Headline: 10 of the Most Obscenely Stupid Right-Wing Conspiracy Theories and Attacks Against the President

Obama’s nefarious plan for the nation’s genitals? His evil designs on your children? Here are the most absurd right-wing assaults on the president — and logic and reason.

Today, President Barack Obama is slated to give a speech urging America’s schoolchildren to do their homework and stay in school.

Naturally, conservatives are extremely alarmed, because obviously the president is looking to create a vast army of adorable little zombies that will help him destroy America faster.

All last week, conservative bloggers and pundits gleefully accused the centrist president of plotting to force radical politics on America’s impressionable youth, after Florida’s Republican chairman Jim Greer said Obama’s address would “indoctrinate” children and spread “socialist ideology.”

The week of right-wing echo chamber freak-outs led to protests by conservative parents, which put school districts throughout the country in the unenviable position of having to deal with the “controversy”: Some have decided not to air the president’s address; others are requiring parental permission.

So, thanks to the right-wing saviors of America’s youth, a bunch of kids will be shielded from the president’s dangerous message that learning things is good.

Could this be the stupidest, most irrational way conservatives have tried to tear down Obama? Is it even possible to answer that question?

We’ve assembled the most absurd, logic-defying right-wing attacks on the president. Some you’ve undoubtedly encountered before, as all are incessantly blared by conservative pundits and shock jocks, while many are cynically embraced by GOP lawmakers.

Assembled together, they illustrate the absurd extremes to which right-wingers are trying to drive the public discourse in their efforts to thwart essential reforms in health care, energy policy and the economy.

The Advent of Socialism/Fascism

Most historians would agree that fascism and socialism represent vastly different ideologies and historical phenomena. But not the historians at Fox News! Since Obama took office, right-wing pundits have lobbed these smears interchangeably, not quite clarifying whether Obama is leading the proletariat to a glorious utopian future or trying to bring the master race to world dominion.

Obama’s Nefarious Plan for the Nation’s Genitals

When news leaked of a CDC report recommending that boys be circumcised as a preventative measure against HIV infection, right-winger conspiracy theorists began to fret that the federal government would mandate circumcision.

Since Patrick Henry isn’t around, it was up to Rush Limbaugh to sound the rallying cry against tyranny: “Leave our penises alone, too, Obama!” roared Limbaugh in a July 24 radio broadcast.

The next day, while discussing an unrelated dispute with Jay-Z, the talk show host said, “I would remind the rapper Jay Z; Mr. Z, it is President Obama who wants mandated circumcision. We had that yesterday. That means if we need to save our penises from anybody, it’s Obama.”

Needless to say, Obama had nothing to do with the CDC report, and doesn’t appear to have ever publicly uttered the word “circumcision.” Nor did he recommend the CDC promote circumcision.

None of this, of course, discouraged Limbaugh from running with the best metaphor for white male anxiety about a loss of power and masculinity in the age of Obama, ever.

The Birthers

Remember when the president invented a time machine and traveled back in time to plant his own birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper and forge a certificate of birth proving he was born in the States, all to hide the fact that he’s a foreigner from a country filled with scary black people?

That, of course, appears to be the only explanation for why the birther nonsense continues to gurgle up online (even thoughcertain idiots, who for mysterious reasons still have shows on CNN, have finally stopped giving this nonsense the patina of mainstream credibility).

Recently, some birthers on Free Republic argued that the only way to determine the president’s birthplace for sure was by checking if he is circumcised. (It would seem that there needs to be a subcategory on this list for these patriots’ obsession with the president’s penis.)

The Deathers

In America in 2009 — a time and place where most people have access to a high school education and can read — a rumor emerged that the overhaul of our terrible health care system would allow the government to put old people to death. This rumor was stoked by the crazy people on Fox News and talk radio, then embraced and propagated by

Republican lawmakers and others who are supposed to be sane adults.

“A lot of people are going to die. This program of government option that‘s being touted as being this panacea, the savior of allowing people to have quality health care at an affordable price, is going to kill people.” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga,said.

Then there was almost-a-heartbeat-away-from-the-presidency Sarah Palin, who contributed to the discussion by saying that under a reformed health system, the government would have killed her child Trig because he has Down syndrome. (Palin took back the comments after much outcry, but that didn’t stop the vocal minority of town hall protesters from screaming about Obama killing old and disabled people all summer).

The End of the Internet?

