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MsLibrarian: Scottish Parliament laughs at Donald Trump

Sam Stein: Robert Draper Book: GOP's Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration

Stephen D. Foster, Jr.: Sarah Palin Claims Child Labor Laws Are Causing America To Fail

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Bill Moyers: The Ghost of Joe McCarthy in Today's Republican Party

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Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein: Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

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Marcus Cederstrom: What if Tim Tebow were Muslim?

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Ezra Klein: Who will get the ‘Recovery Presidency’?

Andrew Sullivan: How Obama's Long Game Will Outsmart His Critics

Robert Reich: The Romney Tax Loophole

Ruth Marcus: Mitt Romney’s miserly concern for the poor

E.J Dionne: Republicans keep moving Obama to Europe

Our blast from the past comes courtesy of loyal reader Chris U. who wants to remind us all of Newt Gingrich's political past, sans revisionist history.

John E. Yang: House Reprimands, Penalizes Speaker

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What the Stewart Rally Meant to Me

It's taken me a couple of days to digest the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally To Restore Sanity at the National Mall in Washington DC. I've had to mull it over to figure out what it means to me because I think that the message was a little different for everyone. Here's Stewart's speech at the end of the rally:



No, I don't completely buy into the "both sides are the same" meme only because one side deals with content and facts and one side deals with hyperbole and untruths. But that doesn't mean that Stewart isn't correct in saying the screechiness on both sides can be equal. And from what I can tell, most of the participants in the over the top rhetoric were the ones most offended.

While I still think it's incorrect in trying to force the notion that there's equivalency from both sides, because the right wing noise machine is much louder, much bigger and therefore more far reaching in it's message. But it doesn't help the liberal side to participate in the teabagger, wingnut, crazy name calling. I know it's hard, but we can rebut and debate without ad hominem attacks. It only weakens our message because people who need the message most get caught up in Keith Olbermann or Ed Schultz calling someone a "right wing nutjob" rather than the content of why they are categorizing that person as such. The content can be all the more effective without clouding it in name calling.

We all do it. I do it on my blog, the right does it, the left does it, hell Stewart even included clips of himself in the video montage the preceded his speech. That doesn't mean that he thinks he's full of shit. He deals in truths and common sense through satire and comedy, but even he will admit that having a Gospel choir sing "Go Fuck Yourself" is exactly the type of "both sides" meme he's talking about.

But he's not completely wrong about new organizations or opinion shows posing as news organizations (I'm looking at Fox New Channel in particular) going too far. We love the red meat. But if you follow politics when there are no upcoming elections, if you read the political blogs daily or watch the political cable shows daily, you are a political junky. You know what's going on. Unfortunately, most people don't. Most people in America can't name the Speaker of the House. And due to the name calling, those are the people who are quicker to dismiss the content of the message because they've already tuned out - the hyperbole turned them off before you had a chance to grab their attention.

So while I didn't completely agree with Stewart, I felt I got what he was trying to say. And I think that the ultimate message Stewart was trying to put across was not that both sides are equal in content, but that they can both be over the top in negative rhetoric. That's what I got out of it anyway.

The mere fact that liberals like TomTomorrow would tweet, "Like Digby says, right wing isn't going to listen to any of this. So basically DFH's just got told to STFU" just gives more credence to what Stewart was saying in the first place. No, he wasn't calling you a dirty fucking hippie and wasn't telling liberals to shut the fuck up, but because everyone is so on edge, TomTomorrow and Digby and Keith Olbermann didn't get the message I got.

It's like when you were in school and the teacher berated the entire class for totally bombing on a midterm exam. Then you get your test back and you got a B+ or an A and you have to step back and think, "Oh, he wasn't talking to me. I get it." You have to separate yourself in an objective manner and not take things so personally. Those that were offended by Stewart didn't seem to be able to do that.

Yes, I'll still watch Olbermann because he still gives me pertinent information even though it may be in a bombastic way. And that's why I watch him and Rachel Maddow, because I can rely on their information. It's based it fact, not fantasy or fear. And since I'm not a vegetarian, the red meat makes me feel like I'm not crazy.

I'll still read Digby's blog and TomTomorrow's tweets because they still have interesting things to say. Just because I don't agree with what people say 100% of the time doesn't mean I'll write them off. It's the same with Glenn Greenwald, for example. In my eyes, sometimes he's just an Obama contrarian but that doesn't mean I disagree with everything he has to say. It's called "opinion." I just have to separate that out.

