[Updated several times at bottom of article...]

Rightwing con man, ACORN conspiracy monger, Drudge protégé, and, naturally, Fox "News" perennial, Andrew Breitbart tweeted in favor of the murder of a climate scientist yesterday...

...as part of a Twittered string of his usual lies about global warming, ACORN, and whatever other stuff he feels like making up, as he and his desperately shameless ilk of pretend "conservatives" are wont to do.

But Hansen's murder wasn't the only one Breitbart subsequently called for to his flock of gullibles...

These are said to be among the photos of prisoner abuse/torture whose release Obama has determined to block. Some of them were obtained, and posted several years ago, by The Sydney Morning Herald (who have more here).

Remember, these prisoners were captured in the war on Iraq, so even the disingenuous claims of Geneva Conventions not applying cannot be used here.

As Drudge and Rush have (predictably) taken to ridiculing these latest noticed photos of abuse/torture of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. captors, I thought it worth running some of them here, so you could similarly see how "ridiculous" it is to be concerned about this sort of treatment of prisoners on our watch. I'm certain that no U.S. military family would ever object, in the slightest way, were their son or daughter treated this way after being captured by an enemy country.

(We're posting the worst of them below the fold, so those who don't wish to look, don't have to)...

As happened on the day of the New Hampshire primary on January 8th, disinformation on the net about problems at the polling place were rampant. But wrong. The disinfo, as The BRAD BLOG was able to debunk that day, seems to have originally emanated from the DRUDGE REPORT.

It looks like Mr. Drudge is busy getting the story wrong again today, reporting that "The board of elections failed to deliver voting equipment to polling places ALL OVER LOS ANGELES"...

After running the above story for a number of hours at his site --- and sending corporate mainstream media folks and Internet blogsites alike into a tizzy, as well as helping to ring our phones off the hook --- DRUDGE has finally updated the item with the real story, and it's far less scary...

-- Brad Friedman, The BRAD BLOG

Our Spidey-sense started tingling before going to bed last night and hearing reports, on MSNBC, that there were 17 paper ballots cast in Dixville Notch, NH, in its midnight, first-in-the-country voting. The report said that there were only 16 registered voters in the tiny voting precinct, yet 17 votes had been cast --- suggesting that somehow, paper ballot "voter fraud" skullduggery was afoot.

Following on that, reports throughout the day appeared that NH precincts were out of paper ballots, and voters were unable to vote.

Trouble is, both reports are either completely untrue, or wholly misleading, or both, as The BRAD BLOG was able to confirm with two simple phone calls.

Each of those reports, however, would seem to go a long way towards giving the impression that paper ballots are a bad idea, and that "voter fraud" is easy to commit when using them. Given that one of those reports seems to have begun on The DRUDGE REPORT earlier today, we're not particularly surprised that the MSM kept repeating the easily-debunked stories running all day.

That, even while there are reasons to be concerned about how the paper ballots used in the New Hampshire Primary will actually be counted by the hackable Diebold optical-scan systems used in the state, as controlled and programmed by an outrageously bad private contractor there...

No doubt you've heard or read the story by now. Drudge ran it, and so Fox (and all of the Rightwing sycophants that suck off their teets) dutifully repeated Drudge's twisted and wholly misleading interpretation.

Just prior to last night's debate, Drudge ran this screamer headline which is still at the top of his site: "ABCNEWS POLITICAL DIRECTOR MEMO SPARKS CONTROVERSY: BOTH SIDES NOT 'EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE' ..."

The desperate and gullible on the Right all dutifully repeated it out in the blogosphere and on Fox News. But of course, if anybody actually reads the memo in question (linked above), they'd see not just the absurd claim Drudge is making, but also the validity of the memo they are choosing to disparage as some form of "proof" that ABC News is biased.

The passage in the memo that Drudge characterizes as "BOTH SIDES NOT 'EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE'":

...So in other words, the words "we have a responsibility to hold both sides accountable" means "BOTH SIDES NOT 'EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE'" in Wingnut World 2004.

Drudge's purposeful mischaracterization aside, what ABC News Political Director Mark Halperin seems to be writing about, if this memo is real, is something I've been pondering and hoped to touch on for some time here.

