permit.  HB2337 requires police to have more than suspicion before they can question a person about being armed.  HB2338 increases the penalty for taking a gun away.   

What is the greatest danger?

Terrorists know that fear advances their cause.  It rewires our brains.  We closed the entire L.A. school district, not two terrorists.

Fear leads to bigotry.  In 1846, Louis Agassiz, the great Harvard professor wrote a letter:  “In seeing their black faces with their thick lips and grimacing teeth, the wool on their head, their bent knees, their elongated hands, their large curved nails, and especially the livid color of the palm of their hands, I could not take my eyes off their face in order to tell them to stay far away.” 

Terrorism promotes fear.  In 1919, Attorney General Palmer, following a terrorist bombing, wrote about European immigrants:  “Out of the sly and crafty eyes of many of them leap cupidity, cruelty, insanity, and crime; from their lopsided faces, sloping brows, and misshapen features may be recognized the unmistakable criminal types.”

Oliver Wendell Homes was not concerned that some child might be left behind.  He wrote:  “It is better for all the world if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility; society could prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…”

Charles Davenport, author of a 1930’s college text, Heredity in Relation of Eugenics, warned that “unless immigration stopped Americans would have darker skin; grow more emotional; and become more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, murder, rape, and sexual immorality”.

William Shockley, the 1956 Nobel laureate who invented the transistor, agreed when he worried about the “genetic deterioration of the human race through the lack of elimination of the least fit as the basis of continuing evolution.”

Fear widens the gaps between people, making those who warn us special, but science denies that.  We created false differences, allowing culture and prejudice to dominate our classifications.  There is much more genetic variation within races than between races.  Someday, there will be no such thing as race. 

What happens when culture fractures?

Culture is a bias about how we act, think, and want.  Sylvia Allen claims that taxpayers will need to support Syrian refugees because they are not above average like us.  She says that Muslims would be more comfortable in a society governed by Sharia law, but isn’t it a fact that we would be more comfortable if we did not have to live with people having different views?

Jeb Bush’s strategy to defeat terrorism is simple:  No Islam!  A crusade against one of the world’s great religions will never put to rest those who hear the Almighty’s word and know they are going to paradise.

Marco Rubio would cancel the Iran nuclear deal, restore sanctions, and prevent the Iranians from having a nuclear bomb, but he does not explain how. 

Ted Cruz promised to paint in bold instead of pastel colors.  He will paint with the blood of soldiers.  The number of angels that can stand on the head of a pin is an argument that cannot be won.  Divisive religion will be the Achilles’ heel of the Middle East.

Paul Gosar speaks of fear, evil, and danger.  He warns that Muslims believe in an apocalypse but fails to mention that Christians also have a version of the end times.  He would lead, but where?  Leadership is more than getting revenge.  It is smarter than the drunken cowboy who tried to ride the rhinoceros at the Phoenix zoo.  Gosar describes President Obama as “scared”, suggesting that he is brave, noble, and wholesome when he argues for an expanded war.  Anyone who doubts is a coward on the side of the enemy, but we have no skin in the game.  Romney missed an opportunity when he did not advocate youth service, like Mormon missionaries, but with secular civic, geopolitical, and military components.

The recent Oregon federal wildlife refuge standoff illustrates domestic terrorism that combines ranching, guns, and bible thumping patriotism.  On The Liberty Roundtable radio show Ammon Bundy said, “We read in Genesis where God gives the earth to man.  He did not give it to government.”  Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Ben Carson have supported the Bundy family’s defiance of grazing fees and the BLM.  Ted referred to it as Obama’s “jackboot of authoritarianism”, though the courts have repeatedly ruled against Cliven Bundy since 1994.  Cruz has hypocritically criticized liberals for no longer believing in law and order.  Fox news lambasted liberals for hiding behind procedure.  It’s the law, but the law is procedure.  Emile Durkheim was concerned with the tyranny of the majority.  He felt that a stable society needed crime to push against the intensifying coercion of uniformity.

Ben Carson would have the Department of Education secretly monitor universities to prevent bias.  Would correcting a “biblically illiterate society” be an example of bias?  It was Cynthia Dunbar’s goal for the Texas State Board of Education when she worked there.  Now she is a state co-chair for Ted Cruz’s campaign.  Her words are about public education dubbed government education, called socialized education that deceives and indoctrinates.  Education expresses our belief in what it takes to join and compete in the world.

