Noise Machine Fumes As Its Hillary Clinton Caricature Collapses

ERIC BOEHLERT/Media Matters For America:

Reacting this week to the news that NBC had announced it's going to produce a four-hour, primetime miniseries dramatizing the political life of Hillary Clinton, Rush Limbaugh dismissed the simmering controversysurrounding the programming decision. Announcing that he was bored of talking about the Clintons, Limbaugh then spent a good chunk of his first hour on Monday's show discussing the Clintons.

Limbaugh insisted the former First Couple amuse him and he mocked the premise of the NBC miniseries; that there's widespread interest in Hillary's life story. The talker insisted that outside of Democratic circles the Clintons are viewed as "jokes."

Indeed, the NBC press release unleashed all kinds of bitter right-wing commentary about Hillary Clinton and the alleged biases that will be in play in the production. (How dare NBC cast a beautiful actress, Diane Lane, to portray Hillary??) The attacks were laced with angry demandsthat as part of the miniseries, NBC devote all kinds of time exploring the numerous "scandals" that have allegedly plagued Hillary's career, and especially the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic outposts in Benghazi.

"NBC and the Hillary 2016 Bandwagon: Will Miniseries 'Forget' About Benghazi?," a Fox Nation headline demanded to know. The same question was asked endlessly online. 

Based on 11 months worth of robotic and increasingly fantastic allegations about Benghazi, the Fox crew seems to actually believe that Clinton was part of a nefarious White House plot to let Americans die last September in an effort to secure President's Obama's re-election.

There are any number of ethical questions raised by NBC Entertainment producing a miniseries while NBC News continues to cover the production's topic. None of those questions have to do with whether the final product fails to cover "Cattle Futures-gate."

The indignant denunciations of NBC illustrate just how detached from reality the conservative press has become in terms of how it views Hillary Clinton, and the assumptions conservatives make about her image in America and around the world. (i.e. She's a joke.) Lashing out at NBC, one right-wing blogger claimed the network was "delusional" to think anyone cares about Hillary's life story.

The right-wing media have invested years (decades?) trying to define Hillary Clinton in the most ugly and mean-spirited way possible, and don't seem to understand the futility of their ways.

Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and others really have dedicated incalculable hours trying to permanently brand the former First Lady as an angry, power-hungry hag whose political career has been a colossal failure. And with the allegation of a Benghazi "cover-up," they've tried to portray the former Secretary of State as having American blood on her hands.

That's the caricature of Hillary that the right wing holds near and dear and tries desperately to pretend that everyone else does, too. But the announcement from NBC suggests that portrait of Hillary as a political monster is not widely shared.

The programming decision to make the series, whatever the final product looks like (and certainly similar past productions have come in for widespread criticism), implies that Hillary's fame and stature transcends politics. Rather than seen as a shrew, Hillary is viewed as a figure compelling enough to attract the interest of a major TV audience.

In other words, conservatives are losing control of Hillary's image and with the NBC miniseries they fear losing even more. Outside of the radical confines of Fox News and other right-wing hot spots where she's universally viewed negatively, Clinton enjoys widespread respect. And as speculation mounts about Clinton's presidential aspirations for 2016, that failure to define her is only going to fuel even more resentment.

We certainly got a peek of that this week.

Actually, we've been getting a preview of that resentment for months now. Recall the behavior of the Clinton Crazies late last year when the State Department announced Hillary had suffered a concussion after becoming ill and fainting. The health scare was greeted with open guffaws on Fox News and elsewhere as her dedicated foes laughed it up about how the Secretary of State had faked her concussion in order to get out of testifying before Congress about Benghazi. (Who does that?!)

Here was the parody produced by Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard, making fun of Clinton's concussion:

Weeks later when doctors revealed they had found a potentially life-threatening blood clot in Hillary brain, the right-wing laughter died down a bit. Nonetheless, the sorry episode revealed not only a lack of common decency, but also the warped prism through which the conservative press views Clinton - as a national punch line.

