Thom Hartmann: Our quote for day from Dennis Kucinich: “Peace is a civil right which makes other human rights possible. Peace is a precondition for our existence. Peace permits our continued existence.” Peace is not what is being whipped up by the right today and frankly by the corporate media.
Is America is experiencing the terrorism at the hands of faux news or cluster-fox or whatever you want to call it and their dupes. Are the GOP political terrorists willing to do anything to stop the Obama Administration from being successful? What’s going on with these new hate incidents?
...
Yesterday, Dick Morris on Fox News, outright calling for terrorism, calling to terrorize democrats:
Sean Hannity: I mean, it's ridiculous. But the Democrats, the Blue Dogs, when they get called into the White House and they've been -- they've had their August recess, and when early September comes and they go back to work and Obama, Pelosi and Reid are twisting their arm, which way are they going to go, Dick?
Dick Morris: If they are not terrorized during August by...
Thom Hartmann: There you go. That’s enough of that. If they are not terrorized during August, I mean this is the kind of stuff. [sound of protesters, including... "we don't need illegals" ... "Send them home once. Send them home with a bullet in their head the second time" (video)] Yeah, send them home with a bullet in their head!
Dan Gainor ... is the Vice President & T. Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Business and Media Institute, BusinessAndMedia.org. Dan, the Southern Poverty Law Center which tracks these right wing racist hate groups documents that their number has risen from over 600 to over 900 in the last couple of years. This is exploding. I don’t recall when those of us on the left were protesting Bush’s policies that we got anything close to, you know, the most articulate among us, the Amy Goodmans of the world, got almost no face time at all on TV. MSNBC this morning, leading not with a word that Obama had to say last night but instead with this right wing protester from New Hampshire yesterday. What is going on? Is America experiencing terrorism?
Dan Gainor: Of course America is not experiencing terrorism. If it was, it would have experienced terrorism oh the last eight years with left wing protests, you know, all the allegations, comparisons of Bush to Hitler. You can check Google, you can find 1.1 million references on Google to Bush and Hitler.
Thom Hartmann: That’s Google. I’m talking about CBS, ABC, NBC.
Dan Gainor: You find infinite liberal protests. Look at all the Prop 8 protests. You had a whole bunch of people who were pushing and ultimately Proposition 8 advocates.
Thom Hartmann: I don’t recall people showing up at Prop 8 protests wearing guns, and holding signs saying that the blood of tyrants, or implying that the blood of tyrants should be spilled. I don’t recall people saying, or protesting, against Governor Schwarzenegger because he’s not, he was not born in the United States, he is a naturalized citizen. Of course, he’s not a black guy, he’s a white guy.
Dan Gainor: I don’t think anybody cares.
Thom Hartmann: I’m telling you, they are caring, Dan.
Dan Gainor: I don’t think anybody cares. The right does not care that Barack Obama is black, we really don’t. And as far as...
Thom Hartmann: Then why is that over half of Republicans polled recently said that they didn’t believe he was born in the United States?
Dan Gainor: A lot of people, if the media had done a better job of doing any, any, due diligence on Barack Obama prior to the campaign, like going back and looking into stuff that he confessed in his own book about his drug use and stuff, I think people would believe more what they get from the media. I do want to say one thing. It’s legal in New Hampshire for people to walk around with guns. But anybody, anybody who threatens the President, it is my eternal wish that they get locked up faster than anybody can possibly imagine.
And I will say this right now, I’ll say it on national radio. If some nut ball wants to go hunt the President, I wish he would come after me first, because maybe I would have a chance to take him out before he does it. Because we have a democracy here. We are not very happy with one another now, we haven’t been for years. But it’s still a democracy and he’s still the President, he’s still MY President. And anybody tries to mess with him is gonna mess with me first.
Thom Hartmann: Well, tough talk is nice, Dan, but the reality is that yesterday there was a guy standing outside the, and actually I say props to and kudos to President Obama and the Secret Service, for saying this guy has the right to say what he has to say and he is legally carrying a firearm and he was not inside, he was outside. So what he was doing was legal.
