This would be funny if it wasn’t so sickeningly predictable.
For the past month or so, Obama has been ostentatiously advertising his desire to be compared to Ronald Reagan, a President he formerly detested.
Andrea Tantaros noted in her NY Daily News piece on Jan. 6:
Before departing on his Hawaiian holiday, Obama sought advice from Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein and David Gergen, an image adviser to both Reagan and Bill Clinton. While on vacation, his press secretary strategically announced over Twitter that his beach reading consisted of Lou Cannon‘s Reagan biography, “The Role of a Lifetime.” Obama aides are busy making comparisons between the two men – emphasizing Reagan’s troubles in his first term, and his rebound thereafter – with the hope of refurbishing Obama’s brand after a bruising midterm election cycle.
Today, Kyle Drennen reports at Newsbusters: All Three Networks Agree: Obama Sounded ‘Reaganesque’ in State of the Union:
During coverage of President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, all three broadcast networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, managed to compare the tone of the speech to that of Ronald Reagan. Reporters and pundits uniformly praised the supposed optimism of Obama. [Audio available here]
On CBS, Evening News anchor Katie Couric touted how political analyst Jeff Greenfield thought it was “down right Reaganesque” and that “some” have argued “this could be his Reagan moment.” Greenfield himself declared: “He kept talking about winning the future and that was always a big theme about Reagan….the constant reiteration of optimism….he was clearly striking rhetorical notes that reminded me of Mr. Reagan.”
***
Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams noted how “The President [is] very sensitive lately, highly bothered by any kind of defeatism…that’s part of what he went after tonight.” Correspondent Andrea Mitchell chimed in: “That’s exactly what he was trying to get after and I think he was trying to invoke the optimism, the can-do spirit that brings to mind Ronald Reagan in these settings.”
As Brent Baker earlier reported on NewsBusters, ABC This Week host Christiane Amanpour proclaimed that Obama’s address was “full of sunny optimism, very Reaganesque, on and on about American exceptionalism in many, many instances and full of Kennedyesque encouragement to break a new frontier. That Sputnik moment was remarkable.”
I should note that Raymond Arroyo held a “Who was the biggest Media Suck-Up” contest while he subbed on the Laura Ingraham Show, this morning, and Amanpour won, hands down.
But there are plenty of suck-ups to choose from, and most of them are comparing Obama to Reagan, (just like he wants them to).
I mentioned this Mike Evans interview in myTuesday Links post, yesterday. Evans, a Hollywood reporter, and longtime friend of Abercrombie’s told a KQRS radio host that the Hawaii Governor had confided in him that there are no birth records of Obama’s in Hawaii that he can find. The relevant bit starts at 1:28:
When Evans spoke to Abercrombie on January 19, Abercrombie reportedly told him that he searched the relevant Hawaii hospitals using his powers as governor, and concluded, according to Evans, “There is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii, absolutely no proof at all that Obama was born in Hawaii.” After Abercrombie made such a fuss about finding the birth certificate, Evans concluded of his friend that he has “got some egg in the face.”
Curiously too, when Evans asked Abercrombie when he first encountered the young Barack Obama, Abercrombie reportedly said, “I remember him playing in a T-Ball league,” when he was roughly five or six years old.
The reader may recall that Abercrombie had told the Los Angeles Times just before Christmas, “Maybe I’m the only one in the country that could look you right in the eye right now and tell you, ‘I was here when that baby was born.’”
In other words, if this guy is telling the truth…Abercrombie is full of shite.
Who knows what to believe, anymore.
Cashill also links to a WND story about an affidavit signed by former Hawaii elections clerk, Tim Adams, who swears that he was told by his supervisors in Hawaii that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Barack Obama Jr.
In the affidavit Adams swears, “During the course of my employment, I came to understand that for political reasons, various officials in the government of Hawaii, including then-Governor Linda Lingle and various officials of the Hawaii Department of Health, including Dr. Chiyome Fukino, the director of the Hawaii Department of Health, were making representations that Senator Obama was born in Hawaii, even though no government official in Hawaii could find a long-form birth certificate for Senator Obama that had been issued by a Hawaii hospital at the time of his birth.”