The fact is, the Right has got the supposedly "Liberal" Media so frightened and in their pocket, that they've lost all understanding of what "fair and balance" actually means!

An example; Let's say one candidate in a debate (Bush or Cheney for example) gives incorrect information 15 times in one of the debates. And in that same debate, the other candidate (Kerry or Edwards for example) give incorrect information 2 times.

What does the lamestream media report in their post-debate "Fact Check" segments? "Both candidates distorted some facts in last night's debate". And then they go about showing two examples of Bush/Cheney doing it and two examples of Kerry/Edwards doing it. Never mind that Bush/Cheney was wrong some 15 times versus Kerry/Edwards' 2 times. The wingnuts would cry "Media Bias!!!" if the media didn't equalize the rather unequal situation by showing 2 errors each.

That's precisely what's been happening since the debates began if not well before. After the first Presidential debate, for instance, Fox reported on some of Bush's questionable claims (alright, lies) about the situation in Iraq. He repeated demonstrably fallacious information on many many occassions. Fox reported one or two of those, and then reported the one or two times that Kerry misspoke (when he identified the KGB headquarters in "Treblinka Square" instead Lubyanka Square, or referred to the $200 Billion appropriated for the War by Congress as inaccurate because only $120 Billion of that has so far been spent.)

Those "errors" were reported as if they were equal, with both candidates being incorrect at some points in the debate. That sort of reporting paints an egregiously inaccurate assessment of the event.

Halperin's memo was right on the money as far as I'm concerned. Two inequal candidates do not deserve to be covered "equally". But the media has become so frightened of it's own shadow, that they are serving as equalizers for Bush/Cheney when Bush/Cheney deserves nothing of the kind from any sober and unbiased assessment of the facts and the way these campaigns are being run.

Sadly however, the media has boxed themselves in by running scared for years now. To the point where they won't likely even be able to rebuff Drudge's gross misinterpretation of Halperin's memo ("BOTH SIDES NOT 'EQUALLY ACCOUNTABLE'"??) effectively. I suppose that's where those of us with any sense of fairness and honesty and reason have to step in. Unfortunately, there's not all that many of us left with a voice that can be heard over the brilliantly orchestrated din of lies from the Right.

UPDATE: To give you an idea of the breathless coverage the wingnuts are giving to this non-story (apparently they only bothered to read the headline, not the actual memo). Look no further than this from the rightwing blog Power Line...

Sigh...If Drudge prints it...they will come.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall's take on this nonsense.

So what's really wrong with America? Take a step into the insular world that is the Conservative Echo Chamber of Talk Radio, Cable News and the Internet and the answer is easy to find?but only if you're actually looking for it.

It is to the shame of America, that most of the millions of folks who listen to Rush and Sean and all the rest of the Talk Radio cabal and who tune in religiously (pun intended) to the FOX News Channel, are NOT looking for what is really wrong with America. They are looking for validation that what they wish to believe is the only right thing for America.

They are looking to affirm their prejudices and cling to their long held intolerance by surrounding themselves in a world of others like them. A world which shuts out all opposing view points, but one which most insidiously of all, creates the fiction that they are actually ?fair and balanced?.

The lengths to which they will go to convince themselves that they have examined all reasonable points of view and have come to the only correct one is astounding. And yet, unless you are actually interested in taking a real look at the many sides of the various issues of societal debate today, you will quickly find the affirmation you are seeking to feel that you are right and everyone else is not only wrong, but ?crazy?, ?whacko? and dead set on the ?destruction of America and all it stands for?.

This is what passes for ?debate? in the Media today.

For example, ?the Left is against keeping our country safe from terrorism? (presumably then, they are actually hoping that Americans will be slaughtered by the thousands), ?they want to destroy the institution of marriage? (presumably then the left is made of entirely Homosexuals who despise Heterosexuality?), and are otherwise ?against the Rule of Law? (presumably then, they want to create an Anarchist state in America.)

For anyone without the desperate need to validate their own hatred and/or shore up their own insupportably weak political positions by finding someone or something to demonize (Saddam, the French, the Gay Community, Trial Lawyers), the statements above are obviously absurd.

