Sarah Palin's Bizarre Trump Endorsement Analyzed

By David Schilling

 

Here is the anatomy of a very disturbing scene.

Has the world known a greater horror than what it witnessed on Tuesday when Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president of the United States? I don’t mean physical horror, like murders, genocide or sexual violence. I mean lingering existential dread, the kind of sick feeling that burns the inside of your stomach like you just drank a pint glass full of battery acid.

We looked directly into the eternal abyss and were left forever changed by it. Pundits much smarter than I have said that Palin’s decision to endorse Trump might shift the upcoming Iowa caucus in his favor because Palin still has many supporters and donors in the state. My God, Iowa. My God …

I watched all 20 minutes of Sarah Palin’s mush-mouthed, meandering speech and analyzed it for you, but first, I’d like to offer up these five quotes. Some of them are from former MTV reality star and burgeoning space angel devil warrior symbologist Tila Tequila and some are from former Alaska governor Sarah Palin. Can you tell the difference? Answers at the end of the piece.

1. “I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.”
   
2. “Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ ‘Allah Akbar’ calling jihad on each other’s heads forever and ever.”
   
3. “I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.”
   
4. “I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.”
   
5. “Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.”

And so it begins. These two really look great next to each other, don’t they? When in the same room, their spray tans seem almost human. Imagine a hyper-intelligent species from another galaxy coming to Earth and intercepting the satellite feed of this horrendous speech. First of all, they’d have no idea how to decipher our language and second, they’d assume Valencia oranges were our babies.

Instead of leaving the stage for a pee break or sitting down outside of the frame like anyone else would, Trump lingers. He just stands there like the Colossus of Rhodes, breaking character only to give a thumbs up or smile when Palin forms a complete sentence.

“Looking around at all of you, you hardworking Iowa families. You farm families, and teachers, and Teamsters, and cops, and cooks. You rockin’ rollers. And holy rollers! All of you who work so hard. You full-time moms. You with the hands that rock the cradle. You all make the world go round, and now our cause is one.” Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England!

Hopefully I am not the only one who heard the above quote and thought about Rebecca De Mornay in the 1992 psychological thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle – a film about a vindictive, childless nanny who tries to steal another woman’s family through seduction and physical intimidation. See, the federal government is the nanny (state) in this analogy and you are the poor, victimized family who just wants someone to raise their children for them so that they can focus on their careers. But nooooo, this nanny wants to take your kids, and your husband, and your guns, and your taxes, and eventually … your life!

What I’m saying is that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle explains the entire Republican platform and you should watch it immediately.

Palin deftly segues into what convinced her to endorse Trump rather than all the other equally bloodthirsty Republican candidates.

“He is from the private sector, not a politician – can I get a ‘Hallelujah!’ Where, in the private sector, you actually have to balance budgets in order to prioritize, to keep the main thing, the main thing, and he knows the main thing: a president is to keep us safe economically and militarily. He knows the main thing, and he knows how to lead the charge. So troops, hang in there, because help’s on the way because he, better than anyone, isn’t he known for being able to command, fire!”

Oh, I can just see it now. Once “Make America Great Again” becomes passe, the new Trump campaign slogan will be, “Donald Trump: He Knows the Main Thing … and Knows How to Keep It.” Or better yet, “Donald Trump and the Main Thing” will be the name of a high school ska band in Kingston, New York.

As Palin ploughs on, Trump’s teeth finally make an appearance on the campaign trail. As disturbingly white as those teeth may be, it’s preferable to his pursed mouth that looks like he’s about to kiss a live salmon.

“Trump’s candidacy, it has exposed not just that tragic ramifications of that betrayal of the transformation of our country, but too, he has exposed the complicity on both sides of the aisle that has enabled it, OK?”

OK …

At this point, even Trump looks completely baffled. No matter what you think of the man’s hateful, moronic rhetoric, at least it’s coherent. Right now, as I watch this video, I can feel myself going mad.

All Palin and No Logic Makes Dave a Dull Boy.

“That’s why they’ve been bloating budgets. It’s for crony capitalists to be able suck off of them.” If you think that sounds obscene, wait until you get to the part about slurping off the gravy train.

Palin fawns over Trump a bit more, then spins a few conspiracy theories about how the Republican establishment wants the Donald to disappear and that the Democrats would never “eat their own”. I accept that the traditional GOP power-brokers don’t want Trump to be their nominee, but to say that Democrats are somehow the model of an efficient political machine that simply bends over for the old school candidate is ludicrous. In fact, in 2008 the Democratic party split in half during their primary, almost annihilating both Hillary Clinton and upstart Barack Obama in the process. If you are not Sarah Palin and actually read the news, you’d remember that there was even talk of a brokered convention that year.

“We, you, a diverse, dynamic, needed support base that they would attack. And now, some of them even whispering, they’re ready to throw in for Hillary over Trump because they can’t afford to see the status quo go, otherwise, they won’t be able to be slurping off the gravy train that’s been feeding them all these years. They don’t want that to end.”

Was this speech written, or was it found at the bottom of the ocean next to the Cloverfield monster?

And now, Palin totally falls apart and starts speaking as though a tiny man with a cattle prod is silently electrocuting her underneath her podium while she tries to finish her remarks. “Well, and then, funny, haha, not funny, but now, what they’re doing is wailing, ‘Well, Trump and his, uh, uh, uh, Trumpeters, they’re not conservative enough.’” Christopher Dorner’s manifesto made more sense than this. I haven’t seen a speech this bad since the first Police Academy movie.

“They didn’t want to talk about these issue until he brought ’em up. In fact, they’ve been wearing a, this, political correctness kind of like a suicide vest.”

Never before has the idea of a suicide vest sounded more appealing. “So, all I have to do is press this button and the bad lady’s voice will go away? Please, God, sign me up.”

“He builds things, he builds big things, things that touch the sky.” I hope the sight of this bothers you as much as it bothers me.

Cool grandma Sarah decides to let it all hang out and toss some hot jive: “You know, they stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, OK just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. They need to get used to it.” This is truly the “I Have a Dream” speech for idiots.

“The self-made success of his, you know that he doesn’t get his power, his high, off of OPM, other people’s money, like a lot of dopes in Washington do. They’re addicted to OPM, where they take other people’s money, and then their high is getting to redistribute it, right?” For a brief moment, I thought Palin was accusing the entire federal government of being addicted to smack. Debilitating drug addiction might explain the contents and composition of this speech.

By the way, you know what you call people who derive pleasure from giving the less fortunate among us money? Christians.

Trump looks off stage. Who is he looking at? A stage manager? Is he searching for an exit?

Regretting every single one of his life choices and praying for salvation?

“And you’re ready for the tax reform he talks about to open up main street again. And you’re ready to stop the race-baiting and the division based on color and zip code, to unify around the right issues.

