ratboy's anvil 2

God damn. And for good reason.

A Michael Jackson Tribute

Written and recorded within hours of his death.

(CNN)Many fans will always remember where they were when they heard the "King of Pop" had died. The rapper The Game will always remember what he did afterward.

That same day, Thursday, June 25, he rounded up some famous friends, recorded a song, shot a music video and got a Michael Jackson tattoo etched on his upper arm. Actually, he got the tattoo while he was in the studio recording the track. Some people know how to multitask.

The tune, "Better on the Other Side," isn't available for sale yet -- although he's hoping it will hit iTunes very soon. Because the record company was caught off guard, it is still playing catch-up. Game says all proceeds from the sale of the single will be donated to Michael Jackson's family.

The companion music video is all over YouTube. In it, the 29-year-old shares the spotlight with Chris Brown, who sings the hook as a counterpoint to Game's rap. It's the first project Brown has appeared in since he pleaded guilty to assaulting his former girlfriend, Rihanna.

The video, in various forms, had received more than 750,000 views as of Thursday evening -- not bad for less than a week in release.

In the following interview, The Game (born Jayceon Taylor) recounts how the project came together -- with a little help from Lady Luck and the muse of Michael Jackson.

Just when you thought it was safe to explore the sewer system again comes this.

But a sewer monster, it is not.

The city of Raleigh says the video - of a 6-inch sanitary sewer line - was taken in April during an inspection of a privately maintained sewer line in Cameron Village.

Ed Buchan, an environmental coordinator with the city's Public Utilities Department, says the mass is believed to be tubifex worms, which form clusters or colonies of about a half-inch to 1-inch in diameter.

Also known as "sludge worms," they are normally found in sediment of ponds and are sold as fish food in both live and dried forms.

Thomas Kwak, a biology professor at North Carolina State University's Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, however, says the so-called monster is actually a cluster of invertebrates called byrozoan, which are commonly found in both the sea and fresh water environments.

It's unclear how they got into the sewer system, but Kwak said it isn't surprising. The byrozoan feed off bacteria and thrive in cold, dark environments. Those in the video are smaller than a fist, but could grow as large as a watermelon, he said.

"These organisms are completely harmless," Kwak said. "It's another interesting aspect of nature that we don't' get to see every day."

Buchan says that because the worm-like creatures don't pose a threat to the city's water quality, the city isn't requiring York Properties, which manages the system and Cameron Village, to remove them.

Oh yeah?...well I want to know why it pulses like that and think they'd better keep their eye on these things. What if the Republicans decide to run one for office in 2010?

quote:

Originally posted by The Right Stuff:
RE: Link

Nancy Simmons falls into the same trap as many liberal loonies.

She confuses rhetoric with responsibility.

Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and many other people spoke out against Tiller the baby killer, as they are opposed to killing babies period.

Because someone murders another person, and has the same opinions as another person(priests/pastors, friends, someone across the nation they've never met, TV/movie personalities, etc), or that of an organization (Operation Rescue, Churches, etc) doesn't mean it's their fault or an organization's fault when an individual breaks the law.

It's that stupid guilt by association, regardless of the connection, stinkin thinkin.

It's as stupid as saying Sheriff Judd is responsible when someone kills a child molester.

There is a time when the rhetoric does equate to responsibility.

A good example was given when Thomas Beckett was murdered.

The common sense difference between the knights who killed Becket and the ONE individual who killed Tiller the baby killer is that King Henry had authority/control/leadership over those knights, whereas neither limbaugh or o'reilly have any authority over the guy who killed Tiller the baby killer.

Rhetoric doesn't equate responsibility. Unless one is in authority over, or in charge of, the perpetrator.

My response:

Do you understand the term propaganda ?

quote:

Propaganda is communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, often presents information primarily in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

Propaganda is the deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist.

Rhetoric is the use of language as a means to persuade an audience to accept certain ideas. When that rhetoric is laden with emotional rather than rational ideas it is turned into propaganda.