Cass Sunstein, currently awaiting confirmation to head the Office of Information an Regulatory Affairs, is apparently doing Obama’s dirty work on this one. Someone enterprising at crackpot site World Net Daily cherrypicked from a long-ago Sunstein statement, making it sound like he wants government regulation forcing blogs to link to opposing viewpoints.

In fact, as Julian Sanchez writes, in the statement in question Sunstein floated the theory as “food for thought.” And then he noted the free-speech issues involved. And then he called the idea stupid and unconstitutional.

Czars

Obama has “czars” in his administration. The word “czar” is Russian, which of course is scary (”Too Russian!” said former Oklahoma Rep. Ernest Istook. “Why not call somebody the Big Boss?”).

One of Glenn Beck’s favorite things to do is list off and rail against the czars in Obama’s administration. Neil Cavuto, Mike Huckabee and others on Fox and like-minded media are also pretty excited about it and have made lots of puns (czar wars!) and wild accusations about Obama’s alleged czar shadow army.

Somehow, their balanced take on this threatening phenomena fails to mention that George W. Bush was pretty fond of czars himself, overseeing the creation of a “food-safety czar,” a “cybersecurity czar,” a “regulatory czar,” an “AIDS czar,” a “manufacturing czar,” an “intelligence czar,” a “bird-flu czar” and a “Katrina czar,” according to Steve Benen in Washington Monthly.

Our Half-White President Has a Problem With White People?

One would think Obama is pretty OK with white people, since he is half white and was raised by a white mother and grandparents. Beck would disagree.

In July, Beck bizarrely accused the president of having a deep-seated hatred for white people and “white culture,” an attention-grubbing overreach that has led to a successful boycott campaign that has cost Beck 57 advertisers.

Beck’s offensive statement was only the most extreme iteration of a conservative strategy to sneakily accuse the president of undermining the interests of whites. One other example is the absurd claim that the president is trying to trick white Americans into paying reparations through health reform.

Snitch Site?

A few months ago, the White House made a valiant attempt to help steer the health care debate toward existing things like policy, rather than totally made up crap like death panels. They did so by setting up a Web site where people could submit questions about the wild conspiracy theories circulating about reform.

Naturally, the fringe decided that Obama was asking people to report on their neighbors. And, of course, Republican lawmakers irresponsibly and shamelessly joined the fray, with Texas Sen. John Cornyn, for example, accusing Obama of compiling an “enemies list” and demanding the site be shut down.

An Expansion of AmeriCorps. The Horror!

And finally, what does Obama plan to do with all those kids he brainwashes during his speech today?

Wait, with diabolical patience, until their teeny little arms grow strong enough to wield heavy weaponry so he can draft them into his massive domestic paramilitary force. At least that appears to be a fear held by Beck, who has said Obama’s “civilian national security force” is like Hitler’s SS, or something Saddam Hussein would do.

Michelle Bachmann warned of a massive effort to herd kids intore-education camps. What were they talking about? The expansion of AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps.

And there you have it: Public discourse in 2009.

Source: AlterNet

It doesn’t matter what side your on do your own research! If you leave it up to someone else you will become them and not yourself.

Other stories at We Are Change Colorado Springs

Could a Third-Party Candidate Actually Win in 2012?

“The Real War Is Not Between the Left and the Right. It Is Between the Average American and the Ruling Class …Who Would Make Us Their Slaves”

Obama Website Calls Opponents “Right-Wing Domestic Terrorists”

On this Labor Day, inquiring minds are reading Gallup Economic Monthly: Job Creation Not Happening.

Gallup Daily economic data aggregated on a monthly basis show that job creation in August is just not taking place in the U.S. economy. While Gallup data for the month also show a slight moderation in job loss, this is not sufficient to take up the slack for a 35% decline in the rate of job creation compared to a year ago. And, while confidence in the future direction of the U.S. economy is at its highest level in 20 months, Gallup data also show a continued delinking of consumer spending — which is down 33% from a year ago.

What Happened?

Job Creation was unchanged in August, with 24% of employees saying their companies were hiring, as was the case in July — and once again within the 23%-24% range that has held throughout 2009. However, the gap between job creation and job loss did close slightly, as 25% of Americans said their companies were letting people go — a slight improvement from the 26% of the previous three months. While Gallup data show fewer employees being laid off this summer than earlier in the year, the percentage of Americans reporting that their companies are hiring is down 35% from the same month a year ago.