So of course her obsessed critics objected to the NBC announcement. Via the American Thinker blog [emphasis added]:

In "Unfaithful," Diane Lane played an adulterous wife whose jealous husband, Richard Gere,bludgeoned her lover Olivier Martinez to death with a snow globe, which is what many Americans feel like doing to themselves when Chillary Hillary starts talking.

See? "Many Americans" want to kill themselves when the former First Lady starts talking.

In truth, according to recent polling data, Hillary Clinton remains among the most popular political figures in the country. And when pitted against prominent Republicans in hypothetical presidential match-ups for 2016,Clinton wins easily.

That's likely among the reasons NBC green-lighted the Hillary movie: She remains a political and cultural star, and one who is possibly still ascending to new, historic heights.

And that's likely why her critics are so upset this week.

Right-Wing failing the race conversation?

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Is Rush Limbaugh the GOPs Real Boss?

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'Black on black crime' and conservative ethnocentrism

BY DALE HANSEN/Detroit News blog

After the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the murder of Trayvon Martin, I penned an article on the Bizarro World the conservative media has created where racism no longer exists in the U.S. – except for black racism against whites. “If there’s one thing conservatives hate, it’s when they are called out for being racist,” I began in that post.

Boy, did the commenters prove me right.

The tone was varied but the vitriol was obvious. My personal favorites were the suggestion that I “become an expat” and another calling me a “lying sack of (expletive).” While these are both eloquently stated solid arguments, they leave little in the way of substantive conversation. But there were two points that did merit further discussion: cherry-picking data and “black on black crime.”

First, contrary to the conservative media spin on this legal case, there was a national interest in a young man being murdered and no one being charged for his death – even though the murderer admitted to pulling the trigger. If Trayvon Martin were your son or daughter wouldn’t you want someone to be arrested for their death? Wouldn’t you want a trial to determine if a jury believed the Stand Your Ground defense held up in court?

The attention in this case was not that a “white” guy killed a “black” kid – as many would have you believe. It was a commentary on the failure of the justice system – in particular how African Americans are often on the receiving end of these injustices.

Some commenters took issue with my statistics. While true, they felt my application was insincere because I didn’t present additional information – as though the conservative media they parrot is known for their thorough analysis of data.

For example Ann Coulter stated “half of all murders and a majority of robberies are committed by blacks” and then goes on to talk about how George Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin because of burglaries in the area. By using the statistics for murders and robberies Ann is attempting to paint African Americans as inherently criminal, because if she used statistics regarding burglaries she would have had to note that whites, not blacks, commit the vast majority of burglaries.

Rather than question her manipulation of data, the conservative media runs with the story and we get a new conservative talking point: “Black on black crime.”

Bill O’Reilly, for example, stated that 91 perent of homicides against African Americans were committed by other African Americans. He went on to say this number was “astronomical” and compared these killings to a “Holocaust.” It should also be noted that 85 percent of homicides against whites were committed by other whites. Odd that 91 percent is tantamount to genocide – yet 85 percent isn’t worth talking about.

The reality is the “black on black crime” is just a way for some people to justify their racism. If preventing murders had a singular, universally-accepted solution then murder rates would be a relevant stat. Unfortunately, the murder rate is the result of many circumstances which means improvements in this statistic will require an array of changes. For instance;

- According to a study by the Ohio State University, “the violent crime rate in highly disadvantaged black areas was 22 per 1,000 residents, not much different from the 20 per 1,000 rate in similar white communities.”

- Blacks are the victims of non-fatal violent crime at nearly the same rate as whites.

- African Americans represent half of those falsely convicted of a crime.

- Blacks were more likely to report a non-fatal violent crime to police than whites.

- Large cities experience twice as much crime as rural areas – 52 percent of the black population resides in inner cities as opposed to 21 percent of whites.

- Higher income inequality leads to more crime – whites have 22 times more wealth than blacks.

- According to a study by Cal-Berkley, “schooling significantly reduces criminal activity.” Blacks are 2.2 times more likely to drop out of high school.