"Tiller the Baby Killer" is a propaganda slogan meant to convey the idea that Dr Tiller was a monster who went around "killing babies" for money. It made use of the propaganda technique mentioned above of " presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda ."

People who use rhetorical propaganda are doing so with a conscious intent to shape the emotional climate or environment to which a listener is expected to respond. Using rhetoric as propaganda is a conscious act intended to cause an conscious response.

And that response is intended to be active, not passive. WWII Propaganda against the Jews was meant foment hate and fear based action against Jews, not a passive discomfort and dislike.

Phrases like "Tiller the Baby Killer" are an implicit, if not explicit, call to action . It is a means of demonizing Dr Tiller, reducing him to non-human status just as national propaganda does to its enemies, making an assault on him more likely and justified.

The fact that RS constantly labels homosexuals "perverts" is the same thing. Its an emotional appeal using non-rational Biblical authority to make homosexuals less than human and "unworthy" in the eyes of his God. The Biblical penalty for this sort of thing is of course death. He doesn't have to explicitly call for the death or punishment of homosexuals for this to be implicitly inferred by the text itself. So that RS can claim that he has never called for violence against gays. But in fact, that is exactly what his propaganda calls for because the authoritative basis of his rhetoric (the Bible) does it for him. He is simply hiding behind God's skirts as it were and creating a climate wherein homosexuals are more likely to be assaulted because it is emotionally justified; especially to those who are already predisposed to believe in and shape their real world actions according to Biblical authority.

For such people to claim that their rhetoric used as propaganda is somehow blameless for the active results of implicit calls to action is totally disingenuous at best and in my opinion, an act of cowardice.

Simply, words can be weapons and they can lead to injury and death. People who use them as such should be held accountable for that use.

....Unless one is in authority over, or in charge of, the perpetrator.

What do you think the purpose of propaganda is? It is to supplant the listeners rationality with emotional reactions. That IS its authority. How do you think the N.a.z.i.s got an entire nation to murder its Jews? It used rhetoric as propaganda to assert its authority over them and in turn to make them see Jews as vermin needing to be exterminated . The propaganda took over the German public's rational minds and replaced it with an emotional hatred and fear of Jews which served to justify the extermination which followed.

O'Reilly had the "authority" of his mass media position and the means to disseminate his demonizing propaganda against Dr Tiller repeatedly. RS uses the forum threads and incessant appeals to Biblical authority.

That's exactly how it is done.

If the N.a.z.i's were held accountable for the lethal results of their propaganda why should the Bush administration or O'Reilly or even RS not be?

There is a reason that there are "hate speech" laws.
It is because it is well understood that speech can lead to action.

I miss you.

Have a Happy 1

You see all God needs is to be reminded that his plan for you is wrong!

Finally!

Court declares Franken the winner of Minnesota Senate race

Minnesota's Supreme Court has dismissed former Sen. Norm Coleman's challenge to the state's November election results and declared Democratic challenger Al Franken the winner.

The unanimous opinion ruled that Franken "received the highest number of votes legally cast" and is entitled "to receive the certificate of election as United States senator from the state of Minnesota."

The former "Saturday Night Live" writer and performer had declared victory in the disputed race after a recount ended in January, but Coleman, a Republican who had been seeking a second six-year term, went to court to challenge those results.

Coleman still could attempt to take the challenge to federal courts, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, told CNN on Sunday that he would sign Franken's election certificate if the Supreme Court ordered it.

A good thing.

Ya know I was behind this guy right up to the very end where there are detonators in his bag. Not exactly college kid stuff in my day.

Cleared by a jury, man is labeled a terrorist

ARASOTA, Florida (CNN) -- Gary Meringer pulled out of his driveway in his red sedan on a rainy Florida morning. He headed south towards a federal detention center two hours away to visit Youssef Megahed.

Meringer was apprehensive, unsure of what he would say to a man with whom he'd spent a month in the same room, but had never met.

Meringer was the foreman on the jury that set Megahed free.

But, three days after Megahed was acquitted of charges of possessing and transporting explosives, he was arrested again. This time, the U.S. government wants him deported, based on evidence authorities say suggests the Egyptian-born Megahed is a terrorist, in violation of his immigration status.