But to the desperate Right Wing, clinging to the fading fate of Institutional Bias and Racism, it's not only important to demonize from the get-go, it's important to take the fight to the Left by creating their own set of false assumptions and arguments which are then easily defeated by common sense.

In other words, the argument is framed that ?the Media is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the Liberal Left?. This argument immediately discounts the FACT that more folks listen and watch Rush, Sean, Drudge, Fox and the rest of the clan combined each day than the sum total of those who glance at the ?Liberal? media combined in a full week. (An argument that cannot be debated even if you are foolish enough to buy the straw man assumption in the first place that the rest of the media are ?Liberal? and that the Right Wing Media is just fair and balanced ?opposition view?).

But absurd assumptions are beside the point when you're looking for people to agree with you and join your cause.

Absurd assumptions are where the Conservative Echo chamber starts the day, after receiving Marching Orders about what matters on the Drudge Report, and then they play the rest of it out by arguing one side of a debate that doesn't even exist.

This morning Sean Hannity is at the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, CA, on his ?Hannitization of America? tour plugging his latest manifesto ?Deliver Us from Evil : Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism?. He's playing to a pack of live foaming-at-the-mouth Right Wingers who break into a frenzied standing ovation after Sean's every sentence. It doesn't matter what he says, they're in favor it!

?Andy Rooney has employed hate speech because he described Pat Robertson as a ?whacko' after Robertson reported that God spoke to him to inform him that Bush would be re-elected in a ?blowout'?. {STANDING OVATION}.

?The Liberal Left wants to destroy the ?Institution of Marriage' in this country!? {STANDING OVATION}

?Democrats don't believe that Business should be able to profit from their hard work in this country!? {STANDING OVATION}

You know the story. It goes on and on. Take a look at Chaplin's classic The Great Dictator (1940) to see how easy it is to rally a crowd seeking a leader who will tell them what they want to believe. Simply create a false premise, argue the one side of it that represents any form of reason, and then add someone like the hapless Alan Colmes to the mix for a few minutes to give the impression that the issue has been debated fairly. Never mind the fact that the real debate has never been put on the table in the first place.

And if all else fails, despite all attempts to the contrary, should the real debate actually show it's face ? as in the issue of the Constitutionality of Gay Marriage ? we can always try and change said Constitution to reflect what we wish to be true. No matter how much it may violate the heretofore Death Worthy Cause of defending that same Constitution.

That's their game, and ? as far as they know ? they are winning. If the debate can be framed as Good versus Evil, who could possibly defend Evil? Who would want to? So as far as they are concerned, they are winning simply because there is nobody in their room, on their air, or on their bookshelves to tell them otherwise.

So the question remains: Are they winning?

They certainly have a lock on the Free Mass Media, dominating Talk Radio, Cable News and the Internet. They will forgo and/or twist their own values without blinking an eye at a moments notice if it keeps one of their own ?in power? (never mind the stuff they used to care about, like Fiscal Responsibility, States Rights, Right to Privacy and Conservative Interpretations of the Constitution that were once held so dear). They will buy enough books to re-affirm what they already believe in order to get the Super Stars of their Fallacious Strawman Debates (Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Ingraham etc.) to the top of the Best Seller Lists.

Winning a non-debate is easy. Who is there to defend the other side of the non-issue? They are counting on this. Appearance is everything.

So will they succeed in foisting their insular little world on the rest of the majority of Americans who actually do believe in Peace, Tolerance, Freedom, Property, Liberty and the Love of Constitution?

I don't know. I suppose we'll find out on November 2nd. They pulled it off once briefly (in 2000) and I suppose the question is whether America will fall for the same trick again.

If the Media is the Message, then the Message, no matter how falsely created and debated, wins the day. The Media is everything and the Right Wing owns it. No matter what you may hear when you tune into FOX NEWS or Rush.

If the people are smarter than to fall for that old trick ? and I have no real reason to believe that they are, even though they were smart enough to fend off the absurd attempted coup during the Clinton Era ? perhaps America can get back on course to become Ronald Reagan's ?Shining city on the hill? again. Though that won't happen if Sean Hannity and his insular, rabid, and determined band of Choir Preachers have anything to say about it.