Consumer Confidence hit a new high for the year in August and its highest level since Gallup Daily tracking began in January 2008, as the percentage of Americans saying the economy is “getting better” reached 39% for the month. Confidence is up from 33% during July and 16% a year ago. Still, even as confidence increases, 45% of consumers rate current economic conditions as “poor” — not much different from the 43% of a year ago. Consumers continue to believe the economy is improving, but — at least to this point — they don’t seem to see the improvement in their daily lives.

Consumer Spending improved slightly in August, as self-reported average daily spending in stores, restaurants, gas stations, and online increased by $3 per day. Still, spending over the first eight months of 2009 remains in a tight $6 range of $59 to $65, with August spending down 33% from the $97 daily average of a year ago. This lack of spending improvement even as confidence has improved dramatically since the beginning of the year seems to reflect a “new normal” in consumer spending.

It may be that the current inventory- and “clunker”-driven economic upturn will be a “jobless” recovery. It is possible that government and business spending alone can drive economic improvement for a short period of time. However, without significant job creation, it is hard to see how consumer spending will increase; how many retailers will survive after the Christmas holidays; and how the economic recovery will be maintained into early 2010.

Many think that consumer spending will return once job creation picks up. Actually, there is so much consumer debt, and for many, no reasonable way to service it, that consumer spending is likely to remain weak and defaults high even after unemployment starts inching back down.

Frugality The New Normal

Frugality is the “New Normal” as discussed on this blog for well over a year. Now, a Gallup Poll shows the effect in hard numbers. Please consider Consumers Adjust Attitudes Toward Spending.

Most Americans have consistently viewed themselves as financially cautious this summer, with about 9 out of 10 since early June saying they are watching their spending closely, and 7 in 10 saying they are cutting back on how much they spend each week. There has been little variation in these reported behaviors.

Solid majorities of Americans across all income categories report that they are watching their spending closely and are cutting back. Eight in 10 of those making $90,000 or more a year say they are watching their spending, and nearly two in three say they are cutting back on their spending — nearly as high as the percentage of middle- and lower-income Americans doing the same.

Consumers are spending less because they have to. In many instances it is a forced attitude adjustment because debt levels are too high, and ability to service that debt increasing. Karl Denninger has some thoughts about that in 2009 Labor Day Ponderings….. It’s well worth a look.

Bear in mind I think unemployment is going to continue rising for another year, then come back down slowly and reluctantly as noted inStructurally High Unemployment For A Decade. Thus a jobless recovery is a given, assuming there even is a recovery worth mentioning.

Source: Mish’ Global Economic trend

Other stories at We Are Change Colorado Springs

Unemployment hits 26 year all time high: Happy Labor Day

The Rising Tide of Unemployment in America: How Bad Will It Get, And What Can We Do?

Despite What Advocates of Illegal Immigration Say, There are No Jobs ‘Americans Won’t Do,’ Says Study

“Send me everything you can find about Glenn Beck,” screams the headline of a Daily Kos diary postingby MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.

The liberal pundit’s posting continued, “Find everything you can about [Fox News host] Glenn Beck, Stu Burguiere, and Roger Ailes.” Stu Burguiere is Beck’s producer; Roger Ailes is the president of Fox News.

Olbermann goes on to state that, on his prime-time news show Tuesday night, he will announce a hotline where viewers will be able to phone in tips about the controversial Beck and “his TV enablers” Burguiere and Ailes.

Olbermann’s declaration of war against Glenn Beck and the news network that hosts his show is a sign that the Van Jones controversy is not over simply because the White House’s green jobs adviser resigned over the weekend.

Olbermann himself admits that this is about Van Jones — and also about Beck’s own implied plan to continue his political campaign against White House staffers.

BECK’S PERSONAL CRUSADE

Jones resigned on Saturday night over partisan attacks surrounding his signature on a petition requesting an investigation into the possibility of US government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and over a remark he made earlier this year, when he called Republicans “assholes.”

Jones is a co-founder of ColorOfChange, the activist group that launched a successful boycott of Beck’s program after he called President Barack Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred of white people.” Although Beck had mentioned Van Jones in his programs prior to the boycott, it wasn’t until after he lost several dozen advertisers that his campaign to unseat kicked into high gear.

“Van’s resignation is the tragic result of a retaliatory witch-hunt by Glenn Beck and Fox News Channel,” Color of Change co-founder James Rucker told the San Francisco Chronicle Sunday. “Beck’s attacks against Van Jones haven’t been about finding the truth, they’ve been about changing the subject from his bigoted comments and continued race-baiting.”

And Beck doesn’t appear to be finished.

“Van Jones is the tip of the Iceburg [sic].As VJ has said:”personnel is policy”.Demand that the President DISAVOW EACH STATEMENT AND GROUP.CALL DC,” BeckTweeted last week.