"We never expected anything like this," said Megahed, reached by phone at the detention center in Moore Haven, Florida.

Neither did his jury foreman.

"I saw the story about the re-arrest, and it literally just took the air right out of my chest," Meringer said. "I could not believe what my eyes were seeing."

Before he left home, Meringer sat in his backyard with his 10-year-old daughter, Rachel. They talked about what he should say when he meets Megahed.

Meringer told the child he hoped to deliver this message: "People care about him and are rooting for him and hope things work out for the best," adding, "Other than that, I don't know what I'm going to say to him."

"Just let him know that there are people out in the world who love him and care about him," Rachel said.

The Muslim community, the jurors and the Megahed family say they believe that Youssef Megahed is a victim of profiling. They hope President Obama will intervene. Earlier in June, in his speech to the Muslim world, Obama called for an end to what he called the "cycle of suspicion."

"This is like a great starting point for the Obama administration to translate their speech and their vision, into some reality here in the U.S.," said Yahia Megahed, Youssef's brother.

Megahed came to the United States from Egypt in 1998 as a legal immigrant when he was 12. His problems started two years ago when, as an engineering student at the University of South Florida, he went on a road trip with a new friend, Ahmed Mohamed.

The men were pulled over on a highway, near Charleston, South Carolina, for speeding.

Police say they searched their vehicle and found PVC pipe with potassium nitrate inside, along with detonator cord inside one of Mohamed's bags.

The government said the materials were "low explosives." Mohamed said they were materials for homemade model rockets.

Youssef Megahed claimed he did not know that the materials were in the car.

A search of Mohamed's laptop computer found research concerning rockets and propellants and how to manufacture them, as well as information about Qassam rockets -- crude rockets used by terrorists in the Middle East, according to prosecutors.

Could've been rockets...what kind?

.

Why does this figure?

And gays are still being stonewalled.

40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans

by Frank Rich

LIKE all students caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, I was riveted by the violent confrontations between the police and protestors in Selma, 1965, and Chicago, 1968. But I never heard about the several days of riots that rocked Greenwich Village after the police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 -- 40 years ago today.

Then again, I didn't know a single person, student or teacher, male or female, in my entire Ivy League university who was openly identified as gay. And though my friends and I were obsessed with every iteration of the era's political tumult, we somehow missed the Stonewall story. Not hard to do, really. The Times -- which would not even permit the use of the word gay until 1987 -- covered the riots in tiny, bowdlerized articles, one of them but three paragraphs long, buried successively on pages 33, 22 and 19.

But if we had read them, would we have cared? It was typical of my generation, like others before and after, that the issue of gay civil rights wasn't on our radar screen. Not least because gay people, fearful of harassment, violence and arrest, were often forced into the shadows. As David Carter writes in his book "Stonewall," at the end of the 1960s homosexual sex was still illegal in every state but Illinois. It was a crime punishable by castration in seven states. No laws -- federal, state or local -- protected gay people from being denied jobs or housing. If a homosexual character appeared in a movie, his life ended with either murder or suicide. The younger gay men -- and scattered women -- who acted up at the Stonewall on those early summer nights in 1969 had little in common with their contemporaries in the front-page political movements of the time. They often lived on the streets, having been thrown out of their blue-collar homes by their families before they finished high school. They migrated to the Village because they'd heard it was one American neighborhood where it was safe to be who they were.

Truly sad. One of the greatest artists of the 20th century.

Thank you, Michael.

Peace.

hat tip to AKA Lou Too

The St Pete Times took Scientologists to task.

The Truth Rundown: mainpage with the video links

The Truth Rundown: Part 1

Death in slow motion: Part 2

Ecclesiastical justice: Part 3

About freaking time there was action on this in credibly serious situation. Enough of the jokes.

States could lose money over prison rapes

WASHINGTON - States receiving federal money for prisons could see their funding cut if they fail to adopt new measures to reduce sexual violence in correctional and detention facilities nationwide, according to a report released Tuesday.

