First it was Newsmax columnist John L. Perry. Now it's Rush Limbaugh essentially advocating a military coup by saying that when Obama outlines his Afghanistan policy at the United States Military Academy at West Point next week, "hopefully" they will "detain him" there.

Note: If you are calling for military officials to detain a president, you are calling for a military coup.

Newsmax got rid of Perry's column after we highlighted it and endeavored to distance itself from the column. But Limbaugh is more known for people apologizing to him than for apologizing for his outrageous remarks.

Local officials in St. Louis have charged six people in connection with a scuffle that broke out outside an August health care forum. Two of those charged are SEIU members who were hit with misdemeanor ordinance violations in connection with their altercation with Kenneth Gladney. They're accused on beating him up.

Problem for Breitbart and Big Government, as well as the rest of the over-excited right-wing blogosphere, is the low-key charges don't back up any of sensational allegations they've been making for months about the Gladney case. Namely that Gladney was savagely beaten within an inch of his life. (Note the "misdemeanor ordinance violations" that were filed.) That Gladney was the victim of a "hate crime." (No such charges were filed.) And that, most incredibly, the White House "directed" union members to beat up town hall protesters.

What's always been clear about the St. Louis event, since it was partially captured on video, was that a scuffle broke out the night of the town hall forum. Now six people face relatively minor charges and will have a chance to defend themselves. What remains a mystery is why the right-wing catapulted this minor event into the rhetorical stratosphere and concocted all sorts of wild claims about hate crimes, savage beatings, and (best of all) a White House connection. There's still no evidence any of that ever took place.

UPDATED: Not surprisingly, Breitbart's crowing about the Gladney "hate crime" case. And of course, there is no Gladney "hate crime" case. It doesn't exist. Period.  It only exists within the fervent imaginations of right-wing bloggers. (Or do those "misdemeanor ordinance violations" somehow qualify as hate crime charges in the state of Missouri?) Then again, those community workers weren't actually "praying" to Obama, and that didn't stop Breitbart from spreading that lie. So there's a definite trend in play here.

Eighty advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News program since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred of white people." Here are his November 25 sponsors, in the order they appeared:

• Rosland Capital
• Freije Treatment Systems (EasyWater Systems)
• Humana
• News Corp. (Fox News Channel University)
• Premier Bathrooms
• LifeLock
• News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)
• USfidelis
• Clarity Media Group (The Weekly Standard)
• The Foundation for a Better Life
• Jewelry Television
• The Foundation for a Better Life
• Goldline International, Inc.
• Lifestyle Lift
• Consumer Debt Advocate
• National Review

From Dana Perino's twitter feed:

Previously:

Perino: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term"

In the latest bit of right-wing lunacy on health care reform, RedState.com writer "hogan" brazenly compares health care reform bills to Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941--inanely adding that if health care reform passes, you can "say goodbye to freedom." Indeed, a brutal sneak attack that obliterated or wounded at least 3,500 Americans on an early Sunday morning is certainly comparable to legislation that will decrease the deficit over 10 years, provide coverage for 94% of uninsured Americans, and prohibit insurance companies from dropping the insured due to pre-existing conditions.

Yet, with Fox News' Glenn Beck comparing health care reform to the attacks on 9/11 and former Bush press secretary Dana Perino obliviously declaring: "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term," one can only wonder if-like the words socialism, Marxism, fascism and freedom-maybe the right-wing media simply doesn't know what the word terrorism means.  

Here's the RedState post in all its glorious folly:

Saving Freedom This Thanksgiving

Posted by hogan (Profile)

Wednesday, November 25th at 12:41PM EST

2 Comments

68 years ago, Americans around the nation settled into a peaceful Thanksgiving weekend and celebrated with their loved ones. A week later, the nation was viciously attacked by Japan - an attack that sparked our involvement in perhaps the greatest of all wars.

