One of the silliest aspects of the Tea-Bagging-Town Maul spectacles last August was the widespread proclamation by conservatives that they are carrying on the movement of Saul Alinsky. While it was (and still is) laughable that people fighting on behalf on privilege and concentration of power could in any way lay claim to Alinsky’s legacy, it’s instructive to note just how delusional conservatives have allowed themselves to become.
For example, the anti-ACORN agit-prop activist James O’Keefe, arrested this week with three others in New Orleans for allegedly trying to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, was a main proponent of this nonsense.
Here’s O’Keefe being quoted by Politico in September of 2009:
James O’Keefe, the activist and filmmaker who posed as a pimp for an expose of several ACORN offices in the Northeast, told the New York Post earlier this week] that he, too, had been inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” which includes such tactical lessons as “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” and “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”
O’Keefe told the paper he was trying to expose the “absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language.”
“If you can make impossible demands on your enemy, you can destroy them,” he said.
Yeah, ridicule is indeed a potent weapon, as O’Keefe and his little band of modern-day Plumbers are about to find out.
O’Keefe has his actual roots, not in community organizing, but in the wingnut welfare system that sponsors far right “alternative” college newspapers, and it appears a couple of his fellow travelers do as well. Check out TPMMuckraker for more on that.
O’Keefe had his moment of glory, and became a hero to conservatives, because his clearly deceptive and unethical assault on ACORN was pushed into the broader media environment by Fox Noise. But this is not knew, and conservatives rarely pay much of a price for their egregious statements and actions, and in fact one can argue it only endears them to their supporters.
The problem for the rest of society is the conservative agit-prop artists become steadily more outrageous and egregious. Because the legacy media has become accustomed to right wing demagoguery, it seems to barely register when someone on the right jokes about kidnapping and torturing the Speaker of the House. Ha. Ha, whatever. Nobody would really go kill a doctor Nancy Pelosi, don’t be silly.
As progressives have known for a long time, the mind-set of many conservatives is basically akin to that of criminals who justify their wrong actions through excuse-making and an unjustified sense of victimhood. In this parallel universe, fostered, nurtured and encouraged by the broad array of stink tanks, news outlets and operatives now known as the Noise Machine, wrong actions against perceived enemies are justified because the very existence of the country is at stake. Never mind the law, never mind the truth, never mind what a democracy actually can be.
The conservative tribe demands that the enemy (that would be us) be attacked, and meanwhile our tribe is in the nurse’s office because we glued our balls to our legs again, to steal a recent quip about health care reform from Jon Stewart.
And now this is all manifesting itself in outright criminality, and of course that’s not new either. From the Palmer Raids to the McCarthy and Nixon eras, the song remains the same. Remember how much hard time Oliver North did? Yeah.
Some of the national commentary about O’Keefe has centered on what his “motivations” were, which I suppose has some bearing but also acts to disguise the foul nature of being caught in such a situation. I mean, they were pretending to be telephone repairmen in the office of a Senator who sits on the Homeland Security committee? One of them apparently had a listening device in a car nearby? Is there some kind of explanation possible that would justify that, other than being lunatics?
Some national commenters have predicted that O’Keefe’s future is in jeopardy, but that seems unlikely. If history is any guide, O’Keefe could very well wind up in charge of a giant right wing agit-prop machine to wield against his perceived enemies, just like the man who gave him so much air time in the first place, Roger Ailes of Fox Noise. (For those not clicking the preceding link, Ailes got his first big national political job in the 1968 campaign of Richard M. Nixon. The song remains the same.)
Given O’Keefe’s problems choosing between right actions and wrong actions, for anyone in the legacy media to ever, ever, ever again lend O’Keefe credibility is to deny what is plain and obvious to everyone outside the conservative pathology bubble: much of the right-wing in this country is utterly and completely unhinged. Normal people want to be able to afford doctor’s visits and pay for groceries, they don’t think about bugging Senate offices, and normal people consider law breaking to be wrong.
And they don’t believe a damn word coming out of Fox Noise.
I think they should try to kidnap and torture Roger Rabbit.
I see Detonics is back in business.