Another Twitter message to his followers last week read: Watch Dogs: “FIND EVERYTHING YOU CAN ON CASS SUNSTEIN, MARK LLOYD AND CAROL BROWNER. Do not link before burning to disc.”

Blogger David Weigel brought attention to Beck’s Tweets last week, and notes that Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, is the Obama White House’s nominee to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs; Lloyd is the chief diversity officer of the FCC, which regulates TV and radio; and Browner is an assistant to the president on energy and climate change issues.

As with Van Jones, the new targets appear to be at least partly personal for Beck. Lloyd, for example, is a known critic of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine. From the 1940s until the Reagan administration, the Fairness Doctrine dictated that broadcasters using public airwaves must give equal time to opposing viewpoints. When Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, it paved the way for the explosion in one-sided, right-wing talk shows, of which Beck is a part.

But re-instating the Fairness Doctrine could also affect left-wing news organizations, such as Air America or MSNBC, which may help explain why the Obama administration is opposed to bringing it back.

PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS UP IN ARMS

It isn’t only MSNBC’s Olbermann who is alarmed at a so-far successful campaign by one of the most radical TV personalities against the White House. Progressive activists are also upset with both the Beck campaign and the White House’s steadfast refusal to support Jones when he came under attack.

As Joe Garofoli writes in the San Francisco Chronicle:

The middle-of-the-night resignation Sunday of longtime Bay Area activist Van Jones as a White House environmental adviser left many progressives angry at the Obama administration for buckling to conservative criticism of Jones’ controversial past comments and actions.

The administration is losing not only one of the nation’s leading environmentalists, progressives say, but one of the few liberal voices with President Obama’s ear.

…

Supporters say the administration surely knew his background when they appointed Jones, the first African American to write a best-selling environmental book, as special adviser for green jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. In fact, agents interviewed at least one of his former supervisors in San Francisco – Eva Paterson – when the FBI vetted his appointment.

At the Firedoglake blog, Jane Hamsher writes:

If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don’t want to jeopardize, a place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don’t want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.

But other commentators view the link between the ColorOfChange boycott and the Van Jones resignation differently.

“Not for a second am I denying the recklessness of Beck’s words about the president,” writes David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun. “But the link between Jones and ColorOfChange is enough of a connection to raise questions in my mind about the propriety of an organization co-founded by an adviser to the president organizing a boycott against a broadcaster who criticized that president. Does this not sound like something out of the Richard Nixon-Spiro Agnew White House for dealing with so-called enemies in the press?”

Source: Raw Story

Other stories at We Are Change Colorado Springs

Olbermann Drags Dr Paul’s Name Into The von Brunn Picture

Glenn Beck’s Outrageous Lie: Racist Von Brunn is “Hero of 9/11 Truthers”

Media Attempts to Link Alex Jones to Pittsburgh Shooter

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released a report today calling for the creation of a new global reserve currency.

The UN also called the dollar-based system a “confidence game” of financial speculation.

The UN is calling for a new global reserve bank to manage the new currency.

Bloomberg quotes a co-author of the report and UNCTAD director:

“There’s a much better chance of achieving a stable pattern of exchange rates in a multilaterally-agreed framework for exchange-rate management,” Heiner Flassbeck, co-author of the report and a UNCTAD director, said in an interview from Geneva. “An initiative equivalent to Bretton Woods or the European Monetary System is needed.”

I have written previously about the possibility that the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights currency (SDRs) could become the new reserve currency.

But Flessbeck says (as quoted in the above-linked Bloomberg article) that this would not go far enough:

While it would be desirable to strengthen SDRs, a unit of account based on a basket of currencies, it wouldn’t be enough to aid emerging markets most in need of liquidity, said Flassbeck…

Emerging-market countries are underrepresented at the IMF, hindering the effectiveness of enhanced SDR allocations, the UN said. An organization should be created to manage real exchange rates between countries measured by purchasing power and adjusted to inflation differentials and development levels, it said.

“The most important lesson of the global crisis is that financial markets don’t get prices right,” Flassbeck said. “Governments are being tempted by the resulting confidence game catering to financial-market participants who have shown they’re inept at assessing risk.”

Source: Washington’s Blog

Other stories at We Are Change Colorado Springs

89 banks go belly up in 09; Sep sees five failures in one day

Federal Reserve Seeks Delay in Disclosure of Emergency Lending

What the Fed is REALLY Trying to Hide In Fighting an Audit