Sentinals join the wolves in fooling and fleecing the flock. Great society indeed.

If Helen Thomas had said anything half as offensive as the everyday bilge from Beck, Hannity, O’Reilly, and co. I’d have lost all my respect for her – but it still wouldn’t mean that unlike that undistinguished rabble, she ought to be sent home to wherever some one else thinks she should call home and/or her place of origin.

Lost in the maelstrom was the fact that she said that Israel should get the hell out of Palestine and I and the majority of the world heartily agree. The world would be a lot safer and better place if the nasty, war mongering, murdering effin’ bastards from Israel would get the hell back to their own piece of land and stop being so effin’ belligerent.

Helen Thomas was the last, and only real journalist, stalking the WH and the crooks therein. It should come as no surprise, considering that she is a favourite target of the righteous wing, that she has been ousted for telling the bloody truth. Of course being a woman did not help!

Israel’s defenders use the same techniques verbally that Israel uses militarily: provoke trouble, attack the victim. Repeat.

What Helen said was not even close to the hate spewed by Ann Coulter.
Helen is an old woman. Society considers old women worthless.

Helen was also right.

Amusingly your link takes us to an article that is, in the first paragraph, grammatically incorrect.

Dumb remark. She should have said that the only fair solution is a one state, one person one vote, secular democracy. Everyone who will play by those rules can stay and the others should go live somewhere where they find agreement with the religious and dogmatic views of society.

Religion is such a divisive force in the world. Nothing beats it for causing people to hate each other.

Slobodan Netanyahu is chuckling today.

Between the pandering to Israel, pandering to AIPAC, pandering to various versions and guises of god and pandering to their corporate bosses, it is no wonder the Congressional chickens have no time to see to the needs of the electorate.

I must say that, for those of us that are atheist, anti-war, pro-Palestine and pro-union Congressional representation is a sad joke. And, as for main stream media, well, Chomsky was denied access to Israel, and hardly a peep was to be heard about it in the client state of america, an american citizen was murdered by Israeli pirates in international waters and the was nary a peep about it over here and Helen Thomas gets the boot for speaking the truth and is castigated by the main street press rather than being praised for exercising her freedom of speech.

WTF.

A 90 year old woman who has more experience in life and reality than most expresses a sentiment, and she is hung by a Rabbi?

When the oppressed become the oppressors and the previously oppressed now oppress, moral credibility is lost. You see Helen Thomas is old enough to remember Warsaw. Irony when the descendants of oppressed people forget their own oppression and do same in an amazing display of “one side situation ethics?” What offends the conscience is the utter arrogance of those who forget history. History HT will never forget, but apparently and conveniently forgotten by the Israeli leadership! To Life, not fuckheads…………

How about Bill Maher? What he said (that the 9/11 terrorists weren’t cowards) got him fired as well. The list is endless. Conservatives speak hatred and nothing happens. Someone on the left slips up and they’re history. I’m even going to include Imus. What he said was hateful but he was very critical of Bush and they must have been licking their chops when he made those racist comments.

Good morning, pups. It’s Brooks and Herbert today. Bobo is standing four square for education in the humanities. In “History for Dollars” he croons that as the job market slides, it can be easy for college students picking their majors to forget why humans need the humanities. He then proceeds to natter on about what he’s terming “The Big Shaggy.” Don’t ask… Mr. Herbert, in ” ‘A Very Deep Hole’,” says .ast month’s jobless numbers are the latest evidence of the severe threat the unemployment crisis poses to the well-being of the U.S. But of course now the deficit hawks are howling so we’ll probably slide into a 30′s style depression…

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got toasted Thomas’ English muffins with your favorite jam. I’m having one of those mornings where I just want to bite someone so I think I’ll just go outside and water the plants in pots. Have a great day.

As far as that goes, remember when there was speculation that Chris Matthews was going to run for the Senate? There was a sudden outcry that he’d better resign from his job if that was his plan. Meanwhile, Huckabee, amd Palin are part of FoxNews and nobody makes a peep.
Do we not know how to play this game? Why are we always under different rules?