The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission issued an extensive report, five years in making, that found that more than 60,000 inmates are sexually abused every year.

Based on a 2007 survey of tens of thousands of incarcerated people, 4.5 percent of those surveyed reported being sexually abused in the previous 12 months -- and more prisoners claimed abuse by staff than by other inmates.

The commission recommended that jails and prisons take steps to reduce rapes behind bars, including adoption of zero tolerance policies, better staff training, and improved screening to identify prisoners vulnerable to abuse.

"Individuals who are incarcerated have basic human rights," said U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton, chairman of the commission. "Just because they've committed a crime and they're incarcerated does not mean that their human dignity can be abused."

The proposed standards are being sent to Attorney General Eric Holder, who has a year to write new national standards. States will be notified of the finalized standards and then have a year to adopt them and begin complying. If they don't, they risk losing 5 percent of any federal prison grant money.

Among the commission's key findings:

• Inmates who were short, young, gay, or female were more likely to be victimized than other inmates.
• Inmates in jails reported fewer instances of rape than in prisons.
• Who gets abused depends a great deal on where they are incarcerated. Ten facilities studied had high rates, between 9 percent and almost 16 percent, whereas six facilities reported no abuse at all for the past year. The facilities or locations were not named.

The commission said prison management must show leadership in stopping such abuse. The panel's report also recommended that prison authorities adopt more internal monitoring, such as video cameras, as well as external oversight by review boards.

This crap needs to be eradicated from the services.

Christian Soldiers

By Kathryn Joyce

Ever since former president George W. Bushreferred to the war on terror as a "crusade" in the days after the September 11 attacks, many have charged that the United States was conducting a holy war, pitting a Christian America against the Muslim world. That perception grew as prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the "army of God." Although President Obama addressed the Muslim world this month in an attempt to undo the Bush administration's legacy of militant Christian rhetoric that often antagonized Muslim countries, several recent stories have framed the issue as a wider problem of an evangelical military culture that sees spreading Christianity as part of its mission.

A May article in Harper's by Jeff Sharlet illustrated a military engaged in an internal battle over religious practice. Then came news about former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Scripture-themed briefings to President Bush that paired war scenes with Bible verses. (In an e-mail published on Politico, Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn denied that the former Defense secretary had created or even seen many of the briefings.) Later in May, Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to "hunt people for Jesus."

In the aftermath of that report, the Pentagon responded that it had confiscated and destroyed the Bibles and said there was no effort to convert Afghans. But while the military dismissed the Bagram Bibles as an isolated incident, a civil-rights watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), says this is not the case. According to the group's president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command's General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion. A Defense Department spokeswoman, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, denies any knowledge of this project.

Obama is caving to vested interests when it comes to health care. Its the same old same old. As a politician he has been counseled and likely personally measured up the possible fight with the lobby powers and sees failure if he tries to take them on directly. Its likely, without a massive public outcry, that the closest we will get to a single payer system is his "government plan" alternative. Its a good ruse and wedge for later consolidation to a single payer system, but its still not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to eliminate the corporate middle man expense at all once as most other countries have already done.

Here's the thing - no matter what the propaganda from the health care lobby try to SELL you about the evils of "socialized" medicine, (which is what Medicare is), the only practical difference between our present system and a single payer system is that single payer is way cheaper and more efficient because the massive profits and expensive bureaucracy of the middle man insurance companies are taken out of the picture.

The other major expense of the present healthcare system is drugs costs, which are often more than double in the US what is paid in Canada for exactly the same drug from exactly the same company.

Why? Because Canada's single payer system allows it to act as a bulk buyer (like Walmart) that can demand cheaper prices on drugs from the pharmaceutical companies...something that the big Pharamco lobby got made illegal in the US by having it specifically written into the medical legislation passed not long ago by the Republican congress and the Bush administration.

The really sad thing is that the single payer system that most people want (including health care professionals) is not even on the table, is because the health care industry lobbies have taken control of both houses of congress.

