Shepherd Smith Tells The Truth

For me, it's kind of a big deal, because I honestly don't expect Fox News talkers to be in touch with reality. Nice to see, but what he says is scary.



In the last year, we've seen a guy shoot up a church because he wanted to kill liberals. We've seen a guy kill three cops because he thought Obama was going to take away his guns.
We've seen a guy assasinate a ob/gyn physician in his church.
We've seen a guy who hated Jews and Blacks and questioned Obama's birth certificate go on a rampage and kill a security guard at the Holocaust museum.

You can say these were all lunatics and loners if you want. But don't tell me these are isolated incidents. This is a trend. This is exactly what the DHS memo on right-wing violence predicted.

"...conservative commentators tried mightily to paint the memo as an underhanded attempt by the Obama administration to smear its honorable critics by equating "right-wing" with "terrorism." It made no difference to these loudmouths that the number of hate groups around the country has increased by more than 50 percent since 2000, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. It didn't matter that the memo was backed up by solid intelligence and analysis. For these infotainers, the point isn't to illuminate a subject with light but to blast it with heat."
-Eugene Robinson

(I highly recommend you read that article, by the way.)

Those "infotainers" have always bothered me, and never more so than now, when they daily rail against Obama, calling him a socialist, communist, fascist, saying he is destroying the country. A couple weeks ago I saw a clip of O'Reilly and Beck talking about how they "believed" Obama supported the Black Panther ideology. "I can't prove it, I don't have evidence, but I believe that," O'Reilly said. What a statement. And it sums up too many on the right. They want to believe the worst about Obama, so they do. No evidence required. If they say it, it's so.

If you think that violent movies and video games influence people to become more violent, what effect do you think this daily barrage of hate has? Glen Beck is the most delusional, paranoid person I have ever seen on television, and he's a huge hit with the Fox viewers. The same viewers Shep Smith was talking about.

In the end, I have only a question, not a solution.

Where is this all going to end up?

Facebook: blog killer??

Totally neglecting the blog lately. I blame facebook.

Not that there's not a lot to talk about. Here in MN, Pawlenty announces he's running for president, er, I mean, not running for another term as governor. I had a whole lot to say about that but it's a little late now.

There's a whopping health care debate going on right now, we're likely to see the biggest reform in the nation's health care system since Medicare. Lots to say about that too, hopefully I'll get to it before long.

But the thing that I've been thinking most about is the uptick in violence by far-right-wingers in this country. I'll have more on that soon, I hope.