This shocking video shows Memphis talk radio host Thaddeus Matthews insulting and humiliating Republican congressional candidate Charlotte Bergmann on air.

Matthews later tells Bergmann to “get your stupid, ignorant ass out of my studio” and refuses to shake her hand because he doesn’t want her “whiteness” to “rub off” on him.

The video exemplifies the true feelings of black liberals- in this particular instance the radio show host is black as well- towards black conservatives.

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Occupy Wall Street was ‘absolutely’ racist and hypocritical, according to a black occupier and his girlfriend who first liked protesting at Zuccotti Park but now have moved to Occupy Newark. My interview with occupier Michael Morgan raised the same issues that came up in every discussion I had with black members of the Occupy Wall Street protest, who all felt that the movement was racist. These accusations are coming from men and women who support much of the rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street but have seen the reality with their own eyes. So far, the cowardly elitist leaders of Occupy Wall Street have done nothing to answer these charges from within their own movement that they are racist against people of color.

Here’s my interview with Mr. Morgan:

Mr. Morgan was clearly bothered by the segregation at Zuccotti Park and that there was an area of Occupy known as ‘the ghetto.’ This segregation was brilliantly  exposed in one of the best pieces on mainstream media reporting on #Occupy from The Daily Show, which also shows the rift between the smug, privileged liberal elites who talk about the 99% but clearly wouldn’t want to be caught dead with them.

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People inside the Occupy movement — including one of the leaders of the Occupy Newark encampment — claim that Occupy Wall Street is racist against people of color. These new accusations of racism are based on people’s personal experiences with the increasingly secretive and “fascist” Occupy Wall Street leadership and the actions of OWS participants.

Imagine the amount of press the following story would get if it occurred at a Tea Party event; “If you ever want to see the biggest bunch of a**holes in the world, it’s Occupy Wall Street,” an unidentified man told me. We were in the atrium of 60 Wall Street, a location that Occupy Wall Street uses for meetings especially on evenings such as this past Friday when the weather outside was rainy and cold. The gentleman speaking to me was clearly upset, in his late 30s, neatly dressed and black. He eyed the tables of white Occupiers chowing down nearby. “I brought plates,” he said. “I brought plates free for everyone to eat on and what do they do? They asked me if I’d washed my hands. That’s how they treat us here.”

This man’s complaints about his own personal experience of antiblack racism at Occupy Wall Street were echoed by every black person I spoke to this past week in New York. Some people did not want to go on record, possibly fearing reprisals from people at Occupy Wall Street, but others freely admitted in video interviews that BigGovernment.com and Breitbart.TV will be releasing this week that they think the Occupy Wall Street movement is “clearly” and “absolutely” racist against people of color based on their own personal experience.

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The Political Class has honed a dangerous skill, building the perfect undetectable fraud machine. Americans need to learn to spot these scams for their own protection and realize that the perpetrators can come from either political party and often work in cahoots with attorneys or big business.

Think about three seemingly unconnected news stories, all examples of costly or dangerously indictable fraud machines…

• The economic collapse of 2008 was caused in part by relaxed mortgage rules that allowed borrowers to get a home loan without a down payment or even proof of income in some cases.
• In the Pigford settlement, claimants were able to get $50,000 checks by asserting without proof that they had “attempted to farm.”
• In a move strongly supported by the NAACP and other liberal advocacy groups, the Obama Department of Justice just stopped South Carolina’s plan to put in place some minimal ID requirements for voting. Currently voters in a number of states don’t need to show any photo ID or other identity checks in order to cast a ballot.

All three stories are examples of systems that have been intentionally set up with such low standards that they invite fraud. But ingeniously, they have also been set up in a such a way that makes them almost critic-proof because the lack of standards makes detection of fraud nearly impossible. When the system is questioned, the defenders, creators and beneficiaries then point to the lack of “proof” of fraud as a reason to keep the status. Thus, a self-perpetuating fraud scheme is kept alive as long as possible.

Make no mistake, these scams are costly….

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Big Government has learned that a major internal fight has erupted among Occupy Wall Street organizers after activists began circulating an infographic published by FastCompany, the “progressive business” magazine.

The infographic in question depicts the results of an internal online survey conducted by Occupy Wall Street supporters at occupywallst.org.

The data, compiled by advertising analyst Harrison Schultz and Ford Foundation sociologist Dr. Héctor R. Cordero-Guzmán, were intended to promote the idea, as Dr. Cordero-Guzmán put it, that “the 99% movement comes from and looks like the 99%.”