The issues important to me, or I wouldn’t be endorsing him. Pro-life, pro-second amendment, strict constitutionality. Those things that are unifying values and their time-tested truths involved. These are unifying values from big cities to tiny towns, from big mountain states and the Big Apple, to the big, beautiful heartland that’s in between.”

Aren’t those all the most divisive issues in the country? Those are the issues we’re supposed to unify around? Here are a few issues that actually unify the country:

• Ice Cream Is Delicious
• McDonald’s All Day Breakfast
• Star Wars
• Zayn Should Have Stayed in One Direction. He’s Totally Sabotaged His Own Career.
• Free Beer

If that was Donald Trump’s platform, he’d have my vote for Permanent Emperor of the Universe.

“Now, finally friends, I want you to try to picture this, it’s a nice thing to picture. Exactly one year from tomorrow, former president Barack Obama. He packs up the teleprompters and the selfie-sticks, and the Greek columns, and all that hopey, changey stuff and he heads on back to Chicago, where I’m sure he can find some community there to organize again. There, he can finally look up, President Obama will be able to look up, and there, over his head, he’ll be able to see that shining, towering, Trump tower. Yes, Barack, he built that, and that says a lot. Iowa, you say a lot, being here tonight, supporting the right man who will allow you to make America great again. God bless you! God bless the United States of America and our next president of the United States, Donald J Trump!”

I am truly flabbergasted that Sarah Palin hasn’t come up with new insults to direct at Obama. This guy is a two-term president who has overseen the passage of major legislation like the Affordable Care Act, dined with countless world leaders, and will likely leave office with improvement on most major economic markers since he got the job. All that, and the best she can do is to mock him for working as a community organizer.

It has never worked to mock this man for helping people in need. You’d be better off joking about his gigantic dumbo ears or his mole instead of impugning the very idea of human kindness. Obama is 2-0 against these clowns and yet they persist in claiming that using a teleprompter disqualifies you for the office of president. To Sarah Palin, a truly impressive achievement is paying to erect a building shaped like a hunting rifle.

As if Palin’s speech wasn’t grotesque enough, we have to see Trump’s kissing face. What is he kissing? The invisible demon whispering in Palin’s ear? I have to assume that an outside entity was feeding her lines, as it is the only explanation for her shambolic, disjointed lunacy. Inexplicably, a human being who speaks like the comment thread underneath a YouTube video remains a political force in this country.

Really, this was all fated to happen. No two people on this planet seem less concerned with criticism, more content with themselves, or more oblivious to the obscenity of the words they speak. Let us never forget that almost 60 million Americans voted for John McCain in 2008. That’s 60 million people in a nation of over 300 million that had no qualms about having Sarah Palin a breath away from the nuclear codes. To them, there was nothing wrong with her speech yesterday. It probably made perfect sense. The stumbling, the atrocious grammar, and the folksy gibberish just endears her to them more. Sarah Palin has not disappeared because her supporters haven’t either. The marriage of Trump and Palin is simply the unification of a movement that has been gaining steam in this country ever since the election of George W Bush. This is not a nation of thinkers. It’s a nation of deciders and robber barons and blowhards.

ANSWERS:

“I only exist in your dreams. Literally. The dream reality exists inside of vibrating atoms at the nucleus.” TILA

“Where they’re fightin’ each other and yellin’ “Allah Akbar” calling jihad on each other’s heads for ever and ever.” SARAH

“I’d rather beg than depend on the government because then they’ll own your soul.” TILA

“I own this world. You’re now transitioning into MY domain! It shall be fully completed by May.” TILA

“Power through strength. Well, then, we’re talking about our very existence, so no, we’re not going to chill. In fact it’s time to drill, baby, drill down.” SARAH

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Palin Claims Trump's 'Not An Elitist' During Rambling Endorsement Speech

By Heather

The Snowbilly from Wasilla wants us all to believe that Donald Trump is just a regular working Joe like you and me. The cable "news" networks decided to give Donald Trump some more free airtime this Tuesday and treated their audiences to twenty minutes of Sarah Palin's rambling word salad of an endorsement and for those of you who aren't fond of the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, here's a taste:

PALIN: Yeah, our leader, a little bit different. He's a multi-billionaire, not that there's anything wrong with that. But it's amazing. He is not elitist at all. Oh, I just hope you all get to know him more and more as a person and a family man, what he's been able to accomplish with, it's kind of this quiet generosity.

Yeah, maybe his largess kind of, I don't know, gets in the way of that quiet generosity and his compassion, but if you know him as a person, you'll get to know him more and more, you'll have even more respect. Not just for his record of success and the good intentions for America, but who he is as a person. He's not an elitist.

PoliticusUSA has more on her never ending word salad of an endorsement here: Sarah Palin Goes On A Demented Mentally Unstable Rant About Obama While Endorsing Trump

Sarah Palin was supposed to be endorsing Donald Trump, but within moments of taking the stage, Palin unleashed a demented and mentally unstable rant about President Obama.

Palin said:

Thank a vet and know that United States military deserves a Commander In Chief who loves our country passionately, and will never apologize for this country. A new Commander In Chief, who never leave our men behind. A new Commander In Chief one who never lie to the families of the fallen.

I’m in it because just last week we’re watching our sailors suffer and be humiliated on a world stage at the hands of Iranian captors in violation of international law. Because a weak-kneed capitulator in chief has decided that America will lead from behind, and he who would negotiate deals like kind of with the skills of a community organizer maybe organizing the neighborhood tea. Well he deciding that America would apologize as part of the deal as the enemy sends a message to the rest of the world that they capture, and we kowtow, and we apologize, and then we bend over and say thank you enemy.

Palin also whined about the media and was her generally unhinged self. Sarah Palin was a moldy flashback to the past. Palin brought out all of her old 2008 Obama slurs. Palin inaccurately accused President Obama of incompetence, apologizing for America, and lying.

The circle has now been completed as the ugly racism that Sarah Palin injected into the Republican Party in 2008 has matured into the candidacy of Donald Trump. Palin laughably accused Obama and Democrats of race baiting, while standing beside Donald Trump who called all Mexican immigrants drug dealers and rapists.

Sarah Palin is a permanent stain on the United States of America, and she has come back into the 2016 race to satisfy her own ego and replenish her dwindling coffers.

Trump may gain a few voters in Iowa by trotting her out there, but she's toxic as a surrogate when it comes to a general election. I hope he keeps her around for the rest of his campaign.

XSplit Gamecaster 2.7.1512.1839

By Softpedia Games

Stream your gaming sessions over Youtube or record them on your PC all with the push of a button

XSplit Gamecaster is a very useful gaming tool that will allow users to stream or record video from the game with ease.