State Senator Sylvia Allen, Chairman of the Education Committee and Administrative Program Manager of a for-profit charter school, seems suspicious of education that could lead to an uncomfortable choice between literal sacred teachings and scientific fact.  Industrialization secularized education in the 1800’s, but in some agrarian southern states religion remained in public education into the 20^th century.  Now believers, who are rightfully concerned about America losing the moral high ground, would retreat to the past.  The shortcoming of local control of schools is that the content of education in the most backward areas of our country will be determined by backward people.

More Than We Can Know

When politicians encounter an uncomfortable truth, they claim the exact opposite.   They make us feel good by appealing to our greatness.  The “will of the American people” always seems to oppose the party in power.  Bandwagon propaganda and polls are tools that recognize our desire to be on the winning side.  They infect our minds.

Sigmund Freud knew that we are more than what we think we are.  Our conscious is the superego, the Jiminy Cricket that was our parents, upbringing, and the Holy Spirit.  The id, our instincts, verified by our acceptance of dirty jokes, is of Satan.  Our rational Ego is what we thought we were, but that is incomplete.  We are subconsciously embroiled in a life and death struggle between the desire to be a free individual and the urge to be a good citizen.  Carl Jung developed this further, assuming that our minds are somehow more than brains.  They contain instincts that come from elsewhere.  We strongly react to the world in ways that exhibit our connection to each other.  However, studies suggest that only five percent of our decisions are conscious.

In 1951, Solomon Asch tried to measure independent thinking.  His experiment presented a picture of a line and a second picture with three lines, differing greatly in length, with one being exactly identical to the line in the first picture.  A group of eight people voted verbally to select the line in the second picture having identical length.  Unknown to the test subject, seven impostors were programmed to make wrong decisions about which line was identical in length.  Asch found that three out of four test subjects voted with the obviously wrong majority at least some of the time.  The test subjects said they valued freedom, but conformity was more important.

In 1963, Stanley Milgram experimented with obedience in a learning situation.  The “teacher” was ordered by an administrator to electrically shock a hidden learner, who cried in pain when a wrong answer was given.  The strength of the shock was indicated by a large voltmeter indicating “death” at its highest level.  The teacher’s duty was to follow the administrator’s instructions, which continued to increase the shock until the learner finally grew silent.  More than 62 percent of the teachers were willing to kill the learner.  It was not in their educational methods class!  It shows how authority and conformity can cloud the moral judgment of normal, sane people.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Wundt and Gustav Fechner began to explore how different things needed to be before we could distinguish between them.  Business contracts are applied transactional ethics where the participants are assumed to be perfectly rational and utterly self-interested.  They require deliverables, but friendly loan gives it to you, and then takes away more than you can pay.  Donald Trump wants the best outcome for himself, but he has not confided much to us.  He claims that “winners”, like himself, drive the improvement of society.  Chinese business is less concerned with measurable objectives, focusing instead on a lasting relationship that cares for you.  These views overlap, but there is a difference.

We wonder about Sylvia Allen’s ability to discriminate between individual acts of kindness and government programs.  While it is commendable that Glen Beck provided refuge for 149 Christians in Slovakia, it cannot solve the problem of more than nine million Syrians that have fled their homes.

Destiny

C. S. Lewis wrote, “The act of cowardice is all that matters; the emotion of fear is, in itself, no sin.” Does America progress?  To answer that, we must consider what gives meaning to our lives, what our values are, and how they are determined.  It is not about terrorism, but is about our response.  We have experienced the silent majority and the moral majority.  Now it is time for the rational majority to step up.

Cattle Grazing Is a Climate Disaster, and You're Paying for It

Cattle grazing in a field. (photo: Max Whittaker/Reuters)

By Ben Adler, Grist

24 January 16
readersupportednews.org

 
he rules governing cattle grazing on federal lands are so obscure that your average climate change correspondent hasn’t given much thought to them. But now that a gang of pathetic losers with guns has occupied a federal wildlife sanctuary in Oregon to gripe about the federal government’s audacity to set rules for how ranchers use publicly owned land, it’s worth taking a look at this policy.

