Now, see. This should prove—once and for all to the idiots at FoxNoise (just don’t hold your breath)—that the Obama government is NOT as tyrannical as FoxNoise likes to claim. I mean, after all, a truly tyrannical government would have the Bundy boys shipped off to Gitmo for their “minor crimes” instead of one’s being released without bail (though does anyone believe that a Black “scofflaw” would’ve been released without bail—assuming, of course, he hadn’t been “accidentally” killed while resisting arrest?) and another one’s being in a regular jail for violating his terms of probation (again, kind of doubting a Black guy would’ve been offered a “diversion” program instead of jail time for felony burglary and weapons theft charges).

(Of course, had the Obama Administration been as tyrannical as FoxNoise likes to claim, Cliven Bundy—and his supporters—would all be dead or in Federal prison, if not Gitmo, for their anti-government actions, including threatening the lives of federal LEOs. AND, FoxNoise would be off the air with all its hosts and owners in federal prison for “offering aid and comfort to the enemy.” Then again, FoxNoise uses a lot of terms they don’t actually understand in order to rile their party’s base of bigots.)

“Either shoddy video reviewing is part of a pattern or someone is deliberately fabricating right-wing talking points!”

What? Can’t it be both?

Um, Steve. Go back and read what Huckleberry said. Sure, his comments don’t actually SAY “trashy women,” but what the f@ck are you going to take away from “In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women do it. And you know, you just are looking around, saying, my gosh, this is worse than locker room talk. This would be considered totally inappropriate to say these things in front of a woman, and for a woman to say them in a professional setting, we would only assume that this is a very, as we would say in the South, that’s just trashy.” Especially that LAST sentence. “[F]or a woman to say (f-bombs and gratuitous profanity) in a professional setting . . . that’s just trashy.”

Sorry, Steve. Perform all the apologetics you want, but Huckleberry did all but call women “trashy.”

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, well, chances are it’s NOT a chicken.

“If you ask me, O’Reilly put Palin in her place like a gentleman.” (emphasis mine)

And that is the most surprising thing of all. Usually, BillO has utter disdain for women with whom he disagrees and treats them reprehensibly (mainly because he’s putting the woman “in her place” as BillO would see all women).

Another interesting thing: I didn’t watch O’Reiliy’s blather (something almost as unlistenable as anything emanating from Palin) but Ellen transcribe’s O’Reilly’s comment with “Miss Palin.” Perhaps that was Ellen’s error in hearing O’Reilly or O’Reilly’s “putting Palin in her place” was a lot less gentlemanly than Ellen suggests. “Miss” is only appropriate when a woman’s marital status is unknown* (something Palin’s is most assuredly not)—or as an honorific, mostly used by Southerners to refer to any woman older than the speaker/writer without regard to her marital status. A gentleman would be sure to use the proper honorific, especially for a married woman; otherwise, he’s being less a gentleman and more a sarcastic wiseass.

*And the speaker/writer is a right-wing conservative who still can’t find it within himself to use the marriage-neutral “Ms” especially when the woman is well past standard college age. Even most modern women who eschew the term “feminist” tend to prefer “Ms” if they’re unmarried and older than 25.

Perhaps Mr Arroyo needs some reminding of the New Testament.

The only attributed case where Jesus became truly irate was with the “lenders” at the Temple, who were making money off the people’s faith. (Sound familiar to anyone else?_

Compare that action with how Jesus reacted when one of HIS disciples drew a sword on a Roman soldier there to arrest Jesus. Jesus rebuked the disciple and healed the “enemy.”

I’d also suggest that, if Mr Arroyo’s going to criticize the Pope*, he might leave the religious pontificating about what Jesus would or wouldn’t do to the Pope (you know—the guy that Catholics consider to be “God’s Emissary on Earth”).

(*It’s kind of interesting that a right-winger can criticize the Pope and still consider himself to be a “devout Christian” and face no criticism from FoxNoise but if a progressive or liberal dares to make a similar criticism, then they’re roundly criticized for days on end by FoxNoise.)

Something tells me these idiots backing this “State Book” nonsense don’t quite understand the purpose of a “State” symbol. Historically, state symbols—fish, bird, flower, tree, etc—are selected because they represent some unique aspect of the state. Now, it’s true that the state flower or state bird may represent another state as well but when your state doesn’t have moose or polar bears as native animals, you don’t tend to choose those as the “state mammal/animal.” When you have magnolia trees growing every 20 feet but pecan trees are only growing on commercial farms, you pick the magnolia to be your state tree.

