Posted 9:21 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Christopher Borick on the Banana Republicans in Pennsylvania

Posted 8:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

At Least We Own Sean Hannity's Wife's Name
Back in 2005, I started a Google bomb of Sean Hannity's name. It worked for at least a couple years. The top ten sites for a Google search of "Sean Hannity" were overwhelmingly negative (and informative). In the top ten was a link to my post regarding my hilarious on-air conversation with Hannity about Republican sexual hypocrisy.

Alas, it didn't last. With the exception, of Media Matters' page on Hannity, none of the original links are there for the top ten Google searches.

However, there's good news: we own Hannity's wife's name. If you google "Jill Rhodes Hannity," "Jill Hannity," or "Sean Hannity's wife," in the top ten are links to my post (with her picture) as well a link to the site I created.

Posted 10:07 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
John L. Micek on the groups behind the attempted gaming of Pennsylvania's electoral votes.

Posted 8:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Get Back to Work!
I was going through my Statcounter stats and found that someone from the Bank of America in New York City go to this site by doing a Google search of "gore at monticello" (The person obviously had heard about the manufactured controversy started by wing-nuts (most notably) that Al Gore wasn't able to identify Ben Franklin and George Washington during a tour of Monticello. I debunked the myth here.

Considering all of B of A's woes, doesn't this person have more important things to do?

Posted 8:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Robert Parry, "The Dark Legacy of Reaganomics"Also, read my page on the dark legacy of Reagan's racial policies.

UPDATE: Also, read Harold Meyerson on the GOP's plan to rig the electoral college.

Posted 2:24 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
New post on the Sun Myung Moon blog

Posted 10:22 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Eric Alterman on the problem of media stupidity

Posted 10:44 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
David Corn of the 2012 GOP presidential candidates.

Posted 9:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Al Franken takes on Hans von Spakovsky.

Posted 7:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Bill O’Reilly’s Cop Scandal: The Inevitable Taiwanese Animation

Posted 3:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack Chick Tract!
"The Walking Dead?"

Posted 9:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Rolling Stone's Ari Berman, "The GOP's War on Voting"

UPDATE: Listen to Berman on Pacifica Radio.

Posted 6:34 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Gawker: "How Bill O’Reilly Tried to Get His Wife’s Boyfriend Investigated By the Cops." This sounds like a job for Fox security.

Posted 6:24 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Yesterday when Dick Cheney's memoirs came out, I went to the bookstore and checked it out. I was one of the first people to write and Amazon.com review of the book. Check it out; it's in the two star-rated reviews. If you have an Amazon account, you might want to give it some postive feedback because the wingers have not been kind to it (but a lot of non-wingers have supported it).

Posted 8:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Paul Krugman on the anti-science party.

Posted 10:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon blog
Click here

Posted 9:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Glenn Greenwald on Dick Cheney: "The fruits of elite immunity"

Also, Media Matters on Sean Hannity.

Posted 10:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Listen for Yourself!
A few days ago, I wrote about a completely loony and paranoid robocall I recieved from Wayne LaPierre and the National Rife Association. Media Matters for America has a tape of a telemarketer for the NRA reading from a script about the same issue. Cliff Schecter has more.

Posted 9:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon blog
Click here

Posted 11:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Media Matters for America has an exclusive on James Desborough, the former U.S. editor of News of the World who was arrested Thursday in London.

Posted 2:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

More Bad News for Rupert Murdoch and News Corp
Let's hope it's true

UPDATE: more here

Posted 8:44 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Listen
Jim Hightower on Rick Perry

Posted 8:04 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Charlie Reina "A New Fox? Don't Unlock the Henhouse."

In case you don't remember, Reina was the former Fox News producer who spilled the beans about how Fox News works in 2003 because of his disgust over comments that Chris Wallace made that said that Fox was "serious, thoughtful and even-handed."

Posted 8:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Under-the-Radar Fearmongering
I'm at a relative's house in a purple state and I received a robocall from Wayne LaPierre of the NRA warning me that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were "teaming up" with Cuba and Iran to pass an international treaty that would take away the guns of Americans. It turns out that LaPierre was referring to the Arms Trade Treaty which has nothing to do with Americans' right to bear arms.

These kinds of robocalls, along with spam emails, and talk radio are the reasons that half the GOP is batshit crazy (about half of Republicans surveyed believe that Obama was foreign-born and that ACORN stole the 2008 election for him).