As it turns out, ranchers using federal land, like the Bundy family that is leading the occupation and the Hammond family in whose name they took up arms, are recipients of massive federal subsidies for activities that exacerbate climate change and damage sensitive ecosystems. It’s time the taxpayers stopped indulging these whiny welfare queens and kicked them off the dole.

Why this land matters to the climate

Grasslands are, like trees, essential carbon sinks. Shrubs and grasses breathe in carbon dioxide and thereby regulate atmospheric concentrations of carbon. Loss of grasslands contributes to rising rates of carbon in the atmosphere and therefore to global warming. These lands are also important habitats for threatened species and their ruination contributes to the ongoing massive loss of biodiversity. Only 5 percent of the original grasslands in the U.S. remain.

Climate change can cause the degradation or loss of grasslands because drought and heat waves damage or kill plants. This problem is currently plaguing the West. And, in a vicious cycle, that contributes even more to climate change.

Putting cattle on these grasslands just leads to more problems: The livestock can rip plants to shreds, push other species toward extinction, and turn the land to dust.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, “In the arid West, livestock grazing is the most widespread cause of species endangerment.” The group explains: “Cattle destroy native vegetation, damage soils and stream banks, and contaminate waterways with fecal waste. After decades of livestock grazing, once-lush streams and riparian forests have been reduced to flat, dry wastelands; once-rich topsoil has been turned to dust, causing soil erosion, stream sedimentation and wholesale elimination of some aquatic habitats; overgrazing of native fire-carrying grasses has starved some western forests of fire, making them overly dense and prone to unnaturally severe fires.”

In 2012, a study by Oregon State researchers found that climate change is worsening environmental stressors on Western grasslands, and therefore the federal government should consider reducing or eliminating livestock grazing on public lands.

At the core of this current kerfuffle in Oregon is a dispute over the penalty for ranchers who illegally set fire to federal grassland. The militants who took over the wildlife sanctuary think the prison sentence set forth in federal law is inherently invalid. But from a climate perspective, the behavior at issue is totally unacceptable.

In the face of an overwhelming climate crisis, you would think the federal government would make preserving and protecting these carbon sinks the overriding purpose of its land management. You would be wrong. Instead, the government leases out 270 million acres of public land in the West for livestock grazing. It’s just as outrageous as leasing out public land for coal mining and oil drilling.

How cattle hurt the climate

Even aside from their impact on grasslands, cattle are terrible for the climate.

Cows emit methane — a greenhouse gas that is 86 times more damaging than carbon over 20 years — when they burp, fart, or poop. As CNN recently noted, “14.5% of all greenhouse gas pollution can be attributed to livestock, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, the most reputable authority on this topic. And a huge hunk of the livestock industry’s role — 65% — comes from raising beef and dairy cattle.” A pound of beef has about the same carbon footprint as driving an average American car 70 miles.

This is far worse than most foods. The Environmental Working Group found that beef has the second highest carbon footprint of any common food after lamb. Pound for pound, it is twice as bad for the climate as cheese and pork, four times worse than chicken, and more than 14 times worse than broccoli.

And that’s not even considering the other unsustainable aspects of beef, such as using land and water much less efficiently than plants or chickens to produce food. There’s just no reason for our government to actively promote cattle raising and beef.

Taxpayers are subsidizing these ranchers

If the federal grazing-lease program were enormously profitable, and the profits were put to some good use, then there would at least be a counterargument in the program’s favor.

Instead, the program is a big money-loser — a giant taxpayer subsidy for an environmentally destructive industry. As FiveThirtyEight points out, “In 2012, the [federal government’s] fees for grazing were 93 percent cheaper than the average market rate in 16 Western states ($1.35 versus $20.10 per AUM, which is a fancy acronym for the amount of land needed to support a cow and her calf for a month).”

These minimal grazing fees are the same ones Bundy family patriarch Cliven Bundy refuses to pay.

The Center for Biological Diversity calculates that below-market grazing fees amount to a direct subsidy to ranchers of more than $100 billion per year, and that indirect subsidies such as federal predator control programs that protect livestock may add up to $300 billion.

