Really Not Hiding It Anymore

The conservative right treats politics like warfare, warfare like a video game, and actually participating in war with a shrug and a retreat to their gated community.

South Florida Republicans held a weekly meeting at a gun range, shooting at targets including cut-outs of a Muslim holding a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

The GOP candidate to replace U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz fired at a full-body silhouette with "DWS" written next to its head.

And you wonder why a Democratic President received the Nobel Peace Prize essentially for not being a Republican.

...for more of this in action, see The GOP Speaks. Barking mad.

Pwned By Bill Ayers, Ferchrissakes

You don't need to respect Bill Ayers' past actions to respect the unbelievable stupidity of the wingnut faction.

[Y]ou shouldn’t believe everything you hear about me, [Ayers said,] you know nothing about me. I said, I know plenty–I’m from Chicago, a conservative blogger, and I’ll post this [...]

Then unprompted he said–I wrote Dreams From My Father. I said, oh, so you admit it. He said–Michelle asked me to. I looked at him. He seemed eager. He’s about my height, short. He went on to say–and if you can prove it, we can split the royalties. So I said, stop pulling my leg. Horrible thought. But he came again–I really wrote it, the wording was similar. I said I believe you probably heavily edited it. He said–I wrote it. I said–why would I believe you, you’re a liar.

He had no answer to that. Just looked at me. Then he turned and walked off, and said again his bit about my proving it and splitting the proceeds.

Unbelievably, a good bit of the wingnutosphere picked this up and ran with it today.

Ayers is messing with conservatives. People he’s duped so far: Jonah Goldberg, his mother Lucianne Goldberg, Tom Maguire, Dennis Byrne, Carol Platt Lieblau, and a bunch of other conservatives, some of whom try to split the difference by suggesting that Ayers is revealing a little bit of truth behind the sarcasm. How embarrassing.

More morons believing that Bill Ayers would just blurt out a wingnut conspiracy theory here. If Confederate Yankee is the smartly suspicious one in this scenario, your movement is bankrupt.

The Latest Attack Of The Wingnut Brigade

Amazingly enough, conservatives weren't satisfied by the resignation of Van Jones and the funding cutoff for ACORN. Seems they are trying to attack the Administration relentlessly, as if that was their singular objective! There have been a few clumsy stabs this week, like the mild song praising the President, or the lame tape of community organizers praying to "O God," not "Obama"; or attacking the President for wanting to bring the Olympics and $22 billion dollars of economic activity to America. But the right thinks they've found a target with a Department of Education official named Kevin Jennings. Sean Hannity has practically jumped on his desk and demanded Jennings' resignation for allegedly "covering up statutory rape." I say allegedly because only Sean Hannity thinks that, and it certainly doesn't meet with the facts of the case.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Fox News -- led by Sean Hannity -- and other right-wing media have claimed that Department of Education official Kevin Jennings "cover[ed] up statutory rape" and violated Massachusetts law by not reporting to authorities a 1988 conversation in which a high school student told Jennings about his relationship with an older man. In fact, Jennings' attorney wrote in a 2004 letter that the student was 16 years old, which is -- and was at the time -- the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.

Jennings' attorney: Conversation was "with a sixteen-year-old student"; "no factual basis" that Jennings was "aware of any sexual victimization of any student." In an August 3, 2004, letter, Constance M. Boland of the law firm Nixon Peabody -- which represented the organization that Jennings ran -- wrote that the "conversation" Jennings had was with "a sixteen-year-old student" and that there "is no factual basis whatsoever for" the "claim that Mr. Jennings engaged in unethical practices, or that he was aware of any sexual victimization of any student, or that he declined to report any sexual victimization at any time." [Boland letter, 8/3/04]

What happened was that Jennings wrote about a conversation he had while a teacher - 21 years ago - where a 16 year-old student told him about a relationship with an older man. Jennings, who is gay, didn't report the kid to the authorities for doing anything illegal, mainly because he... wasn't doing anything illegal.

Nevertheless, Hannity is outraged (but that's redundant) and the trumped-up scandal is seeping into the media. John Aravosis writes:

Allen went on a right-wing TV show this morning and falsely accused Department of Education official Kevin Jennings of a crime. He said - falsely - that Jennings failed to report "an assault" on a young man, twenty years ago, which would be a crime under Massachusetts law at the time. In fact, Jennings was never informed of an assault on anyone. He spoke to a student, of the legal age of consent, who had sex with a man. Ta ta ta dum.

Yes, you guessed - they were g-a-y. And one was older than the other. Ergo, it must have been one of those gay pedophile predator types who always go after young boys, because those gays are such perverts - right?