By the way, I watched MSNBC on and off for a few hours today and didn't hear one mention of the rally. An estimated 215,000 showed up for the rally, outdrawing Beck's rally of 87,000. But we'll cover the Beck rally for a week.  Stewart's? No so much.  So much for equivalence, huh?

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The Stakes

posted by Armadillo Joe

Right on cue, just as I'm continuing to plow my way through Pearlstein's book on Goldwater and writing vague & incoherent rants about an ongoing right-wing conspiracy dating back to the 1940's and early 50's and running right on up to today -- right now this very moment, even -- to undermine the America we all know and love, I go and read a blog post that sums the whole situation up better than I ever have or could.

He somewhat cheekily refers to his website as "Der Stiftung Leo Strauss" ("the Leo Strauss Foundation") as in Leo Strauss the "Jewish Nazi" -- a villain in American history you should know about, if you don't already. He also seems to be some kind of Washington insider, I think, because he refers to conversations he's had with members of Congress in their offices. His vision of America is rather dark, which naturally grabbed my attention, and he has little use for the majority of politicians and pundits who still treat this whole process we call "politics" as a mere parlor game with not the slightest clue as to the actual stakes. He persuasively argues that this thing called the GOP "Base" or sometimes "movement conservatism" is in fact an entity apart from the "conservative base" which is itself a separate entity from the GOP. His imagery is spot-on:

The Movement is the controlling parasite astride its enfeebled Republican host.

Our Ruling Class, though, whether pundits or politicians, either don't get the stakes or they do and don't care, because...

Seemingly bright ‘mainstream media’ still do not understand the dichotomy. Or its implications. They still treat ‘Republicans’ and Democrats as equivalent political actors playing the same game by the same rules for the same prizes. As long as relative neophytes view politics in this prism, the Movement wins.

One side thinks we're all playing a gentlemanly round of paintball on a paintball court while the other shells the whole damned town with live artillery. Or, if you will, one side keeps bringing a knife to a gun fight. Whether Emmitt Till or JFK or Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, how many people have to get shot down before we realize the other side isn't fucking around, that they actually want us dead?

the Movement within the conservative base always plays a different game for a different prize. The Movement may speak in normal political talking points from ‘Republican’ institutions. Yet is is not committed to Dahl-esque pluralistic politics. It has has never sought compromise or ‘moderation’. That’s because for the Movement, politics is existential warfare. Compromise is defeat.

I have tried at this blog and elsewhere to paint the Big Picture by arguing against the D.C. Establishment's cherished notion of bi-partisan centrism -- a notion that seems to soothe the tortured souls of our nation's punditocracy, worshipping as they do the blessed and elusive "middle" where one finds both moderates and roadkill. Choosing sides between the different parties is manifestly not like selecting a red car or a blue car, as though each is essentially the same in purpose and function and the selection is one of mere aesthetics and personal taste -- country music versus jazz, Dallas & Atlanta versus New York & San Francisco, BBQ versus granola and yogurt, Dunkin' Donuts versus Starbucks, beer versus wine. It's a little bit of regionalism, it's a little bit of ethnicity, it's a little bit of class and socio-economic status, but in the end we're all Americans and we all want the same things even if we disagree about process, right?

Wrong:

For the Movement ... politics is existential. And when survival is on the line, pluralistic compromise is for chumps. Democrats still are playing for political advantage within the confines of traditional two party politics. ... When the other side’s world view is existential, then the stakes are higher than something so trite as the Constitution.

The idea that one group may laugh at Larry The Cable Guy jokes and the other at Woody Allen movies, yet both love America and want it to succeed for all Americans, is silly and laughably naive. Such pablum may make for pat and comforting answers to gullible people who think we're all in this together as Americans and we just have different ideas about how to get there, but it's useless when steeling yourself for attacks from the other side, attacks not merely intended to wound, but to mortally wound. Digby calls this vague sense of "our side/their side" American Tribalism and I think the embrace of those outward trappings is an important component of the divided American soul, but more as external signifiers to fellow tribe members than any instrinsic affinity for the actual things embraced.

They are more like prescursors to learning the secret handshake, to getting invited into the club:

This I share out of personal experience talking with the Movement crowd over the years. Many of the conversations are carefully masked and there is almost a secret handshake and a ‘feeling out’ to see if one is receptive to test, and then small conversational overtures. If the Stiftung has seen and heard this stuff from Capitol Hill to refined salons in the Imperial City so has everyone else. From fatuous Tweety to Howard — to all of them.

