Frank Gaffney - Fear Monger

This past Friday I found my self strolling, as I am sometimes fond of doing at lunchtime, towards Market Square dahn-tahn.

Needless to say I was surprised to stumble over a tea party rally being held there.

For the news details here's McNulty of the P-G:

Entering its second year, Pittsburgh's tea party movement had its now-traditional tax day rally in Market Square today, attended by roughly 500 supporters and a gaggle of counter-demonstrators.

Alas, by the time I got there the gaggle had dispersed leaving the 500 or so tea partiers to be kept wide-eyed and entertained by none other than Rose ("Obama may be the devil because he attracts flies and rats") Tennant.

An interesting morsel from the P-G follow up the next day:

Underscoring the tea party's role in the GOP, [Pittsburgh tea party organizer Patti] Weaver, a former candidate for Allegheny County executive, invited fellow GOP candidates Chuck McCullough and D. Raja onto the stage.

Chuck McCullough was there? I wonder if someone from this anti-establishment crowd asked him about his impeding trial. I wonder if anyone in the crowd asked him about his being charged with taking money from an elderly client to make political donations in her name but without her authorization.

I wonder.

I didn't see that if it happened. What I did see was blazing fear mongering by Center for Security Policy President, Frank Gaffney. Some things to keep in mind when ascertaining the credibility of Mr Gaffney:

• He's a birther. In 2008 Gaffney wrote:

Another question yet to be resolved is whether Mr. Obama is a natural born citizen of the United States, a prerequisite pursuant to the U.S. Constitution. There is evidence Mr. Obama was born in Kenya rather than, as he claims, Hawaii. There is also a registration document for a school in Indonesia where the would-be president studied for four years, on which he was identified not only as a Muslim but as an Indonesian. If correct, the latter could give rise to another potential problem with respect to his eligibility to be president.

Curiously, Mr. Obama has, to date, failed to provide an authentic birth certificate which could clear up the matter.

• His Center for Security Policy is heavily supported by foundations controlled by our very good friend Richard Mellon Scaife:

$175,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2009.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2008.
$300,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2007.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2006.
$350,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2005.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2004.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2003.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2002.
$325,000 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation in 2001.

Nice to know that such a grass roots movement can host a crazie speaker connected to some very old school conservative money.

Then there's Gaffney's certainty about Saddam's WMD.

Now that we've established Frank Gaffney as completely infected with teh crazie, let's move on to what he was talking about. Gaffney's yelled, screamed, and ranted about how SHARIA LAW IS RUINING THIS COUNTRY.

Sharia's EVERYWHERE! AND IT'S TAKING OVER!

Except it's not. From Reinbach at the Huffingtonpost:

Here's how Gaffney described what he calls the threat to the New York Senate's Homeland Security and Military Affairs Committee on April 8th: ."The threat...is best described, I believe, as a politico-legal-military threat whose express purpose is to have it imposed world-wide, subject to a theocratic ruler called a Caliph. That is of course a program that is completely at odds with our Constitution, our form of government, our way of life, our freedoms."

I'll admit that sounds pretty grim. Even if it does seem a lot like the threat of Global Communism I used to hear about as a kid.

The truth? Sharia is religious law, and no religious law can be imposed on the US without amending the Constitution -- twice -- to repeal both the opening clause of the First Amendment, and the Supremacy Clause in Article 6.

Something he never got round to telling the crowd. Here's the opening clause of the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

And here's the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.

Huh. I thought the tea partiers knew the Constitution.

I guess when it comes to billionaire-funded WMD finding birthers like Frank Gaffney, the truth is something to be jettisoned in favor of fear.

Teh Crazie Get Crazier (With A Local Connection)

I just found this at mediamatters.org.

Here's the setup. This is from June 23:


And a transcript:

This president has a problem with flies landing on him. Then we had the bees that were swarming the White House. And then, I don't know if you saw this -- do we have the rodents? Here's the president giving a speech and the little rat running -- watch this. OK. I don't know if he's Doctor Doolittle or what exactly. Do you remember this from the live interview? I've never seen that before. Hello. Yes. OK. Now flies landing on his mouth as he's speaking yesterday. I'm not sure what to make of it. Might be that there's a lot of BS and flies are -- but the president's ability to attract rodents and insects is kind of creepy.