I'm not surprised that FOX News and the far right hate groups are going after a gay appointee in the Obama administration. Anti-gay bigotry is ripe at FOX, in the religious right, and in the GOP base that now controls the Republican party. So none of this should surprise us. What does surprise me is when real journalists, real reporters, like Mike Allen, swallow the bait from the ilk of Sean Hannity and the Family Research Council, and report their sludge as fact, when it's an outright lie. It really makes you wonder why the media smells a story here. I doubt they'd be as interested if the two legal adults, and the Obama official, were straight.

And another thing. Would Mike Allen, and any other media outlet covering this story, prefer if the kid had killed himself? From the REST of the story, if you bother reading it, the kid didn't exactly sound long for this world. Can you imagine, in the 1980s mind you (which is when this happened), had Jennings outed the kid as gay, not just to his parents, but to the entire state (which would include his school), which is what Allen is proposing? Assuming the kid didn't kill himself, would his parents have kicked him out of their house (which happened, and still happens, to a lot of gay kids)? Gee, I'll bet the media covering this fake story didn't think of that one. No, they had a "sex" story involving a gay guy - three gay guys in fact - and well, how you can top that?

Jennings' real crime in the eyes of his accusers appears to be that he's a gay man. After all, a famous director drugging and raping an underage white girl without consent - that's OK for the establishment, and he shouldn't be punished because he's in their social class. Someone like Jennings not turning in a ghey for his consensual relationanship - that deserves a burning at the stake.

This ticky-tack distractions don't even have to succeed. It's part of an effort to chip away at the legitimacy of the President, so that when the big story breaks, these zombie lies can fit an invented pattern. That's all.

No, "The Left" Isn't Apologizing For Roman Polanski

I haven't proffered an opinion on the Polanski case, but let me say now that I am against people raping 13 year-olds and getting away with it! Yes, I'm going out on a limb! According to Howard Kurtz, that makes me no longer a liberal, since he quotes wingnut Ed Morrissey, who lazily attributes defenses of Polanski to "the Left." Which, as Jamison Foser points out with multiple links, isn't true. Scott Lemieux piles on. Indeed, the most prominent defenders of Polanski are certain friends in the movie industry, which of course becomes "the Hollyweird Left" in the wingnut construction, as well as Anne Applebaum, whose husband is a Polish government official working to free Polanski (Applebaum casually forgot to mention that in her piece). In other words, friends of his. They saw a documentary that put the whole thing in a favorable light for Polanski, and that allowed them to assuage their guilt.

Steve Lopez has a very good piece today, noting that far too many of these defenders have elegantly chopped out the most damning parts of the testimony from the trial:

Q: What happened then?

A: He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, "No," you know, "Keep away." But I was kind of afraid of him because there was no one else there.

She testified that he put his mouth on her vagina.

"I was ready to cry," she said. "I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid."

She said he then pulled off her panties.

Q: What happened after that?

A: He started to have intercourse with me.

At this point, she testified, Polanski became concerned about the consequences and asked if she was on the pill.

No, she told him.

Polanski had a solution, according to her.

"He goes, 'Would you want me to go in through your back?' And I went, 'No.' "

According to her, that didn't stop Polanski, who began having anal sex with her.

This was when the victim was asked by the prosecutor if she resisted and she said, "Not really," because "I was afraid of him." She testified that when the ordeal had ended, Polanski told her, "Oh, don't tell your mother about this."

He added: "This is our secret." [...]

Q: Did you resist at that time?

A: A little bit, but not really because . . .

Q: Because what?

A: Because I was afraid of him.

It's pretty outrageous that Polanski's gotten away with claiming victimhood for 30 years after serving 42 days in jail (before the trial) for drugging and raping a 13 year-old. I like his movies but I don't have to absolve his behavior for that reason. We don't have a cultural exemption - or a political one, for that matter - in the US justice system. Let him do his time.

And by the way, that's the prevailing opinion of many on "the Left."

...Many are making use of the fact that Samantha Geimer, the victim, is willing to show compassion and doesn't want to see Polanski prosecuted. After a guilty verdict in a trial, I don't think that's her decision to make anymore, actually.

P.T. Barnum Laughs - The Birther Infomercial, Stealing From Suckers $30 At A Time

TPM Muckraker has found the next late-night sensation - a birther infomercial entitled "Where Was President Obama Born." It's already received the usual 1:00-in-the-morning airing on at least one local TV station in Texas. The United States Justice Foundation, a Birther front group led by the aptly named Gary Kreep, paid $100 to the CBS affiliate in Lubbock for the privilege of gracing their airwaves. That seems like money well spent for the Birthers for reaching a few thousand eyeballs or so and filling them with wingnut ideology. But that's not the true purpose.