Mississippi has (as noted in the article) a pretty nice literary history all its own, with a few of its authors being not only nationally renowned but internationally renowned. And the “State Book” should be something written by a Mississippi native or resident—not something that wasn’t written (or even compiled) by anyone who spoke English (which is a bit ironic as the State is attempting to make English the State’s official language—a language that didn’t even exist when the planned “State Book” was put into its present form some 16 or 17 centuries ago).

Jason Redman said “The reality is, I fought for freedom, Chris fought for freedom, Sean fought for freedom.”

No, Jason, you did NOT. Chris did not. Sean did not.

From what I’ve been able to determine of his biography, Redman served from 1992 to 2013. During that time, he NEVER fought for “freedom.” The US was never in a conflict during his service in which America’s “freedom” was ever at risk. And pretty much the same applies to Chris Kyle and Sean Parnell.

NOTHING that any of them did was the result of an attack or lessening of America’s “freedom.” And what Kyle did as a sniper in Iraq and Afghanistan did absolutely nothing to advance the cause of “freedom”—not America’s, not Iraq’s, not Afghanistan’s.

The US is no freer today from their service than it was before they joined the military. And Iraq and Afghanistan? If you believe either country is truly “freer” today than they were in 2001, then you’ve fallen for FoxNoise’s bullcrap (and you don’t deserve to have access to the voting booth).

Alveda King needs to be reminded of exactly what her uncle accomplished: He and his fellow civil rights marchers and workers allowed her to grow up to be the “rigger witch” she now is.

Sooner this “rigger witch” dies, the better off the King legacy will be.

Sorry, but I find this (fill in whatever incredibly disgusting term for the female of the species you prefer) too repulsive, even by FoxNoise standards. She’s a traitor to her uncle’s legacy and she’s especially nauseating because she actually believes she has any right to speak on his behalf.

Well, I have a theory about Palin’s “really interested” deal (though since this is Palin we’re discussing, she doesn’t have the brains to have thought of it—that’s not to say there’s not a “puppet master” pulling her strings; we did see that from Jan 2001 to Nov 2008, but I digress……).

Palin’s letting everyone know that she’s “really” interested now so that she can graciously accept the GOP nomination by acclaim when the convention is deadlocked and only she can “save” the party.

Now, of course, that’s an incredibly long longshot but consider what it means.

1—Palin doesn’t have to give up her FoxNoise job until August of next year (since she’s not actually running for the Presidency).
2—She doesn’t have to worry about raising campaign funds and after getting the nomination, the GOP is obligated to do the majority of the fundraising for her (and if the party doesn’t raise enough by her standards, she can always whine that her loss was due to the party’s failure to support her candidacy).
3—She’ll be able to “borrow” the best ideas from the losing candidates, meaning she won’t have to think of any policies on her own (not that she could if her life depended on it).
4—She doesn’t have to do any kind of work for it. She just spends the next year and a half doing what she’s doing—speechifying and keeping her name before the public (especially, potential convention delegates).

Again. I doubt Palin’s got the ability to plan any scheme that requires this much forethought so we’re probably lucky that this is Palin and not some intelligent GOPer (of course, an intelligent GOPer has no chance of winning the nomination because he or she would alienate the party’s base by having an IQ greater than a low-grade fever).

So, when someone criticizes a movie that the right-wing likes, they need to attacked with as much vitriol as possible. When a right-winger disrespects President Obama (even more troubling, when that right-winger is active-duty military), Fox gives it a pass because “free speech.”

Hypocrisy, thy name is FoxNoise.

Which is worse, Seannie-poo: A potential cop killer or an established killer cop?

Brown had no opportunity to develop his “potential”; Wilson, on the other hand, went from “servant of the people” to “judge, jury and executioner.”

Amazing how LGBTs seek the “destruction of the family” by seeking to make famililes of their very own. Of course, LGBTs have been making their own families for decades, after their biological families rejected them; the difference now is that LGBTs are seeking to legitimize certain aspects of their family lives (marriage and raising children—whether "rescued"* or in vitro fertilization and surrogacy for their own biological children)..

*By “rescued,” I mean, of course, adoption and fostering kids, many of whom have special needs or were physically and emotionally abused by their “loving” biological families.