To be fair (and we are nothing if we are not fair), Beck has claimed he was joking about the bees and flies and rats and Obama. This is from Mediaite:

Glenn Beck was talking about bees – specifically, asking the audience at Saturday night’s “Bold & Fresh” tour if they would be surprised to see Pres. Barack Obama one day walk out of the White House, covered head to toe in bees, hovering around him, then shake them off, and see them form the presidential seal behind him.

It was a good laugh line – and the crowd erupted. But it served as the conclusion to a lengthier Beck ‘theory’ about why flies, rats and other insects and rodents appear to be ‘attracted’ to Pres. Obama. Is it because, as his co-star Bill O’Reilly suggested, he is the Antichrist? Well I’m not necessarily saying that, said Beck, smiling. Later in the show, O’Reilly brought it back up and Beck finally relented. “Oh come on,” he said. “I’m completely joking!”

Saturday Night would be July 31st. By the way, Krakauer isn't buying that Beck was joking:

But as I sat in the audience, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone in the 1,000+ crowd had bought into the complete jokes Beck mixed into his very real, and often convincing, conservative stumping.

And then:

Beck talked about his time at CNN again – “Anderson Cooper was nice to me” he noted. He also recounted his first meeting with Larry King. “So, you’re the Mormon,” he recalled King saying. And then there was the talk about bees and rats and “communist revolutionaries” in the White House. It certainly didn’t sound like Beck was joking about that last one.

Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. But how many crazies in the crowd believed him anyway?

Or crazies elsewhere?

Like our local Rose Tennant of the Quinn and Rose show:


And as Mediamatters described Rose's crazie:

On their June 25 radio program, Pittsburgh hosts Rose Tennent and Jim Quinn read a listener's email that speculated Obama may be "evil," or an "enemy of the USA," citing evidence from Beck's June 23 Fox News show. Tennent then asked: "Isn't there something ... weird about that? Like all the insects and the rodents come out for this man, or something. Like they're attracted to him. You know like those devil movies ... Like they're attracted to the devil or something." Quinn then referred to a scene in The Passion of the Christ in which, he said, an "androgynous devil figure was walking through the Garden of Gethsemane and the worm was coming out of his nose."

And even if Quinn and Rose are as "completely joking" about this as crazie Glenn Beck is, I gotta wonder how many of teh crazies in their audience believe them anyway?

Teh Crazie, Quinn and Rose style.

Sestak Job Offer

I heard Jim Quinn and Rose Tennant froth at the mouth and fall over backwards over this yesterday morning.

My friends on the Trib Braintrust have been on this story for a few months. This is from March:

A special prosecutor must investigate whether the Obama administration offered U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak a high-ranking federal job in exchange for dropping his Democrat primary challenge to U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter.

Rep. Sestak made that claim during a February radio interview. He didn't bite. A White House spokesman says whatever conversations there were "are not problematic."

But U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight committee, says this "has all the makings of a cover-up" of bribery, election interference by government officials and political use of federal jobs. If he doesn't get White House answers by April 5, he'll call for a special prosecutor.

The alleged violations carry jail terms of up to one year. And with White House wagons circling to protect Sen. Party-Switcher, a special prosecutor is warranted.

I heard Jim say something like, "Same as Watergate - the coverup is worse than the crime."

Crime?

Too bad, (and my apologies to any Gertrude Stein/Alice B Toklas fans reading this) but there is no there there and there hasn't been for a long time.

The AP from February:

Ethics attorneys in Washington said such offers are common.

Melanie Sloan, director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, described it as “politics as usual.”

And Marc Abinder at The Atlantic said the same in March:

Now, trading an administration job -- a thing of value -- for a political favor might well constitute bribery. It is also very common. A Nexus search turns up numerous examples. In 1981, President Reagan offered S.I. Hayakawa, then California's senior senator, a job if he declined to run for reelection. We know this because Reagan's chief political adviser admitted as much on the record.

Reagan did it? I wonder if Jim Quinn or the Trib Braintrust knows this.