One of the most easy to use streaming applications out there

No configurations is necessary as the application will scan your current configuration and will choose the best settings. All you need to do is start the game and starts the streaming/recording. After starting a game, you need to press a key combination and you'll gain access to the Xsplit control panel from where you can choose to stream or record.

There are three different options for streaming a video: you can choose to stream the game through your YouTube channel, your Twitch channel or your Ustream account. Please note that when streaming a video, you will have to login on your chosen streaming channel and this comes with a price: Xsplit will have access to your account, your emails and will even be able to post for you.

The features will simply amaze you

You will be able to stream your videos with resolution up to 1080p. You must know that the higher the resolution, the higher the setting for your system. 1080p, for example, will require a 2nd Generation Core i7 CPU, 4 gigabytes RAM minimum and over 8 gigabytes of free space on your hard disk.

Another thing I just loved about Xsplit gamecaster is that it's compatible with PC, Xbox, PlayStation and lots of other consoles. Now friends from all over the world will be able to see you while owning at Dota 2, Battlefield or even Assassin's Creed.

If you're more of a strategy enthusiast, the draw on screen feature will surely make you happy. You will be able to point out the current strategy for all the other team members to follow by highlighting the most important units on the battlefield or the targets that need to be attacked.

The streaming tool for the gamer in you

The option to play and share with your friends the highlights of a game or even the entire match sounds more than great, and when you can do this with the click of a button it sounds awesome.

5 screenshots

XSplit Gamecaster was reviewed by Alexandru Niculaita

4.5/5 http://games.softpedia.com/get/Tools/XSplit-Gamecaster.shtml#download

How To Watch 'The Big Short,' 'Making A Murderer' And 'Concussion' Without Losing Your Mind

By Lauren Duca

 

Tales of real-life corruption and evil bureaucracy are hot entertainment — and infuriating to watch.

 

Pop culture is drenched in bureaucratic corruption right now. Between “Making a Murderer,” “Concussion” and “The Big Short,” we have three portraits of flawed institutions, seemingly lacking in a clear villain. None point to a single figure responsible for the unethical nonsense on display.

Instead, in each distinct yet eerily similar story, it’s clear that unquestioning cooperation is required for corruption to prosper. It takes a village to induce depravity.

First off, we have “Making a Murderer,” which presents a police force so irrationally hellbent on putting a man away for a crime, they practically brainwash themselves into believing their suspect is guilty. It’s worth noting that there’s certainly an alternative way of presenting the content of Stephen Avery’s trial. Like most documentaries, “Making a Murderer” has a clear opinion that it doesn’t work to obscure. Still, in the effort of proving Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were framed for the murder of Teresa Halbach, the potential for unethical behavior quickly spans the Manitowac County hierarchy. From Lt. James Lenk to prosecutor and “Fraggle Rock” monster Ken Kratz or Dassey’s own lawyer Len Kachinsky, few hands are left clean. In order to simplify things for the jury, the defense would like to argue that one or two people could have planted the pieces necessary to convict Avery. Perhaps they’re right. But, as the case unfolds, we see a system built on unethical practices like coercing testimony and concealing evidence. It’s little wrongdoings from a laundry list of people that add up to a sentencing that will more than likely rob a man of his life.

In “Concussion,” a similar phenomenon is at play. In light of Dr. Bennet Omalu’s discovery of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the National Football League convinces itself that its precious hobby is not dangerous to its players (or, depending on your level of cynicism, deliberately covers up the fact that it is). Since “Concussion” is a dramatization of real-life events unlike “Making a Murderer,” there was certainly more of an opportunity to send up a clear antagonist. Yet, while NFL chairman Roger Goodell leads the public charge against Omalu’s condemning findings, it is clear that the effort to conceal the possible side effects of the sport straddles the business of football in its entirety. Press reps, suits and the doctors they hire are all partially responsible for allowing the condition to remain hidden. This is not Goodell huddling up employees and telling them to keep quiet about evidence of CTE; it’s a system of people each doing their small part to prevent Omalu from disrupting the status quo, if only by staying quiet.

Structural corruption is at its most brazen in “The Big Short.” The film reveals crookedness so far-reaching it extends through entire companies, ultimately poisoning the whole of the American banking system. It’s tough to explain the way the housing market falls apart (and Adam McKay goes out of his way to simplify things, recruiting Anthony Bourdain and Margot Robbie in a bathtub to break it all down). Put most simply, by the end of the film it’s clear the banks likely knew mortgages would fail and didn’t bother to fix things, assuming the taxpayers would bail them out. As Steve Carell’s character puts it, creasing his brow into the depths of his dramatic role, “They knew, they just didn’t care.” The “they” in that simple statement hits on how entrenched and far-reaching the issues lie. Again, it’s not some awful, mustachioed CEO directing his company to destroy the lives of millions of Americans, because “Muahaha, profit anyway.” It’s an industry holistically complicit in accepting crookedness as the way business that is done.

Finishing “Making a Murderer” or leaving the theater after “Concussion” or “The Big Short,” the questions of “who’s responsible?” and “how could they let this happen?” linger. The knee-jerk reaction looks to the dark psychology of authority, the banality of cogs in the machine following orders, but there’s no Hitler stand-in in any of the three stories. Rather, we see a structural lack of ethics built on the sum total of individual ethical infractions. Each scenario seems like an implausibly malicious case, leading to false imprisonment, fatal injuries or our country’s near-financial ruin, but lining them up reveals more mundane forces fueling the devastation. And so, the question turns to our own culpability. In order to watch each film without descending into despair, we have to look at how the portraits of corruption they reveal reflect back on ourselves. We are all susceptible to the phenomenon we see on-screen. These are often perfectly “normal,” often boring people, going about their day without asking questions. The takeaway should be that there is not always going to be a horned creature demanding you “do your job.” We all play a role in the systems that allow for these horrors, sometimes just by letting things be. In Manitowoc County, the NFL, Wall Street and far outside the boundaries of each, evil can be as simple as going with the flow.

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Crisis Management

Bernie Sanders is winning with the one group his rivals can't sway: voters

By Trevor Timm

Perhaps more important than Sanders’s gain in the polls is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message, regardless of what other candidates said.

As Trump continues to dominate both parties for media attention, and Hillary Clinton remains a favorite to win with Wall Street, Bernie Sanders is suddenly surging again among those who actually matter: voters. But more important than his rise in the polls is how he’s doing it.

A string of polls over the past two weeks show that the once-independent Vermont senator is tied or in the lead in the two early primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, and all of a sudden, in striking distance of Hillary Clinton nationally. With very little fanfare, he has been leading in New Hampshire for months, with some recent ones putting his lead in the double digits.


But Iowa seemed distinctly in Clinton’s corner for the last quarter of 2015 until this week, just a month away from the primary. A Quinnipiac poll released Tuesday night showed Sanders vaulted into the lead, with a slew of others show him pulling in close to a tie.