Adams further swears his supervisors told him to quit asking about Obama’s birth records.
“During the course of my employment,” Adams states in the affidavit, “I was told by senior officers in the City and County of Honolulu Elections Division to stop inquiring about Senator Obama’s Hawaii birth records, even though it was common knowledge among my fellow employees that no Hawaii long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate existed for Senator Obama.”
“I can go get my long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate,” Adams told WND. “And so I don’t understand, this whole controversy should have been settled three or four years ago in about five minutes.”
Nor does Adams feel the short-form Certification of Live Birth is authoritative documentation proving that Obama was born in Hawaii.
Curious and curiouser.
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UPDATE:
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Wow.
Evans is now recanting – he’s saying that everything he said there isn’t so. His explanation? He “misspoke”.
Mike Evans told FoxNews.com on Wednesday he was remorseful and embarrassed that he appeared to have given the impression that he had discussed the search for Obama’s birth certificate with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie.
Wow.
“Yesterday, talking to Neil’s office, Neil says that he searched everywhere using his powers as governor ….. there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii. Absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii.”
But that’s no longer Evans’ story.
“Only this I can you tell you is 100 percent fact: that Neil never told me there was no birth certificate,” Evans told Fox News. “I never talked to him.”
Related:
Insider:Can’t respond much at this time. Too busy with all of the chaos coming at us these days. May be out of work soon! Crazy stuff. Simply urge you to lay off the birther angle at this time. Strongly urge. To proceed is at your own peril. Please take warning seriously. This is not a small town cop shop situation here. Let someone else try and make name on this one.
Air Force General Norton Schwartz and Marine Corps General James Amos looked like statues after the president played up the congressional repeal of the military policy.
“Our troops come from every corner of this country – they are black, white, Latino, Asian and Native American,” Obama said. “They are Christian and Hindu, Jewish and Muslim. And, yes, we know that some of them are gay. Starting this year, no American will be forbidden from serving the country they love because of who they love.”
U.S. Navy Admiral Gary Roughhead, Army General George Casey and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen, who publicly supported repeal of DADT, didn’t give Obama any positive reaction either.
The Joint Chiefs have in the past stood and applauded certain policies during State of the Union addresses.
I thought he did a very good job conveying the idea that we are running out of time. Greece, Ireland or Great Britain is our future unless we change course, now:
Unfortunately, I don’t think Obama has a problem with us turning into Greece, Ireland, or Great Britain.
What he did do was put a youthful, engaging face on the Republican Party and tap into the concerns of the center-right country that government and our debt have become too enormous and now threaten our economic progress. It also wasn’t long-winded, flat or boring.
He also demonstrated why Tea Partyers and establishment Republicans might, if given the chance, choose him as the standard bearer in 2012. Judging by tonight, he is fully capable of besting Obama.
In this first video, via Jim Hoft, the Hammer tells us what he really thinks about Obama’s crummy speech: “This is a president who is capable of giving great speeches and has… This was not one of them.”
In this clip, via The Daily Caller, he trashes apart Obama’s proposed spending cuts:
Ace is aghast that 92% of the public seems to approve of Obama’s speech:
. …did he start late and just yammer about obvious stuff (“twirling, twirling ever forwards”) to put people to sleep?
In yesterday’s State of the Union speech, Barack Obama set himself on two contradictory courses. Obama knew he had to pay lip service to the anger among Americans over the profligate spending Congress conducted over the last four years, but then he also wanted to sell his grocery list of new initiatives at the same time. How did he do? According to the AP, Obama’s math needs remedial work in almost every area — including Obamacare…
91%? Show me a poll where 91% of Americans agree that water is wet. That’s not a poll result, that’s an election return for Saddam Hussein. Why not just make it 192%? 1092%? Then everybody in the real world will see it and start liking Obama and the things he says. Yay, CBS! You saved Obama!
All that poll shows is that the only people who bothered to watch the speech are the people who agree with Obama already. Everybody else has tuned him out. He’s made it clear that if you don’t see things his way, you’re his enemy and it’s okay to lie to you as outrageously as he pleases. And you’ll be excoriated and demonized for failing to fall in line. We’ve had two solid years of that already. Who wants to sit through even more?