Keith Nantz, a rancher in Oregon, wrote Friday in The Washington Post that “many ranchers must lease [federal land] to create a sustainable operation.” By “sustainable,” he means profitable, not eco-friendly. If it’s unprofitable to raise cattle on private land, why is it the taxpayers’ responsibility to bail him out? Some things are worth taxpayer dollars: education, national defense, health care. But beef?

What should we do?

The public should use the land it owns not for subsidized, carbon-intensive economic activities like cattle grazing and fossil fuel development, but for climate change mitigation and adaptation and habitat preservation.

Nantz complained in the Post that the federal government pushes ranchers around by creating new rules to protect endangered wildlife. He wants the feds to defer more to the ranchers on issues like whether to protect endangered species.

OK, here’s my counter-offer: Nothing. You don’t like being told where, when, and how to graze your cattle on public land? Then get them off public land. The ranchers frame their complaint as being about government overreach, but what they really object to is federal policies that balance their interests with others’.

The Bundys, their compatriots, and the politicians who kiss their asses, like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, argue that states and individuals should be able to misuse grasslands ad infinitum. But if the federal government were to hand them over to anyone, the morally and ecologically responsible recipients would be the Native Americans from whom this land was originally stolen in the first place, not a renter class of entitled white men who want to exploit it.

  
Comments

-7 # Depressionborn 2016-01-14 16:22

Bur cattle eat grass made by the sun and he rain, produce protein for the kiddies, and fertilize the ground for the vegies. Can't beat that.

+9 # Shades of gray matter 2016-01-14 23:30

These Big Hat, Big Mouth "welfare queens" are parasites, leeches, claiming to be "independent" and "self made." Eliminate their access to 95% of PUBLIC LAND and charge market rates for the other 5%, the least desirable. Use the Bundy Butthead episode to out the hypocritical gabby galoots of the Cowboy Caliphate. Don't these morons know that American PUBLIC LAND put up for sale would go to Saudis? Send in the tofu trays.

-3 # brycenuc 2016-01-14 23:52

Cattle grazing is a historical and beneficial way to harvest crops that would otherwise go to waste. It is necessary not to overgraze, but otherwise cattle grazing actually stimulates the plant growth, because of hormesis (which can be googled for he definition)

+10 # Eliz77 2016-01-15 01:34

Look at the land where the Bundy types overgraze. There is no sign of plant stimulation on those bare fields. Get them off our property. I am so offended that the terrorists at the bird sanctuary are able to move about freely. The access should be closed off and each one coming to a check point be arrested and put in jail

The once rich lands are dying under the crush of too many cattle and bad management. These gunsils are not cowboys. They are thugs.

The real cowmen who pay their way and care for the land have to know that their industry is not sustainable. Beef is not an essential food source. It is a specialty niche that must be contained and not expanded.

It's Time to Get Serious About Bernie

Bernie Sanders. (photo: Karen Bleier/Getty Images)

By Frank Rich, New York Magazine

23 January 16
readersupportednews.org

 

Most weeks, New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich speaks with contributor Alex Carp about the biggest stories in politics and culture. To kick off 2016: Bernie's New Hampshire surge, Palin's Trump endorsement, and the Oscars' diversity problem.

If Trump is Don Rickles and old Vegas, 

Palin is Loretta Lynn and old Nashville.

As Bernie Sanders increases his lead over Hillary Clinton to 27 points in one New Hampshire poll (and appears to be closing the gap nationally), some in the media have begun to wonder why they didn't see this pre-caucus surge coming. Is it time for the Democratic elite to more broadly reconsider Sanders's candidacy?

Let’s face it: This is going to be remembered as the election where almost no one in either party’s Establishment or the political news media saw anything coming. So why should the Bernie Sanders surge be any different? Writing at CNN Politics, Dylan Byers points out that the Times, whose supposedly data-driven "Upshot" column is still trying to explain why it declared Donald Trump near death last summer, buried Sanders’s announcement of his candidacy on page 21 — versus the page-one play given Clinton, Trump, and Ted Cruz.