Posted 8:45 AM by Scoobie Davis

Weird Keyword Searches that People Used to Get to This Site
Occasionally, I do a post based on the odd keyword searches that people use to get to this site (the last post I did for this is here). Here is the latest group of keyword searches:

rush limbaugh goes into hannity's studio flipper pregnant
did ricart ford get a curling iron stuck in his butt {click here for an explanation]
Larry Winters crook [Winters is an Amway kingpin]
is Marianne ginther alive
how to join a powerful cult
george bush groom of the stool still used
callista bisek photo
kellyanne conway ,rick perry
sun myung moon net worth
did fred ricart's wife stick a iron in his butt
Callista Bisek are you kidding me
jerry falwell racist
hannity's secret perversions
jeffrey kuhner birth control
ann coulter see through nipples
sun myung moon coronation pics
sean hannity is dishonest

Posted 9:19 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Posts on the Anti-Amway Blog
Click here

Posted 10:54 AM by Scoobie Davis

I am praying to Jehovah, Allah, Xenu, and Zeus that this is true
Click here

Posted 10:09 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Title Says it All
Alex Pareene, "If Rick Perry is seriously a presidential front-runner there's something wrong with all of us"

Posted 9:32 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read and View
Media Matters for America on Fox News' history of mainstreaming of hate

Posted 10:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Joan Walsh, "Destroying Democratic presidents"

Posted 8:10 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Michael Lind on the neo-Confederate nature of the tea party meovment.

Posted 8:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Brad Friedman on disenfranchisement apologist Matthew Vadum:

Matthew Vadum will lie about anything he needs to in order to collect his wingnut welfare paychecks apparently. American values such as democracy be damned. It's partisan politics (and paychecks) at all costs.

Vadum has, of late, taken over from the disgraced Bush/Cheney general counsel turned fake "voting rights advocate" Thor Hearne of the fake "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), and the disgraced liar John Fund of the Wall Street Journal as the moment's GOP master of media misinformation meant to confuse the public about polling place Photo ID restriction laws passed by the GOP in statehouses around the country over the past few months in order to suppress the legal Democratic-leaning vote in advance of 2012.

Posted 7:26 AM by Scoobie Davis

Zev Chafets up to his Old Tricks
Eric Boehlert of Media Matters on Chafets' whitewashing of James O'Keefe's underhanded tactics. No big surprise: Chafets previously wrote a puff piece on El Rushbo that allowed him to pen a hagiography of Limbaugh. Read my Amazon.com review of his godawful book on Limbaugh (click here and scroll down).

UPDATE: Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic has more.

Posted 9:39 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Jon Stewart on Fox News victims.

Posted 9:19 AM by Scoobie Davis

Rick Perry's Star is Rising (According to Intrade)
Succession advocate Rick Perry is becoming popular with Intrade bettors. Here's a chart from the last 120 days based on Intrade bettors wagering that Perry will be the 2012 GOP presidential nominee:

Posted 11:37 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Katrina vanden Heuvel, "The GOP’s state-by-state crusade to disenfranchise voters"

Posted 10:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Reads
Tom Tomorrow on the Phone Hacking Scandal and Media Matters on how the right is responding to the Norway terrorist--here, here, and here.

Posted 1:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Stephen Colbert on alleged voter fraud.

Posted 9:16 AM by Scoobie Davis

Exclusive: Sean Hannity Speaks about Rupert Murdoch's News International Phone Hacking Scandal
Until yesterday, Hannity has been silent about the scandal involing his boss and parent corporation. I happened to be listening to Hannity's radio show yesterday and a caller broached the subject. Hannity's response: "This is all a political witch hunt from my perspective."

Posted 10:05 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Jon Stewart on "piling on."

Posted 11:08 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
This could be huge: "Former Fox News Executive: Americans' Phones Were Hacked."

Posted 10:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Murdoch has nothing to say to Fox News anchor. On that subject, now that Murdoch is in deep trouble, someone should throw him an anchor.

Posted 8:35 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Eric Boehlert on the Murdoch/News Corp scandal and the way the right-wing media has ignored.

Posted 10:55 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Sacrifices I Make for this Blog
I read Laura Ingraham's new book, Of Thee I Zing: America's Cultural Decline from Muffin Tops to Body Shots. Amazon.com review is here. If you have an Amazon account, give my review a thumbs up because the wing-nuts are savaging it.

Posted 9:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Carl Bernstein, "Murdoch’s Watergate?"