 

Digging deeper into the numbers shows even more good news for Sanders: nationally, he is beating Clinton by 2-1 with voters younger than 45, and by 20 points with female voters younger than 35. In New Hampshire there is not one demographic group in which Clinton is beating Sanders. He’s also made recent gains among African Americans and Hispanics – both demographics long considered Clinton strongholds.

But perhaps more important than the news of Sanders’s gain is how it happened: by patiently hammering on his message of drawing attention to economic inequality, raising taxes on the rich, dramatically expanding Medicare and Social Security, making public universities free of charge and criminal justice reform.

 

He has, to great criticism by beltway pundits, avoided the rest of the candidates’ descent into constant fear-mongering about terrorism and hyping the “threat” from Isis. Instead he has mocked both the media and other candidates for doing so, as BuzzFeed reported last month:

“As a nation and as a people, we have got to understand that our country faces a myriad of very serious problems… if you turn on the TV, what they now say is, ‘Well we’ve got one problem, it’s Isis,” Sanders said, launching into a sarcastic impression of the “they” on television this week.

Clinton, meanwhile, has sounded more like the Republican candidates with her conventional forever war posture, her defense of the disastrous Libya intervention and her calls for an escalation of the war in Syria. Apparently she’s not concerned that she’s running for the nomination from a party who rejected her in 2008 partly because of her support for the Iraq war.

Sanders disappointingly isn’t running as an anti-war candidate, either, and it’s a shame he’s not more aggressive in rejecting the militarism that has infected the country since 9/11: he’s indicated his support for the CIA’s drone program, continued war in Afghanistan and has been largely silent on the fact that the war against Isis is by, almost all accounts, illegal since Congress hasn’t authorized it as the Constitution requires.

 

But he has proven false the idea that candidates have to drop everything to treat Isis as a threat to America’s existence requiring 24/7 hand wringing, rather than what they really are: a comparatively small problem in the day-to-day lives of Americans that we only exacerbate by doing the terrorists’ PR work for them and upending our rights to supposedly “defeat” them.

 

All of this is not to say Clinton should not still be considered the favorite. Nate Silver still has Clinton with a 73% chance to win Iowa and a 55% chance to win New Hampshire. She also has strong support in the African American community that will be critical for the third primary in South Carolina, and a much higher national profile for Super Tuesday in March, when more than a dozen states will be voting at the same time.

She also has one trump card that Sanders never will, given her establishment ties: a massive advantage in “super delegates”, who make up a large percentage of the delegates who will actually decide the nomination at the Democratic convention this summer but who aren’t beholden to vote the way their state’s primary ended up.

But it’s clear that Sanders is not going to fade away, as many predicted in the fall after it looked like his support was leveling off; he is only getting stronger. Given that most voters don’t even start paying attention until after the Iowa caucus, Democrats would do themselves well by putting the Clinton coronation on hold for now.

Bill O’Reilly Vows He's 'Fleeing’ To Ireland If Bernie Sanders Elected

By News Hound Ellen

“Patriotic” Bill O’Reilly is so upset at the possibility of paying more taxes to the country he supposedly loves, he is threatening to leave it if Bernie Sanders becomes president.

O’Reilly made the announcement during a discussion with Fox News’ Ed Henry about the presidential campaign.

O’REILLY: If Bernie Sanders gets elected president, I’m fleeing. I’m going to Ireland and they already know it. I shouldn’t say it publicly because that’ll get Sanders more votes, but I’m not gonna pay 90% of my income to that guy, I’m sorry. I’m not doin’ it.

Actually, it’s doubtful O’Reilly would have to pay 90% of his income. Though Sanders has previously said that he didn’t think 90% was too high, he has since specifically clarified he won’t raise taxes that high. From the CBS News November 14 Democratic primary debate:

QUESTION #3: Well, let’s get specific, how high [for taxes] would you go? You said before you’d go above 50%. How high?

BERNIE SANDERS: We haven’t come up with an exact number yet. But it will not be as high as the number under Dwight D. Eisenhower which was 90%. …I’m not a socialist compared to Eisenhower. (LAUGHTER) But-- (CHEERING) but—but we are gonna end the absurdity as Warren Buffet often reminds us …that billionaires pay an effective tax rate lower than nurses or truck drivers.
…
MARTIN O’MALLEY: I mean, (UNINTEL) under Ronald Reagan’s first term the highest marginal rate was 70%. And in talking to a lot of our neighbors who are in that super wealthy millionaire and billionaire category great numbers of them love their country enough to do more again in order to create more opportunity for America’s middle class.
 
Obviously O'Reilly was not one of those O'Malley talked to!

This is at least the fourth time we have caught O'Reilly threatening to stomp off with his money rather than pay more taxes. In 2011, he threatened to retire if his income taxes went over 50% and to stop investing “at the level I am now” if his capital gains taxes went over 20%. In 2012, he made a similar threat and said he’d move his money out of the country rather than pay higher taxes. That same month, he had also threatened to stop “aggressively putting any money in the market.”

After pledging to leave the country rather than live under a Sanders presidency, O’Reilly had the nerve to complain that Sanders won’t come on The O’Reilly Factor any more. “We made him who he is today,” O’Reilly said.

America could say the same thing to O’Reilly.

Watch it above, from the January 14 The O’Reilly Factor.
Crossposted at News Hounds.

We watch Fox so you don't have to!

Reggie Has Left the Building! - The Nutty Professor

We Need Justice, Not Racism

We’re going to be looking at the racial divide in America, focusing on the lawlessness that white citizens are able to get away with, and the gross injustices being suffered by people of color at the hands of police officers.

MoveOn Members Voted to Endorse Bernie Sanders

The Top 5 Reasons MoveOn Members Voted to Endorse Bernie (with the Most Votes and Widest Margin in Our History)

By Ilya Sheyman, Executive Director, MoveOn.org Political Action

With a record-setting 78.6 percent of 340,665 votes cast by the MoveOn membership, Senator Bernie Sanders has won MoveOn.org Political Action’s endorsement for president with the largest total and widest margin in MoveOn history.

MoveOn.org only endorses candidates based on votes by our members. Our only previous presidential endorsement during a Democratic primary was for Barack Obama, in early 2008. In 2004, no Democratic candidate reached the threshold for an endorsement.

Here are 5 of the top reasons MoveOn members support Bernie and will mobilize to get out the vote on his behalf in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other crucial early states.

1. Bernie’s lifelong commitment to standing up to corporate and 1% interests to fight for an economy where everyone has a fair shot.

“His refusal to accept the status quo of the wealthiest Americans using their power to influence politicians matters to me. If we’re going to push back against the rising oligarchy in our country, we need people like Bernie Sanders representing us in government.”