To think that our problems in America are only about cowboy boots versus Gucci loafers is to manifestly not get to the heart of the matter where epic struggles over race and gender and class have been fought -- often to the death -- and will be fought again. One group of Americans wants the rest of their fellow Americans eliminated, in fact refuses to even acknowledge that they are fellow countrymen, and that spiteful, bitter group of people has the means, motive and opportunity, whether with guns or ropes or control over health-insurance policies, to make good on their secret wishes. That the talking heads on the Tee-Vee and in print don't, can't or won't incorporate this uglier, more existential threat to the health of American political discourse into their horse-race/game-day style analysis of the scene in D.C. reveals that they are morally vacant, willfully blind or just plain stupid.

The Krugman and Joan Walsh fantasy that some ‘Republicans’ are going to put a stop to the Movement is a joke. At one time there was a functioning Republican apparat apart from the Movement, capable of independent action. The Movement long ago slipped the leash.

[...]

Because Krugman et al. fail to grasp the fundamental difference between the Movement, the former Republican Party and the Democratic Party, talking heads refer to the Movement as the ‘Republican base’. As if somehow the Movement and its Manichean zero-sum nihilism is the same as the Democratic base.

[...]

It wasn’t always like this, of course. The Republican Party as an independent actor and entity was able to keep the Movement within bounds. But after Reagan, and especially the Bush debacle in ‘92, the Movement learned to seize power on its own within and without the Republican Party.

As Pearlstein depicts in his book, the transformation of Barry Goldwater from a stalwart political actor to the head of a full-fledged political movement represented the coagulation of a movement whose constituent parts -- once disparate and scattered between the two parties or even beyond them -- had been churning under the placid surface of a "Leave It To Beaver" 1950's America still basking in the glow of her glorious victory over fascism with FDR's "Arsenal of Democracy" -- tools and weapons built by mighty American industry -- before wheeling around to stare down another form of monolithic totalitarianism in the USSR, it too doomed to defeat by superior American ingenuity and culture.

America thought itself to be invincible.

Such an America imagined itself at the end of internal conflict and strife, that no problem was beyond the reach of Yankee grit and determination, even the "Negro" problem, hence the subtitle of Pearlstein's book "The Unmaking of the American Consensus," because a growing chorus of Americans throughout the 1950's simply no longer wanted to get along in the post-New Deal, pluralistic, ecumenical, multi-ethnic country that America had long purported to be and was finally en route to becoming.

Frankly, they never really had been down with that program and still aren't, to this very day:

In the case of racism, overt comments allow all quickly to depict a discovered outburst as ‘isolated, unacceptable incident’, etc. The nativism swirling around the immigration debates are an easy example. ‘You look different than me’ or the White trash psychology of another era trying to pick on someone below them socially is an ugly but known practice. The same argument on more upscale level is to mask it behind NAFTA, globalization and now economic free fall. Beyond the socio-economic critique, alleged health dangers, welfare freeloaders. Pat Buchanan long swam in those waters now plied by Lou Dobbs.

[...]

As a famous ‘Republican’ once told me, he’d rather live an American version of Franco than have to deal with multiculturalism. *That’s* how existentialism trumps liberal democracy.

Pearlstein's book just details how, over a couple of decades, the screeching, poo-flinging monkey hordes were driven or herded or bribed or otherwise willfully gathered under a single political banner for the simple reason that a large enough swath of the American public was finally demanding that this country live up to the high-falutin' rhetoric of its founding, but rather than man-up, admit that America's failures had done wrong by whole segments of her population and then work to make amends, enormous voting blocs got Pied Piper'd by sociopaths like Nixon and Saint Ronnie into the Republican fold, where their basest, ugliest, most anti-social impulses would never be condemned or even questioned. Then, like a virus, they multiplied and spread until the original Party of Lincoln no longer resembled itself. The Movement had triumphed. Our friend at the Stiftung continues:

All of the above are premised on loyalty to the Movement’s higher existential values rather than ‘mere process’ like democracy ... When you understand this dynamic, then the relative silence about Dr. Tiller’s murder, or the right wing extremism that led to Officer John's heroic courage makes sense.

[...]

What this means as a social, cultural and political actor, the Movement is unable to accept loss of power or control through liberal democratic means. The Movement’s eschatology is to higher truths than liberal democratic government: race, security, nationalism, order, security. The Movement’s psychology compels the rage as its Counter-Enlightenment agenda is revealed, in power and then snatched away again.