This Thanksgiving holiday is different from that weekend. While we should likewise celebrate and give thanks for our innumerable blessings, this time, the American people are staring at an attack on our nation and can stop it. This attack is coming from within. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi healthcare bill - in its various forms - is an assault on the American way of life and an affront to all the generations before us who fought to preserve and protect our cherished freedoms.

Why? Because the bill will eliminate your God-given ability to care for your family according to YOUR wishes and YOUR conscience. It will insert Washington D.C., and the incompetent bureaucrats who live there, into your hospital room, your doctor's office, your insurance company, your home and ultimately, into your personal health decisions. As analyzed here, the bill is loaded with active-government terms like "shall," "tax," and "require." And, even a cursory review of the text will show how much power this bill gives Washington to interfere with your healthcare (you know, the town that brought you the TARP bailout, Katrina-relief and over $12 Trillion in debt and counting...). Qualifications, panels, reports, studies, mandatory insurance whether you want it or not, penalties, taxes, fees, mandates on coverage but restrictions on prices... and 2079 pages of non-stop assaults on your right to live free and care for your family as you see fit.

Say hello to lines, waiting rooms, priority lists and more expensive, less effective healthcare. Say goodbye to freedom.

That is, unless you act now. It is your job - indeed, it is your duty - to talk to your friends and family this weekend and in the coming weeks. Call them to action. Other than our fine men and women in uniform fighting around the world, there is nothing more important that you can be doing right now to preserve our children's birthright - heirs to the greatest nation the world has ever known.

Read over the bill. Read summaries. Whatever you need to do. Try the Heritage Foundation's website, http://fixhealthcarepolicy.com/. Then... pause the football games and take a break from the turkey and cranberry sauce. Talk to friends and family this weekend. Explain it to them.

Then... next week, when the Senate come back in session - call your Senator. Email more friends. Email more family. Then... Call your Senator AGAIN. Don't stop. Repeat. Then... call Senators on the fence. And, feel free to start with Senators Ben Nelson (R-NE), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Mary Landrieu (D- LA). They represent solidly red states - and need to have their feat [sic] held to the fire. The list of Senate office phone numbers can be found here. Shut their phones down. Flood their offices. Visit their offices.

The American people can win this, but only if you take action to stop it. There is one thing that elected representatives fear - and that is YOU, the American people. Celebrate Thanksgiving this year in the American way - by fighting for freedom and working hard to preserve this, the last best earthly hope for mankind.

From RedState.com, accessed November 25:

Saving Freedom This Thanksgiving

68 years ago, Americans around the nation settled into a peaceful Thanksgiving weekend and celebrated with their loved ones. A week later, the nation was viciously attacked by Japan - an attack that sparked our involvement in perhaps the greatest of all wars.

This Thanksgiving holiday is different from that weekend. While we should likewise celebrate and give thanks for our innumerable blessings, this time, the American people are staring at an attack on our nation and can stop it. This attack is coming from within. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi healthcare bill - in its various forms - is an assault on the American way of life and an affront to all the generations before us who fought to preserve and protect our cherished freedoms.

Why? Because the bill will eliminate your God-given ability to care for your family according to YOUR wishes and YOUR conscience. It will insert Washington D.C., and the incompetent bureaucrats who live there, into your hospital room, your doctor's office, your insurance company, your home and ultimately, into your personal health decisions. As analyzed here, the bill is loaded with active-government terms like "shall," "tax," and "require." And, even a cursory review of the text will show how much power this bill gives Washington to interfere with your healthcare (you know, the town that brought you the TARP bailout, Katrina-relief and over $12 Trillion in debt and counting...). Qualifications, panels, reports, studies, mandatory insurance whether you want it or not, penalties, taxes, fees, mandates on coverage but restrictions on prices... and 2079 pages of non-stop assaults on your right to live free and care for your family as you see fit.

Say hello to lines, waiting rooms, priority lists and more expensive, less effective healthcare. Say goodbye to freedom

From the November 25 edition of Fox News' Live Desk:

Congressman John Shadegg (R) represents Arizona's 3rd congressional district.