For a $30 contribution, viewers also get a fax sent in their name to the 50 state attorneys general and Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that President Obama produce his real birth certificate.

Getting 4 suckers to fork over $30 for nothing covers their whole expense, and looking at the production values, producing the episode didn't cost much more than $100 either. This is pure conservative hucksterism, where a few people make money off of whipping up fears for no real purpose.

And Bill Keller, the host of the birthermercial, is perfectly positioned to be that huckster - he's a fundamentalist preacher:

The program was produced by LivePrayer.com, a Web site affiliated with Bill Keller, a fundamentalist Christian minister who also hosts the infomercial.

Imprisoned in the late 1980s after an insider trading conviction, Keller later committed his life to God, attended Liberty University in Virginia, and founded Bill Keller Ministries, according to his bio. LivePrayer.com was "founded for the sole purpose of having a site on the internet where people can go 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for prayer."

This has about as much of a chance at dislodging Barack Obama from office as the Sham-Wow, but both infomercials have the same goal - to get rich off of selling you garbage. Sadly, there are probably enough morons in America to make Gary Kreep and Bill Keller very wealthy men.

Disappear'd

The latest winger brouhaha over some school students singing a song praising Obama is, of course, happening in a vacuum. Are we to believe that George W. Bush wasn't revered as a colossus, godlike in stature and deified by the conservative movement. Does nobody remember this?



Or this?



Incidentally, I find all of it creepy (the teacher probably should have laid off). Which is the consistent position. But the degree to which George W. Bush has been written out of the wingnut vocabulary is striking.

Hero Of The Stupid

Another classic look at Glenn Beck's early career from Alexander Zaitchik, who's clearly about to write a great book. Here's where the classiness of the new leader of the anti-government movement really comes out:

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

And teabaggers, allow me to introduce your hero:

The Danger Of Bad Bill-Writing

Ryan Grim has an amusing report about the unintended consequences in the conservative attempt to embarrass ACORN:

Going after ACORN may be like shooting fish in a barrel lately -- but jumpy lawmakers used a bazooka to do it last week and may have blown up some of their longtime allies in the process.

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Alan Grayson is all over this, with a list of defense contractor misconduct at the ready.

So conservatives have two choices - let the ACORN bill wither on the grounds that it's an unconstitutional bill of attainder, or push it forward and open it up to about a decade's worth of Alan Grayson filing motions to deny funds to Northrop Grumman or Blackwater or whoever. The establishment would probably just prefer this gets swallowed up in conference, but from a political standpoint that would be the worst thing to do because it lets Republicans off the hook. If they really want to stop tax dollars from going to fraudulent companies, then game on.

Governor Headline Latches On To The ACORN Story

The wingnutosphere has been in high froth the last week or so about ACORN, the community organization dedicated to helping low-income Americans. The freak-out concerns a series of videos showing ACORN employees engaged in nefarious schemes (it took lots of shoots for the right-wing activists to get the footage they wanted, incidentally). This has led to the Census Bureau distancing themselves from ACORN and the Senate to block HUD funding for the group. It's interesting in and of itself that the right has decided the source of all ills in America is a relatively small community organization and not the banking and financial interests who destroyed the economy and took hundreds of billions in bailout money for good measure. But never one to miss a pile-on, the Governor has requested an investigation of ACORN:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger apparently has been captivated by recent news stories about a conservative filmmaker who exposed misdeeds at ACORN, the national organization that serves low-income residents and has been involved in controversial efforts to register Democratic voters.

The Republican governor sent a brief memo Wednesday to Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown asking him to investigate ACORN's activities in San Bernardino. Two conservative activists have posted videos of their visits to ACORN offices around the country in which they posed as a prostitute and a pimp seeking advice.

In San Bernardino's ACORN office, a volunteer who claims to be a former prostitute is shown offering advice to the two activists on how to set up a brothel using underage girls from El Salvador. She tells them that they would be breaking various laws, but also explains ways to get around those laws. At one point, she claims to have connections to various Democratic lawmakers in the state Legislature and Congress.

It's amusing that the Governor has honed in on the San Bernardino case. Because that would be at least one instance where the guerrilla filmmakers - and now, the Governor - got totally played. John Santore explains:

Most critically, it is clear that Fox News has made virtually no attempt to verify the authenticity of the tapes before broadcasting them -- something no self-respecting journalistic organization would dare do. Consider the case of the San Bernardino ACORN office, which was featured in the most recent video to be released. The words of ACORN employee Tresa Kaelke appear to be damning. Not only does she offer assistance to Giles and O'Keefe, but she claims that she murdered her former husband following a period of domestic abuse.