- The Heritage Foundation reports that higher instances of single parent homes lead to higher juvenile crime rates – blacks are 2.7 times more likely to be brought up in a single parent household.

So while conservatives whine that black leaders aren’t addressing the “black on black crime” issue, the reality is that black leaders have been pounding the pavement for years about the need to improve circumstances for the African American community which would ameliorate the crime statistics conservatives claim black leaders are ignoring.

If conservative America truly wants to put claims of racism in the rear view mirror they have to stop having conversations that begin with, “I’m not racist, but blacks are criminals,” and start considering the plight of African Americans when whites aren’t involved.

Democrats To Introduce Supreme Court Ethics Bill

By Stephanie Mencimer/Mother Jones

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, has been in the news recently after Mother Jones revealed her involvement in Groundswell, a secret effort by a group of conservatives to organize their fight against liberals, mainstream Republicans, andKarl Rove. Her political activity has once again raised questions about whether she is creating conflicts of interest for her husband, and whether he should be forced to recuse himself from cases that involve Ginni's work.

Such calls for Thomas to recuse from cases hit a fevered pitch when the Affordable Care Act was before the high court and Ginni was actively lobbying against it. As it turned out, there's no mechanism for concerned citizens to complain about a Supreme Court justice, or even a clear set of rules that the justices must follow in making recusal decisions. Supreme Court justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct for United State Judges, the rulebook that every other federal judge in the country has to follow.

That code would have prohibited the justices from a number of controversial activities the Supreme Court has engaged in over the past few years. In 2011, for instance, Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia headlined a fundraiser for the conservative legal group, the Federalist Society. Ordinary federal judges couldn't have done that. Both also have attended hush-hush political events hosted by Koch Industries that are billed as efforts "to review strategies for combating the multitude of public policies that threaten to destroy America as we know it." Koch Industries is owned by the right-wing Koch family that's been dumping millions of dollars in the Republican politics, particularly after the court decided in Citizens United to allow unlimited corporate money into the electoral system. The code also requires federal judges to recuse themselves from cases in which a spouse or family member has a financial interest, a rule that might apply to the Thomases.

Several members have decided to try to do something about the appearance of impropriety by some of the justices. On Thursday, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Sen. Chris Murhpy (D-CT), and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), plan to introduce the Supreme Court Ethics Act of 2012 that would force the high court to adopt an ethics code much like the one that binds lower court judges. The idea has support from legal scholars, who've been urging the court to adopt such a code since last year. More than 125,000 people have signed a petition calling on Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. to apply the Code of Conduct to the court. But Roberts has been pretty adamant that he thinks the justices are perfectly capable of policing themselves without the need for silly codes (codes which most of the sitting justices once had to abide by on a lower court). 

Without buy-in from Roberts, any attempt, even by Congress, to require the justices to give themselves a written code of ethics is probably a tough sell. The new bill, if it could even pass through the full Congress (also doubtful), could set off an epic separation of powers battle between the two branches of government. A spokesman from Slaughter's office says that the bill is absolutely constitutional, as Congress has the authority to regulate the administration of the court—setting the number of justices and whatnot. Still, it's possible that the court could put up a fight—a fight that might ultimately have to be decided by....the Supreme Court.

Fox News whines ‘far left media’ making fun of our ‘most embarrassing interview’ ever

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

Fox News host Shannon Bream on Wednesday complained that “very far left media” had criticized the news network’s recent interview with a religious scholar who happened to be Muslim.

“The liberal media has remained quiet on the subject matter of the book but cannot control its outrage over that question: Why did you write it?” she said.

A Fox News interview with Reza Aslan last week went viral after BuzzFeed labelled it “the most embarrassing interview Fox News has ever done.”

Fox News host Lauren Green began the interview by asking why a Muslim was interested in writing a book about Jesus Christ.

The initial question alone was innocuous. But after Aslan explained his interest in Jesus — he was a former evangelical Christian and a religious scholar — Green continued to question his motivations. She insinuated the book was a secret attack on the core tenets of Christianity and that Muslim scholars could not write an accurate book about the historical Jesus.