I certainly have been no seer in the case of Sanders. I have never believed — and still don’t — that he can be elected president even though I prefer almost everything about his views and record to Clinton’s. To me he has three problems in a national election: He’s 74; he can be stigmatized as a nominal “socialist” (though that nomenclature may not carry much weight, negative or otherwise, to 21st-century American voters, beyond the claque who think every Democrat is a socialist); and he’s Jewish, a fact that few want to discuss as a possible hindrance to a national general-election candidacy.

I also thought Sanders couldn’t win the Democratic nomination because he has so little support from the party’s crucial African-American constituency. My theory was that while Clinton is a dreadful candidate running a campaign as tone-deaf as the one that imploded in 2008, she’d still triumph thanks to the loyalty of black voters, Sanders’s aforementioned handicaps, her command of the party hierarchy, and her fund-raising clout. I may be proven wrong about all of this. The enthusiasm of Sanders supporters has translated not just into big crowds but into enormous financial support for his campaign by individual donors; he has been pursuing black voters under the media radar; and the Clinton campaign is looking panicked and confounded by a youth-led insurgency in 2016 just as it was eight years ago. The recent effort of a Clinton backer, David Brock, to cast aspersions on Sanders’s (apparently sound) health backfired; so did Chelsea Clinton’s dishonest claim that Sanders wanted to dismantle government health care (he wants to expand upon Obamacare). Meanwhile, Sanders has gotten tougher on Clinton. In the last debate, he tied her speaking fees from Goldman Sachs around her neck like an anvil. He has demolished her grandiose claims about the value of her experience by going after her vote for the Iraq War. Barack Obama did that, too, and Clinton is nearly as flummoxed by this predictable line of attack now as she was then.

If Clinton continues to lose altitude through self-inflicted wounds, through Sanders’s ability to sell himself to a wider electorate, or through further revelations about her and Bill Clinton’s dubious buck-raking from Wall Street, corporate America, and foreign governments, the Democrats are left with only one plan B: Bernie Sanders. The party’s elites better start reconciling themselves to that, because if we’ve learned anything over the past year, anything is possible. Who would have imagined that an election that was destined to be Bush versus Clinton stands at least a small chance of yielding Sanders versus Trump, with possibly a third-party candidate (or so Bloomberg enthusiasts believe) to scramble the odds further?

Sarah Palin's appearance in Iowa, to endorse Donald Trump, was mocked widely on the coasts. How helpful can she be in Trump's campaign against Ted Cruz, even if her support may only add to his potential problems in the general election?

Palin’s pugilistic endorsement of Trump has been fodder from heaven for condescension and ridicule across the political and media spectrum — much in the same way, some may recall, that Trump’s early speeches were. Heaven knows her appearance was bizarre — not so much locked-and-loaded as, just possibly, plain old loaded. But for her audience, the base of the GOP, the “lamestream media’s” criteria of logic, fact-checking, sobriety, and propriety are beside the point. The base loves her, as it loves Trump, precisely because she breaks all the rules and says what she thinks. Granted, thought may not be the appropriate term to describe the whirlwind of non sequiturs, mixed metaphors, jingoistic sloganeering, puerile flag-waving, and self-infatuation that constituted her “speech.” It was an entertainer’s riff in much the way Trump’s performances are. If he is Don Rickles and old Vegas, she is Loretta Lynn and old Nashville. (The 83-year-old Lynn, by the way, has endorsed Trump.)

I have no idea if Palin will help Trump vanquish Ted Cruz. But if Cruz, who wraps himself in the legacy of his father, a hard-right and homophobic preacher, cannot win Iowa, he’s probably done. And Palin’s seal of approval may well help Trump best him there, by making tea-party types and hypocritical Evangelical Christian voters feel better about supporting a guy with “New York values,” a checkered marital history, a largely pro-choice paper trail on abortion, and little or no familiarity with either religious practice or Scripture. Somewhere God is laughing — or maybe Jerry Falwell is. Jerry Falwell Jr. invited Trump to speak at Liberty University on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of Palin’s return to center stage is the loud chorus of Republican potentates expressing outrage about both her and her Trump endorsement. Most of her current critics were her cheerleaders the first time around, from William Kristol (who once took credit for discovering her in Alaska) to Meghan McCain (who campaigned relentlessly for the ticket her father shared with Palin) to the talking heads at Fox News, which promoted her from the get-go and put her on the payroll after she left public office. The Palin endorsement, like nearly every other aspect of Trump’s rise to the top of the GOP heap, gives the notion of chickens coming home to roost an apocalyptic dimension.