No, Steve, you’re wrong. More accurate would be pro-fetus. These anti-choice nuts don’t care if there’s an actual birth; in fact, I’d be willing to bet they’re happier if birth doesn’t happen. (One of the more disingenuous arguments is how abortion adversely affects minorities, and yet, if all those brown and black babies are born, do you think the mostly white anti-choice nuts are going to want to have to “support” all those new mouths? And it is pretty telling that the overwhelming majority of faces you see protesting abortion facilities or doing the yearly protests against the Roe decision are white. Considering self-identified (non-Hispanic) whites make up roughly 65% of the total population, you’d think that the protestors would be a little less “salty” than they appear to be.

It’s kind of funny that O’Reilly would pull the “she’s a Socialist” card when it really wasn’t all that long ago that his bosses and co-workers were chastising Obama (in their minds, a Socialist of varying stripes) for NOT going to Paris to march in sympathy for the dead in the recent terror attacks—where he would’ve been associating with a number of Socialists.

By the way, Bill, I guess you’d know all about “suit’s going nowhere.” Of course, in your case, you paid an undisclosed sum to make sure it went “nowhere.” I guess in right-wing world, lawsuits are only a good thing when it’s a right-winger who feels they’ve been wronged (such as the Christian “victims” we see paraded on FoxNoise). But when it’s a con right-winger being sued, then the suit should go “nowhere” because it’s just an “attention grabber” effort.

“You may be surprised to learn that I agree with O’Reilly and Huckabee about the over-sexualization of popular culture.”

Well, that’s your right, Ellen, but what you’re doing is agreeing for the wrong reasons. It’s absolutely NO different than the 1980s when members of the (allegedly) liberal feminist movement teamed up with the religious conservatives of the so-called Moral Majority on the issue of porn. The trouble was that the conservatives’ reason for stopping porn was in no way close to why the feminists wanted to stop porn. The feminists decried porn for its alleged denigration of women as a whole; the Moral Majority didn’t care one whit about how women were demeaned by porn—they simply opposed sexual freedom. (The feminists largely ignored aspects of porn that were developing during the decade—gay porn as well as female porn. The latter refers to top female porn stars who started writing and directing and starring in films that were intended for female viewers; they had more romance and the men were typically more attractive and more focused on pleasuring the female stars. Of course, these were targeted by the Moral Majority just as all other porn.)

The reality also is that “popular culture” has ALWAYS had periods of “over-sexualization”—you just have to take in the context of the era. The early film era had the original vamp, Theda Bara as well as the oh-so-sultry Rudolph Valentino, “sexing up” the movie screens in ways that scandalized “middle” America (the outrage, of course, didn’t keep the prim-and-proper folks of Main Street USA from turning out in droves whenever these two appeared in a film). Of course, the 1930s had Clark Gable going bare-chested in a scene from “It Happened One Night”—considered somewhat shocking (it also reportedly caused a nosedive in the sale of men’s undershirts); IMS, it was also the first film to depict an UNmarried couple sharing a hotel room (albeit with a sheet between the beds), another shocking scene for the era. The film’s “shocking” attitudes, though, don’t resonate today (its modern appeal lies entirely with the acting and the story as a whole).

Then, of course, in the 1950s, you had the infamous “sex on the beach” scene in “From Here to Eternity” and the “scandalous” film, “The Moon Is Blue” (which was a plot point in an episode of “M.A.S.H.” because it was notoriously “banned in Boston”). And who can forget the Tennessee Williams films, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Suddenly Last Summer” (aspects of all three stories had to be toned down for movie audiences of the era but the most shocking elements of all three are only moderately so by today’s standards)?

By the end of the 1960s and the sexual revolution, sexualization of pop culture was pretty much the norm. “I Am Curious (Yellow),” “Midnight Cowboy,” “Splendor in the Grass” had all revolutionized aspects of sexual behavior on film while Broadway was dealing with the nude play “Oh, Calcutta” and the youth-culture phenom of “Hair” (the latter having a soundtrack which did phenomenal business and various songs from the musical were covered by big names in pop music, all making the Top 5). Beatlemania, while less overtly sexualized than the Elvis phenomenon a decade earlier, was still rife with sexual undertones (each Beatle had his fans claiming he was the “cutest” or even “sexiest”—Lennon even has a “nude” scene in “A Hard Day’s Night,” although a close look shows he’s wearing a pair of bathing trunks in his bubble bath).

And then, the 70s. Sex from start to finish in popular culture. Film, TV, music. Hedonism flourished as the decade came to a close.

