Anti-Muslim Violence & Deep State Quackery

Finsbury Park van driver Darren Osborne

The popular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took to Twitter this morning to issue a strong condemnation of the van attack that took place early Monday morning; reaffirming Canadian support for London and the UK.

But while Donald Trump was quick to condemn the London Bridge attack, there's been relative radio silence from America's most obnoxious famous Twitter user about the Finsbury Park attack.

Which, given the fact that Trump's outrage is entirely conditional on the ethnicity of the victims and the terrorist, isn't surprising.

According to the BBC, 47-year-old Darren Osborne, a father of four from Cardiff, Wales, has been tentatively identified as the man who intentionally drove a white van into a group of innocent people standing in front of a building in the Finsbury Park section of north London.

His target? A group of Muslims who'd just left evening Ramadan prayers at their local mosque, who, according to some reports, were helping an elderly man who'd fallen when Osborne plowed into them.

Lately it seems like the people of poor old London just can't catch a break from the dark reach of hate-filled terrorism that has claimed so many innocent lives and left so many injured in recent weeks.

Osborne (a neighbor described him as "a complete C***") added to that gruesome tally by killing one and injuring at least 11 before he was hauled out of the van by stunned onlookers who held him and fended off a mob of outraged bystanders who were trying to tear him apart while he reportedly yelled, "I'm going to kill all Muslims!"

Did Osborne think his decision to attack innocent Muslims, would somehow "even the scales" or bring some measure of righteous retribution for the victims of the recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester?

17 YO Nabra Hassanen & Darwin Martinez Torres

If he did he apparently wasn't alone.

On Sunday, just a day before Osborne's van attack in London, the body of a young girl tentatively identified as 17-year-old Nabra Hassanen, was discovered in a pond in Fairfax County, Virginia.  

According to an NBC.com article by Kalhan Rosenblatt, Hassnen had been reported missing after she was attacked by 22-year-old Darwin Martinez Torres.

After breaking the ritual fast of Ramandan, Hassanen and a group of friends were walking to an all-night prayer vigil when some kind of confrontation ensued that prompted Torres to jump out of his vehicle, assault Hassanen with a baseball bat, then throw her in the car and drive off.

While Loudon County Sheriff Michael Chapman expressed shock over the killing at a press conference, police investigators are not yet confirming that the incident was motivated by Hassanen's race or religion - but I'm not buying that.

This was a teenager with her friends observing one of the most scared religious holidays of the year on her way to a prayer wearing the traditional Hijab (head covering).

Frankly the idea that Torres stopped his car, jumped out, assaulted her with a bat and threw her into the car with a group of witnesses watching because it was some random assault is ludicrous.

Particularly given the current anti-Muslim rhetoric in this country being peddled by the Trump administration, many Republican politicians and right-wing media.

Lately the conservative talking heads who pump content into the bowels of right wing media have been far more obsessed with the mythical entity they've christened the "Deep State" than they are with the hate-based killings of Muslims and people of color both here and abroad that have dominated headlines recently.

Fox host & conservative quack Sean Hannity

As MediaMatters.org reported today, on Fox & Friends this morning, Fox's David Bossie is just the latest conservative figure to try and float the fringe-theory that the investigation into Russian interference with U.S. elections and Russia's ties to the no less than 11 members of the Trump administration, are all part of a Deep State plot.

Which is starting to have a rather unpleasantly familiar stench to it.

Increasingly this Deep State nonsense is sounding suspiciously like Senator Joe McCarthy's paranoid fear-mongering about communist infiltration of the U.S. government in the 1950's.

Last Friday the Hill.com reported that increasingly-unhinged Fox host Sean Hannity did a whole monologue about how left-leaning figures within various department of the U.S. government are somehow plotting to leak information to media outlets that's damaging to Trump in order to promote a Russia investigation that some right-wing conservatives dismiss as "fake news".

Hannity further prodded his conspiracy-friendly audience by warning them that the Deep State isn't just a danger to Trump, "These people have now become a clear and present danger to this country and to you."