On September 15, Beck and Sean Hannity both broadcast Kaelke's assertion. Beck, who had reported breathlessly on the supposed confession during his radio program, added on Fox, "She never spanked her kids, but she did shoot her husband dead." Later that night, Hannity played the same clip before commenting, "Specifically, now, she goes into this scenario about her husband and the killing of him."

The following morning, on September 16, Fox News' Gretchen Carlson repeated the allegation, saying, "She killed somebody? Despite this, some lawmakers want to keep funding the group."

The problem, of course, is that Kaelke was deliberately lying. The San Bernardino Police Department itself has now confirmed that her claim regarding her husband was untrue. A department statement released on September 15 reads: "The San Bernardino Police Department is investigating the claims made regarding the homicide. From the initial investigation conducted, the claims do not appear to be factual. Investigators have been in contact with the involved party's known former husbands, who are alive and well."

Furthermore, Kaelke has claimed that when she made the statement, she was seeking to mislead the undercover videographers, whom she was suspicious of. "They were not believable," Kaelke is quoted as saying in an ACORN press release. "Somewhat entertaining, but they weren't even good actors. I didn't know what to make of them. They were clearly playing with me. I decided to shock them as much as they were shocking me."

But none of these simple facts stopped anyone at Fox from running with the story. Any cub reporter would have thought to actually call the San Bernardino police before effectively alleging that ACORN was staffed by murderers. But such an act never occurred to people like Beck, Hannity, or Carlson. (In her defense, Carlson later added that the husband was still alive, "according to ACORN," but ignored the police report.)

Some of the other allegations have shown what may be wrongdoing, if the tapes are legitimate and not doctored (they are certainly edited for effect, and we know they were in some cases obtained illegally and therefore inadmissable as evidence). It may even warrant an investigation. But Schwarzenegger is specifically riffing off the San Bernardino incident, in which the main offense described there has been proven to be a lie. This apparently doesn't matter. I'm wondering what other provable falsehoods have led to the Governor urging a criminal investigation.

This is at least not as embarrassing as Tim Pawlenty, who ordered agencies in Minnesota to "cancel all state funding for ACORN," when there... is no state funding of ACORN in Minnesota. But it's pretty weak nonetheless. And par for the course for a headline-chaser like Gov. Schwarzenegger. But if he wants to get in line with far-right extremists with an obvious racial agenda who want to demonize people of color and the organizations that provide help for them, go ahead. It did a lot for Pete Wilson.

Unspoofable

Glenn Beck of September 16 is mad that Jimmy Carter called Joe Wilson's outburst racist.

BECK: Nobody is saying we’re blowing children up or anything like the Taliban. But this is the same kind of tactic being used now in America. You can’t get your agenda, so you unleash the hounds and point the fingers, and everybody is a racist.

Glenn Beck of July 28: Obama is a racist.

There's also the issue of how, for the oppressed whites on the right, the worst kind of racism is calling someone a racist, not actual racists engaging in racist actions.

Still, the hypersensitive to fictional allegations of racism highlights once again the basic outlook of the contemporary conservative movement on race. Actual racism against racial minorities is, according to conservatives, a trivial or non-existence problem. By contrast, anti-racism gone too far (often known as “political correctness”) is seen as a huge social problem against which one must always be on guard.

Carter And Race

In some respects, the former President is the perfect person to make this argument. He's done with politics and has nothing to lose. Anyway he's already hated by the right, so what more can they do to him?

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News." "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that shares the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."

"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it's bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people -- not just in the South but around the country -- that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It's an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply," Carter said.

The wingnuts are EXTREMELY sensitive to this. Because Carter's coming close to cracking the code here. It's really as much about class as race - corporate-dominated Republicans want the lower classes to fight amongst themselves while they steal the Treasury. But because of our particular history, that manifests itself as a racial issue, because of the disproportionate amount of minorities at the low end of the income scale. And this goes double for undocumented immigrants, which manifests itself as anyone of Hispanic origin.

Digby has more on this. Our lack of what she calls "social insurance" does lead to this animosity toward racial minorities who get "something for nothing." The fact that we're seeing similar animosity play itself out in Europe with regard to animosity toward Muslim immigrants, even while they've had well-designed social safety nets, tells me that this is something of a universal, tribal concept ingrained in our lizard brains, and unwinding it is nearly impossible, at least for some section of the population.