Some activists were outraged, however, that the survey results and the infographic show Occupy Wall Street to be 81.2 percent white, and only 1.6 percent black.

By comparison, the U.S. population is 77.1 percent white and 12.9 percent black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau–making the Occupy Wall Street movement disproportionately white.

The infographic, depicted below, caused instant controversy when it was shared among Occupy Wall Street organizers. One activist reacted: “81% white protestors–and you actually made a flyer proudly advertising this lie, in a multicultural city like NYC? You must be crazy and blind.”

She later accused Schultz of “insidious racism” and “white supremacy,” and demanded “serious mediation” from organizers on the Safer Spaces working group, the internal security apparatus of Occupy Wall Street.

The argument then escalated, according to Big Government sources, with threats of intervention from the “people of color working group” and the sarcastic suggestion that the analysts “join the Tea Party.” (more…)

From Investor’s Business Daily:

President Obama says the Occupy Wall Street protests show a “broad-based frustration” among Americans with the financial sector, which continues to kick against regulatory reforms three years after the financial crisis.

“You’re seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on the abusive practices that got us into this in the first place,” he complained earlier this month.

But what if government encouraged, even invented, those “abusive practices”?

Rewind to 1994. That year, the federal government declared war on an enemy — the racist lender — who officials claimed was to blame for differences in homeownership rate, and launched what would prove the costliest social crusade in U.S. history. (more…)

Lisa Fithian, the anarchist who is organizing #OccupyWallSt “direct actions” with unions and Democrats across the country, addressed several hundred evidently brainwashed activists at their “General Assembly” in Chicago on October 10, 2011.

She described the coordination between “community-based organizations” and unions across the country in a “fall campaign,” and described the racial speech codes that #Occupy enforces at its meetings.

Fithian actually called for white men to speak first at meetings, in order to create a racial solidarity that can unite all of #Occupy’s disparate groups. [Update: It was apparently unclear, even to the activists, whether Fithian used the pronoun "they" to refer to white men, or to everyone else.]

The cult-like crowd repeated almost every word.

Transcript:

Hello Occupy Chicago!

Hello Occupy Chicago!

My name is Lisa.

My name is Lisa.

I was on Wall Street September 17th.

I was on Wall Street September 17th.

I’ve had the pleasure to be involved [in] OccupySanFrancisco, OccupyLA, OccupyDC, and now OccupyChicago!

[Cheers] (more…)

The Occupy Wall Street movement has adopted racist rules for speech at its nightly “General Assembly” meetings, according to which white men cannot speak unless preceded by some other type of person.

State your race, gender & sexual orientation, then maybe we'll let you speak. Later.

According to Occupy Wall Street supporter/observer “Lori“:

Occupy Wall Street’s General Assembly operates under a revolutionary “progressive stack.” A normal “stack” means those who wish to speak get in line. A progressive stack encourages women and traditionally marginalized groups speak before men, especially white men. This is something that has been in place since the beginning, it is necessary, and it is important.

“Step up, step back” was a common phrase of the first week, encouraging white men to acknowledge the privilege they have lived in their entire lives and to step back from continually speaking. This progressive stack has been inspiring and mind-boggling in its effectiveness.

[Hat tip: Matt Sledge at Huffington Post] (more…)

There is something terribly wrong with our Justice Department. Under Barack Obama, it is no longer interested in justice at all but instead has become a base used by far-left ideologues and race baiters to destroy the American idea of the equality of rights of all people before the law.

J. Christian Adams is the heroic former election lawyer who served in the Voting Rights section at the U.S. Department of Justice. He blew the lid off the Black Panther case of voter intimidation that Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder refused to prosecute. Now he is exposing the Obama administration’s secret (or not-so-secret) race war and complete abandonment of individual rights.

In his new book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department (Regnery), Adams, who worked inside the DOJ for five years, tells the whole shocking story about how Obama has allowed – or commanded – the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department to be politicized. For his efforts to expose the corruption of the Obama Justice Department, Adams was my co-recipient of the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Annie Taylor Award for Courage in 2010. And that honor was richly deserved. As Adams shows in this book, if you’re not a member of one of the groups that the Obama administration considers to be its constituency, there’s no justice for you. But if you are a black militant or a member of one of Obama’s other favored groups, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done: you won’t pay any penalty, no matter how serious your crimes. (more…)

If you were to pile Hollywood’s most talented black actors, actresses, and singers into a room, many of them would echo the same sentiment towards the Tea Party movement — that they are, in effect, little more than a fringe racist organization.