Previously / Related:

Fox News Management Fed Up by Mistakes

Fox News VP in May:  We don't have an accuracy problem - how's that still going?

Fox News' "mistakes" memo: where does the buck stop?

Fox News' year in apologies: fake videos, false info, cutting and pasting from GOP

Fox News:  "Sen. Joe Lieberman (R-CT)"

On Fox, Mark Sanford "(D)" holds press conference

On Fox & Friends, Sen. Max Baucus "(R-MT)" discusses his health care plan

Fox News:  "Rep. Joke Sestak (D-PA)"

In this all-important piece that mocks the White House for using the phrase "unprecedented" too often (I'm not making this up), Politico (inadvertently?) gives readers an inside look at how utterly pointless articles like this come to fruition [emphasis added]:

The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented — “a first by an American president visiting China” — town hall meeting with students in Beijing, for instance, drew a collective eye roll in certain circles back home, namely among former aides to President George W. Bush, who had already been grumbling about Obama’s carefree application of “unprecedented.”

Voila! Former Bushies have been privately mocking the White House for its use of "unprecedented." And then what do you know, Politico turns around the publically mocks the White House for its use of "unprecedented." And who does Politico quote for sources in its story? Former Bushies, like ex-flak Karen Hughes. 

That's how Beltway journalism works. Conservatives dream up attacks on Obama and then get journalists to treat the attacks as news, regardless of how absurd.

Making matters worse this time around is the fact that the Politico article contains perhaps single dumbest paragraph published by Politico in a very, very long time:

Either way, for a president whose approach to exaggerated critiques of his administration is to “call ‘em out” and who has made an issue of forcing corporate America to expose the fine print, one wonders whether his use of “unprecedented” would pass his own litmus test.

You mean there's an enormous disconnect between what Beltway media elites claim is newsworthy and what news consumers are actually interested in? Shocking, we know.

And it's not like we didn't see this one coming, amidst the orgy of Palin coverage last week:

I'll bet five bucks that when the Pew Research numbers come out this week we'll see a massive disconnect in terms of the amount of time journalists dedicated (i.e. wasted) to the Palin story, and the microscopic percentage of news consumers who listed the Palin book launch as the story they paid the most attention to last week. Instead, once again it will be the economy or health care that top the list because (surprise!) that's what matters to people. Beltway parlor games, and especially pointless ones involving Palin, are of no interest to most news consumers.

Well, the Pew numbers are out and exactly 2 percent of Americans pointed to Palin's book release as the story they followed most closely last week. Yet on cable TV last week, the Palin story devoured 14 percent of the entire news hole.

And oh yeah, a majority of Americans agreed they were hearing "too much" about Palin. So I guess instead of more than 1,700 "Palin" mentions on network and cable news last week, a mere 200-300 would have sufficed.

This one's just strange: Newsbusters' Carolyn Plocher is upset that network morning shows have offered tips on how to avoid excessive Thanksgiving calorie consumption:

In the past week, from Nov. 18-24, five network stories have bashed traditional Thanksgiving food because it's not "healthy." With the nation in a recession and the unemployment rate above 10 percent, the media want Americans to worry about their waistlines too. Each of the networks offered tips on how to avoid the "most gut-busting holiday of the year," as Harry Smith of CBS's "Early Show" put it Nov. 19.

What a bunch of monsters!  

Seriously, this is the right-wing media critique: Whining about the Early Show offering advice on how to avoid over-eating at Thanksgiving.

From Fox Nation on November 25:

According to its website, the 9/11 Never Forget Coalition "formed to fight the decision of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to try the 9/11 co-conspirators in New York City's federal court, effectively giving war criminals the same rights as American citizens while endangering the safety of all New Yorkers."

Previously:

Fox News personalities aggressively promote Bachmann's protest against health care bill

Fox Nation now promoting the "Tea Party Express II"

Fox Nation now promoting "Tea Parties Marching on Media Outlets Oct. 17!"