Bream said Wednesday that Green was “taking so much heat” because people of the Muslim faith were overly sensitive.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube, below:

George Zimmerman armed with gun during traffic stop in Texas

By Eric W. Dolan/Raw Story

George Zimmerman was stopped in Forney, Texas over the weekend for speeding and told police he was armed, according to CBS 11 News.

Zimmerman, who was recently acquitted after killing Florida teenager Trayvon Martin, was pulled over on July 28 around noon. He said he was heading “nowhere in particular.”

He told officers that he was armed. The officer instructed him to put his gun in the glove compartment.

The officer gave Zimmerman a warning after running a background check.

Zimmerman reportedly asked the officer if he recognized him, but the officer did not.

It is not the first time Zimmerman has popped up in the news following the end of his highly publicized trial. Last week, Zimmerman made headlines for helping pull a family out of their overturned SUV.

Bill O'Reilly is being posted on Nazi Stormfront.org because he sounds like a White Supremacist

byMinistryOfTruth/Daily Kos

Bill O'Reilly has some new friends.

I think O' Reilly is an honest, hardline journalist who unfortunately is FORCED to work with the Jews who've had a centuries old stranglehold on journalism in this country from newspapers to television. He is unable to say much since he'd be out of a job.

I genuinely think that he is growing sick and tired of it all and is having a sort of Network Howard Beale type moment (albeit in a much smaller proportions).

No one else is coming close to discussing this from the MSM from our side of the equation.

You know, our side, the side Bill O'Reilly, White Supremacists and auditioning Fox News host Don Lemon are on.

Yesterday the Neo-Nazi Website Stormfront.org put up a post of Bill O'Reilly's latest diatribe against black people. I happened upon it when googling "Bill O'Reilly + White Supremacist" because if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck you can always google it and find out. What I stumbled upon was not just one but a series of posts on Stormfront.org about Bill O'Reilly's now nightly lectures to black people about their problems.

Amongst the comments where proud white supremacists hide behind avatars and anonymous screennames I found what paints a picture of the people Bill O'Reilly has reached with his words.

It's still pretty amazing that a white man is actually saying these things on network TV.

Yes, Mr. Anonymous White Supremacist, yes it is pretty amazing, if by amazing, you mean a string of curse words.

Another commenter stated that racist rants on the right can never truly implement white supremacy because Conservatives aren't trying hard enough . . .

And this is precisely why modern Conservatism is a dead-end for us! The Ann Coulters, Michael Savages, and yes, O'Reilly too, have nibbled around the edges of this race issue for as long as I can recall. Yet they remain totally schizophrenic on the issue! They occasionally acknowledge Black pathologies and criminality, but in the next breath, condemn anyone who says they wish to stay away from Blacks for just those reasons, as "racists" etc.

Pat Buchanan has been guilty of this as well, though he comes closest to the truth...yet never actually comes out with it.

Hopefully, people like them will continue to serve as a "gateway" for those who dare to seek the truth beyond. Though truthfully, I think the fact is that relatively few are so affected.

A gateway! Like a gateway drug! Remember how Chris Hayes said that Bill O'Reilly goes on these rants about black people because it gives a cheap crack like high to the old fearful white audience that watches Bill O'Reilly Well I guess this means Fox News is a gateway drug that can lead to becoming a white supremacist.

   But yesterday's rant wasn't the only O'Reilly whitesplaining of why you people need to get your shit together, turns out Stormfront.org has been posting a lot of these O'Reilly rants since some black kid got in the way of some guys bullet.

As one white supremacist commenter noted in a post about another O'Reilly rant a few days ago notedin a post titled "O’Reilly Panelists Slam Civil Rights Industry Myth That White Racism Is To Blame For Black Problems" . . .

O'Reilly has been relentless lately on the black crime and incredibly high out of wedlock birth. Ever since the Zimmerman verdict and the chaos that followed afterwards.

Yeah, hmm, we noticed too.

