Then I heard that it was being executive produced by Joel Surnow, a right wing activist who’s so close to Rush Limbaugh that they’ve gone on vacation together in the Dominican Republic. This is a guy who refers to Bill Clinton as a “yuppie, baby boomer narcissist” and who supported Rick Santorum for Senate. What is he doing producing a series about one of the greatest progressive political families in American history? What’s his agenda?, I wondered.

Soon after, I started hearing the chatter from my friends in the film and TV world. I heard from friends in the industry that I absolutely had to read the script for the latest Kennedy mini-series.

Then I got a copy of the script.

It turns out that “The Kennedys,” an upcoming mini-series on The History Channel, is nothing more than a right wing political hit job. Its aim is to turn all the wonderful and important accomplishments of the Kennedy family into a cheap story of sexual titillation, opportunism and failure, of backstabbing and political intrigue. Historically misleading, demeaning and disgusting, this piece of far right propaganda goes beyond the bounds of decency, let alone historical accuracy. I was shocked and infuriated at this character assassination and sexual exploitation of the highest order, driven by a right wing agenda. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, this is par for the course for the right wing. The recent ‘Citizens United’ Supreme Court decision, travesty that it was, was merely the capstone of a generations-long effort by conservatives to rewrite history and litter it with suggestions and outright fabrications of sleaze, crimes and conspiracies by progressive icons, from Hillary Clinton to John F. Kennedy. That’s how hacks like Jonah Goldberg and David Horowitz draw their paychecks.

Right-wing zealots, of course, hail the Citizens United decision as a victory for “free (corporate) speech.” But yet, when the mythology of their own pantheon of heroes is challenged, these same right-wing activists drop the “free speech” mantle like a hot potato and sing a different tune, such as when they successfully pressured CBS to drop its plans to air a mini-series on the Reagans a few years ago.

It’s time to defend our own pantheon and stand up for responsible historiography. Sign our petition to the History Channel telling them that this upcoming mini-series is right-wing character assassination, not “history”:

http://stopkennedysmears.com/

I come from the world of commercial film and television production, having directed and produced over 55 movies, mini-series and TV shows. I can’t remember anything I’ve seen in that world that was so full of overt character assassination, that was so hackish and malevolent.

And yet, this series is being produced for The History Channel.

It doesn’t seem possible. But sadly, it is.

I cannot understand how or why the History Channel, with its ostensible commitment to historical scholarship, would even consider airing this propaganda. Why would a channel that stakes its reputation on its commitment to responsible historical scholarship turn over its programming to a partisan, right wing attack dog like Surnow, with a clear intent to launch an attack on the reputation of the Kennedys to coincide with the 50th anniversary of JFK’s inauguration?

Join me and let them know that the History Channel should not be financing and supporting propaganda and smears of the lowest order.

http://stopkennedysmears.com/

Anthem Blue Cross is spending millions on executive salaries and lobby efforts against healthcare reform — and how are they paying for it? By forcing 39% increases on their policy holders in California.

Join the more than 16k on Facebook who are fighting back today!

In an apparent attempt to censor the President as he engaged in an informative and conciliatory question and answer session with GOP members, FOX News decided to cut off transmission and divert the discussion. This does not inspire trust in news, but represents yet another example of how FOX News manipulates the truth and engages in lies and deception to further their political agenda.

Appearing for the first time on ABC’s “This Week,” Ailes said that Beck’s often over-the-top rhetoric was politically legitimate, even if it ruffled a few feathers.

Reminded by Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington that Beck has warned of “slaughter” and a “killing spree” for those not on board with the Obama administration’s agenda, Ailes insisted that the reference wasn’t to this president but rather to murderous dictators.

“Well, he was talking about Hitler and Stalin slaughtering people, so I think he was probably accurate,” he said. “I think he speaks English, I don’t know. But I don’t misinterpret any of his words. He did say one unfortunate thing that he apologized for. But that happens in live television.”

Ailes was wrong. Beck’s reference was, indeed, to Obama.

UPDATE:

Here is Beck warning of a possible impending “slaughter” in November 2009:

I told you yesterday, buckle up your seatbelt, America. Find the exit — there’s one here, here, and here. Find the exit closest to you and prepare for a crash landing. Because this plane is coming down, because the pilot is intentionally steering it into the trees!

Most likely, it’ll happen sometime after Christmas. You’re gonna see this economy come up — we’re already seeing it, and now it’s gonna start coming back down again. And when you see the effects of what they’re doing to the economy, remember these words: We will survive. No — we’ll do better than survive, we will thrive. As long as these people are not in control. They are taking you to a place to be slaughtered!

The Obama Administration just unveiled a huge Defense Department budget for next year shaped by the Afghanistan war. War spending is exempt from the president’s proposed spending freeze, despite President Obama’s statement at West Point that, “we can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars.”

According to AFP:

The Obama administration plans to unveil a defense budget on Monday that pours billions into drones, helicopters and special forces, reflecting a focus on fighting Islamist extremists rather than conventional armies.

The Pentagon’s spending priorities as well as its strategic vision — which is also due to be unveiled this week — are a product of the counter-insurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan that have severely stretched the military.

The proposed 2011 defense budget comes to more than 700 billion dollars, a modest two percent increase, and unlike last year avoids sweeping cuts to major weapons programs, according to Pentagon officials and draft documents.

Politico also reports that the administration’s war funding estimates for the next 2 years far exceed last year’s estimates:

President Barack Obama’s new budget, to be released Monday, forecasts two consecutive years of near $160 billion in war funding, far more than he hoped when elected and only modestly less than the last years of the Bush Administration.