Fox Nation helps WND promote July 4 tea parties

Even after it's over, Fox Nation still promoting Tea Party 2.0

Fox News "hops" aboard Tea Party Express with rampant promotions, live coverage

REPORT: "Fair and Balanced" Fox News agressively promotes "tea party" protests

John Solomon has only been gone for a couple of weeks, and already The Washington Times has reverted to its old ways -- the scare quotes are back.

A Times editorial today states: "It's a dark scandal in American politics that so many Catholic politicians promote abortion and same-sex 'marriage.' " And in an op-ed in yesterday's Times, Binyamin L. Jolkovsky wrote that Carrie Prejean's "fame, or infamy, skyrocketed after she honestly answered a question about gay 'marriage' during an internationally televised beauty pageant."

The Times reportedly banned the practice of using "scare quotes" around "gay marriage" shortly after Solomon's hiring as executive editor. In a February 25, 2008, memo, copy desk chief Patrick Tuohy reportedly stated that "[t]he quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage)." TPM's Ben Frumin reported this month that Solomon left the paper on November 6. It didn't take long for this modest improvement during his tenure to fall by the wayside after his departure.

One wonders what other back-sliding we'll see at the Times. Will it return to warning its readers about the "gay agenda" and its "assault upon traditional norms and values"? Will the Times once again treat its readers to laughable references to "gay caballeros" and the "lavender lobby" that presumably represents them?

That, of course, would depend in part on whether the Times stays in operation at all, a prospect that remains in question.

As noted below, Michelle Malkin is demanding lots of retractions in the wake of the police finding that the federal census worker who was found dead in Kentucky two months ago actually hanged himself. Malkin wants everyone on the "Left," to apologize for ever suggesting right-wing activists, or the culture of anti-government hate they created, might have been responsible for the death.

But oops, the blame game runs both ways. And if Malkin's suddenly the new apology chief in town, than I anxiously await her demands that right-wing blogger Dan Riehl offer up his sincere apology in light of the fact that back in September, Riehl (with zero proof) floated the hateful claim that the maybe the Kentucky census worker was killed because he was a pedophile. (Stay classy Dan.) 

Worse, get a load of Riehl's reaction to the latest police news from Kentucky about the suicide:

Update: Michelle Malkin recounts the smears that came our way from the "reality-based" lunatics on the Left- including randy Andy Sullivan!

Do you see the twisted genius of how the right-wing blogosphere functions? In September, a fact-free name-caller like Dan Riehl wrote up a post where he was simply "speculating" that the dead census worker was kinda/probably a "child predator." Alleged proof? Riehl stressed that the dead man "certainly did gravitate towards children." Whatever that means.  

But now when local police announce the death was a suicide with possible insurance money implications, Riehl, who smeared the dead man far worse than anyone else, demands that "lunatics" on the left be held accountable for their "smears."

UPDATED: Uh-oh, more housecleaning for Malkin. Also back in September, at the right-wing online fever swamp WND, Roger Hedgecock claimed the dead census worker "was yet another victim of illegal drug operations on national forest land, and possibly also a victim of our still open border with Mexico."

Good luck getting Hedgecock to now cough up an I'm-sorry, Michelle.

A misleading Washington Times headline suggesting that the White House had "not invited" Republicans to its first state dinner now reads: "Top Republican lawmakers not attending State Dinner." From the Times:

Because it's not like Malkin has any kind of track record herself when it comes to owning up to the many, many fact-free (and often mean-spirited) conspiracies that she's pushed as fact. And she has even less experience apologizing  for said dead-enders. So I must say it seems a bit odd that Malkin now rushes to the front of the line, waving her hands and yelling about how anybody on the left who speculated that right-wing activists had anything to do with the death the Kentucky census worker needs to set the record straight. (Police now say the death was a suicide, staged to look like a murder.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for holding people accountable, and the blogosphere only functions properly when bloggers have to answer for their work. But the sad truth is, over on the far-right side of the Internet, any notion of accountability seems to have been tossed out the window. It is utterly ignored. Like, as a rule.