(Seriously, ya gotta love the "These people" coded-reference and the Tom Clancy reference all in one easy-to-digest soundbite - no wonder this delusional wind-bag is bleeding advertisers.)

Personally I think all this Deep State drivel is nothing more than a bunch of unsubstantiated bunk being promoted by right-wing media as a desperate attempt to undermine the multiple investigations into Russian interference and ties to the Trump administration.

Aaron Zebley

Investigations being conducted by both Republican and Democratic members of the House and Senate in addition to the FBI and special independent counsel Robert Mueller.

As Mueller, a seasoned federal investigator with impeccable credentials, assembles what Wired.com's Garret Graff described last week as an "Investigatory Dream Team", the right-wing rhetoric about the Deep State gets more desperate and loony.

If you get a chance, check out Graff's Wired.com piece on crack investigator and former FBI agent Aaron Zebley - those rumors about panicky Trump officials looking into ways to fire Mueller start to make more sense.

The deaths of innocent Muslims here and in England are clearly far from the radar of the Trump administration these days.

Lately he seems far more interested in yelling at his TV, tweeting nonsensical fakery about how his poll numbers are better than President Obama's were, and acting almost clinically detached from the deaths of seven U.S. sailors on the U.S.S. Fitzpatrick.

No, the right-wing apparently has bigger fish to fry than at least having the decency to even acknowledge the deaths of innocent Muslims - unspeakable tragedies that simply don't fit into the current conservative narrative.

Bah Humbug: Republican's AHCA Chameleon

Albert Finney as Ebenezer Scrooge in the British 
musical Scrooge released in 1970

If Charles Dicken's fictional 19th century English curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge could somehow step into a time machine and morph into 21st century America, one of the first things he'd do is join the Republican Party.

That's my impression anyway after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released it's analysis of the Republican's American Health Care Act (AHCA) earlier today - revealing that a staggering 23 million Americans would lose their healthcare by 2026.


True to the current Scrooge-like nature of today's GOP, the motley collection of conservative politicians, policy wonks, industry lobbyists and Grover Norquistian anti-tax "starve the beast" zealots who drafted this monstrosity, Republicans are dutifully trying to spin it as a measure to curb deficit spending.

While it would (supposedly) trim $119 billion from the deficit, it shifts massive costs back onto individual states, many of whom might be forced to raise state taxes.

It could be one of the most heartless, compassion-free pieces of legislation ever devised by Congress.

As Danielle Kurtzleben reported for NPR.org late this afternoon, the CBO score reveals that the AHCA would take an axe to Medicaid, cutting $884 billion from one of the bedrock social safety nets in the U.S. that provides healthcare coverage for an estimated 80 million American people.

The AHCA would also cut an additional $276 billion by sharply reducing the insurance subsidies that are one of the core foundations of the Affordable Care Act, putting the cost of healthcare out of reach for millions of people.

Take a wild guess who gets the bulk of the tax cut under the
Republican's American Health Care Act

As the Tax Policy Center reported earlier today, the AHCA is not a really a healthcare bill at all.

By capitalizing on years of Republican-created hysteria, lies and disinformation about the Affordable Care Act, House Speaker Paul Ryan and his GOP cohorts on the Hill have created a transparent trojan horse.


It's a legislative chameleon.

A carefully crafted piece of chicanery intentionally designed to dupe the working class masses who fell for Trump in the 2016 election into supporting a massive tax cut for the top 1%.

Remember all those enraged working and middle-class Americans in places like Kentucky and Ohio
who spent years listening to right-wing media's distortion of the Affordable Care Act?

The people who raved about fake "death panels" and vilified President Obama for his belief that all Americans are entitled to decent healthcare?

Once Trump was in office, poll results released by Morning Consult in February revealed that a staggering 35% of people surveyed did not realize that Obamacare and the Affordable Care Act were in fact the same thing - really.

Take a minute to watch Jimmy Kimmel's informal street survey back in 2013 for yourself; considering the scope and importance of the legislation this is actually pretty scary.