In an essay he wrote for The Hollywood Reporter a little over a year ago, Chris Rock described entertainment as a "white industry" and talked about the role he's played as a "big brother" to black actors and comedians who couldn't otherwise get a break. Now he's hosting the industry's biggest awards show amid a walkout over another all-white slate of nominees. What would you like to see from him as the ceremony approaches?

The last thing Chris Rock needs to hear from me or anyone else is advice or instruction on what he should do at the Oscars. He is a brilliant interpreter of America and its culture, as I think he has made clear throughout his career, including in the freewheeling conversation I conducted with him for New York in the aftermath of Ferguson, late in 2014. The fact that he is the host of this year’s “all-white” Oscars is the best thing that could have happened to that telecast, which has been mired in declining ratings and irrelevance for some time now. Who would not watch his opening monologue?

Movie, television, and theater critics — I was once among them — have to take awards seriously, or at least try to. Readers care about them; they’re fun; they prompt debates. But really: They are completely arbitrary or capricious for the most part, and most people in show business know (and privately acknowledge) as much — even if they play to win. As one much-Tony-awarded theater giant has joked to friends, “As long as they’re giving them out, I’ll take one.” So to painstakingly decode this year’s Oscars as some larger indicator about race in America is ridiculous, particularly in what everyone recognizes was a less-than-vintage year for American movies. Look at Chicago, or Baltimore, or Cleveland, or the state-enabled poisoning of the majority-black populace of Flint, Michigan, not at a Hollywood ceremony, to see what’s going on. It’s the Oscars, for heaven’s sake — where many voters eject a screener after ten minutes — not the Council of Trent.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, meanwhile, will have to either reform or die. An old white male electorate is as damaging to it in the entertainment marketplace as that same demographic is to the GOP in the political marketplace. If the Academy intransigently refuses to reflect the audience that votes with its eyeballs — the ever-more-diverse America whose Nielsen ratings and box-office dollars the industry craves — it will soon go the way of the nickelodeon.

Comments

+44 # tswhiskers 2016-01-23 10:22

I think if all of us who truly support Bernie will vote for him, surely he must win the nomination. I'm concerned that Rich and many like him approve of Bernie's ideas and most of his platform but are so wrapped up in his "electability" that they will probably vote for Clinton despite the fact that she does not warm the hearts of voters. Too many still think she is the Dem. Party's darling and therefore will of course win both nomination and election. My advice: too many of us are afraid to vote for a "loser" and so will vote for Hillary instead. If all of us would vote for the candidate we want, he will have a good chance of winning the nomination. But a vote for Hillary just because she seems the foregone winner is a needed vote against Bernie.

+13 # MainStreetMentor 2016-01-23 12:39

I contend that the reason, (to some), Hillary may seem to be the “shoo-in” nominee, is in part because the Democratic National Committee has one-sidedly “greased-the-sk ids”, and thrown their-behind-th e-scenes influences to her side of the political ledger, while providing only token support to the other two Democratic candidates. The Democrat’s political machine is working as designed, and it’s being operated by those partial to Clinton.

I’m hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren will come out in support of Senator Sanders, (and even I hope, consider becoming his running mate)! I don’t think she’ll come out in support of Clinton … (see this video: http://www.americansviews.com/video40.htm ).

+55 # avram@canarycoalition.org 2016-01-23 10:30

It's really a white wash to claim that the news media "didn't see this coming." There has been a concerted effort to ignore the Sanders campaign, to ridicule it and to suppress it since he declared his candidacy back in May. The mainstream media now innocently says "We didn't see this coming." What they didn't see coming is that the Sanders campaign would be so powerful that it was able to overcome the Bernie Blackout and the staunch bias of the corporate media against it. Their only bewilderment is that their tactics didn't work.

 

+19 # tswhiskers 2016-01-23 11:08

Yes, indeed. The actions of Wasserman-Schul tz alone have made it clear that the Dem Party is actively shilling for Clinton. I have also heard media commentator Chris Hayes say straight out that we know that Hillary will win, of course.