It was Samuel L. Jackson most recently who, while entertaining children at a “Reach Out and Read” benefit that featured other well-known thespians such as Julianne Moore and John C. Reilly, decided to follow in the footsteps of the Congressional Black Caucus, all while chatting up a reporter for the New Yorker:

While we were on the subject, we asked Jackson if he agreed with fellow thespian Morgan Freeman, who caused something of a ruckus recently after he claimed that the tea party is racist. “It’s pretty obvious what they are,” Jackson told us. “The division of the country is not about the government having too much power. I think everything right now is geared toward getting that guy out of office, whatever that means,” he said, echoing Freeman. “It’s not politics. It is not economics. It all boils down to pretty much to race. It is a shame.”

Of course, Jackson did not simply come out and say what he believes. Apparently, he was one of only two beings (the other his shadow) that hadn’t been informed of the “N-head” controversy (if it can even be viewed as such) of Republican hopeful Rick Perry. Jackson made it abundantly clear that he was convinced the “shock rock” (as a close associate referred to it) wouldn’t affect Perry negatively. After all, “He’s a Republican and this is America”. You see, Mr. Jackson not only believes that Republicans are inherently racist, but that the same holds true for the entirety of the United States. That is what the real shame is. (more…)

To quote someone we all know and love, let me be perfectly clear:  The mainstream media is the bought and paid for lapdog of the liberal Democrat elite.  It will not only never give conservatives a fair hearing but will actively distort, lie and slander in an effort to destroy any conservative it sees as a threat to its masters.  So why the hell do conservatives treat its members with anything other than contempt and allow it to set the agenda and exploit fault lines in the movement?

Easy – conservatives tend to be polite, reasonable people with a genuine interest in honest debate and a quaint belief in the efficacy of things like “facts” and “evidence” as a way to demonstrate the truth.  No wonder they get rolled.  The other side believes in none of those things – its only belief is that leftism must prevail and any other value is disposable if it turns into a liability.  The answer is conservative judo – understanding how the Left works and using its own weight and momentum against it.  We need to start being less like butt-kissing conservanerd David Brooks and more like butt-kicking conservastud Chuck Norris.

Conservative judo means going on the offense and keeping on the offense.  It’s not about reasoning with unreasonable people; it’s about using their own strengths against them to defeat them.  It has application to the GOP candidates for sure, but it also applies to those of us in the real world facing liberals every day.

The bizarre Rick Perry rock pseudo-scandal is a wonderful teachable moment for conservatives, mostly because the GOP candidates’ reactions allowed this contemptible lie to gain steam.  The Washington Post ran a story that some idiot wrote a racial slur on a rock at some ranch where Rick Perry hunted.  Now, one might observe that the facts and evidence show that about 30 years ago the Perry family got a hunting lease and promptly painted over the word.  One might also note that Perry was a Democrat at the time.  Moreover, the sources who disagree can’t agree on a different timeline and won’t give their names – inconsistent, anonymous hearsay is apparently acceptable when it comes to conservatives.

But none of this matters.  It’s not about “facts” or “evidence” or even “truth.”  It’s a calculated smear designed by a liberal rag to slander a leading GOP candidate.  Moreover, it is another example of a partisan political publication hiding behind the lie that it is an objective news source.  It is not.  The Washington Post, like the New York Times and the vast majority of mainstream media outlets, is an active collaborator with the liberal elite.  If it weren’t, Andrew Breitbart would not be the one breaking the story of Barak Obama’s game of patty cake with the expressly black supremacist New Black Panthers.

The question is, then, why the other GOP candidates tolerated this attack instead of coming to his defense – after all, this was an attack not just on Rick Perry but upon every conservative.  This was pure innuendo designed not just to trash one candidate but to feed a narrative that all conservatives are just one sheet away from an old fashioned cross burning of the kind dead Democratic icon Robert Byrd would have enjoyed in his pre-Senate capacity as a KKK Kleagle.