Yes, the mixed-seating of the audience definitely worked against him because the birds of a feather weren’t flocked together. But this simply wasn’t an inspiring speech. I don’t think his naked calls for what amounts to industrial policy excite anybody who won’t get a check if they’re enacted. And the theme “winning the future” sounds even more focused grouped than it did when Newt Gingrich came out with a book by that title a few years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a bump in the polls, but if I were a GOP strategist I’d take some solace in the fact that this is a guy who has, once again, misread the political moment.
A SOTU TO SNOOZE TO: “Obama seemed to have contracted Reich’s Disease, the annoying affect of lecturing to his audience as if they were schoolchildren in the manner of former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. . . . It’s even worse for Obama to lecture than for other politicians to do it, since the reason he is unlikeable (to people like me) is that he seems stuck up.”
Cub reporter Biff spackle gives his condensed 90 second version of the speech at Doug Ross @Journal.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and Professor Piven:
I’d like to welcome the new Tea-Baggers and pray for the recovery of Gabby Giffords, wounded in a tragic attack by right-wing conservatives and/or Sarah Palin.
Look, it’s no secret that I’m a Marxist. Look it up. Textbook definition. But I realize now, having withstood a massive repudiation in the midterm elections, that I’m going to have to pretend to be a centrist again. Let’s all relive the glory days of my 2008 campaign when a snappy logo, a compliant media and an amorphous slogan — Change! — catapulted me to my first real job.
And so on…
RELATED:
This is a reaction to Obama’s duplicitous article in USA Today which fooled no one:
The birth certificate issue*groan!* is heating up again. Yes, I know Democrats think this is a winning issue and Republicans are afraid to take it on. Yes, I know Obama and Abercrombie may be implementing “a giant head fake”, as Rush has been suggesting. But something is up.
Hawaii’s State Attorney General David Louie gave more volume to those “birther” voices on Saturday after he refused to release President Obama’s birth certificate documents on privacy grounds. Louie told Governor Abercrombie that the documents could not be released without the consent of President Obama, even though Mr. Obama is a public figure and his legitimate appointment to the US presidency is dependent on proof that he was born in the United States.
“our investigation” indicates there is a recording of his birth.”It actually exists in the archives, written down,” he said.
Jack Cashill links to a Mike Evans interview on KQRS on January 20. Evans, a “longtime friend” of Abercrombie’s, claimed that there is no birth certificate for Obama on file:
Evans, Honolulu born and now a Hollywood-based celebrity journalist, claimed that Abercrombie had promised him that he when he became governor, he planned to find absolute proof that Obama was born in Hawaii.
When Evans spoke to Abercrombie on January 19, Abercrombie reportedly told him that he searched the relevant Hawaii hospitals using his powers as governor, and concluded, according to Evans, “There is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii, absolutely no proof at all that Obama was born in Hawaii.” After Abercrombie made such a fuss about finding the birth certificate, Evans concluded of his friend that he has “got some egg in the face.”
Meanwhile, Atlas Shrugs is still insisting that the certification that initially appeared on Daily Kos (how Presidential), and was eventually posted on Obama’s farcical “Fight the Smears” website, is a forgery, and a very bad one at that: A New Twist in Obama Birth Certificate Mystery:
In what could be considered a psyop on the American people, the birth certificate issue is being used to smear the Republicans in general as “birthers,” conspiracy nuts who have given themselves over to right-wing nuttery. Any mention of this issue inspires in many the same revulsion as being diagnosed with the clap did in the ‘50s. And the arrogance and fear on the right of being tainted by this issue has created such dissension and infighting that we’re eating our young — and the left is positively giddy.
We, the American people, are not the enemy here, we are not the guilty party. The media should stop blaming the victim. Remember: conservatives are not responsible for the birth certificate issue at all. Obama is, by refusing to this day to release the vault copy — whether because it contains something damaging or simply because it enables him to wield the weapon of ridicule against the right. At this point, the effect is the same regardless of which of those possibilities is true. This carnival of conspiracy has become a deliberate distraction from the real issues and the real destruction being wrought by the Obama administration.