– MoveOn member Matt R., Reston, VA

At the core of Bernie’s campaign is a commitment to fixing an economic system that has been rigged in favor of giant corporations and the wealthiest few and that is making economic inequality worse.

Bernie’s campaign is funded by more than a million ordinary Americans chipping in whatever they can afford — not by billionaires or corporate SuperPACs. In our endorsement vote exit poll, one of the words MoveOn members most frequently used to describe him was “integrity.” He isn’t beholden to lobbyists and corporate interests, and it shows in the positions he’s taken, from fighting to break up too-big-to-fail Wall Street banks, to tuition-free public higher education, to expanding Social Security, to fighting for bold solutions on climate change and a $15-hour minimum wage.

In short, MoveOn members support Bernie Sanders because they believe they can trust him to stand up to powerful interests and fight for what’s right.

2. He’s standing up for justice for communities facing oppression.

“In a nutshell, he exemplifies the ‘We the People’ style of democracy I believe in. He has stood by and with the people, supporting women, people of color, LGBTQ, seniors, and the poor against those who look to subjugate these historically oppressed groups for profit.”

– MoveOn member Natalie R., Claremont, CA

Bernie is fighting for racial justice by calling to demilitarize police, invest in community policing, end the drug war and tackle the epidemic of mass incarceration, and restore voting rights gutted by federal courts. On immigration, Sanders proposes allowing undocumented immigrants to purchase health care through the Affordable Care Act, dismantling inhumane deportation programs and private detention centers, and a path to citizenship for 11 million aspiring Americans. He’s fighting for equal pay for women and to expand and protect reproductive rights, and has pledged to only nominate Supreme Court justices who support Roe v. Wade.

3. He’ll say no to permanent war.

“He represents integrity. He was also right about Iraq and I prefer his stance on foreign policy. I feel that he is concerned with getting our country on track and not getting us in more wars.”

– MoveOn member Janekee C., Davenport, FL

Bernie Sanders has been a strong, consistent voice for the principle that war should always be a last resort. He had the foresight to vote against authorizing the war in Iraq in 2002, was a strong supporter of the nuclear deal to prevent war with Iran, and has been a voice of reason against escalation in Syria and other conflicts around the world.

A diplomacy-first foreign policy has long been one of MoveOn members’ top priorities, and Bernie has consistently stood with us against costly, needless, and unwise military escalation that puts our nation’s security and values at risk.

4. Electability: This election will hinge on turnout, and Bernie is inspiring and mobilizing the communities it’ll take to win.

“I have never been as excited about a candidate as I am about Bernie Sanders. His liberal values match my own values more closely than any other candidate. I respect Bernie Sander’s independence from corporate influence. His focus on social justice and addressing the economic inequality in this country make him the candidate for me.”

– MoveOn member Megan W., Poulsbo, WA

Bernie’s campaign is inspiring millions of people to enter the political process for the first time, including young people and other members of the “rising American electorate” who the eventual Democratic nominee will need to mobilize in order to win in November. He’s raised money from more contributors than any candidate in history at this stage in the primary process, and massive crowds have turned out to see him across the country. Part of why MoveOn members are supporting Bernie is that his agenda excites and inspires them, and they see it doing the same for others.

Experts agree that the general election will hinge on voter turnout. If the Obama coalition can be inspired to vote, Democrats will retain the White House. But if the electorate looks like it did in 2014, when Republicans gained ground across the country and seized control of the Senate, Democrats will be in trouble.

Not only do some new polls this week show Bernie leading the Democratic field in Iowa and New Hampshire, they also show him to be the Democratic candidate who performs best against various hypothetical Republican nominees.

MoveOn members support Bernie because they know his message has broad support and that he is well positioned to win the White House in a general election.

5. Putting members in the driver’s seat is what MoveOn does, and a whopping 79 percent voted to endorse Bernie.

“I voted for MoveOn.org to endorse Bernie Sanders for president because he represents the progressive movement like this organization. His views align perfectly with my own — wealth inequality, a living wage, job creation, Wall Street reform, racial justice, women’s and LBGT rights, college without debt, climate change, and peaceful solutions to prevent war, such as his support for the Iran deal.”

– MoveOn member Terri D., Brookfield, WI

Finally, MoveOn is endorsing Bernie for president because MoveOn is our members. MoveOn only endorses candidates for office after formal membership votes, and in this case, the outcome of our internal democratic process was overwhelming: the vast majority of voting MoveOn members want the organization to support Bernie, so that’s what we’re going to do. We’ve pledged to run a 100% positive campaign. And then regardless of who wins the nomination, MoveOn will support the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election to keep a Republican out of the White House, because the vast majority of members have made clear that it’s what they want MoveOn to do.

More than 340,000 MoveOn members participated in our endorsement process. Sanders won with 267,750 votes, or 78.6 percent. “Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton garnered 49,811 votes (14.6 percent). Martin O’Malley earned 2,949 votes (0.9 percent). There were also 20,155 MoveOn members, or 5.9 percent, who voted against MoveOn making an endorsement now.

Bernie’s vote total and percentage are MoveOn records — the best any presidential candidate has performed in our 17-year history.

In short, MoveOn members #FeelTheBern and are going to mobilize in a big way to turn out the voters Bernie needs to win in Iowa, New Hampshire, and other early primary states. Let’s demonstrate the impact of progressive people power. Click here to join our MoveOn for Bernie campaign.

Nikki Haley's Stepford Wives Republican Response Can't Paper Over GOP Racism

By Jason Easley

Republican Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC) delivered a Stepford wife like performance as she unsuccessfully sold the Republican agenda of racism and tax cuts for the wealthy in the GOP response to President Obama’s State Of The Union.

In one breath, Nikki Haley proclaimed herself the child of immigrants. In the next breath, Haley said that the country must crack down on immigration. Haley said, “We cannot continue to allow immigrants to come here illegally. And in this age of terrorism, we must not let in refugees whose intentions cannot be determined. We must fix our broken immigration system. That means stopping illegal immigration. And it means welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of their race or religion. Just like we have for centuries.”

Haley brought back the same old Republican b.s. that if they win back the White House, their tax cuts for the wealthy will help working Americans, “If we held the White House, taxes would be lower for working families, and we’d put the brakes on runaway spending and debt…We would make international agreements that were celebrated in Israel and protested in Iran, not the other way around. And rather than just thanking our brave men and women in uniform, we would actually strengthen our military, so both our friends and our enemies would know that America seeks peace, but when we fight wars we win them.”

It was the same old trick that Republicans try to pull every four years. The GOP never stops trying to dress up their racist, anti-woman, pro-billionaire agenda with a new face. This time the Republican Party trotted out an American-Indian woman to try to fool voters into believing that they were not being sold the same old bill of goods.

