Glenn Beck at CPAC 2010. Photo: Gage Skidmore CC

Thank you Karl Frisch – who doesn’t want to annoy Glenn Beck without actually devoting too much time to doing so? He writes in Media Matters:

Want to annoy Fox News’ Glenn Beck in five minutes or less while simultaneously making sure your community gets its fair share of federal money? Fill out and return the 2010 U.S. Census questionnaire when it arrives in your mailbox.

Few other issues seem to whip media conservatives into a frenzy of misinformation and half-baked conspiracy theories like the decennial count of Americans.

You see, for the world of “conservative journalism,” the census is a manifestation of everything they fear. Put yourself in their shoes: Obama’s administration is hell-bent on imposing a socialist-fascist-communist-totalitarian-Marxist police state, and now he’s sending us all mail! Even worse, Obama’s thugs may show up at your door to get a more accurate count.

Why wait for the third installment of the Twilight franchise when you’ve got these scary bloodsuckers wanting to … gulp … count you?

To hear Beck tell it, the Census is just part of the “modern day slave state.” Hardly surprising for a man who has called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people” and claimed Obama’s policies in general are driven by little more than “reparations” and a desire to “settle old racial scores.”

For government-haters like Beck, attacks such as these are as calculated as they are mean-spirited. Why would he want his audience to think highly of the once-a-decade count if it has a direct result in determining just how federal money for schools, hospitals, job training centers, senior centers, emergency services and a host of public works projects are allocated? He doesn’t believe the federal
government should be involved in these programs in the first place…

[continues in Media Matters]

A prominent gay rights advocate and soldier being discharged under the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay members of the military from serving openly was arrested after chaining himself to the fence of the White House Thursday.The Advocate notes:

Following a Human Rights Campaign rally for DADT repeal at Freedom Plaza in Washington, Choi and Pietrangelo led about 100 protesters to the White House, where the two then proceeded to handcuff themselves to the gates. Pietrangelo was discharged from the military under the gay ban, while Choi’s discharge is pending. Choi is the founder of Knights Out, a West Point alumni organization supporting LGBT soldiers.

United States Park Police spokesman Sgt. David Schlosser told The Advocate that both men were taken to Park Police’s Anacostia station for processing, where they were charged with failure to obey a lawful order. Choi and Pietrangelo will be held overnight and are scheduled to appear in D.C. Superior Court on Friday.

Choi told rally attendees, according to the report: “You’ve been told that the White House has a plan. But we learned this week that the president is still not fully committed. … Following this rally, I will be leading [the protest] to the White House to say ‘enough talk.’ … I am still standing, I am still fighting, I am still speaking out, and I am still gay.”

[Read more at the Raw Story]

In a scene reminiscent of non-violent civil rights confrontations from the 1960s, Ohio Tea Partiers quickly turned ugly when facing off with health care advocates in front of Ohio Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy’s office Tuesday.

In shocking video taken by a Columbus Dispatch reporter Doral Chenowith, Tea Party protestors mock a seated counter-protestor with a sign indicating he has Parkinson’s disease. They then proceed to hurl wadded up bills at him shouting, “I’ll decide when to give you money!”

See and read more on the Columbus Dispatch

As the Western powers continue to criticize Iran for its nuclear enrichment program, and while they try to pressure Russia and China to impose stiffer economic sanctions, maybe it would be an opportune time to remember that for decades Israel has developed nuclear weapons and has tried to keep its program a secret. In fact, Israel has produced more than 200 nuclear warheads, a number of which can be deployed on nuclear submarines, long-range aircraft and missiles.(1)

Starting in the 1950’s, Israel begin producing uranium for its nuclear missiles program. It is one of the few nations that has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and it has never declared its nuclear weapons program publicly.(2) From the Dimona reactor in the Negev Desert to the complex nuclear facilities at Nahal Soreq, Rehovat and Yodefat – which is near the Syrian border – Israel has constructed a number of large-scale nuclear facilities, many of them underground.(3)

In one incident at Dimona, when American inspectors came to check on the use of their nuclear materials and technologies, the doors to the lower levels were bricked up. A false control room was displayed to suggest the reactor was operating at a lower level than the Israelis admitted.(4) Stories abound about how Israeli officials obtained nuclear materials and technologies from illegally diverted ships, by stealing uranium from the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation at a plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania.(5)

[Read more at Truthout]

WASHINGTON — In May 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.