Tuesday night, Obama will give his State of the Union (SOTU) speech. So what can we expect? According to the NYT, Obama will present as a newly minted centrist, focusing on “five pillars for ensuring America’s competitiveness and economic growth: innovation, education, infrastructure, deficit reduction and reforming government.”
…the ‘Five Pillars‘ of Islam are the foundation of Muslim life.
Speaking at Saudi-funded Georgetown University, Obama said:
“…a solid foundation for the U.S. economy must be built on five pillars: new rules for Wall Street, new investments in education, renewable energy and health care and new federal budget savings to reduce debt.”
One person not taking part in the “civility” march tonight: Justice Alito. He won’t be there. I don’t really blame him after what happened last year. As far as the court’s other “conservative” Justices – Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Scalia, and Justice Thomas – it’s not known yet whether they will be in attendance.
Here’s the only seating list I’ve been able to find so far. I’m looking for a complete list of the politicos who have decided it’s in their best interests to take part in the bipartisan seating idea. When I do, I’ll post it here so that – in the event your House rep. and/or Senator(s) are taking part – you can email them (House / Senate) and let them know what you think.
Conservatives have nothing to lose by making the effort to persuade the other side. We should be setting the tone by our actions, not just our words. Demonstrating how to debate real issues respectfully strengthens our case because the facts, and the math, are on our side.
Let me leave you with a few Proverbs that define civility far better than anything I’ve read in recent weeks.
Proverbs 19:11 — “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense.”
Proverbs 25:21–22 — “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”
Proverbs 15:1–2 — “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise commends knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly.”
Proverbs 25:15 — “Through patience a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.”
“The most important SOTU rebuttal” is similar in meaning to “the most hygenic hippie.”
Still, Drudge moves opinion, doesn’t he? Drudge shapes narratives. And for the first time in a long time, the rebuttal is not just a formality. The narrative (forced by Drudge) is that this is a duel.
Now, not everyone reads Drudge, of course, but the MFM does, even if it hates the fact that Drudge is guilty of the felony of practicing Narrative-Shaping Without A License.
This is a great narrative to push. The MSM will be praying for an epic Jindal caliber fail, but Ryan will hit it out of the park. Definitely hit the link for Ace’s guess about how it will go – I think he’s dead on. And check back later for his live blogging.
I’ll be shlepping my girls back from dance class when it starts. Probably won’t live blog. (I rarely do that)…but I will most likely be posting later tonight.
This is propaganda in its purest form. Grandma Piven knows the game well, and plays her victim card very competently – Beck plucked HER out of tens of thousands of people – she wrote a “little article” 45 years ago, the “death threats” etc… Alas, she gives the game away at the end when she starts down a forbidden road and then abruptly stops…Watch her closely at the 4:07 mark.
Oops…I don’t think she was supposed to go there.Do you think she was wearing an earpiece, and someone told her to cheese it?
In her December 2010 Nation column, Piven wrote: “Local protests have to accumulate and spread — and become more disruptive — to create pressures on national politicians. An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece. . . .” Given Piven’s strategic stance, it’s clear that she and The Nation are in fact calling for violence. Her denial of this lacks all credibility. Similarly, when The Nation’s editors defend Piven by referring to her support for “civil disobedience” and “street protest,” they are attempting to create the impression that Piven is a virtual disciple of Martin Luther King Jr., when in fact her longstanding strategy has little if anything to do with nonviolence.
Progressive radio host Amy Goodman recently invited Piven to appear on her show to speak about Beck and her other conservative critics. Goodman played an excerpt from my appearance on Beck’s show. There I noted Piven’s prominent role at the Socialist Scholars Conferences that Barack Obama attended in the 1980s. Commenting on my statement, Piven said that it was “crazy” to call her a socialist.This stunning denial flies in the face of clear evidence that Piven is, and has long been, one of America’s most prominent socialists. She is currently listed as an “Honorary Chair” of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a prestigious appointment bestowed on only the most esteemed, influential, and long-serving DSA leaders. Piven was elevated to the status of honorary chair in 2003, after years of service as a DSA vice chair. If Piven can’t be honest about her own socialism, how can we trust her claims about anything else? In Radical-in-Chief, I document the presence of intentionally stealthy socialists throughout the world of community organizing, many of them close colleagues and mentors of Barack Obama. But for Piven to deny her own socialism in the face of the wealth of public evidence to the contrary beats all I’ve ever seen.