Haley’s performance in the Republican response was professional. Her delivery was solid. She fared better than Bobby Jindal and Marco Rubio, but Republicans still don’t get it. The problem is the messenger. The problem remains the message.

Voters aren’t going to buy tax cuts that benefit the wealthy and discriminatory policies from anybody.

The Stepford governor failed just like all of the other puppets failed before her.

Republicans can’t hide that it’s Donald Trump, not Nikki Haley who speaks for the real Republican Party.

Dear Ted Cruz: Even David Brooks Hates You

The New York Times conservative columnist suggests the GOP candidate is anything but kindhearted.

By Kali Holloway

Ted Cruz has been gaining on Donald Trump in recent weeks, closing the gap between the two among likely GOP voters. While the numbers show support for Cruz is building, there’s apparently one conservative whose vote he doesn’t have, and is unlikely to gain—PBS talking head and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

In his latest op-ed, Brooks took Cruz to task for what he calls the candidate’s “pagan brutalism,” which he says leaves the candidate empty of “compassion, gentleness and mercy.” Brooks cites the case of Michael Wayne Haley, a Texas man who in 1997 was sent to jail for stealing a calculator. Due to prosecutor error, what should have earned Haley two years maximum behind bars resulted in a prison sentence of an astounding 16 years. When the mistake was discovered, then-Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz actually fought to keep Haley imprisoned, going as high as the U.S. Supreme Court. Haley was ultimately released after serving six years, but in that anecdote, Brooks finds troubling indications about Cruz’s personality.

Brooks notes a marked incongruity between Cruz’s appeals to evangelical voters, with whom he’s gaining a foothold, and his so-called dedication to Christian virtues. “[Cruz’s] speeches are marked by a long list of enemies, and vows to crush, shred, destroy, bomb them,” Brooks writes. “When he is speaking in a church the contrast between the setting and the emotional tone he sets is jarring.”

He suggests the candidate is creating an “atmosphere of apocalyptic fear,” making hyperbolic pronouncements that seem like doomsday forecasts. Brooks quotes Cruz's statement that America is in danger of toppling off the “cliff to oblivion.” He also points to a Cruz quote following a Democratic debate about how “[w]e’re seeing our freedoms taken away every day, and last night was an audition for who would wear the jackboot most vigorously.”

Brooks believes this tone, thanks to its success with some Republican voters, is being picked up by other candidates. "Ted Cruz is making headway. There's...you begin to see little signs of liftoff,” Cruz said, according to Politico. “Trump has sort of ceiling-ed out. Carson is collapsing. And Cruz is somehow beginning to get some momentum from Iowa and elsewhere. And so people are either mimicking him, which Rubio is doing a little by adopting some of the dark and satanic tones that Cruz has."

Brooks suggests in his column that evangelical voters would do well to look more closely at Cruz’s rhetoric before deciding to support him, since it runs counter to much of what they believe. “Evangelicals and other conservatives have had their best influence on American politics when they have proceeded in a spirit of personalism,” Brooks writes, “when they have answered hostility with service and emphasized the infinite dignity of each person. They have won elections as happy and hopeful warriors. Ted Cruz’s brutal, fear-driven, apocalypse-based approach is the antithesis of that.”
 
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The Junior Militiaman Playset!

As Christie rises, foes turn focus on the mess he's leaving in New Jersey

By Tom Moran

With just a month to go before New Hampshire votes, Gov. Chris Christie's opponents have begun whacking him over his dismal performance as governor.

Finally, someone noticed.

I don't think I'm the only Jersey guy who feels that the voters of New Hampshire are a pretty clueless bunch if they embrace Christie before checking with his home team.

They would find that a whopping 76 percent of New Jerseyans say that Christie cares more about himself than the state; that 69 percent say he'd make a poor president, and that 59 percent are so fed up they want him to resign today.

Put it this way: If Christie wanted to leave the state for good, he'd have no trouble finding volunteers to drive him to the airport.

During two trips to New Hampshire, and one to Iowa, I found that nearly all their voters are judging Christie solely by his performance on stage, where he excels.

Heads bob up and down as Christie claims that New Jersey's economy is robust, that the Bridgegate scandal is over, that the state's finances are rock solid, and so on. It's enough to make your head explode.

But the attack ads could pry open the door to Christie's real record. And it's been a torrent lately, with attacks coming directly or indirectly from Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio.

Christie says the attacks are a good sign. "They're coming after me because I'm doing well," he says. "Its good to be attacked. It means I'm in the game."

Fair point. Why would they waste their money attacking a guy who has no prayer?

But that's not the end of it. Because if New Hampshire voters do take a hard look at Christie's record, he's in big trouble.

This is the time bomb that's been embedded in this campaign from the start. Once a candidate gets traction, the scrutiny gears up. And for Christie, that could cut deep.

I was impressed with Christie during his first few years, as were most people in New Jersey. He signed a slew of bipartisan reforms that helped contain public spending at a time when that was a top priority.

And he made solid progress on education, with tenure reform and the robust growth of the best charter school chains in the state's poorest cities.

Give him that. It's not for nothing that he won re-election in a landslide.

Then everything collapsed. And we learned that while he may have the talent to be a good president, he lacks the character.

The turning point came when the party establishment begged him to run for president in 2012. He turned them down, but he was left with a bad case of White House fever.

By now, he's lost his bearings, like the mythical Icarus who flew too close to the sun.

The Bridgegate scandal was an early sign. It was all about an attempt to run up his margin of victory in New Jersey as a credential for a presidential run.

But the fever has deepened since then. Christie was absent from the state 72 percent of the days during 2015, a truly shameless total. And still, he attacks Rubio for missing Senate votes. Has he lost his mind?

If you wonder why New Jersey's transit system is such a mess, blame Christie's fever. He can't raise the gas tax because it would kill his campaign, even when the state's Chamber of Commerce sees no alternative to a tax hike of some kind. So he has proposed no solution whatsoever.

The result: Our crowded trains break down much more often, tolls and fares have skyrocketed, several crumbling bridges have been closed down, and the state's economy faces the risk of a body blow if the decrepit century-old railroad tunnel under the Hudson River fails. Keep your fingers crossed.

Christie's gotten sloppy in his second term, like the cocky star quarterback who skips practice. He slurps up luxury gifts from kings and billionaires, and makes the phony claim that they are all personal friends.

He flip-flops on meaty issues like gun control, Common Core, immigration, and Planned Parenthood.
He seems paralyzed by the state's budget crisis, with the credit rating dropping a record nine times.

In New Jersey, this act has worn thin. Polls show that even Republicans here don't like him, and that he'd be crushed in a primary vote in his own state.

One hopes that New Hampshire voters will soon become curious to find out why.

Hillary Clinton Is Not Telling The Truth About Wall Street

  Scott Olson via Getty Images

And it's damaging her campaign.