But now [Murdoch’s media] empire is shaking, and there’s no telling when it will stop. My conversations with British journalists and politicians—all of them insistent on speaking anonymously to protect themselves from retribution by the still-enormously powerful mogul—make evident that the shuttering of News of the World, and the official inquiries announced by the British government, are the beginning, not the end, of the seismic event.

It couldn't happen to a more deserving person.

Posted 1:32 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Why does this not surprise me?

Posted 7:42 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Post on the Sun Myung Moon Blog
Click here

Posted 8:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Michael Lind, "The Three Fundamentalisms of the American Right."

Posted 10:06 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Roger Ailes’ Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News

Posted 8:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

New Jack Chick Tract
"Mean Momma"

Posted 9:30 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Gene Lyons on the Dittoheads.

Posted 10:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
David Sirota, "Why people become chickenhawks"

Posted 11:13 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Reads
Media Matters for America has two good posts on the media and succession/treason and the clip that Fox News clipped.

Posted 12:16 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
E.J. Dionne on rigging the 2012 elections.

I'm working on a long post.

Posted 9:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Rachel Maddow and Cenk Uygur

Here is the blog post Cenk mentions on the Seven Step Plan for Media Domination and Opponent Destruction

Posted 10:04 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Listen
Rush Limbaugh gets zinged on the air again! Caller: "So you really are off the Oxycontin?"

Posted 5:29 AM by Scoobie Davis

My New Site
I noticed that there are a lot of sites that mention Ronald Reagan's views and actions on race but not one comprehensive site. I spent a little time creating one. It's called "Ronald Reagan: Racism and Racial Politics"

Posted 9:03 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Last night's Rachel Maddow's show segments: "The David Vitter Problem"

Posted 8:49 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Listen! Rush Confronted about Sexual tourism!
Listen to this guy who got on Rush Limbaugh's radio show and confronted El Rushbo about his sexual tourism with his bottle of Viagra in the Dominican Republic. It's priceless! Also, read the transcripts of me on Limbaugh's show here and here.

UPDATE: Turns out the caller was Mike Stark.

Posted 8:26 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Harold Meyerson, "When Your Base is Nuts":

How did the Republican Party become at once so insular and unmoored that winning its presidential nod requires an extremism that would give Barry Goldwater the creeps? Many are responsible for the Republicans' descent into madness, but pride of place surely goes to Fox News chair Roger Ailes, the onetime Nixon aide who created a counterfactual network that in turn helped create a counterfactual Republican Party. Ailes, we now learn from a recent article in New York Magazine, despairs over the current crop of Republican candidates, but he has no one more to blame than himself for driving more electable Republicans from the race. The man who gave Palin (as well as Huckabee, Santorum, and Gingrich) a regular gig at Fox, according to one Republican close to Ailes who's quoted in the article, now thinks "Palin is an idiot. He thinks she's stupid."

But take a bow, Roger; that's the Republican field you've built.

Posted 12:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

My Review Of Ann Coulter's New Book Demonic
The short review: "I could shit a better book."

The long review is posted on Amazon.com--I gave it two stars. Why two stars? Read the review. Also, since I took the time to read the book, please give the review some positive feedback.

Posted 9:56 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Justin Elliott on Lanny Davis. I wrote about Davis' embarrassing foray into Amway here.

Posted 8:57 AM by Scoobie Davis

Update
I noticed that I'm getting hits for the serach term "Paul Ryan Miami University." It seems that Google puts my recent post on Ryan and MU high on a Google search for the terms (right now the post is number five for a Google serach). I revised and added to the post. Enjoy.

Posted 10:19 AM by Scoobie Davis

Zell Miller to Become Newt Gingrich's Campaign Co-chairman
No comment, just a link to something I wrote about Miller after the 2008 election.

Posted 11:15 AM by Scoobie Davis

Woo Hoo! New Jack T. Chick Tracts: "That's Baphomet?" and "Still No Revival?"
"That's Baphomet?" is an update of the anti-Freemason tract "The Curse of Baphomet."

"Still No Revival?" is an updated variation of the classic "Why No Revival?" Check out the parody of Seth McFarlane's "Family guy" on page 4--featuring Peter Griffin and Stewie:


UPDATE: Jack Chick announces that Chick Publications has been in business for 50 years!

Posted 8:52 AM by Scoobie Davis

Even the Freepers are Mocking Corsi, Farah, and WorldNetDaily!