For example, just last week I highlighted how popular right-wing blogger Gateway Pundit manufactured an Obama quote which the blogger then used to mock the president. After I, and scores of his commenters, politely pointed out that Gateway Pundit had, y'know, manufactured a quote, what was the blogger's response? Nothing. The post wasn't updated, the fake quote wasn't taken down, and of course no apology was offered up.

Accountability, at least within the right-wing blogosphere, is for suckers. So again, it's a bit odd for Malkin to come running out onto her porch and start demanding that any liberal bloggers who might have gotten the Kentucky story wrong, or even raised questions about the case, start writing up their corrections.

Hey I know, maybe as a sign of good will, and an indication that she really takes accountability seriously, Malkin will finally come clean about the bogus tale she eagerly spread in September about how a staggering 2 million anti-Obama protesters had gathered in Washington, D.C..

Because oops, she was only off by 1.9 million.

UPDATED: The Brad Blog, a target of Malkin's ticket-writing campaign, explains why he's not going to honor her request:

We're more than happy, even eager, to offer corrections and, as needed (and it's only been needed once) retractions to anything that we get wrong here. While we appreciate Malkin's desperation to find someone out there who screws up so spectacularly as she does on such a regular basis --- such hilarious failures have damned near become her meat and potatoes at this point --- this story hardly appears to be the one on which she should, pardon the tasteless pun, hang her hate hat.

Leave it to Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter to equate the denial of civil rights to the civil rights movement. There they were on The O'Reilly Factor last night, discussing the "call of Christian conscience" known as the Manhattan Declaration, which O'Reilly described as "a document that encourages religious Americans to fight back, and in some cases even break the law." Coulter explained:

COULTER: The civil disobedience parts of it are pretty narrow. It's for saying that we won't participate as doctors, nurses, hospitals, in euthanasia, in abortion. Churches won't participate in same-sex marriage or -- or in denouncing, condemning homosexuality in the practice of their faith.

And just like that, Coulter put organized efforts to deny civil rights to gays and lesbians on par with black civil rights pioneers who used civil disobedience to expand their rights. The "civil disobedience" of churches that "won't participate in same-sex marriage" becomes elevated to a perch next to activists who refused to adhere to Jim Crow's separate-but-equal charade. Of course the distinction here is that Jim Crow laws were very real, and very brutally enforced. Coulter offers no evidence of a single church that would be required to bless or in any way recognize a single gay marriage.

Think about it for a moment. Coulter and her enabler O'Reilly would have you believe that in a nation where 78 percent of the citizens are Christians, it is Christians who need to engage in acts of civil disobedience for protection from laws passed by overwhelmingly Christian lawmakers. At what point does the notion of civil disobedience get turned on its head?

But the discussion masks a more sinister element of the manifesto: its effort to smear gay couples, since "the assumption that the legal status of one set of marriage relationships affects no other would not only argue for same-sex partnerships; it could be asserted with equal validity for polyamorous partnerships, polygamous households, even adult brothers, sisters, or brothers and sisters living in incestuous relationships."

At that point, can state-sanctioned marriage to goats and dolphins be far behind?

Eighty advertisers have reportedly dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's Fox News program since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred of white people." Here are his November 24 sponsors, in the order they appeared:

• Goldline International, Inc.
• American Advisors Group
• BMW
• National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (boosterseat.gov)
• Sony Music Entertainment (Susan Boyle, "I Dreamed a Dream")
• USfidelis
• Merit Financial
• Clarity Media Group (The Weekly Standard)
• LifeLock
• The Foundation for a Better Life
• News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Rosland Capital
• TaxMasters
• The Villages

It is truly amazing that Time allowed Mark Halperin to publish the following caption and image on his blog, The Page -- no matter how briefly (the site has since pulled it down): 

Maybe Halperin thought it was really clever to echo a scene from a late-90s romantic comedy, but it isn't. The image and all that it suggests -- yes, her hair is supposed to be held up by semen -- isn't supported by any facts provided by Halperin in his post. The page to which he links doesn't have anything to do with semen, romantic comedies, or hair gel. In fact, it's a statement from Sen. Mary Landrieu's (D-LA) Communications Director "on motion to proceed timing" on the Senate's health care reform bill.