The problem is though not all the people in America speak english all of the white supremacists in America do. This allows us to go back and see how the White Supremacist community on the internet receives the dogwhistle blown nightly at O'Reilly's Pavlovian White Power rallies. This is how O'Reilly's stochastic terrorism works, he bad mouths someone, they crazies hear it and some lone wolf eventually gets caught in O'Reilly's trolling net. O'Reilly has become a kind of Grand Vizier of the FoxNewsiverse, a wizard, if you will, who is able to use his Saruman voice to convince people to justify their hates and fears while dismissing that racism even exists and bashing anyone who disagrees.

The stochastic dog whistle goes out! Black people are dangerous and if they can't stop crime in black communities why should anyone else care! One commentator in particular strongly agreed.

Featuring an O'Reilly rant from August 22nd a Stormfront.com user posted the video of O'Reilly scolding the African American community.

O'Reilly has been spot on all during this case.

He's called the black community to task many times, as have a few others, but the black community refuses to take personal responsibility for their actions, or lack thereof.

You reap what you sow and the black community will continue to spiral into the abyss of crime and violence.

Until there is total separation of the races, the White race will continue to pay for the crimes of the black community, either financially or with our lives.
______

"They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pest to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."- George Washington

"If you want to know who rules over you just ask yourself who cannot be criticized."

"I'm your huckleberry." ~ Doc Holiday, Tombstone

Just look at this exchange between one anonymous Stormfront commenter to another . . .

Originally Posted by LeonidasThe2 View Post

He said "HERE IS THE HEADLINE: YOUNG BLACK MEN COMMIT HOMICIDE AT A RATE 10 TIMES HIGHER THAN WHITES AND HISPANICS COMBINED."

That was good info to bring up.

Yes it was and O'Reilly stating these facts gives us much more credibility.

You know, when white supremacists start telling each other that the points Bill O'Reilly make help give credibility to white supremacy, there is a reason for that, and it is because Bill O'Reilly sounds exactly like a white supremacist.

Slightly more below the fold . . .

The GOP has given up on policy and so now they are running on white racial resentment under the white sheet of Fox News. The FoxNewsiverse stirs up that white racial resentment towards THE OTHER and the GOP makes it harder for THE OTHER to vote on the state level where they control power. Meanwhile the FoxNewsiverse keeps telling us that racism is over except racists like Al Sharpton and Eric Holder who are keeping racism alive because it is profitable for them to do so.

Because it's not like white billionaires would stand to gain something by turning poor conservative prejudiced white folk against poor black folk while robbing them both. Remember Obamaphones and how Mitt Romney told audiences that Obama was giving black people free welfare money with no work requirement. Nah, they'd never do that exact thing they just did a few months ago!

When once Glenn Beck called Obama a racist who hates white people and white culture amidst outrage a few years ago it is now safe and routine to accuse Obama of being anti-white and an instigator of racial tension. The RW media runs with this because what else have they got left? Obama is fixing the deficit faster than previously expected by raising taxes slightly on the rich, the economy is kinda sputtering to life while the plutonomy is fully recovered and corporate profits and CEO salaries are better than ever, what else does the Right Wing have to run on? So they blow the dog whistles, same as they have always done.
    The reason white supremacists are responding positively to Bill O'Reilly is because Bill O'Reilly sounds like a white supremacist these days. How else can the GOP keep poor white people voting for Mitt Romney without blaming poor black people for being lazy and expecting free shit?

   This is how stochastic terrorism works, and Bill O'Reilly is effectively stochastically terrorizing black people when he paints them all as potentially violent drug addicted lay-abouts who can't be bothered to help themselves. This drumbeat leads to an environment where Trayvon Martin gets shot because some idiot got the idea in his head that all black kids have to be regarded as potential thieves and threats, and it is that same social racism the GOP has exploited since Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy that dominates their economics, anything they don't like can be named "Welfare" and destroyed because lazy workers can't expect more than they are paid. The same Stochastic Terrorism designed to rile up Fox Viewers against Doctor George Tiller, Muslims and pretty much anyone else who right wing pundits direct the blame of societies ills upon has an interesting overlap with the people white nationalist do not like, does it not?