-Stanley Kurtz, NRO
You can’t believe anything lefties say…they’re professional liars.
John Gibson predicted this would happen when Comcast took over, a year ago. Now he’s saying, don’t listen to what TV gossip sites are saying - this is Comcast’s doing. You’ll want to listen to this whole thing. Gibson is never more fun than when he’s on the subject of Keith Olbermann.
I suspect last Friday was a sweet, sweet day for John Gibson.
Rahm Emanuel was thrown off the ballot for mayor of Chicago today by an appellate court panel, a stunning blow to the fund-raising leader in the race.
An appellate panel ruled 2-1 that Emanuel did not meet the residency standard to run for mayor.
Appellate judges Thomas Hoffman and Shelvin Louise Marie Hall ruled against Emanuel. Justice Bertina Lampkin voted in favor of keeping President Obama’s former chief of staff on the Feb. 22 ballot.
“It’s a surprise,” said Kevin Forde, the attorney who argued on Emanuel’s behalf.
The Chicago Trib reported just a few days ago on Emanuel’s huge fundraising advantage over his opponents:
A new Tribune poll released Thursday night showed Emanuel, a former White House chief of staff, with 44 percent support from Chicago voters compared to 21 percent for former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, 16 percent for former Chicago Board of Education president Gery Chico and 7 percent for City Clerk Miguel del Valle. Another 9 percent were undecided.
Moreover, campaign finance documents filed with the State Board of Elections show Emanuel with a significant multi-million dollar fundraising advantage over his rivals. He downplayed sizable donations that came from outside the Chicago area as contributions from long-time donors or friends familiar with his career.
2:35pm Eastern. Rahm gave a short statement to the press (no profanity delay buttons were necessary today). An appeal is on the way. He brushed off suggestion that politics played a role in court decision and said: “I have no doubt in the end we will prevail.”
A longtime ACORN operative is about to take over the reins of the Democratic National Committee as its executive director – just in time to begin initial preparations for President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
The activist in question is Patrick Gaspard. He currently holds the title of White House political affairs director, the same title Karl Rove held in President Bush’s administration.
Gaspard comes from the same world of radical left-wing community organizing that shaped Barack Obama. Gaspard is well schooled in the brutal, street-smart organizing tactics taught by the late Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals. He’s the hatchet man Obama sent to New York over a year ago to strong-arm then-Gov. David Paterson into dropping his reelection campaign.
Keep reading….The name,“Patrick Gaspard” should be familiar to longtime readers of this blog.
As libs in the MSM continue to pound the need for “civility” in politics theme, it’s important to note that what they are really objecting to are stories like this one from Chris Queen at NewsReal: Top 7 Facts From Obama’s Background That Prove He’s a Socialist
John Hawkins: Now, in recent years we started to hear more people calling to get rid of the Federal Reserve. Good idea, bad idea? What are your thoughts?
Thomas Sowell: Good idea.
John Hawkins: Good idea? What do you think we should replace it with? What do you think we should do?
Thomas Sowell: Well it’s like when you remove a cancer what do you replace it with?
Warning: Everything you’re about to read below is a figment of Glenn Beck’s “unhealthy imagination”. It involves communist groups that call for revolution against our unjust capitalist system, like Granny Piven has been urging. You are not supposed to know about this…therefore it’s not happening. When Glenn Beck talks about the So. Cal Young Communist League Commie Bus Tour on his show this week, (as he almost certainly will) it will be more evidence of his paranoid and delusional state of mind:
As you cruise around your home town this year, you may see a Red Bus full of young people displaying communist flags and shirts passing you by. No Need to Worry, they are just Communists who Support Violent Revolution.