Let’s face facts, the United States is a country where people care more about National Hot Dog Eating Month than they do the history of what Europeans and their descendants did to the native population that occupied the land they wanted. To use the word “genocide” in context with Native Americans is forbidden as is the notion that reparations are somehow in order for a people(s) that ended up at the ass-end of history thanks to the abject racism of white people. If this wasn’t enough, Hollywood added insult to injury with its portrayal of these indigenous folk as either vicious animals, savage nobles or pathetic victims.

One other thing: I’m sure those people defending Israel and the right of Jews to settle there are as vociferous about the Armenians and what happened to them during World War One. I’m sure the U.N. will be discussing handing Mount Ararat back to the Armenians any day now.

Big Shaggy, the Bobo ideal, really is diverting, he probably thinks his careful speech patterns have hidden it all these years. Deconstructing is as usual a dead giveaway, which he fails to see.

Anyone want to do some calling for Halter?
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/53337

Gross examples of situation ethics born out of political expediency motivated by profit and fuckhead mentalities where the result is humaburger. Where the machine just grinds people and lives into “humanburger!”

Have a “humanburger” today! Or better yet a Fillet du Fish out of the Gulf?

Key to my understanding of what happened is that rabbilive.com produced a video of an impromptu interview with Helen Thomas in which the question was “What do you think about Israel?” The clip is then placed in some contextual material that accuse Helen Thomas of being a Holocaust denier. Then a week or so later Ari Fleischer ignites the firestorm by asking for Helen Thomas’s resignation because of this then obscure video. The video goes viral as does the outrage. Helen Thomas apologizes. Not good enough, says ADL. Helen Thomas retires. Ari Fleischer has done what he wanted to do when he was Bush’s press secretary–shut Helen Thomas up in Presidential press conferences. Gibbs expresses his gratitude (well not that directly).

And the Washington Times, in its classy style runs the story with the headline, “Hag Gagged”.

James O’Keefe wishes he was this good.

I doubt that Buchanan is a member of the Village in good standing. He opposed the Iraq war and has had David “Axis of Evil” Frum call him unpatriotic. He and Larry Flynt are more are less the only people with the balls to front cover the Sibel Edmonds deposition story. (How that plays out “off the record” when he’s backstage with all the Village idiots I’d love to know.) But hell, don’t let someone’s good qualities get in the way of vilification. Progressives really need to stop vilifying those who they have much in common with on the right. It is widespread, unproductive, and SERVES ONLY TO STRENGTHEN THE CORPORATISTS.

I doubt that Buchanan is a member of the Village in good standing.

Then why do we keep seeing his hateful old face?

Attaturk, you’re forgetting that in 2000 Buchanan received the votes of thousands of elderly Jewish voters in Palm Beach County. They certainly didn’t think he was anti-Semitic.

“…a video of an impromptu interview with Helen Thomas…”

So Americans should just keep their mouths shut whenever a camera is on for fear of political soundbite retribution? “THE DEATH OF FREE SPEECH” This was a political assassination of sorts by an impromptu opportunist in the form of a Rabbi? How disgusting! You would think a “Rabbi,” would exhibit more wisdom and empathy than this particular Rabbi who I know nothing about! Seems to be a rather classless act on the Rabbi’s part!

Perhaps it depends on how problematic one finds Buchanan’s defense/apologies for Nazi/fascist thinking, and for some of the blood-drenched folks (living and dead) who come out of that tradition. In determining whether to associate/ally with media people, a lot of lefties find that sort of thing a show-stopper.

Maybe it’s like finding someone who offers promise as a soul mate – you like the same music, movies, food, people… hell, you even find yourself finishing each other’s sentences. However, you just can’t get around all those unexplained corpses buried in shallow graves in your new-found companion’s basement.

What to do… what to do…

What is really pretty fucking amazing today actually is that if you do a google search for “Pat Buchanan Helen Thomas” you will find about a half a dozen articles with more or less the same title: “If no Helen, why Pat?” Most of them are just attacks on Buchanan with almost no defense of Thomas.

Well, I find the neoconservatives FAR creepier and I don’t think that they would let their kids be bussed across town, so I’ll have to go with the distasteful conservative over the treasonous hypocrite neocon. If the Rachel worshipers prefer someone who likes war in Mesopotamia because he pays lip service to gay rights, that is their choice.

Oh, I suppose the powers that be consider him a convenient distraction. Get people prattling on about him while war breaks out and the environment goes to hell. Something like that.

Exactly. The visual cue was the position of the close-up camera angle. A set-up job. This was an intentionally biased, carefully staged trap. Brings to mind the Stanford Binet tests of mid-twentieth century where you lost IQ points if youmarked the black and white drawing of the woman with the long nose and a wart was beautiful, instead of the drawing of the younger woman with flowing hair. Even if it looked like your loving grandmother!

But the fact remains for me that Helen Thomas was right: millions of Jewish citizens of European countries in the 1930s and forties were occupied and murdered in their own countries of Germany, Poland…

May Helen Thomas wake up this morning with the joy of living she deserves, free of the burden of truth-telling to an ungrateful American citizenry. American media does not deserve her energy.

In fact they didn’t even think he was Pat Buchanan.

Your comments highlight something that has plagued the liberal/progressive/leftie community for what seems forever: how can effective working coalitions be built between different – but mostly allied – constituencies, when there always seems to be one issue or another that is a deal-breaker for the individual groups? It is extremely difficult to compromise on issues that may be fundamental to your very own life’s work.

As it stands, I don’t think hooking up with Buchanan specifically would offer much help, but for me at least, there are other paleos out there who offer more promise, though they may not be as well known as Buchanan. Example: I don’t know if retired USAF officer Karen Kwiatkowski is a paleo or a libertarian – she has been published in the paleo magazine American Conservative, but from her bio she has some association with Lew Rockwell’s folks – but she is definitely the kind of person with whom I could make common cause, despite likely disagreeing with her on a lot of issues outside of the national security/defense arena.

Markos (he of Daily Kos) brought this up in his talk yesterday at that progressive conference who’s name I forget (I only caught a snippet on C-SPAN radio). Markos talked about trying to get rid of some Congressional Republicans – the former Rhode Island moderate Republican Senator was a specific example – but women’s and environmental groups would break off, saying they had to be loyal to the Republican in return for the support he had provided them over the years. Of course, if the Republican had won, that would have kept James Imhofe in as chairman of the Environmental & Public Works committee, defeating the whole purpose of the initiative Kos addressed.

So yep, need to keep eyes on the prize, long view, etc.

The rabbi’s video would have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for Ari Fleischer.

“Progressives really need to stop vilifying those who they have much in common with on the right. It is widespread, unproductive, and SERVES ONLY TO STRENGTHEN THE CORPORATIST.”

Yes focus on those issues which effect all Americas and waste liberty and grind people into human burger. First start with energy and its cost to society, relative to the benefits realized. America needs to “War” on energy. WWII and America’s industrial might propelled USA into the spotlight and out of the depression. Energy Independence is “liberation” from the corporatist. $147.00 per barrel oil proved this as our economy “TANKED” after energy cost sucked up all the cash!!!! Now BP a foreign corporation rapes America like a cheap whore while we still waste .75 cents of every dollar we spend on the product they commodities then monopolized Like tea! Maybe the tea party people can understand this rather than blaming say ” illegal immigrants,” or the Irish or the Germans or the Jews or the Italians or the Haitians or the Chinese and government? The tea partiers are just as much victims of “Corporate Sodomy” as everyone else. Their anger is misplaced and misdirected almost like a dirty brown shirt seeking to scapegoat, opposed to taking off the glasses of myopic self interest for a more “Enlighten Perspective?” Like Jefferson and Madison and the control of corporate identities undo influence of the political procedures via cash!! Yes legalized bribery which benefit the corporatist, keeps the career politician in office who then delivers the American people into a state of servitude to corporations as the colonist where mecantiled for the benefit of a King and his corporate cohorts in colonial crime! A little history lesson for those that party with tea! Like Building Bridges?

Which Pat Buchanan has admitted, himself. But reality basis seems not to enter into this particular line of chatter.

Ah, closer reading of Kwiatkowski’s Wikipedia entry reveals she is definitely libertarian-flavored. {for the record}

You mean Lincoln Chafee? What I would like to see is a bit more recognition the part of true progressives that there are people who pretend to be in their camp, but do everything they can divide and distract. Buchanan is not a fucking issue today. He hasn’t said shit lately. But here we are talking about him. He is a distraction. This whole thing is a manufactured distraction. If he was saying how great BP was or something, I would gladly join in ripping him a new one. But that’s not what is going on. This site has plenty of people playing distraction games. I just wish that there was a bit more awareness of this. It is relentless subject changing. Vilification of people who like us what to audit the fed? Relentless divisiveness. All of it just serves the status quo.