Talkingpointsmemo has something more recent:

Even those who used to prosecute public corruption cases agree. "Talk about criminalizing the political process!" said Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor with the Justice Department's Public Integrity unit. "It would be horrible precedent if what really truly is political horsetrading were viewed in the criminal context of: is this a corrupt bribe?"

And Melanie Sloan, a former federal prosecutor who as the head of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington isn't known for going on easy public corruption, concurred. "There is no bribery case here," she said. "No statute has ever been used to prosecute anybody for bribery in circumstances like this."

Sloan added that Issa's move was more about politics. "It's not at all about whether there was actual criminal wrongdoing," she said. "It's about how to go after Sestak."

Yes, that's exactly what it is.

Maria on Night Talk

8:15pm

PJ Maloney (the host) has been correcting Rose Tennent for the past ten minutes or so. He's corrected Rose about Health care in Canada and Massachusetts.

So far.

Maria's doing a fine job.

8:20

Maloney to Rose (paraphrase): What you just said has no basis in reality.

He complained about all the disinformation in the current Health Care debate (Rose denied any misinformation) then corrects Rose's many misstatements.

It's fun to watch!

8:25 Les Ludwig is soaking up all the time during the discussion of the PA State Budget. I don't really understand what he's saying. Or why he's there.

8:48 Maria and Rose agree on the sexism faced by Senator Clinton and Governor Palin in the last election.

8:56 Maloney had to cut Les off a few too many times. He just kept talking about stuff no one (ok *I*) had any idea what he meant.

Maria did a great job. Rose looked ridiculous.

I'll be on PCNC’s "NightTalk: Get to the Point" tomorrow night

I'll be a panelist on tomorrow's PCNC's "NightTalk: Get to the Point."

The show airs Friday, October 9, 2009 from 8:00 PM to 9:00 PM (with repeats at 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM, I believe).

P.J. Maloney of KQV Newsradio will host the program.

The panel will consist of Rose Somma Tennent (Quinn & Rose, WPGB, 104.7 FM), Pittsburgh Mayoral Candidate Les Ludwig and me (Maria Lupinacci, 2 Political Junkies blog).

The program commonly features conversation on a wide range of topics local to Pittsburgh, the Southwestern Pennsylvania region and some national items.
.

Quinn and Rose Update

A few days ago Maria got an e-mail from Rose, of Quinn and Rose. She wrote to point out an error I'd made in this posting. Seems that I'd mistakenly posted that Rose had agreed with Quinn when he favorably compared slavery to being on welfare.

He's since apologized, by the way.

To make a long story short, I got into a brief and very cordial e-mail exchange with Rose.

At the end I realized that I had no idea HOW she felt about what Quinn said so I sent this to her:

But I have to ask the question (and THIS IS FOR THE BLOG): What IS your position on Quinn's discussion vis a vis slavery and welfare? Do you agree or disagree?

This is her answer:

There is an update on our page www.warroom.com

I think it will address your concerns.

As for me, I believe that welfare, when used properly is a wonderful tool to help people until they get back on their feet. I also believe that it can be abused, and therefore, ultimately prove to be oppressive. I certainly did not care for the comparison that Jim made. And, apparently, Jim has re-thought his analogy. Please read above link for more info.

So there you have it.

Adrian McCoy Writes About Quinn, Rose, and MediaMatters

This past Sunday. The article begins with:

Media Matters thinks Jim Quinn's hot-button speeches can be hazardous to listeners, so he gets a "radioactive" rating from the watchdog group.

Here's the "Radioactive" page at Mediamatters.org. It links to the many many embarrassing things Quinn (and Rose - we can't forget Rose, can we?) has said on the public airwaves.

McCoy touches on one:

Media Matters called Quinn to task for several comments made on his program. In one show excerpt posted on Radioactive, he said: "You know, if you were a slave in the old South, what did you get as a slave? You got free room and board, you got free money, and you got rewarded for having children because that was just, you know, tomorrow's slave. ... Can I ask a question? How's that different from welfare? You get a free house, you get free food, and you get rewarded for having children. Oh, wait a minute, hold on a second. There is a difference: The slave had to work for it."