Don’t forget to have it throated and ramped so it’ll feed those Federal hollowpoints with the little steel post in the center.
Quick-draw ankle holsters are really cool.
One of my relatives shot an assailant and spent only 3 days in jail pending investigation before they released him without charges.
If the perps in this case had been, instead of O’Keefe and his oh, so very white pals, a gaggle of dark-skinned gentlemen with middle-eastern looking facial hair, how much would you be willing to bet that they’d already have been shuttled off to Gitmo, or worse?
Great piece regarding how it is that doing bad things leads to being rewarded in our messed up country.
Reminds me of when I was a cog in the big corporate world. If you were an asshole and did something terrible, you got promoted as a way of getting you out of the way.
I am sure there are books already written on this is the corporate world, same principle is alive and well in the world of politics and government.
@6
My thoughts exactly. Heck they wouldn’t even need to be Middle Eastern …
I’m also thinking what the outrage would be if say this was some ACORN types attempting to tap the office phones of Lindsey Graham. Wanna bet the Homeland Security Committee aspect would be getting a lot more play?
Not a lot of comments here..
Cuz the story is soooooo old..
Extremist right wingers being deceitful con artists not hesitating to break the law if that will further their degenerate agenda..
I assume because our right-wing trolls haven’t loudly and publicly denounced the actions of O’Keefe and his friends it must mean they approve.
Chris Stefan:
They’re just upset that he got caught. Their “lesson learned” is about covering your tracks.
Speaking of F@ckers–
How about Democrat Douchebag Johnny Edwards…ambulance-chasing, lying, cheating piece of sh@t..
Finally, Elizabeth is kicking this Democrat loser to the curb. I give her credit for trying…but enough is enough.
Edwards even denied his own 2 year-old daughter!
Now there is a ratf@cker Goldy.
You KLOWNS absolutely loved the guy!
Shows your poor judgment, huh?
Hey KLOWNS–
What happened to innocent until proven guilty??
Sheesh.
Goldy tries to be truthful for a change by saying “allegedly trying to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu”
ALLEGEDLY…very important word.
Then Goldy goes ahead and convicts him with a trial.
You KLOWNS support giving terrorists a trial for cryin’ outloud.
But an American citizen is convicted in the leftist press without one??
Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.
If convicted, he should face jail time.
But he should have a fair trial.
@12 [YAAAAAWN!]
@13 [YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWN…]
@13
Hmm … Edwards may be a philandering scum, but he isn’t accused of committing a Federal Felony either.
Besides I always liked Elizabeth much better than John.
Say what? Jon Stewart glued his balls to his brain again? Maybe that explains why he couldn’t go half a round with John Yoo, a real man with a real brain.
As for Palmer and McCarthy and Nixon, oh my, remember that Joe McCarthy and big Dick Nixon were Palmer-lite, and that Palmer was a progressive Democrat Quaker. For modern braindead progressives with glued balls (Jon Stewart and Jon DeVore), history began at Wheeling in 1950 and ended in 1974 BC, Before Carter.
Maybe y’all need to get back to the progressive tyrants of the Palmer Era, back when Big Government really knew how to push its weight around. Getting back to Palmer-Wilson’s 1919 was a lot like getting back in the USSR.
Typical left-wing lies and hypocrisy, in other words. Falling all over O’Keefe without having any real facts while pretending that what O’Keefe proved about the culture of corruption at ACORN was a “clearly deceptive and unethical assault.” Actually, Jon and Jon, Obama’s ACORN is clearly deceptive and unethical. Amazing that it took days or weeks for Big Media and teeny-weenie HA media to even mention it, while convicting O’Keefe in print mere moments after he hung up the phone.
It’s like the New York Times running specious slander on page 1 about a McCain sex affair, while hiding for weeks and months the truth about Goldy’s love daddy, John Edwards, who was one haircut away from the presidency.
16. Chris Stefan spews:
They are still investigating his misuse of campaign funds to pay off the mistress.
And the key word is “ACCUSED”, right??
Or in your world does accused mean guilty without a trial??