   Laid bare the GOP has nothing left. Leaderless. Idealess. Driven now only by Fox News and the billionaires who own their think tanks and media conglomerates behind a slew of grifters and know-nothings. The Heritage Foundation has urged them to give up on governing and stick to flinging fake scandals at Obama in the prayerful hope that something sticks and getting House Republicans to govern is like trying to get a crocodile and a sandshark to mate. What else does the GOP have but the only thing they are good at anymore, making it harder for black people to vote. Republicans are why we can't have nice things anymore.

    So here are white supremacists posting O'Reilly videos about how white racism can't be blamed for black people's problems. You know, the people who are saying "Racism is over" can't act surprised when White Supremacists smile in approval. You built that together.

Originally Posted by Vogon Poet View Post
Don't be too enthusiastic lol. By merely inviting his latest guest, that Hollywood actress Victoria Jackson, ridicules right wingers again. O'Reilly needs to do his homework before he invites all kinds of people. Letting fools speak doesn't help nationalists at all.

True. Even a fools words can be dangerous influence.
I've had all kinds of debates with peoples online.
No matter what facts or statistics I mention, all these people say is the same generic garbage, "don't you know we're all human? Segregation is dangerous!" ect. and they always end up getting dozens of thumbs up.

Yes, letting fools speak doesn't help white nationalists at all, which is why I am strongly suggesting that white nationalists along with Bill O'Reilly kindly shut the fuck up.

Because if fools are not allowed to speak for white nationalism how else will they get their message out?

And the same could be true for Republicans. Someone accused me of saying that all Republicans are racist and I don't think that is true, I think the GOP creates an environment where animosity towards black people, minorities and poor people is totally acceptable and racist people respond to it the way you would expect them to respond to people who seem like minded as they. So no, the entire GOP is not racist, BUT the side with the most white supremacists on it is the racist side and right now that is Bill O'Reilly's side.

What do they really fear? Well, as quoted above "Even a fools words can be dangerous influence."

The problem(?) with this new awareness in the black community coming to light is that they might after ten or twenty years begin to get their sh1t together.

That's what white supremacists fear, the same thing Bill O'Reilly fears, that despite all the hurdles and roadblocks put before them the people whom they'd prefer to keep in second class citizenship might get their shit together and demand better.

So there you go, Bill O'Reilly! The White Supremacist community is right behind you and hanging on your every word. You built that, fuckface. I hope you're proud, you pinhead.

Rush Limbaugh: Detroit Went Bankrupt Because Blacks Drove Out Whites

BY IGOR VOLSKY AND ALAN PYKE/THINK pROGRESS

Economists are attributing Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing to problems facing the entire Rust Belt region: a shrinking tax base, high health and pension costs, sprawl, and general dysfunction. But on Tuesday, Rush Limbaugh added another cause to the long list of factors that have contributed to the city’s downfall: black people.

During an appearance on Fox News’ On The Record with Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday, Limbaugh claimed that “unchecked” Democratic rule “since the last Republican mayor [in] 1957″ created a lazy and bloated culture of out-of-control spending and corruption.

“You’ve had that — that town has been a petri dish of everything the Democrat Party stands for, everything the Democrat Party loves — massive unions, massive pensions, pay people pensions and health care long after they’ve stopped working,” he said, before arguing that the city’s first black mayor exacerbated the city’s spending and sparked racial riots that chased white people into the suburbs:

LIMBAUGH: You have massive welfare states where citizens are given things left and right in order to buy their votes. You have no opposition whatsoever.

And in the case of the — you throw race into the mix and you bring on Mayor Coleman Young who causes riots in 1967 in Detroit and Mayor Young caused a white flight to suburbia, and Detroit is left with nothing but liberal Democrats running it. It is what it is. And you — any place in this country that has similar circumstances, the same fate is going to happen to them.