I fear we may simply be in one of the inter-glacial thaws between periods of Rethugli-goon mis-rule. It seems to only take a few years for the voting public, helped along by a prostrate and compliant corporate media complex, to forget just how bad things tend to get during Republican regimes and to view past GOP administrations through a gauzy lens.

Take, for instance, the Republican beatification of a third-rate Hollywood meat-puppet as The Greatest President in the History of Human Civilization™. Saint Ronnie of the Ray-Gun is the only other Republican president -- going all the way back to Lincoln -- not to die in office, bolt the party in disgust, lose a bid for re-election, leave office amid widespread corruption or be hounded from office by scandal. Except of course for Eisenhower, but he was barely a Republican anyway. Many in his own party accused him of being a Communist sympathizer.

Thus, considering the weakness of the competitve field, Saint Ronnie being the Greatest Republican President since Lincoln is a pretty low bar to hurdle. Upon his death a few years ago, one would have thought Pericles himself had returned to earth just die all over again, to hear the corporate media tripping over each other to issue ever more thoroughly unquestioning paens to his great and glorious era of prosperity, strength and greatness. It made me sick to my stomach to hear all that "Morning in America" bull-pucky again, as though he had led us from the Dark Ages.

I can't wait to hear how Jimmy Carter will be spoken of upon his passing. I suspect the tone will be somewhat different.

The resurrection of Richard Milhouse Nixon's career as an elder statesman in the 1980's is the clearest indicator of The Movement's not-so-latent authoritarianism. For them, the problem was never that he did something wrong, just that he got caught. His re-emergence paved the way for all those unreconstructed Nixonites to weasle their way back into government throughout the 1980's and early 90's and eventually into the Bush43 White House.

Therefore, when I hear people on our side talk about how this or that move makes Republicans look dumb and boy howdy, they're just gonna keep acting all dumb and losing elections, I can only join in the schadenfreude to a point. These people aren't engaged in a merely political program. Politics is but one facet of their agenda and since violence and a willingness to kill is one of their primary and most effective tools, they have the power to de facto enact huge swaths of that agenda, even if they fail de jure.

From race-relations & immigration to the health-care showdown, these are the stakes.

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Beavis And Butthead Republicans

by Armadillo Joe

I was re-reading my post about the Rethugli-goons' collective response to that global call for a symbolic act of responsible stewardship of the planet we all share and must bequeath to our descendants -- Earth Hour -- a collective response that amounted to, when tasked with collaborating on a class project of, say, making a dinosaur or race car, to eating the Play-Doh®. I was going to update it with this picture on the right, when I read the ever-awesome digby, who wrote the following:

Beavis And Butthead Republicans

by digby



I'm beginning to think that Limbaugh is doing this in order to make clowns like Cantor and Steele look statesmanlike by comparison. It's working.

In fact, I love that title so much that I'm creating a new tag so that we keep such stuff collected in one spot.

What have you guys got? Anything that qualifies as a "Beavis & Butthead Republican" moment?

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Addition - Anne Kornblut: Palin Did Not Visit Iraq

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...I was still digesting [the "Britney" ad] when the "Moses" ad came out. The point of this one was that there are voters who are so tragically, laughably ignorant they're actually thinking of voting for someone who inspires them. They're assholes. You know, like the Israelites.
People with faith! They'd be sad if they weren't so damn funny!
Don't they get it? It's a garbage existance -- even if Jihadists don't kill you -- and you're just making fools of yourselves with this "change" bullshit. So pull up your socks, stop acting like some love-struck German, and vote McCain...

Digby: Negative Appeal

“Sen. Obama is still opposed to a comprehensive energy plan,” McCain claimed. “It seems to me the only thing he wants us to do is inflate tires” to improve gas mileage.

Just like Bush: "you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes, rubes." At this point I don't care if Obama flips on every single issue, I will do everything I can to see this jackass defeated. Ugh.

And speaking of improving gas mileage...

Ben, Think Progress: Clueless Gingrich Claims Inflating Car Tires Properly To Save Energy Is ‘Loony Tunes’

...Obama is correct to suggest that inflating tires properly and getting regular tune-ups “could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling” — and by a long shot. According to the Energy Information Administration, if Congress lifted the moratorium on offshore drilling, by 2030, oil crude production in the “lower-48″ outer continental shelf will increase by about 200,000 barrels per day. By contrast, the production offset based on Obama’s proposal will likely approach 800,000 barrels per day, immediately.

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Carol Kreck via HuffPo Blog: McCain=Bush

Defending Obama On FISA

I woke up Friday morning to an e-mail in my box from the Obama campaign. It was a two and a half minute video of Barack Obama and his announcement that he was foregoing public funding for the campaign.