So he hired an attorney — not because he wanted to sue anyone; on the contrary, the shy African-American teenager expected his insurance was canceled by mistake and would be reinstated once he set the company straight.

But Fortis, now known as Assurant Health, ignored his attorney’s letters, as they had earlier inquiries from a case worker at a local clinic who was helping him. So Mitchell sued.

Read More: Reuters

Joseph Goebbels, the leading propagandist of the Third Reich, believed in the power of the lie; the greater the lie, the greater the power. Goebbels would have loved Karl Rove’s Courage and Consequence: My Life as a Conservative in the Fight, a pastiche of lies, fabrications and distortions designed to rehabilitate the record of the Bush-Cheney years. There are too many lies to treat in this one column, but his greatest lie is that the Bush administration would not have invaded Iraq if it had known there were no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) there. Its corollary is that the administration did not lie about the presence of such weapons in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In fact, the Bush administration mounted an intense six-month campaign to make sure that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) produced “evidence” of WMD, and then made sure that such players as National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell parroted the administration’s big lie to the American public and to the international community. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their acolytes Lewis “Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove desperately wanted to go to war against Iraq for reasons that have never been explained. As a result, they created and employed a strategic disinformation campaign to convince Congress and the American people of the need for war. Goebbels would have beamed.

This is not the first time the United States has manipulated intelligence to make a case for war. It happened prior to the Mexican-American War to support the policies of President James Polk, the Spanish-American War to support the policies of President William McKinley and the Vietnam War to support President Lyndon Johnson. But the Iraq war marked the first time that the White House mounted a full-court press with such zeal to take the nation to a war that was unneeded, illegal and immoral. Rove and Libby were key operatives in a programmatic “marketing plan” to justify the war, which included the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, whose husband had dared to challenge the case for war; the phony intelligence documents produced by the CIA and DIA; and the public commentary linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 and Iraq to al-Qaeda. Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card has already admitted to the marketing plan, which was introduced in September 2002, because “from a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”

In the summer of 2002, the White House Iraq Group was formed to convince public opinion at home and abroad of the need for war against Iraq. The group met regularly in the White House situation room and the regular attendants included Rove, Libby, Condi Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley. At the same time, Cheney and Libby began meeting directly with analysts at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, an unprecedented procedure. The purpose of these meetings was to garner the intelligence justification for a pre-emptive war to remove Saddam Hussein in order to make a case to the Congress, the American public and the international community. In July 2002, the chief of the British MI6 intelligence service, Sir Richard Dearlove, after several meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair about the American misuse of intelligence and the public relations campaign to justify war. Dearlove concluded that “intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy,” and that “military action was now seen as inevitable.”…

[continues at TruthOut]

The rising cost of cancer research and care, which helped reduce death rates by 16 percent over 40 years, is straining the U.S. health system and needs to be restrained, commentators said in a special edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Cancer research has cost the U.S. government $100 billion since 1971 and the price of care, accounting for inflation, has more than doubled to $90 billion since 1990, according to six journal reports that raise key questions about the past and future success of the U.S. “War on Cancer,” announced by then-President Richard Nixon in 1971.

The reduced death rates result from anti-smoking campaigns, early disease detection and new drugs, which can cost individual patients as much as $100,000 a year. The price of the drugs, and the care tied to their use, can be lowered by shifting to a system in which the cost of drugs, tests and other care are combined in a single provider payment, researchers said.

Such a system would push doctors to “shop carefully for the services” patients need, wrote the researchers from the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, led by Elena Elkin, in a commentary that was among those included in the special issue.

Read More on the Columbus Dispatch

The president will refuse to make fund-raising visits during November elections to any district whose representative has not backed the bill.

A one-night presidential appearance can bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars in funds which would otherwise take months to accumulate through cold-calling by campaign volunteers.

Mr Obama’s threat came as the year-long debate over his signature domestic policy entered its final week.

Mr Obama is personally telephoning congressmen who are still on the fence this week, in between several personal appearances devoted toward swinging public opinion.

Read More on the Telegraph

It is worth continuing to explore the role of the International Socialist Organization and its political line expressed in Socialist Worker. As the class conflict becomes more two-sided, groups such as the International Socialist Organization will—regardless of the intentions of individual members—play a crucial role in protecting the existing system.