Right after Tuesday's release of Jerome Corsi's birther book Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President, Mark Warren at Esquire magazine wrote a funny satire that claimed that the head of WorldNetDaily, Joseph Farah was pulling all the books from stores and offering refunds to people who bought the book. Now Farah is threatening to sue Esquire. When someone posted about the controversy on the wing-nut site The Free Republic, one of the Freepers responded, "Farah complaining about someone making up stories...without a hint of irony."

Posted 7:12 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
This Newt Gingrich video. Hilarious. Also, read the transcript of my on-the-air conversation with Sean Hannity about Gingrich's wives.

Posted 9:04 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
My review for the just-released birther book, Jerome Corsi's Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President. It's under the one-star reviews. I had the review up for about 30 seconds and someone gave my review a thumbs-down so if you like the review, log in and give it a thumbs-up.

One other thing, the book is published by WorldNetDaily Books (who else?).

Posted 11:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Danny Schechter, "How Fox News Outfoxes Americans"

Posted 11:31 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
Jon Stewart on Sean Hannity, the "Common" controversy, and Ted Nugent's violent rhetoric.

Posted 12:22 PM by Scoobie Davis

Latest OBL Death Conspiracy Theory
I don't listen to Michael Savage much; this is obviously good for my mental health (I did read his book Savage Nation and reviewed it here; here's more on Savage). Anyhow, the other day Savage hypothesized that the reason that President Obama approved the raid on Osama bin Laden's complex was that he felt snubbed by British royals for not inviting him to the Prince William/Kate Middleton wedding so he approved the raid to take the wedding out of the headlines.

Posted 2:15 PM by Scoobie Davis

Ain't The Internet Great
From my Statcounter stats of keyword searches: because of this recent post, this site is number three for a Google search of "Ayn Rand skeezer"

Posted 11:01 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must View
From Democratic Underground:

Posted 9:40 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Steve Kornacki on the real nature of birtherism.

Posted 10:47 AM by Scoobie Davis

Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand, and the Miami University Theodicy
It didn’t surprise me when I recently found out that Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), whose draconian budget proposals are the latest rage in GOP circles, is a devotee of free market cult leader Ayn Rand. I don't know much about Ryan, but I can see how Ryan’s academic environment encouraged his worldview; Ryan and I attended the same undergraduate institution: Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Miami University (AKA Miami of Ohio) was a blast (I wrote about my Miami U. experiences here) but it was extremely sheltered and homogenous. I could see how it could encourage a sterile, venal, and supercilious ideology like Rand’s Objectivism. Charles Taylor, writing in Salon about Ann Coulter and other “Conservative Fembots,” describes his own undergraduate experience that is reminiscent of Miami University’s prevailing ideology and theodicy:

I don't know the social background of Coulter, [Laura] Ingraham, [Kellyanne] Conway or [Lisa] Pinto, but I've encountered their type before. They are the essence of the white, privileged kids at the small New England college I attended during the conservative heyday of the early Reagan years. What characterized those kids and what characterizes the [Conservative Fembots] is that they seem unaware that not everyone shares their privileged existence, or seem to believe that anyone who doesn't has only themselves to blame. It's a small world, after all, and the CFs are absolutely secure about their place in it and the rightness of their views.

When Rand wrote, "No one helped me nor did I think at any time that it was anyone's duty to help me," it reminded me of some snotty upper-class Miami University students I knew who laughably attributed their lot in life to their supposed efforts. A professor of mine at Miami noted that such people were born with so many advantages that they would have to work overtime to fail. (Rand was also full of herself; in reality, she was a sponge who lived off her Chicago relatives and, once she hit the big time, reneged on her promise to repay them—she’s the last person to call anyone a moocher.)

In essence, Rand’s ideology is a feel-good elixir for self-aggrandizing people who have a huge sense of privilege. Assimilating its message is a way for people who were born on third base to convince themselves they hit a triple. Miami University has been fertile ground for this kind of non-thinking.