Don’t you just love to see young people getting involved and trying to make a difference? Their Marxism classes will begin in Los Angeles, and then they will travel to unknown locations in Texas, Florida, and the Northeast. (They’re going to love them in Texas!)
According to the CPUSA YCL website, their Motto is “Unite and Fight” in order to Bring around ‘Socialism’.
We do not believe in violence simply as a means to an end. However, we support all forms of revolution, which historically have included violent forms but only were they successful or lasting and positive when the circumstances had called for it, when the assessment was correct (under fascism, extremely repressive and life-threatening conditions are set in place and creates justifiable responses) and ultimately if the end result is the achievement of a democratic, just society.
… letting your staff sit in the dark until they hear the news on air, strikes me as precisely the sort of thing you’d expect from a self-involved jerk.
One of my favorite hymns, performed by Eden’s Bridge:
Be Thou My Vision
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.
Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my souls Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
Riches I heed not, nor mans empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.
High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heavens joys, O bright Heavens Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.
Poor Frances Fox Piven. As one of the authors of the Cloward Piven strategy, she has had to endure no small amount of grief from Glenn Beck and his drooling minions, and the NYT’s Steve Benen *Brian Stelter wants it to stop.
First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the “Cloward-Piven Strategy” seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse.
Inspired by the August 1965 riots in the black district of Watts in Los Angeles (which erupted after police had used batons to subdue an African American man suspected of drunk driving), Cloward and Piven published an article titled “The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty” in the May 2, 1966 issue of The Nation. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists were abuzz over the so-called “crisis strategy” or “Cloward-Piven Strategy,” as it came to be called. Many were eager to put it into effect.
In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven charged that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor; that by providing a social safety net, the rich doused the fires of rebellion. Poor people can advance only when “the rest of society is afraid of them,” Cloward told The New York Times on September 27, 1970. Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, wrote Cloward and Piven, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would “the rest of society” accept their demands.
Stelter, writing in the Media and Advertising section of the NYTs writes:
On his daily radio and television shows, Glenn Beck has elevated once-obscure conservative thinkers onto best-seller lists. Recently, he has elevated a 78-year-old liberal academic to celebrity of a different sort, in a way that some say is endangering her life.
Frances Fox Piven, a City University of New York professor, has been a primary character in Mr. Beck’s warnings about a progressive take-down of America. Ms. Piven, Mr. Beck says, is responsible for a plan to “intentionally collapse our economic system.”
Her name has become a kind of shorthand for “enemy” on Mr. Beck’s Fox News Channel program, which is watched by more than 2 million people, and on one of his Web sites, The Blaze. This week, Mr. Beck suggested on television that she was an enemy of the Constitution.
Never mind that Ms. Piven’s radical plan to help poor people was published 45 years ago, when Mr. Beck was a toddler. Anonymous visitors to his Web site have called for her death, and some, she said, have contacted her directly via e-mail.
In response, a liberal nonprofit group, the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote to the chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes, on Thursday to ask him to put a stop to Mr. Beck’s “false accusations” about Ms. Piven.
“Mr. Beck is putting Professor Piven in actual physical danger of a violent response,” the group wrote.
Reading the NYTs piece, you get the impression that 45 years later, Piven is a mellowed out grandmotherly type who may have a vague recollection of some wacky scheme to “intentionally collapse our economic system” (LOL!), but goodness gracious me! Those were the crazy sixties! How long does she has to suffer for one silly idea!
What?! This very same woman is still talking about revolution, you say?! And as of this year,1/2011 in The Nation Magazine?
In a chilling and almost unbelievable editorial again in The Nation (”Mobilizing the Jobless,” January 10/17, 2011 edition), she calls on the jobless to rise up in a violent show of solidarity and force. As before, those calls are dripping with language of class struggle. Language she and her late husband Richard Cloward made popular in the 60s.
“So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?” she writes. “After all, the injustice is apparent. Working people are losing their homes and their pensions while robber-baron CEOs report renewed profits and windfall bonuses. Shouldn’t the unemployed be on the march? Why aren’t they demanding enhanced safety net protections and big initiatives to generate jobs?” [Emphasis added]
Those are the questions that frame what can best be called a roadmap for revolution. And it’s not long before those questions give way to directions. The first instruction: get angry.