Here's Mediamatters page on that particularly idiotic rhetorical flourish. The part that McCoy didn't quote is what Tennant said immediately after Quinn favorably compared Welfare to slavery. She said:

Ah, the truth stings, does it not?

Tennant, a self-professed Christian had no trouble agreeing. The meek might not, I guess, inherit the Earth. But what do I know, I'm just an agnostic. [SEE THE CORRECTION AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS BLOG POST]

Hey, but did you know that the three days later he defended his point with:

Now, naturally, the point that I was making was that there are two forms of servitude: There's the servitude that you can be forced into, and there's the servitude you can be coerced into, I mean, the horrors of slavery notwithstanding -- naturally, that was my point.

And then:

[W]hen you think about it, the slave had more personal nobility than the welfare recipient, because he or she had no say in their station in life. The welfare recipient actually volunteers for it. It is the liberal plantation.

The world according to Jim Quinn. After a profoundly illogical charge by Quinn himself:

"Media Matters is not just a bunch of liberal bloggers exercising their First Amendment rights," Quinn warns, citing the nonprofit organization's financial support from wealthy liberal donors. "Any critique of media speech by Media Matters for America carries with it the implied threat of government censorship."

We reach the only I can find in McCoy's reporting. It's here:

Like many conservative talk hosts, Quinn and Rose raise the issue of a possible revival of the Fairness Doctrine. "It is a weak argument that suggests that speech may be stifled without the doctrine," Tennent says. "It's virtually impossible in today's environment to deny access to certain viewpoints -- or to find outlets that air them."

On the Quinn and Rose War Room Web site (http://warroom.com), there's an online petition opposing the Fairness Doctrine that listeners can sign. The petition encourages listeners "to urge Congress and government officials to reject any and all efforts to censor, limit or restrain the right of conservatives."

But [Media Matters senior researcher Julie] Millican maintains that Media Matters isn't out to silence or censor these talk hosts. "It's important to keep an eye on what's being said on the public airwaves. People should be aware of what's out there. They can say whatever they want to say. But people are entitled to know that's what being said on their airwaves, and they're entitled to be offended about it."

Uh, wait. The "Possible revivial" of the Fairness Doctrine? By whom? Perhaps McCoy should have checked this page at Mediamatters.org. Where it quotes Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly:

I've been fascinated of late with the far-right hysteria about the reemergence of the "fairness doctrine," because conservative activists are gearing up for a knock-down brawl against an enemy that doesn't exist. Everyone from obscure right-wing bloggers to Rush Limbaugh to Washington Post columnists are prepared for a fight that isn't going to happen.

And yet, the nonsense doesn't stop. Perusing the news this morning, there are still more conservative columnists railing against the "plan" to bring back the fairness doctrine, and unhinged propaganda about the "unprecedented government assault upon the First Amendment" that is allegedly on the way.

The New Republic's Marin Cogan asked around, trying to find Democrats who actually support bringing the fairness doctrine back, or media-reform liberals who might push for action on this. Cogan couldn't find any.

Benen adds that even Barack Obama opposes reinstating it.

Or McCoy could have checked this blog or even the Post-Gazette itself. Brian O'Neill wrote:

The Fairness Doctrine is not going to be reinstated, nor should it. Never mind that a restraint on free speech would be a betrayal of core liberal principles. It won't happen because President-elect Barack Obama has no interest in it, few Democrats in Congress care about it, and they all can read a map.

So why does Adrian McCoy write about a "possible revivial of the Fairness Doctrine"?

Fact-checking. It's all in a day's work.

AND A CORRECTION: I misread the mediamatters posting. For the record, Rose Tennant DID NOT say, "Ah, the truth stings, does it not?" after Jim Quinn (favorably) compared slavery with being on welfare. That was Jim Quinn himself.

There's no record of her agreeing with that rather grotesque statement. I would hope she disagrees with it but that's completely beside the point. The point is I should have gotten it right the first time.

My bad.