In other words, it's part of a broader, sexist right-wing narrative that the U.S. Senator from Louisiana is, as Glenn Beck put it yesterday, "a high-class prostitute" engaged in "hookin'" -- all because she lobbied Senate leadership for expanded Medicaid funding for Louisiana in the Senate health care bill in what was characterized by the media as an exchange for her "yea" vote to proceed with floor debate on the bill.

Not to be left out, Rush Limbaugh got in on the action yesterday too, declaring that Landrieu "may be the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitution."

These types of backwards, sexist remarks are what we have come to expect from Beck or Limbaugh, but this is truly a new low for Halperin, and, by association, for Time. As my colleague Julie Millican pointed out last week, the other weekly news magazine -- Newsweek -- has a sexism problem that it needs to address concerning another female politician.

So let this serve as a word of warning to those media figures like Halperin who like to think of themselves as separate and apart from -- perhaps I should say above? -- right-wing bloviators and pot-stirrers like Beck and Limbaugh: When you engage in baseless, sexist smears of women politicians, you are no different than the side-show commentators. Maybe you're worse -- at least they don't purport to be journalists.  

On Wednesday, President Obama will pardon Courage, a turkey raised on a family farm in North Carolina.  In doing so he will carry on a long tradition dating back to the administration of George H.W. Bush.  (Seriously -- it's not a long tradition.)

But the pardoning comes at a particularly vulnerable time for Obama.  Following a week of coverage in which he was attacked by the conservative media (which was amplified by the mainstream media) for bowing to Japanese Emperor Akihito (which the majority of Americans approved of), Fox News senior correspondent Brit Hume claimed of the "bowing and scraping" overseas: "This president seems quite willing to embrace weakness as a position for the United States."

Combined with the right-wing media's outrage that by actually demonstrating that the U.S. actually practices the kind of justice it promotes around the world, the pardoning couldn't come at a worse time for Obama.

How will Fox News react to this latest sign of Obama's "weakness"?

• Will Fox Nation and the Drudge Report run the headline "Obama Lacks Courage to Kill Courage"?

• Will John Bolton portray the event as a worldwide show trial giving Courage "extensive time in front of the cameras and the reporters"?

• Will Karl Rove explain how Obama specifically chose a North Carolina turkey to gain approval in the swing state?

• Will Bill O'Reilly host an ornithologist to analyze the Courage's reaction to the pardon?

• Will Glenn Beck somehow connect the pardoning to the appeasement of the Islamic AK Party in Turkey?

• Will Sean Hannity dig up footage of Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright enjoying green bean casserole at a Thanksgiving potluck in the basement of the Trinity United Church of Christ?

One thing is for certain: If Sarah Palin were president, she would pardon Courage as well, but would ensure that the rest of the turkeys were slaughtered.

Sarah Palin's book tour was the third-biggest news story from November 16-22 -- and second-biggest on television and radio talk shows:

Given her status as a polarizing public figure, it's no surprise that Palin's book tour last week-which included her doing interviews with everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Oprah Winfrey-was a hot topic in the talk show world. Indeed more than one-fifth (21%) of the airtime studied on the 12 cable and radio talk shows in the NCI was devoted to the 2008 GOP vice-presidential candidate, making it the No. 2 story there after health care. By a narrow margin, coverage of her book tour last week (8%) exceeded the attention devoted to her decision to resign as Alaska governor (7% from July 6-12, 2009).

That's an extraordinary amount of attention for an unpopular politician who holds no office.