First, Coleman Young, who Limbaugh claims caused the riots, wasn’t elected to the mayor’s office until six years after violence broke out, in 1973. The New York Times noted in his obituary that by that point, “Detroit had already been reeling from high unemployment in the automobile industry, a high crime rate and deteriorating housing.” Young also wasn’t a proponent of the kind of welfare policies and “massive pensions,” that Limbaugh attributes to Democrats. In the 1970s and early 1980s, he was actually credited with keeping Detroit financially afloat “by persuading city workers to accept cuts in salaries and fringe benefits and voters to approve a $96 million increase in income taxes.” In the late 1990s, the city, still under Democratic rule, even experienced a small revitalization. Household incomes rose, child poverty dropped “by a stunning 13 percentage points,” and homeownership grew.

As for the 1967 riots, they occurred in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, when African Americans across the country were, as a study commissioned by President Lyndon Johnson put it, systematically excluded from the benefits of economic progress and faced “Pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing.” The report, which focused on the causes of the violence, found that “white racism,” not Coleman Young, “is essentially responsible for the explosive mixture which has been accumulating in our cities since the end of World War II.”

The riots of the late 1960s set off “a chain reaction in neighboring communities.” The violence first started in Newark, New Jersey in July of 1967 and later spread to Detroit. “What the rioters appeared to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material benefits enjoyed by the majority of American citizens,” the 1967 National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders concluded. “Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it.”

Limbaugh is right that white people did leave Detroit in large numbers in the aftermath of the 1967 violence, but that exodus followed a trend of whites abandoning cities as black people moved in and a slowdown in the auto industry. Before the riots, the vast majority of white population growth was already occurring “in suburban portions of metropolitan areas” and white population within the city of Detroit had declined by 1.3 million between 1960 and 1967.

The First State That Tried To Defund Planned Parenthood Is Officially Giving Up

BY TARA CULP-RESSLER/Think Progress

After a legal battle that has stretched over the course of two years, the state of Indiana has agreed to put an end to its efforts to strip Medicaid funding from Planned Parenthood clinics. Indiana was the first statethat attempted to target the national women’s health organization by blocking it from receiving state-level Medicaid dollars for the services it provides to low-income women.

In 2011, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) signed a law to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funding simply because it is an abortion provider — even though that money actually funds general health screenings for thousands of low-income women, not abortions. That sparked a national trend. Anti-abortion lawmakers in states like Arizona, North Carolina, Kansas, Tennessee, and Texas followed suit, enacting similar laws intended to defund the women’s health organization by excluding it from their states’ pools of public insurance providers.

But those efforts have been largely unsuccessful. Multiple courts have determined that states aren’t allowed to discriminate against qualified Medicaid providers simply because of their stance on abortion rights, saying that low-income women deserve the freedom to choose their own doctors.

Indiana’s own law was temporarily blocked by a U.S. District Judge last year, and a federal appeals court decided to uphold that injunction. Indiana officials kept fighting, asking the highest court in the country to hear their appeal of the case — but the U.S. Supreme Court declined to do so in May. Now, the state of Indiana is agreeing to permanently end its failed legal crusade against Planned Parenthood.

Cecile Richards, the president of the women’s health organization, hailed the news as a victory for women across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood clinics for their preventative care. “This is not only a victory for Planned Parenthood’s patients in Indiana, it is a victory for the nearly three million people who turn to Planned Parenthood health centers each year across the country,” Richards said in a statement. “Politicians in all 50 states should take note: blocking Planned Parenthood from funding to provide preventive health care is both unlawful, and deeply unpopular.”

In addition to permanently blocking Indiana from stripping Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding, the proposed final judgment will also dismiss the women’s health organization’s claim that this type of state law is unconstitutional.

VIDEO: Paul Ryan Concedes He’ll Help His Constituents Enroll In Obamacare

BY SCOTT KEYES/Think Progress

RACINE, Wisconsin — Some Republicans have indicated they will use any means necessary to sabotage Obamacare’s implementation, even if that means ignoring constituents who come to their office with questions about how the new law can help them. But Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) won’t be one of them.