Quinn and Rose. Again

Media Matters is reporting some more drivel from The War Room:

On his syndicated radio show, Jim Quinn referred to the National Organization for Women as "the National Organization for Whores," and said of Philadelphia Daily News columnist Fatimah Ali: "[Y]ou know, Fatimah, what's your real name? Come on, seriously. I mean, get an American name, will you, if you want to be an American." He then asked: "You don't suppose she's a liberal black Muslim, do you?"

Here's more of what Jim Quinn said:

The Democrat [sic] Party is now the "Alinsky Party." Yesterday, I said, I wonder how long it's going to be before one of these Alinskyites -- formerly known as Democrats -- one of these Alinskyites out there suggests that Sarah Palin is not really a woman. Remember Kay Bailey Hutchison was a female impersonator, according to the National Organization for Whores? Remember that? Well, James Lewis, American Thinker: "is Sarah Palin really a woman?"

NOW said that Kay Bailey Hutchinson was a female impersonator?  Really? When?

Actually it was Gloria Steimen who said that.  In 1993.  Here's what she said:

Having someone who looks like us but thinks like them is worse than having no one.

Hey, I get it, it was a metaphor!  I wonder how Jim Quinn got something so easy so wrong.

Anyway, this line has been around for years.  Take a look at this from CNN from 2000:

[LAURA] INGRAHAM:I actually don't have an abortion discussion in the book because it actually doesn't fall into what -- which I really believe to be the Hillary trap, except it is part of the general liberal idea about government, which the global sisterhood believes that true women, real women should ascribe to. You should be pro- choice, you should be anti-gun you should be pro-big government. Because NOW was the same group that called Kay Bailey Hutchison a female impersonator.

[PATRICIA] IRELAND: No, no, no, that was Gloria Steinem, who is not...

INGRAHAM: Gloria Steinem, OK.

IRELAND: ... National Organization for Women. I know we all look alike, Laura.

Unfortunately I have no idea exactly what the missing word (or words) that ellipsis stands for. It's obvious, however, that Patricia Ireland (who at the time was President of NOW) was distancing the organization from Gloria Steinem.  In any event, it was a correction that Laura Ingraham accepted.

But take a look at the context of Quinn's paragraph.  He wondered how long "these Alinskyites" (this a reference to "community organizer" Saul Alinsky) will question whether Sarah Palin is indeed not a female.  Then he sites this article from The American Thinker, written by James Lewis.

Has anyone told Quinn that The American Thinker is a conservative magazine?  James Lewis is a conservative.  Any question, read this.  

Anyway, take a look at Lewis' article.  It's satire.

The Lewis article DOES mention one blog post that poses Steinem's metaphor - kind of.  Again the metaphor is obvious:

Not only is Sarah Palin not a feminist, she is as anti-woman as Bush and McCain combined. That is the reason why McCain picked her; not because she is a woman and he wanted to be underhanded (which he totally did,) but because she’s a Republican, conservative man who just happens to be in a woman’s body.

That's it.  That's the source of all of this.  Amazing, isn't it?

So 15 years after the Steinem/Hutchinson line, a blog called Mentrual Poetry uses a similar metaphor to criticize Sarah Palin and then Jim Quinn calls the National Organization for Women the National Organization for Whores.

How much you wanna bet he doesn't think it's a metaphor?

Night Talk on PCNC

Not really sure where to go with this.

I tried calling into Night Talk tonight. Rose of "Quinn and Rose" was on defending Right Wing radio talkshow hosts against the lies and manipulations of MediaMatters.org. When they started in on Rush ("The Addict") Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" smear I just had to call in to correct Rose's spin on it. She said that Rush had nothing to apologise for, that it was all a lie, taken out of context...blah-blah-blah. You know the drill.

Imagine my surprise, however, when I called in and was told that while they DO have a new studio, they DON'T yet have the speakers hooked up TO that studio. So while they flash the number to call into the show, you can't actually, you know, call in to talk on the air.

I am hoping it's just a technical thing - something to be fixed easily and quickly.

In any event, the upshot (at least at this point) is that if you call in, you give your question or comment to an otherwise very nice sounding voice. She will then relay the question or comment to Pintek who, I guess, can then ignore it if he chooses.

Hardly a healthy debate, doncha think?

Why won't Mike Pintek take questions on the air?