Herman Cain fell right into the trap.  A good man, it seems he did so here not in a short-sighted attempt to capitalize on the blow to Rick Perry but because he was genuinely disgusted with the idea that some nitwit would paint that sort of thing on a rock.  When asked about it (at the 3:42 mark) by Chris Wallace of Fox News, he responded that it was “insensitive.”  Well, “insensitive” is one word for it – Cain was being kind.  My saltier characterization would have included an adjective beginning with an “F.”  Cain later clarified that he was referring to the person who wrote it, and that he did not believe the Rock of Outrages represented Perry’s belief.  Too late.  The damage was done.

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Yes, I know what you are going to say… “Stop giving her attention and she will go away.” The problem though, is that she has proven that she will not go away even when ignored. Why would she, she has “Olby” to give her liberal ideas (a.k.a. name calling) a platform.

With the easy pickings for cartoon ideas that appear every time she opens her mouth, she is just too hard to ignore. As a cartoonist, she (**shiver**) completes me!

I like the idea of keeping her in the spotlight so regular Americans (the Conservative majority of this country) can see what Liberals truly think of us.

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On BigHollywood I once shared my thoughts on the movie Glory and how Col. Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the 54^th Mass., was an example of a post-racial man in his day – indeed he went to his death for his belief in the rights of the free Black men under his command with whom he shared a common grave.

One of my favorite characters in this film was Sergeant-Major Rawlins, played by the esteemed actor Morgan Freeman.  Rawlins, a grave-digger before enlisting in the Union army, is presented as an older, wiser and honest man whom the others look up to…and Shaw himself leans on for counsel.  Perhaps the best scene in the film is the altercation between Rawlins and the embittered and recalcitrant Private Silas Tripp (Denzel Washington).  Rawlins berates Tripp harshly after Tripp derides his compliance with the chain of command, in which only Whites were allowed to be officers, as making him a “…n****r…nothing but the White man’s dog.”  Rawlins then bitch-slaps Tripp across the face and stings him with these words of wisdom and caution:

“And what are you? So full of hate you just want to go out and fight everybody.  Because you’ve  been whipped and chased by hounds.  Well that may not be living but it sure as hell ain’t dying.  And dying’s what these white boys been doing for going on three years now.  Dying by the thousands.  Dyin’ for you, fool!  I know ‘cause I dug the graves. And all the time I’m digging I’m asking myself when, oh Lord, when’s it gonna be our time?  Well our time’s comin’ when we gonna have to ante up.  Ante up and kick in like men…like men!  So you watch who you call a n****r.  If there’s any n****rs around here it’s you.  A smart mouth, stupid-ass, swamp-running n****r.  And if you ain’t careful that’s all you ever gonna be!”

What I like(d) about Morgan Freeman besides his acting is that, until recently, I felt this Rawlins mentality was not far from that of the actor who portrayed him.  Rawlins was a man who, though clearly the victim of racism himself, would not allow race to be an excuse for failure.  And thus I thought Freeman to be a post-racial man and disparaging of those who view the world through the prism of color.

Consider this excerpt from a 2005 interview with Mike Wallace when the actor exposes the hypocrisy of the 60 Minutes journalist for his condescending attitude towards Blacks that is so common among the white-guilt ridden liberal elite…even as they remain oblivious to their own racism that is just as pernicious if not more so than that of a klansman because of its very subtly.  Mike Wallace asked Freeman his thoughts on so-called Black History Month:

Freeman: “Ridiculous.”

Wallace: “Why?”

Freeman: “You’re gonna relegate my history to a month?”

Wallace: “Oh come on—”

Freeman: “What do you do with yours?  What month is ‘white history month’?”

Wallace: [Uncomfortable hemming and hawing.] “Well…”

Freeman: “No, come on.”

Wallace: [Uncomfortable noises. Waves away notion with sweep of hand] “I’m Jewish.”

Freeman: “Okay.  Which month is ‘Jewish history month’?”

Wallace: “There isn’t one.”

Freeman: “Oh…Oh…why not?  Do you want one?”

Wallace: [rather emphatic] “No, no, no I don’t—”

Freeman: “Alright.  I don’t either.  I don’t want a ‘Black history month.’  Black history is American history.”

Wallace: “How are we going to get rid of racism until—”

Freeman: “Stop talking about it.  I’m gonna stop calling you a ‘white man.’  And I’m gonna ask you to stop calling me a ‘black man.’  I know you as Mike Wallace and you know me as Morgan Freeman.  I’m not gonna say ‘I know this white guy named Mike Wallace.’ You know what I’m saying?”