Yes, thank you, Lincoln Chafee is the name that had slipped my mind.

I don’t disagree with you on your basic point*, I’m just saying that what is a distraction for you or me might well be a fundamental core issue for someone else, or the organization they belong to. Part of the challenge is convincing such people that they need to make what for them is a gut-wrenching decision that will hurt in the short term, for longer term fundamental benefit. [Is that what's called "politics of the personal"? I think so...]

*Just listening to Amy Goodman, who interviewed a long-retired US Senator (South Dakota), and first Arab-American to achieve such a position. He made the very point you are making – and it’s a valid point – that hasbara operatives for the Israeli dominionists have seized on the Helen Thomas business as a useful distraction for taking eyes of the flotilla fiasco and the Gaza human rights atrocity in general. (Of course, these very clever and diligent folks would have found something else to serve as a distraction, if HT hadn’t popped off.)

Yes, yes, and in more ordinary times, the considerations of the politics of the personal would make perfect sense, but these are extraordinary times and the progressives need to understand that anybody who brings up say an issue from the culture wars of the 90′s is most likely just trying to screw them in a big way. Gay rights don’t mean shit without the rule of law. And the rule of law don’t mean shit if toxic dispersant is raining down on your fucking head.

“And the rule of law don’t mean shit if toxic dispersant is raining down on your fucking head.”

Corporate Sodomy…..

Stately plump Buck Muligan came from the staircase bearing a bowl of lather on which a razor and brush lay crossed.

Something like that.

As I mentioned in my Seminal diary last night, why is the ADL’s Abe Foxman far more forgiving of Catholic League president Bill Donohue’s long history of anti-Semitism than that which he claims exists in Bill Moyers and Helen Thomas? For the same reason that Pat Buchanan and Bill O’Reilly are given free passes on it (the only time there was a mass remembering of Buchanan’s anti-Semitism was when he came out against Bush’s invading Iraq, but even that didn’t suffice to keep him in media exile for long) — It’s OK, if you’re a Republican.

Understood. It then comes down to a matter of cold political calculation, once it is decided that the issue(s) is/are that big. To wit: can you do what needs doing without those would-be allies who are living in an earlier decade, and in a worst-case scenario, can you succeed with the potential of their active hostility, in the face of your rejection of their concerns?

As a practical matter, while doing the preliminary strategic planning it should be remembered that, quite often, those living in a past decade have been around longer, and in the course of their longer life have accumulated a certain level of influence/wealth/connections/etc. They would make helpful allies, if that is possible. Have all those possibilities been explored, and deemed unworkable? And if you reject such alliances as being unworkable, can you do so without making these rejected folks your enemies, and have their influence/wealth/connections turned against you?

Why was there a mass remembering when he came out against the Iraq war?

Yeah, Abe Foxman is a piece of work. If truth-in-advertising were law, he and his ADL would be labeled as the AIPAC Annex or something similar.

Well, I’m finding myself agreeing with you a lot more than usual this morning. A pleasant surprise.

Really, the Pro Defamation League. Who has defamed more people than Foxman? Any guess how many times a day he says “anti-Semite”? But no worries, the NYT will print his letter every time.

OK, enough. Time for bed. I stayed up till 7:30 yesterday. Today, I’m cutting it back to 6!

Thanks for the discussion. Sleep well.

I’ll forgive Pat Buchanan a lot because he fought to prevent the invasion of Iraq with everything he had; he started his own magazine to that end, and it’s occasionally a very good one.

That said, it baffles me that he is still given a spot to opine. I’m convinced it’s a kind of inoculation against criticism of Israel and our relationship with Israel: hold Buchanan up and say, see, this is the kind of person who criticizes the alliance.

What’s really offensive among our media and political class is the notion that personal prejudices are a worse sin that supporting the unprovoked invasion of another country; indeed, having supported the invasion of Iraq isn’t even considered a sin by them.