But just tell me, do you think, I mean remember back to the Bush era, when you had to be a member of the Republican party to get into Bush’s town halls. You know they had the three guys who actually because, two blocks away their car had a no blood for oil bumper sticker on it, they went into the town hall and they found these three people, the Denver Three, and hauled them, physically hauled them out. Do you think that if somebody stood outside one of Bush’s town halls with a gun and had brown skin and was a Muslim and held up that sign with that Thomas Jefferson quote that they would not be, probably dead right now, or at the very least, you know, experiencing something close to Guantanamo?
Dan Gainor: Well if they were, it would have been the result of the same, very same Secret Service who are protecting Barack Obama right now. So if you’ve got a gripe there, your gripe is actually with the Secret Service and not with the conservatives. Because that’s not Bush’s decision. That’s the call of the people protecting the President. I want them to protect the President, whether they’re protecting Bush, Clinton, Obama, or whoever. But if you’re going to try to say that random loons, and look, I’ve been to an ANSWER Rally. I’ve got a long list of random loons about people saying crazy things about my government. And they got the chance to do it right here in the nations capital.
So, I mean, you know, everybody from the crazy pro-Mumia people to the anti-Israel zealots, to all sorts of people marching in the streets saying all sorts of hateful things. I mean, there are extremists on both sides. But what there is right now, and it’s shown in the polls, because healthcare is falling like a stone. It’s shown in the polls that there’s a lot of anger in general. And Obama’s sucking up some of Bush’s anger too, because people are disgusted with government, the way it’s being run, they think its corrupt, they think a lot of the people of both parties in DC are in it for their own. They’re morally questionable, at best.
Thom Hartmann: They’re bought and sold. Dan, you know, on that last point, that was the point that I made in my first hour yesterday, and I agree with you. And it’s our system that’s been corrupted and frankly I think it’s been corrupted, starting with Lewis Powell in 1971, with his memo to the Chamber of Commerce, laying out how business can take over the whole apparatus of government in the United States and then his pushing the First National Bank vs. Bellotti case in the Supreme Court giving corporations the right to do this kind of carpet bombing of they call it information, I’d say propaganda. I thought that Claire McCaskill,I mean, you said people are pushing back on healthcare, they’re upset about healthcare, this is my point.
These crazies are getting all this press coverage, and yet Claire McCaskill, she asked people, all the protesters, the angry people in the room, she says ‘How many of you are on social security?’ I don’t know if you saw the video clip of this, but half that room raised their hands. And these were people who were saying ‘We don’t want government healthcare!’ And then she said, ‘How many of you don’t want your social security anymore, how many of you want to get rid of it? Raise your hands.’ Not one single person raised their hand.
Dan Gainor: It’s not surprising.
Thom Hartmann: This is incoherence, Dan. These guys they are, you know, somebody is doing the dog whistle routine and these people are jumping. It’s tragic.
Dan Gainor: No, it’s not true. What’s happened is you’re saying they’ve already got a benefit. Trying to take away a benefit from anybody, ever, is almost impossible. But trying to say ‘Do you want government to seize 1/6 of the U.S. economy and take total control over it?’ The answer is, clearly the majority of Americans, is they don’t want it.
Thom Hartmann: That’s not it, Dan. These people are believing lies. They think that there are death councils, they think that there are mandates, these 5 year mandates. You know, it goes on and on. They think that this is going to turn us into Russia. It’s none of the above. This is just one option.
Dan Gainor: There are several different bills in Congress. Nobody in Congress has probably read all of those bills.
Thom Hartmann: I’m talking about what the President is advocating.
Dan Gainor: Just one of the bills, the President, the President has signed off and is letting Congress do its work. So the President is ultimately going to sign or not sign a bill that has been voted on by Congress. So they’re the ones who are doing the work. Some of the stuff in those bills freaks out a lot of people.
Thom Hartmann: So why don’t you tell these guys to stop talking about it if you say that there’s no such legislation?
Dan Gainor: There is. You want to talk about legislation? There’s stuff in the bill that creeps out conservatives in a lot of different ways, and I obviously hear the music, but you’re right about one thing. That we are one nation and there are loons on both sides.
Thom Hartmann: We need to bring ourselves back together, Dan. We need to be, on both sides, the rational among us, we need to tamp this thing down.
Dan Gainor: We’re not going to have this when government is trying to do something very radical which is what it’s doing right now.
Thom Hartmann: Well, okay. BusinessAndMedia.org, the website, Dan Gainor. Thanks Dan.
Transcribed by Suzanne Roberts, Portland Psychology Clinic.