Rules 4 democRatfuckers:
Rule 1: Never trust another Democrat. Absolutely totally every single last smelly slimy one is a democRatfucker.
Rule 2: Never trust another Democrat. Absolutely totally every single last smelly slimy one …
“Republican Ratfuckers”
I’d heard about the goats. They fuck rats too?
@18
Is Edwards under arrest? Have charges been filed? Then at this point there is nothing more than an allegation which may or may not prove to be true.
BTW I think even your pea-brain can make a distinction between situations where an accused criminal is essentially caught red-handed and where the facts are perhaps a bit more murky.
Whatever O’Keefe’s supposed excuse for running around the New Orleans Federal Building pretending to be a telephone company worker, I doubt it has a completely innocent explanation.
wingnut welfare system that sponsors far right “alternative” college newspapers
Oh, like the UW’s Washington Spectator, c.1985, featuring John Carlson, Brett Bader, and the rest of the brat pack that went on to form the Washington Institute, the “old” Madison Group, and the Eyman protoge?
Ah, the O’Keefe. Boy shows a little moxie. I like. Now the Senator in question is blatantly waving that $100 million bribe around but that shouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary for you folks would it? I mean, come on, look at all those Congressional Commitee’s whitewashing ACORN. His work was effective and that is what matters. Just saying.
That aside, Progressivism simply is ineffectual in the teeth of the real crisis of the Economic Depression, Foriegn Policy disasters and a president who does not faithfully express that he indeed is one of us. Independants should leave you in drove’s and already have. Search #MASEN trending.
What kind of trouble you folks seem to have in the Market of Ideas, no one seems to be buying such obvious lies anymore, brutal insults fuel insipid debate, yet still they seem determined to carry the country in dangerous times on agendas undersirable held together by faux populist glue. Go on, it seems to be working.
Again, just sayin.
SANDY BEEEEEERGEEERRRRR
Correction, Mr. Mungo Jerry. It’s a begger fix than you realized, and the fix is in. And the fix is on, except that our commander in chief, the smartest man who ever lived, now claims that he Knew Nothing about all the dirty dealing that made his health-care plan the wretched wreck that it is.
Speaking of Know Nothings, shouldn’t Goldy have run at least one little squib about Goldy’s love daddy whose daughter is the granddaughter of a mill worker from the second of John Edwards’ two Americas?
@12 Cheating on his wife isn’t against the law, Cynical. It’s not in the same league as bugging a U.S. Senator’s office. But nice effort at trying to change the subject when your asshole buddies get caught committing a federal felony.
@17 Wilson was an asshole.
@18 “Or in your world does accused mean guilty without a trial??”
Why not? You guys do it, so why can’t we?
I think Democrats should behave more like Republicans.
Oopsie … forgot to give the citation to Mr. Mungo Park. The blockquote about Landrieu’s $300,000,000 Louisiana Purchase comes from Dana Milbank at WaPo. Too bad that most HA goldycrats think WaPo is conservative propaganda. Who knew? Is it too late to tell Nixon?
And effing-A right about Sandy Berger. Why did BM Big Media strangle that interesting story in its cradle? Berger had a song to sing. Why didn’t we get to hear it?
@19 Of course I don’t trust Democrats. For what it’s worth, I trust Republicans even less.
Meri or Woodrow or both?
@23 “Ah, the O’Keefe. Boy shows a little moxie. I like.”
I’m sure you do, along with 9/11/01, wars, torture, lies, economic collapse, mass unemployment, and all the other good things conservatives have given the American people.
@24 BLEATING SHEEEEEEEEP
To listen to these trolls whine about the $300 million Landrieu secured for citizens of her state, you’d think Washington’s senators — Democrat and Republican alike — never went trolling for billions for Boeing (see, e.g., Air Force tanker contract).
@18 [ZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……]
Hell, Roger, that’s why we’re trolls.
@34
@24 BLEATING SHEEEEEEEEPo
so roger…you see nothing wrong with a former national security advisor walking into the national acrchives and stuffing documents down his pants then taking them home and shredding them? why?
because he’s a democrat?
because he’s jewish?