By Zach Carter 

WASHINGTON - Hillary Clinton's campaign spent much of this week waging a dishonest attack on Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and his campaign's Wall Street reform platform. The risky attempt to make inroads with progressives on one of her weakest issues is damaging the credibility of some of her top lieutenants.

Clinton's attack on Sanders is as simple as it is untrue: Unlike Sanders, Clinton has argued, she is willing to take on "shadow banking" -- a broad term for various financial activities that aren't regulated as strictly as conventional lending. 

Sanders has in fact proposed attacking shadow banking in two principal ways: by breaking up big financial firms that engage in shadow banking, and by severing federal financial support for shadow banking activities by reinstating Glass-Steagall.

These would be substantive changes. A lot of shadow banking takes place at firms with traditional banking charters, like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. Some of it takes place at specialized hedge funds, or at major investment banks like Goldman Sachs. Breaking them up would not eliminate the risk shadow banking poses to the economy, but it would limit it. Risky shadow banking activities cannot bring down institutions that are too-big-to-fail if there are no too-big-to-fail institutions.

Yet the Clinton campaign has repeatedly said Sanders is wholly ignoring shadow banking, accusing Sanders of taking a "hands-off" approach to it that would not apply to firms like Lehman Brothers and AIG. This barrage has come from Clinton's press aides, campaign CFO Gary Gensler, and Clinton surrogate Barney Frank.

In a bizarre appearance on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, Frank claimed that splitting up Morgan Stanley or Bank of America "is not going to do anything, literally not anything to restrain shadow banking." He even said that since Lehman Brothers was "very small" when it failed, Sanders' break-up-the-banks plan would be unworkably broad and apply to too many firms. 

It's hard to see these comments as anything but dishonest. Lehman Brothers was not "very small" when it failed. At $639 billion in assets, it was the single-biggest bankruptcy filing in American history. Only six U.S. banks are now larger than Lehman was, and the next-largest institutions are almost half Lehman's size. AIG -- then the world's largest insurer -- was even bigger.

Breaking up major institutions and forcing banks that accept insured deposits out of the shadow banking system are not the only conceivable tactics for mitigating risks posed by shadow banking. 

Clinton's plan includes some vague but sensible proposals to take a harder look at the sector, require more transparency, and impose new leverage limits on some players. Her approach eschews a focus on the threat posed by large institutions in favor of monitoring risks across the financial system (she has repeatedly rejected calls to break up the biggest banks). The Clinton team could easily make a case for her approach without saying strange and false things about Sanders' plan.

And indeed, the Clinton camp's relentless references to Lehman and AIG undercut her own regulatory approach. If bank size were truly irrelevant to the shadow banking problem, then there would be no need to consistently highlight two too-big-to-fail institutions, one of which wreaked havoc on the economy by failing, and another of which was bailed out to avoid further havoc.

Jaret Seiberg, a regulatory specialist at Guggenheim Partners - and one of the most astute finance-friendly observers of American politics - issued a note to clients this week saying that key elements of Sanders' platform have bipartisan appeal and political viability that will put pressure on other candidates to present more aggressive anti-Wall Street messaging.

"This is not just about breaking up the biggest banks," Seiberg wrote. "Sanders is calling for a system in which financial firms are smaller, the government controls the interest rates that banks charge, certain fees are capped, the Postal Service becomes a viable competitor to banks and payday lenders [and] CEO's would be criminally liable if employees defraud customers.

"Sanders appears to argue that he could implement much of this agenda on his own even without the need for legislation," Seiberg continued. "We caution against dismissing this view. There is much that the White House, Treasury, or the financial regulators could do by executive order …. Bashing Wall Street is a populist message that appeals to conservatives and liberals. Sanders has now laid out the most radical option on the table that other candidates will be judged against."

So it's easy to see why Clinton would want to steal some of Sanders' populist thunder. But focusing on Wall Street could easily backfire on Clinton. Aside from giving opponents more opportunities to highlight speaking fees she accepted from Goldman Sachs and other banks, it risks demoralizing progressive voters. Financial reform is a major issue with the Democratic Party base. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has become one of the most popular figures within the party, built on her almost single-minded focus on Wall Street accountability. Too-big-to-fail and Glass-Steagall are major causes among Warren's supporters, many of whom have flocked to Sanders, but would be perfectly happy to vote for Clinton over a Republican in November.

Unless Clinton needlessly alienates them. Turning out an enthusiastic base has increasingly become essential for both parties over the past decade. With Clinton up more than 15 percentage points in Iowa polls and ahead by even wider margins nationally, it's hard to see the upside in her campaign's current assault on Sanders. 

Making things up in order to criticize Sanders proposals that Democrats actually like only damages Clinton's credibility with Democratic voters.

Why have major TV networks pulled the plug on Bernie?

By Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

Let's go to the scoreboard to see who's winning the exciting game of "Presidential Election Media Coverage."

A non-partisan media monitoring firm that has been tracking the nightly news broadcasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC reports that Trump is tromp, tromp, tromping over the airtime of everyone else. From last January thought November, these dominant flagship news shows devoted 234 minutes of prime-time coverage to the incessant chirping of the Yellow-Crested Birdbrain, with no other contender getting even a fourth of that.

Take Democrat Bernie Sanders, who's stunning the political establishment with a fiery populist campaign that's drawing record crowds. Indeed, Sanders' upstart campaign is getting higher poll ratings in the Democratic contest than Trump is getting in GOP race. And – get this – polls also show Bernie topping The Donald by 10 points if they face each other in November's presidential showdown. So surely he's getting a proportional level of media coverage by the networks on our public airwaves, right?

Ha, just kidding! The ABC, CBS, NBC devotion of 234 minutes to all-things-Trump was "balanced" by less than 10 minutes for Sanders. Most egregious, was ABC, the Disney-owned network. ABC's "World New Tonight" awarded 81 minutes of national showtime to Trump last year – and for Bernie: 20 seconds.

How self-serving of the media moguls! The one candidate who is effectively rallying large numbers of voters to oppose the rise of corporate oligarchy – including in the media – has the plug pulled on him. Of course, this only amplifies the truth of what Sanders is saying about the villainy of corporate profiteers, and it fuels a greater determination by his millions of grassroots supporters to end the reign of greed in America. For information and action, go to www.BernieSanders.com

Imagine If They Were Black: How Oregon Reveals The Real Story About Race And Whiteness In America

Oregon is about guns, right-wing media and state violence as well as race. But it shows our racial inequity clearly.

By Chauncey DeVega

I recently wrote two pieces on white privilege and the occupation of federal property in Oregon by a gun-toting terrorist insurrectionist “militia” that is led by the sons of Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who, with the aid of an armed group of anti-government protesters, stood down federal authorities in 2014 because he did not want to pay his back taxes and grazing fees.