Lastly, it was inevitable that another Mel Gibson would be found in the wake of the flotilla massacre. Again, the personal prejudice of a famous person is deemed a worse sin than killing a bunch of people (Mel Gibson’s “rant” very quickly superseded the Israeli bombing of a shelter in Lebanon in 2006).

Hateful prejudice should be condemned wherever it is found. It contributes nothing positive to anything or anybody.

A reporter, as opposed to a columnist, has no business holding hateful opinions and pretending to be an impartial observer (which is what a reporter is supposed to be).

It’s really not that complicated.

Helen Thomas’s insensitive and inappropriate comment was “singular” and wrong. She apologized. Can you provide direct links to the comments that you state that Buchanan has made.

Also wondering why we are not witnessing more people who are focused on the outrageously insensitive, inappropriate and brutal comments made by Netanayahu, Micheal Oren, and many others about the brutal executions of the men on the Mari Marvara” Amazing how our media and so many others who have been completely diverted from those brutal murders by the Israeli army to the inappropriate comment of Helen Thomas

Since Obama took office, we’ve seen the greatest setback to reproductive freedom (HCR)in 35 years, expansion of offshore drilling, approval for new nuclear plants, the escalation of the Afghanistan War,more illegal detention, more torture, and the railroad-to-retirement of Helen Thomas.

Now that’s Progress!

If you’re a Teabagger.

Hateful prejudice should be condemned wherever it is found.

Just make sure not to look too hard for it. It might be found in the Israeli cabinet or prime minister’s office.

Look, Helen Thomas was a kind of talisman at this point for the other journalists — as long as their was one combative, cranky questioner their collective conscience could be clean. At the same time she was untelegenic and unsophisticated and they could sort of look down their nose at the uncouthness of that combativeness while they fellated power. Now she’s disgraced herself with these bigoted comments. Good bye.

But give me a break. If Helen Thomas didn’t exist she would have to be invented. TarheelDem’s comment at #17 is the most illuminating comment on this thread.

“Insensitive” and “inappropriate” are inadequate descriptions of a bigoted, inflammatory comment.

That said, the bigoted inflammatory comment of a ninety-year old woman shouldn’t be a greater story than bigoted, inflammatory policies and bigoted, inflammatory bombs and bullets.

I don’t disagree with a single word that you or Tarheel wrote.

Thanks. What a nice way to conclude an exchange.

Railroad, yes. Gibbs was giddy. Let it be said, however, (and I am a Helen admirer/saw her speak to review one of her books) that the suggestion to send Jews back to Germany is beyond any bounds of the defensible. The whole event is more than sad, as Laura Ingraham gets away with cruel trash everyday.

I agree on all points. Helen was/is a voice I want to hear – even when I disagree – and I liked her. And while her view is not a majority view, the send them back (or kill them variation of some in Hamas) view has a large following among the EU left and even some on FDL – and that hate is ignored so conversation can continue.

As someone noted “‘Progressives really need to stop vilifying those who they have much in common with on the right. It is widespread, unproductive, and SERVES ONLY TO STRENGTHEN THE CORPORATISTS.” – and I agree – corporate control is the common enemy.

Two state solution is the only logical solution – Helen’s comments did not advance that solution – but I still love her and wish her well.

“corporate control is the common enemy.”

Nothing is truer and better-directed as an organizing principle than that. And I continue to believe that the only way we have any prayer of stopping the corporate juggernaut, of getting the numbers that are required, is to form an alliance with those from the right who care about reasonableness enough to set aside their most passionate extreme positions (as we must also do), and unite for anti-corporate, clean govt, rule of law principles that will benefit all regular people. The corporate strategy has always been, “Divide and conquer.” The antidote to that is, “Unite annd conquer.” Eyes, meet prize.

I was hoping she would join the team on some hot new news website.

Thank you for the context.

I also am curious about what happened to Helen Thomas just prior to a camera almost being stuck up her nose, by someone with a Bill O’Reilly belligerent stalker attitude. I know Helen Thomas is a Lebanese-American, so she obviously would have some feelings about Lebanon being treated as mincemeat by Syria, Hezbollah and Israel over the years. But it sounds like she was reacting more to the guy shoving a camera in her face, and what I suspect happened just before this filmed encounter.

In my view, Helen Thomas is still a National Treasure. God bless your, dear lady, God bless you.