Anti-Obama Tea Party protester in 2012

A sizable number of those folks got access to healthcare through the insurance subsidies and healthcare exchanges established by the ACA.

Yet they raged against Obama all the same (in large part because of his skin color) even though he fought tooth and nail with Democrats to give them access to healthcare that couldn't be taken away because of pre-existing conditions.

Republican politicians call their baby the American Health Care Act.

But it's not legislation designed to provide healthcare at all.

It's essentially a piece of tax cut legislation that takes about $1.2 trillion from Medicaid and insurance subsidies and gives the vast majority of it to the top 1% in the form of a massive federal tax cut.

The numbers released by the CBO today confirm that.

I'm really not sure why Republicans have such disdain for the poor and working and middle-class in America, to me it's more than just money even though that's a big part of it.

There's something distorted, angry, cruel and dark that seems fueled by vengeance about the Republican vision for this country.

It's a toxic perception of America parroted by right-wing media constantly.

Just look at Fox News host Sean Hannity's continuing efforts to fan the flames of the widely debunked Seth Rich "assassination" fake-news conspiracy being bandied about by fringe right-wingers desperate to deflect attention from Trump's myriad ties to Russia.

Right-wing nut job Alex Jones

Even Fox News denounced the story as fake and Rich's family publicly pleaded with right-wing media to stop pushing the story.

A grassroots social media campaign to begin launching a targeted boycott of the corporate sponsors of Hannity's show began spreading and Fox News execs finally called the delusional Hannity in yesterday and told him to drop it - no doubt after fielding calls from nervous advertisers.

Even worse was the detached host of InfoWars Alex Jones calling the victims of the horrific terrorist attack in Manchester (many of whom were teens) "liberal trendies" to peddle one of his loony conspiracy theories.

Leave it to a nut job like him to find a liberal plot in teens going to an Ariana Grande concert - pathetic.

The proposed 2018 budget released by the White House calling for $3.6 trillion in spending cuts is a reflection of that kind of unhinged vicious ideology and lack of compassion.

A crockpot of cuts to educational programs, after-school initiatives, college tuition assistance, college loan subsidies, SNAP assistance and food stamps for God's sake.

At the annual benefit gala for the Children's Health Fund on Tuesday Hillary Clinton ripped into Republican's budget priorities, as Time.com reported she said:

"This administration and Republicans in Congress are mounting an onslaught against the needs of children and people with disabilities, women and seniors. (Trump's budget) shows an unimaginable level of cruelty and lack of imagination and disdain for the struggles of millions of Americans, including millions of children."

Unimaginable level of cruelty is probably putting it lightly - even Scrooge came around in the end.

Right Wing Media Pundits Use Canadian Terror Tragedy To Attack President Obama

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, killed at the Canadian War Memorial on Wednesday

On some level you have to admire the vacant, uninformed audacity of the modern American conservative movement's efforts to energize their aging and shrinking voter base.

When it comes to their ceaseless quest to find ways to blame virtually any event that takes place on President Obama, there is no level to which they will not sink.
 
While many people in North America and around the globe over the past 48 hours were quietly keeping Canadian soldier Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a 24 year-old reservist who served with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, in their thoughts and prayers and struggling to understand his tragic death at the hands of a recent Muslim convert with a history of drug abuse, Fox News was busy concocting ways to rewrite the narrative in such a way as to blame Obama for it.

Let's review. A radical Muslim gunman named Michael Zehaf-Bibeau opens fire on Cpl. Cirillo as he stands guard over the Canadian War Memorial at a complex in Ottawa, killing him. The killer then races into the nearby Canadian parliament building but is killed in a violent exchange of gunfire with members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This incident came just two days after another radicalized Muslim named Martin Couture-Rouleau used a car to run over two Canadian soldiers in Quebec, killing one of them and seriously injuring the other. 

As reported by Emily Arrowood and Lis Power on  MediaMatters.org earlier this afternoon, despite President Obama specifically mentioning the words "terrorist activity" or "terror" no less than three times during a press conference on Wednesday, the talking heads on the Fox News Channel were busy venting their outrage NOT at Michael Zihaf-Bibeau (the Canadian-born man who used a gun to take the life of Cpl. Cirillo), but at a completely FALSE narrative concocted by right-wing media based on the lie that suggests President Obama won't call terrorist incidents terrorist incidents.  

Consider the transcript of this exchange on 'Fox & Friends' between host Steve Doocy and Fox News "legal analyst" Peter Johnson (as posted on MediaMatters.org):

DOOCY: "Should this serve as a wake-up call to Canada and America, and could the president's failure to recognize terror as terror put us at risk? Peter Johnson, Jr. joins us live."

JOHNSON: "We need to take the wake-up call and say 'don't call back in five minutes.' The president, unfortunately Steve, and our friends out there this morning, has not recognized terror as terror -- Benghazi, Fort Hood, the Little Rock 2009 massacre of our American soldiers here on American soil, Alton Nolan and the beheading as you were talking about before. So the first step is recognition of the problem. We need to be strong and powerful enough to say yeah, there is a problem and we're going to contain it here in the United States."

"But the problem is, we haven't recognized it and called it as such. So today, the president needs to recognize this as terrorism. He didn't recognize it yesterday, although the Canadian prime minister did, and the world did, and anyone that could read about it or see it on the FoxNews.com site or on our television could say, what do you think it is? This is a radicalized Islamist terrorist." 
 [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 10/23/14]

To repeat, President Obama used the words "terrorist activity" or "terror" three times during his press conference on the day of the attack, so what the Hell are these people on Fox even talking about?

This lunacy wasn't limited to 'Fox & Friends' by a long-shot. On the day of the actual shooting Fox News host Sean Hannity, Fox White House correspondent Ed Henry and host Andrea Tantaros ALL repeated variations on the same theme, taking care to tie it into the Benghazi incident in Libya - as did everyone's favorite gas bag Rush Limbaugh.

The Media Matters article points out an important and glaring weakness of the Republican party and today's American conservative movement - their current political platform is largely based off two things:

1. A highly-distorted mix of theory and opinion disguised as policy (trickle-down economic theory, right-to-work laws, "voter fraud", repealing the Affordable Care Act).

2. And using an irrational and virulent hatred of the President as a rallying point - an unprecedented and disrespectful hatred largely based on portraying him as an "other"; which has the effect of laying out a welcome mat for intolerance and bigotry within the Republican party.

The GOP has shrunk to using Benghazi like some sort of all-purpose Magic Bullet, invoking it like some kind of mantra or charm that will simultaneously zap the President's popularity and take the shine off Hillary Clinton's star.

Even though the actual FACTS of the Benghazi incident are totally different than how conservatives USE Benghazi, as the transcript above shows, they have the gall to cite Benghazi as if it was in any way relevant to the terrible events that have taken place in two large Canadian cities in the past few days.

Were these attacks in Canada actually linked to ISIS threats of retribution against any nation supporting the US attacks in Iraq and Syria?

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was born in Canada and, as evidence suggests, was a loner who only recently became involved with radical Islam - yet with barely any facts known and the investigation just starting conservatives want to blame this senseless attack on the President?

There's something distasteful and cowardly in the way Republicans are quick to use the tragic deaths of innocent people who died at the hands of terrorist killers as political red meat to toss to their constituents.

Why didn't Hannity or Limbaugh talk about the fact that Cpl Cirillo was the father of a young son? Or that he loved dogs and frequently posted photos of his beloved pets online?

They're much to busy trying to capitalize on the fear generated by these unprecedented (for Canadians) terrorist attacks as a means to further channel their loathing for the President.

For conservative media pundits there's no room to honor a fallen soldier who was standing guard at a memorial to fallen soldiers; conservatives can't miss the opportunity to use the brutality of this latest terrorist incident to dishonor the leader of the country they claim to love.