The Other

All of the health care bills offer their subsidies to those who need help affording coverage through tax credits. This is seen as completely normal and a cost-effective way to provide such subsidies, since it only requires a new line item on the tax form instead of some new structure for paying out credits. But it actually hurts people who have to lay out money for health insurance and then wait all year until April to get their money back. In addition, some groups, like nonprofits, don't pay taxes. But they also provide health care for their workers, which means they cannot benefit from any tax credits for small businesses to help with affordability in the plan.

The main bill in the House would award a tax credit to small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance — but nonprofits do not pay income taxes and thus would not benefit.

“Why should employees of nonprofits be treated worse than employees of for-profit businesses?” said Jonathan A. Small, government affairs consultant at the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York.

Nonprofit groups were hoping that the president would include them in his speech to Congress on Wednesday, but instead he mentioned only “families, businesses and government.”

“There was nothing in that much-repeated trilogy of those needing help that spoke to nonprofits,” said Lester M. Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

This sounds like a nitpicky point, except that nonprofits are collectively the fourth-largest employer in America.

And there are dozens of little inequities like this. We've heard about the canceling of all individual health insurance, essentially, for undocumented immigrants, even when they have the ability to pay with their own money. Then there's the issue of nurse home care for the children of the poor, a proven crime reduction strategy that has run aground amid shouts of "billions for babysitters" and the like.

It's part and parcel of a long-running strategy by the right to cry martyrdom for their tax dollars being given to the undefined "other." It doesn't matter if a government program reduces crime or saves money or just makes moral sense. This boils down to a largely homogenous Republican Party not wanting their money to go to people who don't look like them or don't act like them or don't work like them. "Illegals" or the undeserving poor or "do-gooders" in the nonprofit sector need not apply. It's been a time-tested tactic going back to Richard Nixon's Southern strategy.

This is the paradox of the tea-party movement and other right-wing protests fueled by genuine citizen anger and fear. It is true that the federal government embraces redistributive policies and that middle-class income is seized in order that "someone else benefits." But so obviously, that "someone else" who is benefiting is not the poor and lower classes -- who continue to get poorer as the numbers living below the poverty line expand and the rich-poor gap grows in the U.S. to unprecedented proportions. The "someone else" that is benefiting from Washington policies are -- as usual -- the super-rich, the tiny number of huge corporations which literally own and control the Government. The premise of these citizen protests is not wrong: Washington politicians are in thrall to special interests and are, in essence, corruptly stealing the country's economic security in order to provide increasing benefits to a small and undeserving minority. But the "minority" here isn't what Fox News means by that term, but is the tiny sliver of corporate power which literally writes our laws and, in every case, ends up benefiting [...]

What's really happening with these protests is that the genuine rage and not unreasonable economic insecurity of these citizens is being stoked, exploited, distorted and manipulated by movement leaders for entirely different ends. The people who are leading them -- Rush Limbaugh, the Murdoch-owned Fox News, Glenn Beck, business-dominated organizations of the type led by Dick Armey -- are cultural warriors above everything else. They're all in a far different socioeconomic position than the "middle-income Americans" whose anger they're ostensibly representing. Their principal preoccupation is their cultural contempt for various groups (illegal immigrants, the "undeserving" poor, liberals) and their desire to preserve the status quo whereby the prime beneficiaries of government policies remain themselves: the super rich and the interests that control Washington. It's certainly true that many of these protesters are driven by the standard right-wing cultural issues which have long shaped that movement -- social issues, religious fears, cultural and racial divisions, and hatred for "liberals" as Communist-Muslim-Terrorist-lovers. For many, all of that is intensified by the humiliation of being completely thrown out of power, at the hands of the first black President. But much of it is fueled by the pillaging of the corporations and Wall St. interests which own their government.

Matt Taibbi called it the peasant mentality. The powers that be get the lower classes to fight amongst themselves and split along ideological or tribal or other identifying lines, leaving room for them to prosper. For Republicans, that means painting their opponents, who are less homogenous and are made up of so-called "outsiders" of society - the poor, the disenfranchised, African-Americans, Hispanics, gays and lesbians, etc. - as undeserving of really anything; and painting the leaders of that party - whether it be a Governor from Arkansas or a war hero from Massachusetts or South Dakota or a multicultural community organizer from Illinois - as the head of a movement to destroy American culture. That's really basically it. And sadly, considering that Democrats have over the last several decades abandoned their role as protectors of the weak, the poor and the voiceless, you can almost sympathize with the misled in the teabagging protests, who finds nobody standing up for them.

Except, their susceptibility to what is essentially a racial argument leaves me little room to share sympathy for their concerns.

Senate Bashes ACORN

Until now the cowering in fear to the radical right was mainly a province of the White House. Never one to be left out, Senate Democrats got into the act yesterday by blocking HUD grants to ACORN.

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in voter-registration fraud cases.

If the House agrees with the Senate, ACORN could not win HUD grants for programs such as counseling low-income people on how to get mortgages.

Last week, the Census Bureau severed ties with ACORN, saying it does not want the group's help with the 2010 count. The group, which advocates for poor people, conducted a voter registration effort last year and became a target of conservatives when some workers were accused of submitting false registration forms with names including Mickey Mouse.

And of course, Democrats won in 2006 and 2008 thanks to 50 million big-eared human-sized mice coming to the polls and voting, right?

I thought we would want low-income Americans to have counseling on housing, but I guess if we take the community organizations out of it and let them get ripped off by predatory lenders, all the better.

More than that, this is just a pander to Glenn Beck and Fox News' whipping up of unfounded hysteria against ACORN, which they blame for everything from socialism in America to the death of Patrick Swayze. ACORN gets their own independent funding in large part, so this won't really impact them, but it's disappointing to see Democrats, in large numbers (final vote was 83-7) crapping on organizations that radical rightist forces unilaterally determine to be evil.

Meanwhile, ACORN may sure Fox News over the doctored videos they keep airing. Tell me where to send the amicus brief.

...It does go without saying that bipartisan elites in Washington fall all over themselves to distance from ACORN, but a company like Blackwater can murder dozens of civilians in Iraq and still get lucrative government contracts.

If It Isn't On Page A1 Of The Washington Post It Didn't Happen

The spin cycle came out in force over the weekend, as a protest of conservatives on the Washington Mall either attracted 2 million people or 60,000, depending on whether or not you like to lie. This included such delights as a photo from a Promise Keepers rally in 1997 being passed off as one from Saturday.

Despite the falsehoods, the spin did its job, as it landed the teabaggers on Page One, a bit of a contrast to other protest rallies in the recent past.

Behold the media's glaring double standard. Today, the Post puts the "tens of thousands" of Obama-hating tea bagger protesters on A1; makes it the lead story as a matter of fact.

Back in 2002, when more than 100,000 anti-war protesters gathered in the nation's capitol to protest the Bush administration, the same WashPost did its best to ignore them:

The Washington Post put the story not on the front page, but in the Metro section with, as the paper's ombudsman later lamented, "a couple of ho-hum photographs that captured the protest's fringe elements."

This simply proves again that when right-wing (and mostly white) conservatives get angry, it's big news. When liberals get angry, it's just annoying.

I would add that the anti-war protestors that day in Washington were buttressed by millions more around the nation and the world leading up to the invasion of Iraq, but still...nothing.

60 million Americans voted against Barack Obama in 2008. Of that number at least half viscerally hated him, as you could see from the various McCain/Palin rallies during the campaign. a small tranche of those 30 million-plus people got so worked up that they organized and brought out people to a rally in the capital. That's good news for the newfound ease of organizing thanks to the Internet, but not necessarily descriptive of the level of sentiment over Barack Obama in the country. These are the same people who hated him before the election, and they hate him just as much now, despite his Administration not having done very much of anything to inspire such hatred. Nobody's paid more in taxes, a Bush recession headed to depression has stalled. This is the same gang who would have been out on the Mall if Obama had provided $100,000 and a new puppy dog for every family (socialist puppy dogs!).

I like a protests as much as the next guy, which is to say, a little bit as long as the drum circle is kept to a minimum. However, although imperfect, the best indicator of support, and even intensity of support, on the issues facing the country remains polling. And the latest poll on health care has a number of contradictory points, with alternating support for a public option and support for a bill without one, as well as support for bipartisanship with an acknowledgment that Republicans have no interest in being bipartisan. The large mass of people seem to want their government to come up with this change in the health care market, which they can assess after the fact. Beyond that lies confusion. And so privileging the work of a lot of angry white men rather than offering a complete picture of public opinion is really a form of deception from the Washington Post.

...The teabaggers are a classy lot, too.

Na Ga Happen

I don't doubt that tenthers want to use nullification or something like it to block health care reform in their states, but they'll back down so fast it'll make your head spin. These are some of the same right-wing governors who claimed they wouldn't accept stimulus money and then ran around their states withe giant novelty checks touting the funding. They're hypocrites, and won't give their opponents an opportunity to pull out some low-income person who was denied federal care and died because of their callousness.

Although, if Texas or any other Southern state wants to secede, and take all their right-wing Congressmen with them, I wouldn't exactly object.

At Least The Other Joe Wilson Had A Reason To Shout "Lie!" At The President

The most sensational moment of last night's speech, obviously, was the heckling and rowdiness from the likes of the now-infamous Rep. Joe "You Lie!" Wilson and others. We see heckling of this sort in the British House of Commons all the time. Politics is emotional. The President is not a king. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.

It does, however, appear to be against House rules, and simply by the book, there ought to be a censure resolution passed. Wilson apologized quickly under pressure, but rules are rules, and Congress should censure him. As Joe Biden said, Wilson "embarrassed the institution I love."

If Wilson wanted to show some fighting spirit for his base, it probably totally turned off the middle, made the entire party look small, and put into perspective the nonsense of the town halls in the last month. It also will gave Republicans fits as the more sane elements rush to condemn the action. Suddenly, we can get a "Republicans in disarray" narrative out of this. It also gave Wikipedians a fat target.



It's worth noting that Wilson's claim, that illegal immigrants would be allowed to access federal funds for health insurance, is patently false. The outburst actually says more about the immigration debate, and all its xenophobia, than the health care debate.

...I think Eric Cantor's twittering might have looked even more offensive to the public. Although, in his defense, he says he was taking notes, and I have used my PDA for note-taking, and it looks bad, even though it isn't.

...Joe Wilson's opponent in 2010 has raised $100,000 $200,000 overnight on Act Blue.

Spark Of Life

Some excerpts of the President's speech tonight are now available. I will say that there's a bit of a harder edge in these remarks, particularly toward out-and-out opponents of reform, the likes of which have disrupted town halls all last month. This follows the feistiness of Obama's Labor Day speech to the AFL-CIO. Here's an excerpt of the excerpts:

But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government. Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics. Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise. Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge. And out of this blizzard of charges and counter-charges, confusion has reigned [...]

But know this: I will not waste time with those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it. I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what’s in the plan, we will call you out. And I will not accept the status quo as a solution. Not this time. Not now.

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.

That is why we cannot fail. Because there are too many Americans counting on us to succeed – the ones who suffer silently, and the ones who shared their stories with us at town hall meetings, in emails, and in letters.

"More will die as a result." That's not half-stepping it at all. And I'm glad that Obama didn't take Saxby Chambliss' patronizing advice and show "humility". From the looks of these excerpts, he won't.

And yet, this is an easy target. Teabaggers and Birthers do not have a role to play in this debate. The President might want everyone to think they do, but they don't. They don't have the votes to stop anything if the majority really wants to pass a bill. The universe of 50-60 votes in the Senate and 218 in the House, those are the ones who will enact health care reform or not. And to them, early reports show that he will be tepid and broadly receptive to whatever they might demand.

He's going to support medical malpractice reform, a sideline of the debate which has little positive value (just see the results in the states which have already enacted it) and may make it harder for patients to seek justice if harmed by their doctor. What's more, it will not change any Republican minds on the overall bill. With respect to the public option, Obama reportedly plans to endorse it, though pointedly, it appears nowhere in his excerpted remarks. What's more, David Axelrod said again today he would not draw lines in the sand and seek compromise on the provision:

He thinks that could be good for consumers, and he's going to make the case for that, but he's also going to make the point that this is not--this is an ends to a means. It's not the essence of this debate. It's a part of--it's one of the tools, and there are other ideas out there that-to-bring competition and choice that are--that are worthy as well," Axelrod said [...]

Questioned further by Wolf Blitzer, Axelrod said Obama will nod at both of most commonly suggested public option alternatives: the co-op model, and the triggered public option.

"He will acknowledge [co-ops]," Axelrod said. "There's the idea of putting trigger on the public option so it goes into effect at some date when it's clear that a market is uncompetitive. There are a number of ideas, but what is very important is that we have the kind of competition and choice that will help consumers in many states in this country."

This just seems to me like arguing from a position of weakness. You allow room for a compromise and your opponents will pounce. Olympia Snowe basically said today that the White House must give up on the public option, as she knows he'll be flexible and she can just wait him out.

A lot of people are talking about what they want to see in the speech. Jon Cohn argues that he wants some commitment to universal coverage, something that future governments would have to take away. That's good on the policy side. Drew Westen wants a simple message and draw clear lines between allies and enemies, letting the public know who is responsible for the broken system. Tim Noah doesn't want any more speeches, because with reform so close, the goal should really be pounding on moderates until they submit. Paul Krugman says that Obama should eschew details and go for the gut, laying out the personal horror stories and the urgent need for action now. Actually, I think based on the excerpts that he's going to do just that.

I think all of this is right for its own reasons, but more than anything, I actually want to see some spirit. The Republicans have clearly made a decision to destroy Obama's Presidency through endless fearmongering and fauxtrage. They started a bonfire over this Van Jones hiring and the White House let the hit squad walk all over them. This didn't appease the right but whet their appetites for more. The only way to fight such bullying, such blatant hatred, is through showing some toughness.

First of all you have to decide if you really want to win. If you just want to spend your time debating hypotheticals and dreaming of how swell things could be while weaving yourself a safety net of emergency qualifiers in case things don't go the way you planned, go get a job at the fucking Brookings Institution. But if you're gonna go to ideological war, then go to ideological war. And if you are going to fight this war you have to ask yourself "what would Dick Cheney do?"

Never apologize.
Never admit weakness.
Never concede points.
Never defend.
Always attack.

You have to remember that, in the case of the Glenn Beck conservative wing (a group of people who make the Dittoheads look like Quakers), you are dealing with a crazy salad of stupid people (and let's quit excusing them as "low information voters"...they're dumbshits), lunatics, assholes, racists, political performance artists, opportunists, and the kind of people who make eugenics seem desirable if not downright necessary.

These are not the people you need or want. You want the mushy middle and the mushy middle loves people who project strength and power. It makes them feel safe. They like being on the winning team. Power and winning intoxicates them. If they write for the Politico, it gives them boners and they'll write anything you want them to. But these people do not respond in the quite the same way to squishy papering over of defeat.

Many of those who have abandoned Obama of late are doing so because they have openly questioned his leadership and resolve. They don't know if he's willing to fight for them. They aren't so concerned with the details, but they want to know that they have a champion for their interests. So act like a winner. Show confidence and not even-handedness. Show the spark of life.

...good news: Marc Ambinder, sock-puppet for the White House press shop, reports that 100 House liberals will be the intended audience for the speech.

IOKIYAR

Van Jones was kicked out of the Administration, the story goes, because he was a Truther. The Congressman giving the GOP response to the President's health care speech tonight, Charles Boustany, is a Birther.

BOUSTANY: Well, it's certainly being looked at.

STARK: What do you personally believe, I mean -- do you think there's a question here?

BOUSTANY: I think there are questions, we'll have to see.

OK, queue the feeding frenzy, then. Obviously, we won't have a double standard on conspiracy theorists based on political ideology, right?

Um, never mind.

Read Every Third Word Backwards And You'll See It, Man

by dday

Here's the text of the big speech that will indoctrinate our kids and turn them into a socialist Army of children crusaders. Sure, the message to the kids appears to be to stay in school and work hard and reach their potential. But everyone knows that it's not the text, it's the subtext. For example, I heard that the camera was going to show Obama from the waist down, and his smooth pelvic thrusts and hip twists would turn the kids into violent, sex-starved maniacs. I think he learned it all from this book.



Sadly, America's great hero in fighting back against messages to children about the value of hard work, Florida GOP chair Jim Greer, is now cravenly capitulating by approving of the Obama speech. How could he? Doesn't he know that Obama's eyes have the power to hypnotize the pre-teen set into becoming unthinking, rabid, spittle-flecked followers of the grisly philosophy of moderate technocratic fixes that fall short of sweeping changes and keep in place the dominant corporate power structure? Now is not the time to give up! Just because we got rid of one communist (green jobs? Try red jobs!) doesn't mean that others aren't lurking.

Yours in the resistance,

A crazy person

P.S. As I was saying.

John Harwood Can Never Work In The White House

He just called Murcans stupid!

MONICA NOVOTNY: John, what about this controversy over opposition to Obama’s speech to school children?

JOHN HARWOOD: I gotta’ tell you Monica, I’ve been watching politics for a long time, and this one is really over-the-top. What is shows you is there are a lot of cynical people who try to fan controversy, and let’s face it, in a country of 300 million people, there are a lot of stupid people too, because if you believe that it’s somehow unhealthy for kids, for the president to say "work hard and stay in school," you’re stupid. In fact, I’m worried for some of those kids of those parents who are upset — I’m not sure they are smart enough to raise those kids.

He probably has all kinds of Marxist-Leninist art in his house, too.

Harwood, or rather the editorial staffs at networks and newspapers, have another option besides calling fauxtrage stupid - they don't have to cover it at all.

...This is another way to do it: fight a hissy fit with a hissy fit.

“What this absurd episode shows is that the GOP can in fact come up with new ideas. For example, it’s now clear that the new Republican education platform will argue against personal responsibility, hard work and staying in school.”

Now, get every single Democratic operative to say on television that Republicans clearly oppose hard work and staying in school. They don't want their kids to get an education. Just do it over and over and put Republicans on the defensive.