When one sees the ways in which the International Socialist Organization (and other groups like them such as Socialist Action and the Workers’ International League) play left defending attorneys of the trade union bureaucracy and middle class reform organizations (who play a crucial role in defending the Democrats who push many of the same policies as the Republicans) you can see a straight line drawn from the fake left to George W. Bush.

Full Article at Black Sun Gazette

“I do not see how permitting open homosexuality in these communities enhances their prospects of success in battle. Indeed, I believe repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” will weaken the warrior culture at a time when we have a fight on our hands.”

—General Merrill A. McPeak, former Air Force Chief of Staff, on the Op-Ed page of the Times.

My name is Marine Corporal Roger T., and I am one gay soldier who agrees wholeheartedly with General McPeak, although I think that he doesn’t go far enough. Because my staying closeted, in fact, makes me a better soldier, through what I term sublimation. For example: Right before heading out into a firefight with Iraqi insurgents, I always imagine myself at the beach with Merrill A. McPeak, both of us in helmets, camouflage-print Speedos, combat boots, and sunglasses. I picture myself rubbing sunblock all over the luscious, leathery hide of General McPeak, and the adrenaline rockets through my veins, and by the time I leave the Green Zone I’m ready to kill anything that moves, and then make savage, passionate love to its corpse. I’m at what I like to call my sensual, combat-ready McPeak.

As a gay man, I naturally spend much of my time debating casting issues involving the musical theatre, although, thankfully, I can’t share such thoughts with my unit. Instead, when I spot a potential suicide bomber, I think of him as someone who insists that Tyne Daly was the greatest Mama Rose of all time, even better than Merman. This makes me so enraged, and my aim grows so steady, that I can pick off the bomber with a single well-flung grenade, while shouting to myself, “Tyne was appealing, but she didn’t have a shred of Angela Lansbury’s esprit, or Patti LuPone’s thwarted fury! Anyone who ranks Tyne over Patti deserves to die! ” It’s called valor.

[Read more at the New Yorker]

Andrew Breitbart has been waiting 45 minutes for a filet mignon. He drums his fingers on the table in this plush Italian restaurant off Times Square, a place where the media types he regularly trashes used to flaunt their expense accounts — back when they still had them. Breitbart looks around for a waiter and launches into a stem-winder about collusion between Hollywood and the press — the “subtle and not-so-subtle use of propaganda to make a center-right nation move to the left.

“It’s not just the nightly news,” he says. “You’re also getting television shows that reflect the same worldview, where Republicans are always the bad guys. Al Qaeda’s never the bad guy. The Republican is always the bad guy.”

From anyone else, this would be just talk — or talking points. (No terrorist bad guys on TV? Really?) But Breitbart is one of the people who rams those points into the popular consciousness. Until last September, the beefy 41-year-old with graying blond hair was a largely covert power in the right-wing media, the hidden hand behind the popular Drudge Report who also, weirdly, cofounded the liberal Huffington Post. But then he struck out on his own. Today his collection of Web sites draws more than 10 million readers a month. He has a book deal worth more than half a million dollars, and he’s a regular presence on Fox News — where he’s headed later tonight, in fact. The covert thing is out the window.

The filet finally shows and Breitbart digs in, ignoring the risk to his mustard-colored sports coat. “The idea is that I have to screw with media, and I have to screw with the Left, in order to give legitimate stories the ability to reach their natural watermark,” he says.

Image: Wikipedia via Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0

Read More on WIRED

Among the proposed changes are reducing the scope of Latino history and culture, removing hip hop music from a list of important cultural movements, portraying Joseph McCarthy in a more positive light, and downplaying Thomas Jefferson’s influence in the intellectual origins of America.

Yes, Thomas Jefferson.

In his place, they want to highlight St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and William Blackstone.

Read more about it on Yahoo News.

In one chair sits a rural retiree, his financial security shot in the slump, a humble Southerner who’s never thought much about politics. In another seat is a born Northerner, an inner-city native, a relative of a civil rights giant. And nearby, circling a table, are an economist, an artist, a onetime John McCain supporter and a long-haired guy who’s rich in Woodstock memories.

Meet these members of the Coffee Party Movement, an organically grown, freshly brewed push that’s marking its official kickoff Saturday. Across the country, even around the globe, they and other Americans in at least several hundred communities are expected to gather in coffeehouses to raise their mugs of java to something new.