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One week after the 10th anniversary of the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, carried out by Islamist terrorists, the American Islamic College and the Organization for Islamic Cooperation convened students, academics, and “intellectuals” in Chicago, Illinois, for its 2nd annual conference on “Islam and Muslims in America.” Rather than accepting the underlying facts that lead reasonable Americans to express concern about the spread of Islam in America, the conference chose to focus on Americans’ “racism and bigotry,” negativity, and the so-called “Islamophobia,” inherent in their opinions about the Muslim faith.

This perverse twisting of the post-9/11 environment in America, as well as the institution’s shady past associations with noted Islamist agitators, provides the context for an event of which all Americans should be aware.

The stated purpose of the conference was to promote awareness of the school, discuss the current affairs of Islam and Muslims in America, and confront ”Islamophobia.” However, events that unfolded reveal that the narrative put forth throughout the conference veered sharply from these goals, the careful review of which invites legitimate concern and even alarm*.

(*Notably, it was within this context that U.S. Congressman Mike Quigley found it appropriate in his official capacity, to apologize on behalf of America, seen here in our previously released footage from the event.)

The following video shows an opening statement from the event emcee, a Muslim/pro-Palestinian activist and host of the Rise Up Radio Show Rashid Darwish. While Darwishundoubtably came across as one of the more measured speakers at the event, and gave no reason for observers to conclude that he was of an unpeaceful character, he makes an alarming claim in his opening remarks:

“…This last week, we look back at 10 years of the 9/11 tragedy….I will tell you this, it gave us all a wonderful opportunity to now educate people about Islam….and really help define what Islam is all about.”

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MRCTV visited the 41st Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and found that some of those we met up with believe the Tea Party and/or its members are racist, and some even hurled racial slurs at Republican Presidential candidate Herman Cain and Rep. Allen West. Curiously the mainstream media was absent while we were there, not asking questions of the CBC attendees like the ones they vigorously asked of Tea Party members at their rallies.

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Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) was recently interviewed on MSNBC after President Obama’s speech on his $447 Billion jobs plan and was asked how much the president was listening directly to the Congressional Black Caucus. Waters responded:

“We can see our handprint all over this proposal. We’re pleased about it and wish it had been even bigger, but it’s substantial and it targets the communities in need….”

The CBC’s entitlement-laced jobs plan was on full display at their shameless political pep-rally, which masqueraded as a townhall for jobs, on August 30^th in Los Angeles. Black lawmakers demanded government programs, attacked the tea party, and lavished one another with compliments in front of an audience of more than 700 people.

The South Central L.A. Tea Party attended the forum and we were able to get some revealing video footage of these lawmakers in action.

Maxine Waters got the crowd worked up and encouraged them to organize and march against the tea party. She also called for money for a “national housing trust fund” and threatened to tax the “gangsters on Wall Street” out of business.  She went on to say:

“…We have been fighting to get the banks and financial institutions to do loan modifications….They didn’t want bankruptcy, they don’t want to reduce the principle, it’s time for the bully pulpit of the White House to bring the gangsters in, put them around the table and let them know that if they don’t come up with loan modifications to keep people in their homes…we’re going to tax them out of business! [Loud audience applause] We need money….One of the things that we’re going for is a national housing trust fund to build more housing and rental units….”

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By now we’ve all heard the reprehensible remarks made by Congressional Black Caucus Whip Andre Carson (D-IN) where he told the audience at a CBC Jobs Fair Town Hall in Miami that Tea Party Congressmen would like to lynch black people.  Given the opportunity to revise or retract his remarks, Carson instead stood by “the truth” of his comments.

So now it seems pretty fair to say that Andre Carson is a race-baiting bigot who has brought shame upon the U. S. House of Representatives. But any regular reader of Big Government knows that this is not new information.  In fact, Andre Carson’s despicable, divisive slander of August 22nd is just the latest of bogus attacks made by the 2nd term congressman against the Tea Party.  Andre Carson is the man who told the mother of all race-baiting lies against the Tea Party: That racial slurs were screamed “fifteen times” at he and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in Washington DC on the day before the ObamaCare vote in 2010.