+17 # reiverpacific 2016-01-23 11:20

Quoting avram@canarycoalition.org:

It's really a white wash to claim that the news media "didn't see this coming." There has been a concerted effort to ignore the Sanders campaign, to ridicule it and to suppress it since he declared his candidacy back in May. The mainstream media now innocently says "We didn't see this coming." What they didn't see coming is that the Sanders campaign would be so powerful that it was able to overcome the Bernie Blackout and the staunch bias of the corporate media against it. Their only bewilderment is that their tactics didn't work.

Absolutely!
The only time I watch the owner media on TV is in our local pub, as one of the three (or four if you count Fox Gawd-forbid) Oregon network franchises just happens to be on when we go there in the early evening.
Just from what my wife and I have observed during these short viewings, is the predictable EXPLOSION of personality-dru nk coverage when Palin came out with her in cohesive blabber to endorse Trump but Bernie Sanders has just recently received a tiny bit of coverage as his surge has been such that it's now possible to ignore!
So THAT'S the REAL story; they can't ignore him now and he certainly isn't going away.
And all creditable polls indicate that he'd trounce Trump and certainly any of the other poisoned-dwarve s crowded on the TeaThuglican end of the political see-saw.
It also reinforces that the US Owner-media are more interested in their ratings than news.

 

+12 # Saberoff 2016-01-23 11:06

We must be attentive to not refer to the campaign in the past-tense.

Do not despair.

+17 # diamondmarge7 2016-01-23 11:13

I agree 100% w/tswhiskers. I intend to vote for BERNIE because that is the person I choose. All this nonsense about "electability" is cover for "I want to pick the winning horse in this race." Good God,people, have the courage of your convictions. Grow up.
If you really want THEBERN to win, do as I have done: give him LEVERAGE @ the Dems convention by becoming a pledge taker:www.revol tagainstplutocr acy.org. The higher the numbers of pledgees, the greater will be BERNIE's leverage. Make sense? Also, go to your local BERNIE headquarters & learn how to phonebank or knock on doors. And donate!

Rush’s Shocking Admission About Conservatism

January 22, 2016

Bill Scher

Campaign for America's Future

ourfuture.org

 

Rush Limbaugh made a startling admission on Wednesday, in the course of discussing the staying power of Donald Trump and the value of the Sarah Palin endorsement: “It’s now out in the open that the Republican conservative base is not monolithically conservative … that’s not the glue that unites them all.”

The proof of that is Trump: “If conservatism were the glue … then Trump would have no chance. He literally would have no chance. Because, whatever he is he’s not and never has been known as a doctrinaire conservative.”

If it’s not philosophical belief and positive ideas, then what is the glue? Per Rush, it is “united, virulent opposition to the left and the Democrat Party and Barack Obama.”

In other words, they know what they hate, but not what they like.

That would explain why the Republican debates have been so bereft of policy ideas and discussion, but loaded with broadsides against President Obama (and Hillary Clinton). If the base doesn’t know what it wants, and doesn’t even agree on the direction in which to go, then proposing detailed plans isn’t going to get you very far.

The fault of a rudderless base should not fall on the individual voters. Parties lead. Parties develop policy ideas and hammer out platforms. It’s the job of the parties to build an agenda based on philosophical principle and rally supporters around it.

This Republican Party wasted its time in the minority wilderness of the Obama years. Sure, it could win low-turnout backlash elections in the midterm years with simple hatred of Obama. “Repeal Obamacare” is easier to say than an actual alternative approach to expanding coverage and restraining cost.

But without a real set of ideas that go beyond bumper stickers and Reagan-era rehash, a party is vulnerable to being hijacked by a demagogue who shows no fealty to policy principles – only to whatever will keep him in the news for the next 24 hours.

I am not one to assume the entire Republican Party is represented by those in the “base” to which Rush is referring. The noisiest voices on the right usually fall short – by miles – of dictating the Republican Party nominee.

But there is no question that the Know-Nothing faction of the party’s base has shaped the party’s image and framed the intraparty debate – to the party’s detriment according to the most recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Limbaugh’s candor is a sad commentary on conservatism. For a long time liberalism was the ideology that its adherents and sympathizers were uncomfortable acknowledging. Today, it is conservatism that is proving so weak it cannot hold its party together.