***
An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. [Emphasis added]
Stelter continues with this bit of disingenuous claptrap – Frances Fox Piven? Never even heard of her:
If you’ve never heard of Frances Fox Piven, don’t feel bad. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t either. Apparently she wrote some radical stuff about poor people and political activism in 1966, and the voices in Beck’s head tell him this is important and relevant in 2011, never mind the fact that the vast majority of liberals haven’t read her work and have no idea who she is.
This video from a few months ago, has over 34,000 views; Stelter apparently not one of them:
‘It is ok to use violence as long as it is a BIG part of your strategy’
Why does this woman no-one’s ever heard of keep saying such inflammatory things?
Cloward and Piven were the ones who crafted Motor Voter legislation in the early 1980s and pushed for its enactment until 1993, when President Clinton signed it into law.
Cloward and Piven considered Motor Voter to be their crowning, lifetime achievement.
Steve Benen claims Beck is making Piven out to be an “imaginary villain” from his “unhealthy imagination” in The Washington Monthly:
Glenn Beck doesn’t just rail against perceived enemies, whom he considers dangerous villains who must be stopped; he also chooses obscure enemies he considers worthy of his rage.
It’s one of the many oddities of Beck’s bizarre message. The condemnations of President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are predictable, but Beck sees imaginary patterns and conspiracies involving figures most Americans neither know nor care about: Van Jones, Frances Fox Piven, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, the Tides Foundation, etc.
In Beck’s unhealthy imagination, each are nefarious players in a plot to destroy you and everything you hold dear. Sane people don’t see the danger, Beck says, but that only proves the point — the mentally healthy are probably in on it.
You know what he really means…?
It’s one of the many oddities problems we have with Beck’s bizarre honest message. The condemnations of President Obama and Nancy Pelosi are predictable, hurting the cause, but Beck sees imaginary patterns and conspiracies involving figures most Americans neither are not supposed to know nor care about: Van Jones, Frances Fox Piven, George Soros, Saul Alinsky, the Tides Foundation, etc.
Yes…they want you to believe that Van Jones, Piven, Soros, Alinsky are products of Beck’s fevered imagination. Never mind that all of the above were on many of our radars years before Glenn Beck ever started talking about them. Yes, Mr. Benen…believe it or not, Glenn Beck is not the first person to engage in this coo-coo crazy connecting-of-dots behavior. Former sixties radical, David Horowitz, for one, has first hand knowledge of how the left operates, sees those same “patterns”, and hasdiscovered the networks. The cat is out of the bag.
There are more Americans than ever paying attention to how the left operates, and apparently they don’t very much like it.
So the strategy is to attack our perceived leaders – the Becks, the Palins, the Limbaughs – to delegitimize them in the minds of the ignorant – those dwindling numbers of “normal” people who don’t pay much attention to politics and have never heard of Frances Fox Piven.
Pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it etc, etc, etc…This week the target is Glenn Beck!
Successful propaganda is composed of equal parts deception and suppression, and the apparatchiks in the mainstream media are much better at the latter.
They may have erred in pushing the Arizona assassination attempt beyond its ideological limits last week, but they succeeded brilliantly a few months earlier in suppressing news of a nearly lethal attempt by a genuine leftist.
In September 2010 Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was scheduled to speak at Penn Valley Community College in Kansas City.
At some point, wearing black clothes and a bullet-proof vest, 22 year-old Casey Brezik bolted out of a classroom, knife in hand, and slashed the throat of a dean. As he would later admit, he confused the dean with Nixon.
The story never left Kansas City. It is not hard to understand why. Knives lack the political sex appeal of guns, and even Keith Olbermann would have had a hard time turning Brezik into a Tea Partier.
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Indeed, Brezik seems to have inhaled just about every noxious vapor in the left-wing miasma: environmental extremism, radical Islam, anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism and Christophobia, among others.
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In his “About Me” box on Facebook, Brezik listed as his favorite quotation one from progressive poster boy, Che Guevara. The quote begins “Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism” and gets more belligerent from there.