Addendum: I’ve never liked anyone who liked Rand’s sterile and ham-handed novels; they all seemed to be joyless and miserable people. I saw the cinematic adaptation of Rand’s The Fountainhead and it was plodding and hilariously pretentious. For more on how cults create bad cinema, read K. Gordon Neufeld's article about the films Battlefield Earth and Inchon. . . Despite an impressive limited-release opening weekend, the box office for Atlas Shrugged: Part I has since tanked. . .I previously pointed out in the case of Newt Gingrich that it was bad enough that he was using his GOP bigwig status to carry on with young women, but it was much worse that Gingrich let himself go. Well, ditto for Rand who apparently was a notorious skeezer. Here’s what Jonathan Chait wrote about Rand:

Sex and romance loomed unusually large in Rand's worldview. Objectivism taught that intellectual parity is the sole legitimate basis for romantic or sexual attraction. Coincidentally enough, this doctrine cleared the way for Rand--a woman possessed of looks that could be charitably described as unusual, along with abysmal personal hygiene and grooming habits--to seduce young men in her orbit. Rand not only persuaded Branden, who was twenty-five years her junior, to undertake a long-term sexual relationship with her, she also persuaded both her husband and Branden's wife to consent to this arrangement. (They had no rational basis on which to object, she argued.) But she prudently instructed them to keep the affair secret from the other members of the Objectivist inner circle.

UPDATE: Miami U. named one of the top preppy colleges in the U.S.

Posted 12:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Will Joseph Farah Welsh on his Bet?
Now that President Obama's released his long-form birth cerificate, WorldNetDaily's Joseph Farah owes Kapi‘olani Medical Center 15 grand. This is based on Farah's statement that WorldNetDaily "will send a check in the amount of $15,000 to whatever birth hospital is listed on his long-form birth certificate." Will Farah honor his promise? I'm guessing not; as I pointed out, Farah has a convenient memory about claims he has made in the past.

UPDATE: Farah's WorldNetDaily has an article, "White House releases Obama 'birth certificate'" These people remind me of Leon Festinger's book When Prophesy Fails.

Posted 11:41 AM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Sean Hannity Cropping quotes in order to leave out crucial information? Who would have guessed. Click here and here for Jon Stewart hilariously addressing two previous examples of Hannity's cropping.

4/26 UPDATE: Anderson Cooper responds to Hannity.

Posted 10:23 AM by Scoobie Davis

The Political Economy of the Birthers or Why is the Right Paranoid?
Drudge is promoting Jerome Corsi's forthcoming book Where's the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President with a lot of usual Drudge hype: "It's utterly devastating," reveals a source close to the publisher. "Obama may learn things he didn't even know about himself!" The book is published by WND Books, the publishing house for Joseph Farah's WorldNetDaily. Farah is a fundamentalist publisher and former ghostwriter for Rush Limbaugh who was a major player in the Clinton Body Count paranoia (though he tried to avoid the issue when I confront him in a Washington Post online forum).

Of course, all this Birther hype is nonsense and Richard Hofstadter's theories explain why people believe this kind of absurd stuff. However, Hofstadter's theories don't explain why about half the GOP base believes batshit stuff like this as well as easily discredited things such as the belief that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama or that Obama is a Muslim.

I think this can be explained in cultural and economic terms. Both Democrats and Republicans appeal to people whose economic interests do not correspond with each party's legislative agenda--I'm speaking of rich people who vote Democratic and poor and working class people who vote Republican. Democrats appeal to rich peoples' better angels and the rich people who vote Democratic realize that it is ultimately in their overall best interest to have a strong middle class in this country.

On the other hand, Republicans appeal to the reptilian brains of poor, uneducated, and working class people. Also, in the past thirty years, the GOP has sought religious fundamentalists (as I pointed out, it was no big surprise that many of the people responsible for the Vince Foster conspiracy theories in the 1990's were involved in the "Satanic Panic" of the 1980's). Most Republican operatives know that the Birther issue is bullshit, the way that the Clinton Body Count was bullshit; however, these conspiracy theories keep the GOP base psyched up during low-turnout midterm elections because these people are convinced that not only are Democratic presidents the wrong man for the office, but they are illegitimate.

However, there is one big difference between the anti-Clinton conspiracy theories of the 1990's and the anti-Obama paranoia. In the 1990's, the GOP had a good situation: they were able to narrowcast their paranoid message through the Rush Limbaugh show and Jerry Falwell's Old Time Gospel Hour. It also helped that the Clinton administration's response to right-wing ratfucking was inept and feckless (e.g., here and here). However, the case is different now. With the advent of groups like Media Matters for America, the hard right can't narrowcast their paranoid message anymore. With issues such as Birtherism, the GOP is paying a price with independents who rightfully view the GOP base as increasingly nutty.

Addendum: I've corresponded with Corsi; the one thing I got from our correspondence is that Corsi loves to dish it out but he can't take it.

UPDATE: The fair and balanced Foxs News is promoting Corsi's book.