The situation literally is that the democratic will of the people is going to be ignored over the profits of corporations. Congress does not represent the people, it represents business interests...period.

Think about that.

Also think about this, in Canada and the rest of the western world, citizens regard health as a right rather than a privilege of those who can afford it .

They also believe that its morally wrong for an huge industry to profit massively from people's illnesses. Why do we allow a system that profits from and bankrupts entire families on the simple basis that a family member got a life threatening disease? They know they have us over the proverbial barrel; are you going to let your parent or your child die, or are you going to sell the house and whatever else its takes to keep them alive? Why do we allow a system like that?

But none of it will change if we the people do not demand a single payer system. We've got to speak up to our representatives and push Obama and his administration to do the right thing by giving the people the health care system we want rather than bending to the will of the corporations.

The first step is to learn the truth about single payer health care and not be bamboozled by the people who profit from your ignorance maintained by their constant and expensive propaganda. Think of them all as seedy car salesmen, because they don't give a damn about you or your family. They're entirely it for the money and nothing else and that's a fact.

Good bye to the Greenback as the world's currency reserve. Eurasia is about to go their own way on monetary policy at a conference being held in Russia today and tomorrow. The US asked for a seat at the party and was denied entry. Think about that.

The American Empire Is Bankrupt

Chris Hedges

This week marks the end of the dollar's reign as the world's reserve currency. It marks the start of a terrible period of economic and political decline in the United States. And it signals the last gasp of the American imperium. That's over. It is not coming back. And what is to come will be very, very painful.

Barack Obama, and the criminal class on Wall Street, aided by a corporate media that continues to peddle fatuous gossip and trash talk as news while we endure the greatest economic crisis in our history, may have fooled us, but the rest of the world knows we are bankrupt. And these nations are damned if they are going to continue to prop up an inflated dollar and sustain the massive federal budget deficits, swollen to over $2 trillion, which fund America's imperial expansion in Eurasia and our system of casino capitalism. They have us by the throat. They are about to squeeze.

There are meetings being held Monday and Tuesday in Yekaterinburg, Russia, (formerly Sverdlovsk) among Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The United States, which asked to attend, was denied admittance. Watch what happens there carefully. The gathering is, in the words of economist Michael Hudson, "the most important meeting of the 21st century so far."

It is the first formal step by our major trading partners to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency. If they succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value, the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket, interest rates will climb and jobs will hemorrhage at a rate that will make the last few months look like boom times. State and federal services will be reduced or shut down for lack of funds. The United States will begin to resemble the Weimar Republic or Zimbabwe. Obama, endowed by many with the qualities of a savior, will suddenly look pitiful, inept and weak. And the rage that has kindled a handful of shootings and hate crimes in the past few weeks will engulf vast segments of a disenfranchised and bewildered working and middle class. The people of this class will demand vengeance, radical change, order and moral renewal, which an array of proto-fascists, from the Christian right to the goons who disseminate hate talk on Fox News, will assure the country they will impose.

I called Hudson, who has an article in Monday's Financial Times called "The Yekaterinburg Turning Point: De-Dollarization and the Ending of America's Financial-Military Hegemony." "Yekaterinburg," Hudson writes, "may become known not only as the death place of the czars but of the American empire as well." His article is worth reading, along with John Lanchester's disturbing exposé of the world's banking system, titled "It's Finished," which appeared in the May 28 issue of the London Review of Books.

"This means the end of the dollar," Hudson told me. "It means China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran are forming an official financial and military area to get America out of Eurasia. The balance-of-payments deficit is mainly military in nature. Half of America's discretionary spending is military. The deficit ends up in the hands of foreign banks, central banks. They don't have any choice but to recycle the money to buy U.S. government debt. The Asian countries have been financing their own military encirclement. They have been forced to accept dollars that have no chance of being repaid. They are paying for America's military aggression against them. They want to get rid of this."