Ammon Bundy speaking at a forum hosted by the American Academy for Constitutional Education (AAFCE) at the Burke Basic School in Mesa, Arizona.
 
Photo Credit: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America (Ammon Bundy) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

 
Those two works—one that was quite short and posted on my Facebook page; the other a longer piece featured on Salon—have been shared and commented upon hundreds of thousands of times on social media and elsewhere. When an essay on race (especially when it explores questions surrounding white privilege) goes “viral” there is a predictable range of reactions.

Some readers have responded with rage and anger because to discuss the connection between white privilege, state violence, guns and right-wing politics is verboten to them.

Other readers have been very positive and supportive. As was seen online at “Black Twitter,” many people were quick, and quite correct, to point out the hypocrisy regarding how the United States government and its agents are apparently much more likely to use violence against people of color (and especially Muslims in the post 9/11 era) than they are white Americans. With that observation, a powerful example was summoned: Tamir Rice, a black child playing with a toy gun was summarily executed by the Cleveland police; white people can brandish real guns and point them at the police and federal authorities, yet somehow they manage to (for the most part) survive unharmed.

There were other readers who are plugged into the right-wing conspiracy theory/Fox News/Alex Jones echo chamber. Epistemic closure visits ignorance and disinformation upon those who are self-exiled within the right-wing media. These readers defended the Oregon “militia” brigands with claims that the latter are “freedom fighters” who are standing up against “tyranny”–as opposed to the plain fact that they are insurrectionists protecting poachers.

Among the many thousands of comments (and several emails that I have also received), there were a few that offered a reasonable and insightful intervention. Several folks are concerned that the white Oregon “Bundy Brigands” insurrection is 1.) about “more than race,” and 2.) that somehow a discussion of the color line and white privilege is a distraction from “the bigger picture.”

To the second point, my response is that to critically interrogate matters of race and the color line is to better understand almost every aspect of American life and culture. The color line cannot be decoupled from American society. To run away from this fact is ironically to cede the centrality of race to America’s history and present. In practice, ignorant and willful “colorblindness” is a malignant and perverse type of “color consciousness” that too often enables white supremacy in the post-civil rights era.

To the first point, are the events in Oregon about “more than race?” Absolutely! Bundy’s Brigands are a nexus for many other important matters of public concern in American society.

The Oregon insurrection is an example of how the right-wing media has cultivated a culture of anger, aggrievement, anti-government conspiracy theories, and victimology among its consumers. The idea that publicly held land is a form of tyranny is absurd. However, the right-wing media and the Republican Party are part of a political religion which holds that the government is always the enemy, a baby to be drowned in the bathtub, as opposed to a force for potential good. Sarah Palin’s death panels, claims that the Affordable Care Act is akin to “slavery,” the foolishness of a “War on Christmas,” and the dunder headed political opportunism of the Benghazi witch hunts, are part of the same distorted and conspiranoid right-wing political imagination that excreted the Oregon militia standoff.

In all, there is something profoundly wrong with America’s sense of civic virtue and righteousness when some would hesitate to call Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Black Lives Matter activists freedom fighters, but those same people enthusiastically embrace using such language to describe right-wing militias and anti-government activists who want to suck off the public teat while avoiding paying any taxes or fees to do so.

The right-wing media protects and nurtures the likes of Cliven Bundy, his sons, and the broader militia movement by giving them attention and using honorifics, i.e. the word “patriots,” to describe their treasonous behavior.

Bundy’s Brigands are also white men with guns. White ammosexual identity is nurtured and protected by the National Rifle Association, the Republican Party, and the right-wing media. These gun-obsessed civic deviants are described by the right-wing, and unfortunately also the so-called liberal media, as being members of a “militia” when in reality they are rabble who are engaging in armed insurrection against a democratically elected government. The gun industry encourages the armed cowboy cosplay of groups such as Bundy’s Brigands in Oregon by marketing assault rifles and other weaponry with allusions to “freedom,” “democracy,” the myth of the American frontier and the Revolutionary War.

Bundy’s Brigands are also an example of how certain economic interests are protected in America. If this group of terrorist insurrectionists had staged their “standoff” at Wall Street for example, they would have been beaten up, arrested, and disappeared by the police, private security forces, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The rhetoric of capitalism and the iconic and empty Americana images of the yeoman farmer and cowboy are also operative in the “Oregon Standoff” as well. If Bundy’s Brigands were liberals and progressives demanding a fairer and more equal democracy, forming grange associations, or people’s economic collectives and banks, the reaction by the United States government and the corporate news media would be very, very, different. As was seen with Occupy Wall Street, the surveillance and punishing state would infiltrate and try to destroy the movement. The corporate news media would legitimate this anti-democratic behavior by slurring and defaming the activists and other social change workers who are involved with it.

Moreover, the efforts by militias, as well as those of individuals such as Cliven Bundy and his sons to privatize public land, cannot be separated from how corporations and other interests would like access to those areas. Neoliberalism considers the very notion of “the commons” and “the public” to be anathema to an organizing logic where all things are to be privatized, sold off to corporations, in exclusive service to the plutocrats, and where the working classes and poor are deemed useless eaters. Bundy’s Brigands and other right-wing militia groups speak of “freedom” from “tyranny,” but in reality they are unwittingly (or perhaps, in some cases, intentionally) working to replace an ostensibly elected and free American government with an unelected corporate dictatorship.

The Oregon insurrection is a great opportunity to participate in the too oft used “teachable moment.” History, as it always does, should inform our analysis of current events. This leads us to a necessary empirical question, one that can be answered, and likely has already been, by social scientists and historians. How does the American State respond to protest behavior by different racial groups? How are the events in Oregon similar or different from how the Philadelphia police decided to firebomb the headquarters of the African-American radical organization known as MOVE during the mid-1980's? Are the events at Ruby Ridge and Waco outliers for how the state uses violence against non-whites, exceptions that prove the rule? What of the freedom struggle by First Nations peoples in the American Indian Movement in the 1960's and 1970's?

Is the United States government (and its agents) more likely to use violent force against black and brown people as compared to whites? While both my intuition and the evidence would seem to suggest “yes,” this is not an “unknown unknown”–to borrow from Donald Rumsfeld–the answer is something that can actually be determined.

Bundy’s Brigands benefit from several types of privilege, with white privilege being central among them. But, white privilege is only one dimension of a bigger system of power relationships in the United States and West. We ought to look broadly for answers while also being mindful of the specific details and aspects of what is being studied. Bundy’s Brigands are not a Rosetta Stone for American politics. They can however, help us to better understand its dynamics.

Chauncey DeVega’s essays on race, politics and popular culture can also be found at Chaunceydevega.com/. He is a regular guest on Ring of Fire Radio and TV, and hosts a weekly podcast, The Chauncey DeVega Show. Follow him on Twitter.

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