The headlines at the time (as well as Topic #1 on cable news and Sunday talk shows) was “Racist Tea Party Yells ‘N-Word’ at Civil Rights Icon John Lewis”.  Andre Carson’s name was hardly mentioned in any of the stories.  But a Big Government investigation revealed that it was he, in fact, who gathered Capitol Hill reporters around himself on March 20, 2010 and breathlessly told them what had happened “outside of Cannon (Congressional Office Building)” just moments before.  (audio courtesy Kerry Pickett, Washington Times)

By now you know the story become part of Democratic Party lore showing up in talking points as recently as just last week as Alan Colmes mangled the “facts” but still was able to perpetuate the lie on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor”. You should also know by now that Andrew Breitbart offered a $100, 000 reward for anyone who can produce video proof o the supposed racial hatred.  The only videos uncovered were found by the Big Government staff.  They show the exact moment Carson described, “down the steps of Cannon”, from four different angles.  Not only were there no slurs heard on any of the videos, but the scene is not at all how Carson described it to Capitol Hill reporters.

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If you thought the class warfare tactic was being used successfully by the Progressive Left to instigate strife between the upper and lower classes in the United States you need to re-examine what you think you are seeing. With declarations by three Congressional Black Caucus Progressives that target the TEA Party, we witness a pathetic attempt by special interest Progressive Leftists to re-package the contrived charge of racism against what is essentially Middle Class America.

Over the past two weeks we have experienced some incredibly caustic declarations by three Congressional Black Caucus members: US Rep. Maxine Waters (P-CA), US Rep. Frederica Wilson (P-FL) and US Rep. Andre Carson (P-IN). All three, evidently, have little respect for their own President who, just after the shooting of US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), called for “toning down the rhetoric.”

On August 20, 2011, while speaking to a friendly audience at a Los Angeles “community summit,” Maxine Waters, a member of both the Progressive and Congressional Black Caucuses in the US House said:

“I’m not afraid of anybody…This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to Hell.”

On August 22, 2011, at a Miami, FL, town hall meeting, Frederica Wilson, again, a member of both the Progressive and Congressional Black Caucuses in the US House said:

“Let us all remember who the real enemy is. The real enemy is the Tea Party…The Tea Party holds the Congress hostage. They have one goal in mind, and that’s to make President Obama a one-term president.”

Also in attendance was one Jesse Jackson of Rainbow/PUSH, a community organizing group that pressures institutions – both financial and otherwise – into doing things that would otherwise be considered ridiculous, like offering low-interest housing loans to unqualified buyers and coercing municipalities into hiring lower-scoring minority applicants to positions regarding public safety in the name of “diversity.” Rev. Jackson, a leader in the community organizing movement of social justice before he was eclipsed by one Barack Obama, compared the TEA Party to opposition to the civil-rights movement. “The Tea Party is a new name on an old game…Dr. King fought a ‘tea party’ in Alabama.”

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He has written about having sex with an underage girl, and claims he once threatened to kill a pregnant girlfriend unless she had an abortion. He claims to hate marijuana, but recommends heroin as the cure for suburban boredom. He mocks “Tea Baggers” and scorns “hippies.” His Russian newspaper was shuttered after a government crackdown, and he’s a regular on The Dylan Ratigan Show on MSNBC.

Meet Mark Ames, the provocateur who created the Koch brothers conspiracy theory.

Long before John Podesta’s Center for American Progress began targeting the Koch brothers for their supposed role in the Tea Party, and two years before the Kochs were cast as the villains of public sector union protests in Wisconsin, Ames had already shaped the Koch brothers meme.

Ames and co-author Yasha Levine launched the conspiracy theory–and its twin themes of drug abuse and gay sex–with a blog post (now removed) at Playboy.com in February 2009, entitled: “Backstabber: Is Rick Santelli High on Koch?” They published almost exactly the same article at their own site, exiledonline.com, as “Exposing the Rightwing PR Machine: Is CNBC’s Rick Santelli Sucking Koch?”

Ames and Levine alleged that Santelli’s famous “rant heard around the world” that inspired the Tea Party movement “was not at all spontaneous as his alleged fans claim, but rather it was a carefully-planned trigger” for an “anti-Obama campaign.” That campaign, they claimed, had been planned for months before the 2008 election, and funded by “the Koch family, the multibilllionaire owners of the largest private corporation in America, and funders of scores of rightwing thinktanks and advocacy groups.”

Ames would later explain that he had been inspired to write about the Kochs by his experiences in post-Soviet Moscow, when he edited a sensational newspaper, the eXile–described last year by Vanity Fair as “arguably the most abusive, defamatory, un-evenhanded, and crassest publication in Russia” before it closed in 2008. (more…)