In 2011 alone, the revised numbers are triple what the president included in his spending plan a year ago. And the strain shows itself in new deficit projections, already hobbled by lagging revenues due to the weak economy.

We can’t afford to keep spending huge amounts of blood and treasure on a war that’s causing massive human suffering and that’s not making us any safer.

In other news, Bloomberg reports that, “Defense Stocks May Rise With Government Budget Increase.” Note especially the giggling about the profitability of drones. Mass murder from above is good for business!

Next Wednesday, President Obama will give his first State of the Union address. It’s a safe bet he’ll discuss the Afghanistan war. You probably recall that the President recently committed to start drawing down troops in Afghanistan in July 2011.

Setting a target date for the start of a withdrawal is a good step, but if we are going to make the president’s commitment into a reality, we need a concrete exit strategy.

Please take a moment to sign our petition to tell the President that you want him to describe a real exit strategy for Afghanistan during his State of the Union speech. Here’s the text:

In your State of the Union address on January 27, 2009, I want you to provide a concrete exit strategy for our troops in Afghanistan that begins no later than July 2011 and which completes a withdrawal of combat troops no later than July 1, 2012.

A concrete exit plan will lay the groundwork that will help make President Obama’s commitment to a draw-down a reality. Our country cannot afford to keep spending billions of dollars on a war that’s not making us safer. Staunching the flow of American blood and treasure into the Afghanistan war will be essential to the success of the Obama presidency and to getting our economy back on track. We need more than a date. We need a plan.

Please sign the petition today. If we get 10,000 signatures, we’ll deliver them to the White House on Monday. Your signature will help put us on a defined path to the end of the war in Afghanistan.

Re-posted from Derrick Crowe, originally on Rethink Afghanistan.

The Democrats didn’t lose the Massachusetts Senate race this Tuesday. They lost it over twelve long and agonizing months ago, well before anyone even knew there would be a Massachusetts Senate race in January of 2010.

To put a rough date on it, this race was lost for the Democrats sometime between the 2008 election and the inauguration, whenever it was that the Obama administration made the fateful decision not to challenge Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, AIG and the rest of the white collar criminals that drove the U.S. economy into the ground, and chose instead to appoint Wall Street’s most prominent boosters and apologists to his economic advisory team. It was compounded when the White House and the Democratic Congressional leadership spearheaded a healthcare reform strategy rooted in the false notions that the opponents of reform are operating in good faith, that legislation directly challenging the profit motives of one of the biggest industries in America can be achieved by consensus, and that the era of political partisanship is over. And as the Afghanistan war grows ever more disastrous, the political swamp the Democrats find themselves in today will become an inescapable quagmire, in the 2010 midterms and beyond.

When voters look at the Obama administration and the Congressional Democrats today, they see little of the ‘change’ they cast their ballots for last November. On healthcare, the White House has been outmaneuvered, out-organized, and outmatched by the health insurance industry from the very beginning, while the Democratic leaders in Congress have allowed the will of the caucus’ majority to be flouted and marginalized by a handful of industry-bought pretenders like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman.

Failure over healthcare reform has been a shortcoming of political competence. Worse for the perception of voters in Massachusetts and elsewhere are the cases of the foreclosure crisis and re-regulation of the financial industry. In these cases, the administration has taken a timid stance, abdicating responsibility and even defending the status quo. These were failures not of competence, but of moral leadership. The upshot of this state of affairs in the minds of voters is the continuation of business as usual in Washington DC.

Ted Kennedy’s seat was lost this Tuesday not because voters abandoned Obama’s call for change, but because they continue to embrace it. The truth is that the mainstream of the Democratic leadership has forfeited its claims to that mantle. Voters continue to seek change, but they have found that the solution is not so facile as simply electing Democratic majorities to the House and Senate.

Obama famously instructed us that we are the change we are seeking. That message resonates now more strongly than ever, but only because we have discovered, to our dismay, that it is not to be found in Congress or the White House. This is the lesson coming out of Massachusetts this week: change will come, but its catalyst will not be found in Washington DC. It will have to come from us.

Read the full story as reported by The New York Times’ Dexter Filkins.

The Afghanistan war is a breeding ground for corruption, and today McClatchy Newspapers reports that it’s not just the corrupt Afghan government that’s feeding at the trough. The Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) says about three-quarters of its active corruption investigations involved Westerners.

The Associated Press breaks down the numbers:

The U.S. agency overseeing the multibillion dollar Afghanistan reconstruction effort is investigating 38 criminal cases ranging from contract fraud to theft – most involving non-Afghans, officials said Tuesday…Just 10 of the criminal cases under the microscope involve Afghans only, while the rest involve U.S. and other foreigners, according to Raymond DiNunzio, the agency’s assistant inspector general for inspections.

As Ahmed Rashid points out in Brave New Foundation’s Rethink Afghanistan documentary, U.S. and allied-nation official and private corruption helped set the stage for the venality of the Kabul government:

[A]fter 9/11, American and western aid actually perpetrated this kind of corruption. Because this kind of subcontracting that went on, the wastage of aid, the fact that there was this concentration on the security sector rather than on winning hearts and minds in the social sector, all this created a climate of corruption which people in the Afghan govt. immediately latched onto and were the beneficiaries of. And they then perpetuated their own corruption. So you can’t just blame the corruption in Pakistan or Afghanistan on local people and local issues. A lot of it is to do with the very corrupt aid system that provided money and corrupted the local people on the ground.

Learn more about the Afghanistan war.