For years, Republicans have tried every possible method they could think of to undermine Obamacare. Now, after failing to stop the law from passing, failing in an attempt to get the Supreme Court to strike it down, and failing in nearly 40 tries to repeal the law, some conservative House Republicans are simply going to try to sabotage the law. The leaders of this new effort are Reps. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), who have said they will try to undermine Obamacare by purposefully not helping constituents who come to them with questions about navigating Obamacare.

However, Ryan, the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate in 2012, isn’t going along with this strategy. ThinkProgress spoke to the Wisconsin congressman after a town hall on Friday and asked whether his office would be helping constituents who had questions about the program. “We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government,” Ryan declared.

KEYES: Are you going to be helping constituent services, much in the way with Social Security and Medicare?

RYAN: We always help any constituent with any problem they have with the federal government.

KEYES: Including Obamacare?

RYAN: Anybody has a problem with the federal government we’re going to help them because that’s my job. But the best thing I think I can do to help my constituents with respect to Obamacare is to work to delay the whole law.

Watch it:

Even if Ryan won’t be a part of this latest effort to undermine Obamacare, it could still have a major impact on the law. Congressional scholar Norm Ornstein, who works at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, derided the “unprecedented, contemptible GOP quest to sabotage Obamacare” in an Atlantic article last week. “It is important to emphasize that this set of moves is simply unprecedented,” Ornstein notes, drawing a parallel with similar recent legislation that Democrats opposed during debate but didn’t try to undercut once it was law.

NRA's Ted Nugent: The Real Racist Is President Obama, Not Me

TIMOTHY JOHNSON/Media Matters For America

National Rifle Association board member Ted Nugent claimed that he is "the antithesis of a racist" and that instead President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder "are clearly guilty of racism" because "they make public judgments based on the color of someone's skin instead of the content of their character."

In his regular column for conservative website Rare, Nugent attacked the "hateful media" for leveling charges of racism against him afterhe made a series of racially charged comments in wake of the acquittal of George Zimmerman. According to Nugent, the people he meets across the country are "aghast at the vulgar dishonesty of a media that has plummeted into the soulless abyss of hurling the hateful accusation of 'racism' at [him] and anybody they disagree with."

The real racists, according to Nugent, are Obama and Holder, who he suggests judged Zimmerman -- who was acquitted of murdering Florida teenager Trayvon Martin -- on the basis of his race and not his character:

We are most offended that the president of the United States and the U.S. attorney general are clearly guilty of racism when they intentionally bring race to the fore when they make public judgments based on the color of someone's skin instead of the content of their character in total defiance of the findings of the FBI, Department of Justice, entire state's investigative resources and a jury verdict.

In his column, Nugent also grouped "racist scam masters" Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and "other black panthers" before writing that "the foodstamp scam is being allowed to enslave so many able-bodied Americans."

Since the acquittal of Zimmerman on July 13, Nugent has made a number of offensive generalizations about the African-American community, leading to calls for his removal from the NRA board of directors.

During a July 16 appearance on conspiracy theory radio program The Alex Jones Show, Nugent claimed that African-Americans could fix "the black problem" if they just put their "heart and soul into being honest, law-abiding, [and] delivering excellence at every move in your life," also adding his belief that "racism against blacks was gone" by "the late [19]60s."

On July 23, Nugent joined entertainer Nick Cannon's podcast to claim that he was an "anti-racist" just moments before suggesting that African-Americans should be profiled the same way members of a community might profile a breed of dog that was attacking children. Nugent doubled down on these comments in a July 24 opinion piece for conspiracy website WND, claiming that the black community has a "mindless tendency to violence" and that an inability to "read or speak clearly is the root of unemployment for blacks."

Nugent also leveled a number of attacks on Martin and his family, labeling the deceased teenager a "dope smoking, racist gangsta wannabe," an "enraged black man-child," and a "Skittles hoodie boy."

His recent comments follow a long history of inflammatory rhetoric on race and other topics: