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On Fox News,
Obama is coming for your guns;
Madonna is coming for your straight kids;
immigrants are coming for your jobs;
liberals are coming for your way of life;
and atheists are coming for your Bibles.

CJ Werleman

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Fox News Is Really Freaked Out by Atheists

The network’s customer base is afraid, and nothing in the news business sells faster than fear.

By CJ Werleman
August 14, 2014

 

In a recent online video for Crossfire, CNN political pundit and self-proclaimed atheist S.E. Cupp claimed conservative atheists are “better” than liberal atheists, and said she does not believe the “myth” that conservatism is “hostile” to atheism. “In fact, I’d go so far as to say conservatism is far more intellectually honest and respectful of atheism than liberalism has been,” she said.

 

Wait, what?

Cupp says she believes it is atheists who are disseminating “the idea that they are somehow disenfranchised or left out of the political process,” but that has not been her experience as a conservative.

Now, CNN is not Fox News, but she acts like she has never heard of the Republican Party’s media arm: Fox News.

For the past few years, Fox News and its right-wing talking heads have waged a relentless war on atheism. Their annual war on Christmas spoof-ganza is their reverse victimhood effort to convince viewers that America’s godless community is coming to take away your toys and your right to say, “Merry Christmas.” In other words, bah humbug.

Comparing atheists to Dr. Seuss’ Grinch is one thing, but on Wednesday Fox News host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asserted that Christianity should be kept in schools because Islamic militants in Iraq were persecuting Christians. Ipso facto, atheists are as dangerous as al-Qaeda, which is exactly what they want their conservative audience to believe without Fox News having to actually say it.

After reading a select few comments from viewers who accused atheists of demanding to have more rights than Christians, Hasselbeck connected the situation to violence in Iraq. “You know, in light of what’s going on in the world and the persecution of Christians right now, how close do we want to get to eliminating religious freedom in the globe?” she asked.

It’s so accidently Orwellian it’s almost adorable. Or more likely she was reading from a script handed down to her from the string-pullers high above. The only way she could’ve been less subtle was if she said, “Some people say atheists are terrorists.”

Atheist pieces on Fox News are now commonplace. “Atheist Group Tells Georgia Football Team to Punt Prayer.” “Atheist Group Resurrects War on Easter.” “Atheist Group’s Billboard Sparks Outrage.” “Georgia Town to Atheists: Stop Bullying Our Kids.” “The Sad Power of an Atheist’s Temper Tantrum.” “IRS Strikes Deal With Atheists to Target Religious Political Activity.”
A few months ago, former Bush White House Press Secretary and Fox News pundit Dana Perino said she's "tired" of atheists attempting to remove the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. She concluded her remarks with, “If atheists don’t like it, they shouldn’t live here.”

Why does the network engage in such negative spin against atheists? Like every business decision, it’s profitable. It pays to sell what your customers will buy. The network’s customer base is afraid, and nothing in the news business sells faster than fear. What is their audience afraid of, other than everything? They’re afraid of an America they no longer understand. They’re afraid of the rapid deceleration of church attendance, the increasing secularization of millennials, the acceptance of same-sex marriage, the refusal of school boards to teach biblical creationism, and the dwindling influence of religious-conservatives on the body politic.

On Fox News, Obama is coming for your guns; Madonna is coming for your straight kids; immigrants are coming for your jobs; liberals are coming for your way of life; and atheists are coming for your Bibles.

Varied polls give varied answers when it comes to determining the atheist population of the U.S. Some polls have it as high as 10 percent, while others like Pew have it as low as 2 percent. But to hear Fox News tell it, you’d conclude atheists are the majority, or at least on level ground with the three-quarters Christian population.

Disproportionately representing the power and influence of a minority is a political tactic used to rally a cause since time immemorial. We’ve seen that everywhere from the Nazi vilification of the Jews; the Israeli vilification of Palestinians; and the Christian Right’s vilification of LGBT Americans.

“Spreading the fear of atheist influence, as small as it is in reality, is a strong motivator to the Fox faithful... not famous for their ability to think critically or discern reality from hype. It works like a rallying cry, it cements support for the most extreme conservatives, never mind the fact that atheism is the least of the causes of what truly infects and affects this nation's stability and progress,” writes Bart Center, author of the Atheist Camel Chronicle.

Since atheists represent such a small percentage of the population, and an even smaller percentage of both the conservative base and the network’s audience, it’s a no-brainer to blame the decline of American civilization on atheists who wish to take away school prayer, rather than talk about problems whose solutions require a pro-government response i.e. safety nets, regulation, workers’ rights, and environmental protection.

Cleverly, Fox News conflates atheism with big government i.e. secular government officials want to take away your religious freedom. The narrative becomes: atheists are bad, the government is atheists, and therefore the government is not part of the solution, the government is the problem.
But the way CNN’s S.E. Cupp tells it, atheists are a welcomed minority in the conservative tent.

Maybe she doesn’t watch cable news. Who can blame her, right?

CJ Werleman is the author of "Crucifying America," and "God Hates You. Hate Him Back."

Three Charts to Send to Your Right-Wing Relatives, Guaranteed to Make Their Head Spin

We'll be in real trouble if we go back to the Bush administration-era's economic policies.

By Dave Johnson
August 11, 2014

Problem: Your right-wing relative is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about “Obama spending” and “Obama deficits” and how the “stimulus” just made things worse.

Solution: Here are three “reality-based” charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending

Bush vs. Obama in spending.

Click to enlarge.

Government spending increased dramatically under President Bush. It has not increased much under President Obama. This is just a fact.

Deficits

Bush vs. Obama in deficit

Click to enlarge.

Note that this chart starts with Clinton’s last budget year for comparison.

The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2015. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look them up. People who claim that Obama “tripled the deficit” or increased it or anything of the sort are either misled or are trying to mislead. President Obama inherited a budget deficit of $1.4 trillion from President Bush’s last budget year and annual budget deficits have gone down dramatically since.

The Stimulus and Jobs

Bush vs. Obama: Monthly Change in Private Employment

Click to enlarge.

In this chart, the RED lines on the left side – the ones that keep doing DOWN – show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines – the ones that just go UP – show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better.

The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.

It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus. We have gone from losing around 850,000 jobs a month to gaining over 200,000 jobs a month.

Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!

More False Things

These are just three of the false things that everyone “knows” because places like Fox News repeat them over and over and over. Some others are (click through): Obama bailed out the banks, businesses will hire if they get tax cuts, health care reform cost $1 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme or is “going broke”, tax cuts grow the economy, government spending “takes money out of the economy.”

Actually This Reduced Spending And Lower Deficit Have Hurt The Economy

Government spending is literally, by definition, the things that government does to make our lives better. People have been tricked into thinking that government spending is somehow bad. The billionaires and giant corporations spread this nonsense around because they are greedy and just want their taxes lower. The top income tax rate used to be more than 90 percent and the top corporate tax rate used to be more than 50 percent. That was back when we built this country’s great infrastructure, had good schools and defended the world against the Soviet Union. We also had higher economic growth and a growing middle class.

Government spending does not “take money out of the economy.” In fact it puts money into the economy, creates jobs and lays the foundation for future prosperity. The decline in government spending shown in the charts above is the reason that the economy remains sluggish and jobs are still hard to get. Just look at that chart showing what the stimulus spending did for the job situation. But since the stimulus ended, Republicans have obstructed every effort to continue to use our government to help our economy.

For example, this chart from The Atlantic, “The Incredible Shrinking U.S. Government,” shows how government spending to create government jobs helped us get out of the 1981, 1990 and 2001 recessions. But since the 2007 “Great Recession,” we instead have laid off hundreds of thousands of government employees, obviously making unemployment even worse.

Change in public-sector employment since the start of the last four recoveries

Click to enlarge.

This chart shows only the loss of government jobs. Never mind the job losses in the stores where all of these people were shopping. The Atlantic article says this, “EPI argues that “these extra government jobs would have helped preserve about 500,000 private sector jobs.”

And never mind the millions of jobs lost or not created because of “austerity” cutbacks in government spending on things like maintaining (never mind modernizing) our infrastructure! And beyond that, what if we had spent some money (public investment) to retrofit every building and home in the country to be energy efficient, or built high-speed rail around the country? How many millions more would have been hired to do those things – and how much would we be saving on energy and other costs from now on?

This chart from Roger Hickey’s post, Continued Jobs Growth. But Highway Bill Shows Austerity Still Hurts., shows how “conservative budget cutting has undermined growth from mid-2010 through 2014″:

Impact of federal fiscal policy on real GDP.

Click to enlarge.

 “As you can see, the impact of austerity on the economy is projected to be reduced over the next two quarters, but the next budget is not expected to be expansionary – and Republicans are still writing budgets under the mistaken conservative theory that spending cuts somehow stimulate growth.”

Family Budget?

They say that government is like a family budget – when the money isn’t coming in you have to cut back. That’s just nonsense if you think about it. First of all, if we make the big corporations and billionaires pay their fair share of taxes again, the money would be coming in. And anyway, families do invest in a mortgage, student loans and car loans so they can have a place to live, a good education to get a better job, and a car to get to and from work.

So don’t fall for the nonsense the big corporations and billionaires are spreading through their right-wing outlets. When you look a little deeper, that stuff just falls apart. A country needs to invest to create jobs and have a better future.

Why This Matters

These things really matter. We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse – just as laying off government workers in a recession makes unemployment worse.

If we get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama – tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want, when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place – then we will be in real trouble.

Dave Johnson is a fellow at Campaign for America's Future.

Proudly lowering the level of political discourse

3/08/2014

Dead Blogger: Bartcop:
One of the originators of lefty blogging, Bartcop, has died at age 60, and he's taken his blog with him. If you never read him, Terry Coppage, his real name, was ass-kicking from the start. Bartcop was a breath of profane, fresh air that started in 1996, predating pretty much everything you know on the internet. All the things others do, from link aggregating to ranting to posting funny or sexy pictures, Bartcop was there as one of the first. He kept the crude look of the page, so much so that scrolling through even the most recent issues is like a trip back in time.

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IS AMERICA BEING POLICED
BY BLACKWATER?

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I found this on BartCop (may he rest in peace)...