Now, now … some of our best friends are Jewish felons. Jack Abramoff, friend of Lapin and DeLay, comes to mind.
the mind-set of many conservatives is basically akin to that of criminals who justify their wrong actions through excuse-making and an unjustified sense of victimhood.
Amen to that. I always laugh when I read some Christian Rightist complaining about how he is being persecuted – or some rich corporate-funded Republikan whining about corporate bailouts and how he’s being victimized by regulations….it reminds me of unrepentent criminals and their twisted families defending their actions.
I think Democrats should behave more like Republicans.
Roger that, Roger.
Let the R’s filibuster health care reform, and show the nation what a pathetic idea-free party they’ve become.
Dems spend way too much time and capital trying to fix the screw-ups caused by conservative, corporate-endorsed policies.
Oh my. Look at the time. Gotta run.
Roger Rabbit said:
@17 Wilson was an asshole.
01/27/2010 at 2:12 pm
But VERY popular in his district and the rest of South Carolina! He’s a shoe-in for re-election in Novewmber.
Hey where did Cynical go?
“Oh, thank you Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Stefan. As a matter of fact, that is my ass. Let me take that off your hands. I’ll be having that re-attached straight away.” Mr. Cynical, Jan. 27, 2010
HeeHee, infidelity = federal felony. Rumored investigation = arrested and charged at the scene out on bail. Guffaw. Ohhh, that’s so true…stop it…you’re killing me!
I wonder if our esteemed Mr. C would like to discuss the rather strange proclivities of Louisiana’s other Senator, David “Diapers” Vitter.
Is it just me, or is mungo at 23 completely incoherent? I try my best to follow our trolls’ posts because I care so much for what they have to say, but sometimes reading them causes my eyes to cross and my head to ache. Actually, as I think about it, between leaps of “logic,” infamiliarity with basic rules of written English, and aversion to facts, none of our trolls’ posts on this thread cohere at all. Maybe I’ve just worked too hard today . . .
Can this be true, did one of Bush’s torture supporters lie about the effectiveness of waterboarding? How could that be, even Rushbo cited this guy?
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/a.....pmpolitics
Uhhh. Wrong again silly HNMT.. Editorial page for sure very inside the beltway which is wired to the right and has been developing that way since before Nixon.. Halfway decent reporting from the newsroom certainly beats the pants off the crumbling Moonie Times and Murdoch’s sinking ship of a NY POST.
i trust the poll that the boston globe ran 2 weeks before the election showing martha coakley up 15….yup, i’m stupid enough to believe it and not smart enough to believe they were trying to sway the election.
manoftruth
You aren’t smart enough to know that you wipe after you take a shit, not before, you racist piece of shit.
Hey DeVore, where da Heck you been fool. Looks like another of your jump on the first headlines you see is wrong again…
“Correction to This Article
Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that James O’Keefe faced charges in an alleged plot to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu. The charges were related to an alleged plot to tamper with a phone system. The headline incorrectly referred to a plot to bug the phone and a caption incorrectly referred to an alleged wiretap scheme. ”
But the HA Libtardo leftists keep screaming without the real facts.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Umm, out of which methodone clinic did you recently crawl out of, Jon DeVore? There is an actual real world that exists outside of your alternate universe of single-wide trailers, internet porn and economy sized jars of lube world that you live in…and yes, they watch and trust Fox news.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl.....st-popular
As for O’Keefe, he wasn’t charged with wiretapping , so it sounds like a whole lot of bluster and no substance, much like the asshat I’m watching on TV right now, the empty suit, Barack Obama.
Golly DeVore you forget the Kill Bush shit from your side for years and years and years.
Whatamoron!
@51
So Puddy, how does the correction change the fact that he’s been charged and out on $10,000 unsecured bond?
But I’m sure the location of the crime is just a coincidence? That you’re logic Pud?
People get charged with a slam-dunk to get them to post bond. Then the prosecutor builds the full case. (Jesus, Law and Order has been on for the entire lifetime of today’s college Freshmen.)
Hey DeVore,
Where is the bugging charge in the affidavit fool? Uhhhhhh NOWHERE fool! This is why Puddy loves to deconstruct your worthless posts. You love to rush to judgment over things that change when the sunlight shines on them.
checksaaz,
We’ll see what happens to those “charges” dude. Remember Merry Fitzmas? Remember the HA Libtardo screams onver Tom DeLay “being charged”? Or how about Karl Rove “being charged”?
You fools love to jump all over the first negative conservative headline.
Heh…
Whatever JOK III was charged with..
He was wearing the St Bernard Parish lockup reds for it…
Did that happen to ACORN people who got “stung” from his pimp act?
How about that lady who said on camera that she murdered her husband? Ooops she was putting on JOK III the stupid pimp and Conservababe Giles so’d they’d crow about it on Faux News..
So pathetic this right wing clown and all the gullible wingnut clowns who swallowed that crap..
@57
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
What boring shit! Still batting a 1.000 in over 5 years of useless drivel on HA.
LMAO @ the criminal lover @ 58…
What a fool!
Puddy turned on the lowest of low lifes MSNBC. Using Keith as their main commentator keeps them in the gutter of ratings.
Look at the ASSkicking…
FOXNEWS O’REILLY 3,581,000
FOXNEWS BECK 3,196,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 3,133,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,624,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,415,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,187,000
CNNHN BEHAR 949,000
CNNHN GRACE 914,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 818,000
CNN KING 796,000
MSNBC MADDOW 726,000
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
@59
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
More boring shit! Has O’Keefe been convicted? Still batting a 1.000 in over 5 years of useless drivel on HA.
Oliver North and Scooter Libby are both convicted Republican felons.
Still snoring?
That’s because you are not a patriot.
re 61: The Man of Wax is a right wing traitor Aaron Burr hack.
But I’m a Centrist.
“Come. Let us reason together.” Lyndon Johnson
Puddy,
I so much want to think you’re a decent guy, but then you just keep proving yourself to be a dumbshit. I’m forgiving of sins, but not of dumbshitedness.
Headless AKB 48 other ASShat names…
Goldy’s Thread Headlines had Merry Fitzmas.
Of course that truth is too difficult for you to fathom so you throw up Oliver North (1980s) and Scooter Libby.
You make Herr Goebbels Himmler Dumb Bunny “look” intelligent.
Proud Leftist,
Puddy is a very decent guy. Puddy just calls the BULLSHITTIUM of your political leaders every day.
SAndy Berger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
…and will someone, anyone, please send DeVore to a community college writing course to brush up on what he learned in his high school equivalency classes?
Unlike DeVore, I have no delusions that the tea party movement is “carrying on the movement of Saul Alinsky” as we prefer the freedoms embraced by our founding fathers.
Alinsky followers would be that of the asshat, empty suited jackass currently occupying 1600 Pennsyvlania Avenue doing that, Jon. Namely ,the HA faithful. Do try to keep these two diametrically opposed factions differentiated in future posts. Thanks.
ESO,
Maybe Jon was using one of those “English Tricks” Herr Goebbels Himmler Dumb Bunny loves to sling, calling your enemy the same name your enemy calls you. Butt we all know Alinsky was a progressive radical, so DeVore has another of his EPIC FAIL bowel movements again.
@50
manoftruth
You aren’t smart enough to know that you wipe after you take a shit, not before, you racist piece of shit.
so i agree with you…thats why i said when the boston globe published a poll showing coakley up 15 , two weeks before the election, i am stupid enouigh to believe it wasnt a fraudulent poll meant to sway the election by a bankrupt, corrupt liberal rag….so what are you fighting me on it.
@ 70 Puddybud~
I doubt it. I think DeVore just didn’t proofread his post for clarity before he posted it. Laziness is, afterall, a trait of liberals. You give him too much credit =)
I just finished watching our president’s State of the Union address. He is brilliant. He gets it. Do you folks on the right really think Sarah Palin competes with him? You don’t have anybody of intellectual substance, Puddy, you know that, don’t you?
It’s just this kind of retarded thinking that got us this mutt in the first place. Unqualified asshat applies for a job- a real smooth talker that dresses sharply and seems intelligent- see the word “GLIB”-. Flash to the job at hand and said candidate doesn’t know his ass from a balance sheet….
Oh shit time…buyers remorse. Dumbass shows up to work everyday dressed to the nines and saying all the right things to make him seem competent to handle the job, but when handed the job, falls flat on his face. That’s Obama in a nutshell. Fucking retards like “proud leftist” falling in love with a nobody with no experience thinking they’re qualified based on superficial qualifications.
Fortunately, the American populace is waking up to this idiot and his ineptitude to perform the job he was elected to do (sans any experience).
He is brilliant. He gets it.
nobody doubts he is a smart man….but he has a hard time telling the truth…as judge alito clearly said tonite when the camera panned him “NOT TRUE”!!!!!!!!
re 69: The founding father’s embraced slavery, among other things.
Little Ricky Dumbass @ 74: “Dumbass shows up to work everyday dressed to the nines and saying all the right things to make him seem competent to handle the job, but when handed the job, falls flat on his face. That’s Obama in a nutshell. Fucking retards like “proud leftist” falling in love with a nobody with no experience thinking they’re qualified based on superficial qualifications.”
Ah, yes, and how would your description not apply to our last president, GWB? Ricky, you are pathetic.
75
Alito wouldn’t know Truth if it was fucking him in the ass. He is a disgusting member of the bar.
re 69: The founding father’s embraced slavery, among other things.
i know. for the life of me i cant understand some of the things they believed in those days. flat earth, couldnt split the atom. i always wonder how come thomas jefferson never jumped up on the table and said, “by god, its time to let men marry other men!!!!”
re 75: I’m afraid that ‘Not true’ does not refute the real and obvious fact that foreign controlled corporations (thanks to the conservative faction on the Supreme Court) now have carte blanche to spend as much money as they like influencing American elections.
re 79: Maybe he was having too good a time with Sally Hemings to think about it.
@ 77 & 78- It appears that “plowed leftist” has been drinking again. They call that liquid courage where I come from….however the truth is after 1 year, Obama is the incompetent empty suit jackass I told you he was 18 months ago…
Put an “entry level” executive of the country usually isn’t the brightest thing to do, but hey, the American people decided otherwise just over a year ago. Expect them to come back to their senses in 2010 and 2012. The sooner this clown is sent back to the community organizing gig in the southside of Shithole Chicago, the better.
now have carte blanche to spend as much money as they like influencing American elections.
well, as it stands now, aipac influences american elelections….and actually runs your whole life anyway
Apparently, “plowed leftist” has some experience in this area…
re 79: “i know. for the life of me i cant understand some of the things they believed in those days.”
Thanks for admitting what we already knew. You DON’T understand what the founding fathers meant. Divining the motives of people who have been dead for hundres of years takes more smarts and scholarship than you, me, Alito will ever muster.
And when an ass-kissing lickspittle like Alito thinks he can, that ought to automatically exclude him from being on the court.
A sperm burping gutter slut like you calls himself ‘the centrist’? what a fucking retard. Too amusing for words. Some just have too much of a man-crush on the Chi-town assclown. It’s kind of weird in its cultlike obedience.
Ricky,
I was just quoting you. Not much else. Let me be brutally frank, Ricky. Of all our trolls, I think you and manoftruth are the most hateful people here. Do you think that this country, a country founded on optimism, would do well by following your path? Little Ricky, let me give you some credit, I think your IQ is slightly higher than that of manoftruth. That doesn’t say much, however.
…thinking isn’t your strong suit, son.
Yes, I believe in individual freedom. Your dumbass believes in being enslaved to government. You are exactly the antithesis of what this country was founded on, you’re just not bright enough to understand it. But then, most HA regulars are your mirror image.
Robert Reich is “very impressed” with Obama’s job plans.
JOK III the pimp???
http://thebruinstandard.com/?p=119
I don’t know if they still do, but Detroit used to have a “Pimps and Ho’s” convention.
If they do, could someone start a Facebook for that little frat rat republican and his trashy friend to raise enough money to go? Before he moves up to being a burglar, like Liddy the other CI lying A thug, and Watergate.