China, as Hudson points out, has already struck bilateral trade deals with Brazil and Malaysia to denominate their trade in China's yuan rather than the dollar, pound or euro. Russia promises to begin trading in the ruble and local currencies. The governor of China's central bank has openly called for the abandonment of the dollar as reserve currency, suggesting in its place the use of the International Monetary Fund's Special Drawing Rights. What the new system will be remains unclear, but the flight from the dollar has clearly begun. The goal, in the words of the Russian president, is to build a "multipolar world order" which will break the economic and, by extension, military domination by the United States. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its U.S. currency. China is frantically spending its dollar reserves to buy factories and property around the globe so it can unload its U.S. currency. This is why Aluminum Corp. of China made so many major concessions in the failed attempt to salvage its $19.5 billion alliance with the Rio Tinto mining concern in Australia. It desperately needs to shed its dollars.

Let the insanity flow from this amazing video. Feel the insanity. Feel it deep within your bowels.

This is an interpretation of the shooting that occurred in D.C. at the Holocaust museum. It is the most important piece of video ever to come from Fox News.

From the Teabagging Blog:

Taken from the Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) site

Related:

This article, critical of the so-called War on Drugs from Nick Kristof of the NY Times, dovetails nicely with the recent absurd arrests of 142 people for marijuana in Florida. US drug policy is an abject failure, a massive waste of resources and an unbelievable mechanism of social destruction. Nothing at all good has come from the policy and it desperately needs changing, but politicians are cowards when it comes to this topic and are years behind the public at large; no changes will occur unless we the people speak up. Writing your congressional representatives is a cliche, I know, but it works.

Drugs Won the War

Nicholas Kristof

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Richard Nixon's start of the war on drugs, and it now appears that drugs have won.

"We've spent a trillion dollars prosecuting the war on drugs," Norm Stamper, a former police chief of Seattle, told me. "What do we have to show for it? Drugs are more readily available, at lower prices and higher levels of potency. It's a dismal failure."

For that reason, he favors legalization of drugs, perhaps by the equivalent of state liquor stores or registered pharmacists. Other experts favor keeping drug production and sales illegal but decriminalizing possession, as some foreign countries have done.

Here in the United States, four decades of drug war have had three consequences:

Frank Rich weighs in on the culpability of the producers of hate speech of late and plumbs the reasons for the boiling kettle that is right wing America.

The Obama Haters' Silent Enablers

Frank Rich

When a Fox News anchor, reacting to his own network's surging e-mail traffic, warns urgently on-camera of a rise in hate-filled, "amped up" Americans who are "taking the extra step and getting the gun out," maybe we should listen. He has better sources in that underground than most.

The anchor was Shepard Smith, speaking after Wednesday's mayhem at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Unlike the bloviators at his network and elsewhere on cable, Smith is famous for his highly caffeinated news-reading, not any political agenda. But very occasionally -- notably during Hurricane Katrina -- he hits the Howard Beale mad-as-hell wall. Joining those at Fox who routinely disregard the network's "We report, you decide" mantra, he both reported and decided, loudly.

What he reported was this: his e-mail from viewers had "become more and more frightening" in recent months, dating back to the election season. From Wednesday alone, he "could read a hundred" messages spewing "hate that's not based in fact," much of it about Barack Obama and some of it sharing the museum gunman's canard that the president was not a naturally born citizen. These are Americans "out there in a scary place," Smith said.

Then he brought up another recent gunman: "If you're one who believes that abortion is murder, at what point do you go out and kill someone who's performing abortions?" An answer, he said, was provided by Dr. George Tiller's killer. He went on: "If you are one who believes these sorts of things about the president of the United States ..." He left the rest of that chilling sentence unsaid.

These are extraordinary words to hear on Fox. The network's highest-rated star, Bill O'Reilly, had assailed Tiller, calling him "Tiller the baby killer" and likening him to the Nazis, on 29 of his shows before the doctor was murdered at his church in Kansas. O'Reilly was unrepentant, stating that only "pro-abortion zealots and Fox News haters" would link him to the crime. But now another Fox star, while stopping short of blaming O'Reilly, was breaching his network's brand of political correctness: he tied the far-right loners who had gotten their guns out in Wichita and Washington to the mounting fury of Obama haters.

What is this fury about?