"Join me and declare your independence from this broken system, and let's build the first general election campaign that's truly funded by the American people."

So I gladly donated for a second time to Senator Obama's campaign. I spent the rest of the morning writing a rebuttal to an Obama smear e-mail and taking great joy in sending it to every schmoe that ever e-mailed me crap like that and giggled as I imagined their faces as they read. On my way to work, I felt good for the first time in a while, sending some cash to Obama and fighting the lies. I actually felt a spring in my step.

Then I got to work and read this: House Passes New Steny Hoyer/FISA Bill. KAPOW!

It took me a couple of minutes to regain my breath, and just as I was starting to feel better, I read this: Obama on FISA - "It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives - and the liberty - of the American people."

KABOOOOOM!!!! Kicked in the balls!

Still seeing stars, I decided to take a deep breath, count to ten, and try to sort this all out. Steny Fuckin' Hoyer... that's where the anger needs to be directed. Hoyer and Nancy "impeachment is off the table" Pelosi.

Think about it. It's been barely two weeks since Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama. The most recent polls show Obama leading McCain in swing states, rewriting the fucking electoral map by the minute. No scandal du jour to speak of - Rev. Wright is forgotten, and guest preacher Father Michael Pfleger's Hillary rant was the last straw that caused Obama to actually sever ties with Trinity United Church of Christ. Even Michelle Obama co-hosted The View to improve her image and show the world that she's always been proud of her country. A hard stance on the "compromised" FISA bill voted in the House would fan the flames of dying embers.

He's stuck between a rock and a hard place and it's the House Democrats who put him there. The worst part of the whole thing is that it always seems like the Democrats in Congress don't know what the fuck they are doing. Maybe because they really don't. They are so petrified of being perceived as soft on national security that they capitulate to the whims of a lame duck president who made us less safe in the first place; and they don't realize that the capitulation itself is what truly makes them look weak. It makes the Republicans look like they were right all along.

Let's take a step back and realize that through it all, Barack Obama is a politician. And at this point in time, it's not wise to come out in harsher tones than is necessary regarding a crap FISA bill that still has to pass through the Senate.

Unfortunately, before you can say "telecom immunity", the liberal blogosphere goes apeshit and acts as if Barack Obama just ran over their dog. Twice. Atrios calls Obama "Wanker of the Day." Digby is "tempted to say this is a Sistah Soljah moment." It's understandable to a point. But why trash our own Democratic nominee and likely next President of the United States before we've gotten him out of the wrapper?

Here's John Cole's reaction to the liberal freakout entitled "Things I Learned Today":

Obama can not snap his fingers and magically change the minds of hundreds of Democrats elected by people other than Barack Obama, and because of it, he does not deserve the votes of the netroots.

Also, compromise means getting everything you want, not just shifting the debate and working to remove portions of a bill that you find objectionable. Compromise to the netroots is much like George Bush’s definition of compromise. Who would have thunk it.

Additionally, Obama apparently hates the Constitution.

The last thing I learned today is that the ideal candidate goes down with the ship. It does not matter if that candidate was right on the issue all along, did everything he could to win the fight, but that he must go down with the ship. It does not matter if the fight is already over and the battle lost, real candidates try to maximize the loss by inflicting political pain on themselves.

You all make me cranky. Enjoy President McCain, whiners.

And he makes a good point. Is Senator Obama supposed to slit his own throat with a FISA tantrum to satisfy his loyal base, damn the consequences? Don't forget that he also said this in his statement: "It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses."

And is he the only Senator opposed to this bill? Did everyone forget the existence of Russ Feingold? Or Chris Dodd? Filibuster away. My hope is that Harry "Poopy Pants" Reid will get all flustered because nothing else is getting done in the meantime and table the bill. And if they are able to strip the retroactive immunity from the bill, then Mensa Man will veto it anyway and at least the Dems can say they tried, but Georgie doesn't care enough about national security and too much about the corporations that did his evil bidding in the first place.

So chill, people, or I will hide your Firebird keys. Direct your anger at the cowards who voted for the bill.

My other thought (initially, while I was still angry) was that both sides are knee deep in shit (would that be so surprising?) and this is a way for the whole thing to go away. Immunity equals the end of getting the bottom of things and finding out the truth. If there are Democratic hands that are as dirty as Republican ones, then the bill will pass. And that would make me very sad indeed.

And I started the day with a spring in my step.