They’re professionals, musicians and housewives. They’re frustrated liberal activists, disheartened conservatives and political newborns. They’re young and old, rich and poor, black, white and all shades of other.

Born on Facebook just six weeks ago, the group boasts more than 110,000 fans, as of Friday morning. The Coffee Party is billed by many as an answer to the Tea Party (more than 1,000 fewer fans), a year-old protest movement that’s steeped in fiscal conservatism and boiling-hot, anti-tax rhetoric.

This new group calls for civility, objects to obstructionism and demands that politicians be held accountable to the people who put them in office…

[continues at CNN]

Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama’s decision to push back further Moon missions.

Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama’s decision would have “catastrophic consequences” for US space exploration.

The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was “disappointing”.

Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa’s Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.

Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.

‘Moral leadership’

The astronauts spoke to the BBC at a private event at the Royal Society in London on Friday organised by the Foundation for Science and Technology.

They were joined there by the first man on the Moon, Neil Armstrong.

As the last astronaut to return to the Apollo 17 lunar module in 1972, Cernan was the last man to set foot on the Moon.

[Read more at BBC News]

From Alternet:

Our nation is already deeply in debt. How can we possibly afford to invest in our infrastructure, renewable energy, health care, our schools — and create the millions of jobs that our unemployed desperately need?

We are told that we’re already living well beyond our means — that entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security will bankrupt us. Forget the solar panels, the smaller classes and the new jobs — we’ve got to cut back on government programs at all levels.

Meanwhile, the super-rich are still having a ball. In his annual shareholder letter, mega-investor Warren Buffett wrote, “We’ve put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. When it’s raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.” And Forbes Magazine adds, “Many plutocrats did just that. Indeed, last year’s wealth wasteland has become a billionaire bonanza. Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year.”

Which brings us back to the federal budget. There are two sides to every ledger: the expenses…and the income. We need to start looking at the income side. With a fairer tax system, we could retrieve some of that money downpour that the elite has been siphoning away from us for decades.

[Read more at Alternet]

Dan Rather reporting from Vietnam in 1966

Dan Rather writes on the Huffington Post:

I must confess that until recently I had no idea what Twitter was. Even now, I’m not completely sure how it’s best used. When I want to post something, the younger, more tech-savvy people in my office help me out. But I do know this: if you searched Twitter for “Dan Rather” over the past few days, you probably could guess why I feel the need to write this column.

It started this past Sunday when I appeared on Chris Matthews’ syndicated talk show. I’ve known and respected Chris for many years and I enjoy doing his show. I take the train down from my home in New York to Washington D.C. and as I approach Union Station my thoughts often turn to the years I spent covering the Johnson and Nixon White Houses. It was a turbulent time for the country and a formative period for me as a reporter and a young father.

The Washington of that time was a far different place. In some ways it was better: less politically rancorous, more collegial. In many ways it, and the country it represented, was much worse. African Americans were still very much second-class citizens. Women held few positions of power. We smoked more, polluted our environment more, and accepted social mores that anyone who has seen Mad Men knows are embarrassingly outdated.

Read More of Dan Rather’s article in the Huffington Post

I asked Jesse why he’s digging up dirt where other public figures fear to tread, what we should do with the information he’s revealing, who he thinks is really behind the myriad conspiracies in his book — from JFK to 9/11 — and much more. Enjoy the video — we’ll post some extra clips where we talk off the record about everything from surfing to rock & roll … soon!

Very few Americans realize there exists a large network of far left philanthropists and foundations in America dedicated to destroying the American way of life, our Christian-based culture and our free enterprise system.  They seek to remove America from its constitutional foundations and move it toward a European-style socialism.  Much of this effort is coordinated by a little known group called the Tides Foundation and its related group, the Tides Center.

The Strategic Principles of the Tides Foundation

Over the course of its 33 year history, the Tides network has given hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-free enterprise groups, gun control groups, anti-private property groups, abortion rights groups, homosexual groups, groups engaged in voter fraud, anti-military groups, and organizations that seek to destroy America’s constitutional basis. All told, over 100 leftist organizations have received funding from one of the two Tides groups.

Not surprisingly, this network of anti-American groups played a key role in electing Barack Obama by using classic propaganda techniques in making false allegations about Bush (he lied regarding WMDs, he stole the election in Florida, he knew in advance about 9/11, etc, etc.) and created the impression that Bush and by extension, the GOP, was corrupt.  Obama, of course, was portrayed as the reformer who would save America from this corruption.

Millions of Americans fell for this mythology and so without being openly partisan, this vast network of far left groups, along with its media allies, was able to manipulate American public opinion during the last election cycle.  Meanwhile, anyone who tried to reveal Obama’s real agenda, his role in the corrupt Chicago political machine, his socialist political associations, or his soft spot for Middle Eastern terrorists was labeled a kook by this same network.

The amount of funding the Tides Foundation and Tides Center provides the hard left is unprecedented. Indeed, its financial disclosures show that the Tides Center has raised between $48 and $71 million each year since 1998 and the bulk of this revenue is contributed back to far left groups. The closely-aligned Tides Foundation has reported revenues of between $59 and $77 million every year since 2002.  The two tax exempt groups are supposed to be non-partisan, but they are certainly extremely political and they push the envelope regarding what non-profit groups are allowed to do politically.   All together, both Tides groups have contributed over $500 million to the organized left.

The list of hard-left causes is long and there is not enough space to review them all.  But here’s a brief review of a few of them:

Environmental Extremist groups

Members of the Ruckus Society

The Ruckus Society is a group of environmental anarchists dedicated to the violent overthrow of America…

[continues at the Western Center for Journalism]

Things have been rather hectic around Black Sun Gazette Central lately, so forgive my lack of regular communication. I’ve got a few articles brewing that I’m sure my loyal readership is sure to enjoy.

However, I wanted to take a moment to go back to the subject of the International Socialist Organization and their website, SocialistWorker.org.

One of the most common arguments by ISO members is that the tendency with which I am in solidarity “does nothing.” I’d like to take some time to seriously examine this claim, in a more reasoned and less emotional way than my prior screed on the ISO.

Full Article at Black Sun Gazette

Josh Gerstein over at Politico sent Threat Level his piece underscoring once again President Barack Obama is not the civil-liberties knight in shining armor many were expecting.Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

When it comes to civil liberties, the Obama administration has come under fire for often mirroring his predecessor’s practices surrounding state secrets, the Patriot Act and domestic spying. There’s also Gitmo, Jay Bybee and John Yoo.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

[Read more at Wired's Threat Level]

So how much pot do Californians smoke?

According to a recent state board of equalization report prepared for the legislature, it’s 16 million ounces a year. That’s a little less than one-half an ounce for each resident in California, in case you’re counting every man, woman and child.

The analysis was prepared for legislation by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), that seeks to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana for use by California adults 21 and over.

Some other findings:

• California is America’s top pot producing state, with an annual yield of 8.6 million pounds of weed valued at $13.8 billion. That’s more than one-third of the cultivation across the U.S.

[Read more at the Sacramento Bee]

The Republican National Committee plans to raise money this election cycle through an aggressive campaign capitalizing on “fear” of President Barack Obama and a promise to “save the country from trending toward socialism.”

The strategy was detailed in a confidential party fundraising presentation, obtained by POLITICO, which also outlines how “ego-driven” wealthy donors can be tapped with offers of access and “tchochkes.”

The presentation was delivered by RNC Finance Director Rob Bickhart to top donors and fundraisers at a party retreat in Boca Grande, Florida on February 18, a source at the gathering said.

The media are trying to find political affiliations for the Pentagon shooter, but they’re missing the big picture.

Another day, another violent anti-government kamikaze act. As the feds recover from Joseph Stack flying his airplane into an IRS building in Austin on Feb. 18 — leaving one dead and 13 injured — the media and government have another dead man to worry about.

Thursday night, after having driven cross-country from California to Washington, John Patrick Bedell walked up to a screening area at the Pentagon and starting firing his two semiautomatic weapons. In less than a minute, he’d wounded two police offers and received gunshot injuries that would later kill him.

Like Stack, Bedell was well-educated and left behind comprehensive material that outlined his longtime anger at the U.S. government. But his grievances are different from Stack’s.

While the deeply tortured manifesto Stack wrote detailed his frustrations with the tax system, it also centered around his concerns that the current economic recession was caused by an economic elite that gets away with financial crimes — even financial murder — every day. “Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes,” he wrote.

[Read more at Alternet]