Even when Reagan was elected, it didn’t really put an end to sexualization in popular culture; it just manifested in a different way. With the rise of MTV, women showed up in videos, though not always in flattering ways. Until Madonna appeared. And the supposedly staid, conservative, sex-depressive era was blown away. But just as soon as Madonna tried on one new sexual image, she’d discarded it and put on a new one. The flirty girl-next-door in “Borderline” gave way to the not-so-virginal vision in the Venetian canals (and her MTV Music Awards performance, in a bridal gown, writhing around in a quasi-orgasmic ecstasy, was put down only for her lip-syncing the performance, rather than the image she was displaying). Then, the sexy Marilyn imitator of “Material Girl” gave way to the hausfrau look of “Live to Tell” which gave way to the defiant pregnant teen of “Papa Don’t Preach” which yielded to another playful beach girl frolic of “True Blue” which turned right around to the sex-club dancer of “Open Your Heart.” She toned down the sex but turned up the controversy as the 80s wound down, only to explode it as the decade changed. The “Blonde Ambition” tour (as shown in the documentary “Truth or Dare”) with numerous attempts by law enforcement in various places to arrest her and her dancers for the simulated sex on stage started it off but that was nothing compared to the release of “Justify My Love” (banned by MTV, but released as the first major “video single”) and the release of her book, “Sex” and the “Erotica” CD (there was also her film roles, from Breathless Mahoney in “Dick Tracy” to the sexual fetish release of “Body of Evidence”).

I know it’s been long, but this idea of “over-sexualization” is NOTHING new in popular culture. And these conservatives who are complaining about it, they do NOT care about it. The ONLY thing they want to promote is the idea that a woman’s body is only for a man’s pleasure. Huckabee and O’Reilly don’t really care if a woman’s shaking her ass and tits all over the place; they just want to make sure she’s doing it for a MAN’S pleasure—not because the woman wants to be sexual on her own terms. When Miley Cyrus was twerking, you could see O’Reilly salivating and drooling over the barely out of her teens girl working it; even while he was denouncing her behavior, you KNOW he had copies of her “racy” videos at home—for “educational” purposes, of course (right along with his loofah and falafels). You have every right to agree with Huckabee and O’Reilly—just remember, their “complaints” about “over-sexualization” are NOT coming from the same place as yours.

To jim armstrong: I’m not sure why you wrote “Your Mr Jindal.” I’m here to tell you he is NOT “our” Mr Jindal. He’s solely the problem of the people in Louisiana who were stupid enough to elect him to office. (And considering the people of Louisiana have allowed the Duck Dynasty idiots to claim the state as theirs, you’ve got to think the state is overflowing with stupid and lacking anything remotely resembling “good sense.”)

A little follow-up on mj’s comment about Hawaii. The oh-so-very white Bette Midler has publicly commented on how she faced discrimination—as a Jewish white girl—when she lived in Hawaii (note, she was born in Honolulu and graduated from high school there, and attended a couple of semesters of college at the University of Hawaii).

So, if a white girl could suffer bouts of prejudice in Hawaii, it’s not that big of a stretch that a young half-Black man would as well.

It’s also worth pointing out—just to tweak D’Souza’s nose—that Obama is LITERALLY an “African-American.” Far more so than the majority of African-Americans in this country (since his father was actually from Africa and his mother was from America).

It’s just too bad that the FCC can’t be enabled to go after deceptive programming the way the FTC can go after deceptive advertising.

We really need laws regulating what can be allowed within a news program (or network) and still be considered news, rather than propaganda.

Even a return to the Fairness Doctrine (killed by Ronald Reagan) and applied to cable news, as well as network news, would be a step in the right direction. (And isn’t it a bit ironic that it was only after the Fairness Doctrine was abolished that the right-wing started claiming the news was “biased” to the left? If the right hadn’t been so gung-ho in doing away with the Fairness Doctrine, the news wouldn’t have gone “hard left,” thus necessitating the rise of FoxNoise. The real irony is that FoxNoise only developed because the right-wing didn’t like the government’s demand for “fair and balanced” reporting.)

So, I’m sure that the locations of these alleged Muslim paramilitary camps have been duly reported to the FBI. Right?

It would be nice, however, if FoxNoise and its guests were as concerned about the RIGHT-WING paramilitary groups (including the “Minute Men”)—groups have which increased over the past 6 years (since that “colored man” had the audacity to set up house on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue).