The Progressive Perspective

The Scions of Saint Sarah

2010-11-28T10:31:00.001-05:00

It took a while, but I finally figured out what truly offends me about Sarah Palin. It's not her shameless greed, nor her stunning ignorance. It's not even her attitude that things like facts and proper English are for elitist intellectuals. Those are reasons to oppose her, even to dislike her, but not to be disgusted by her.

No, it's how she uses her kids. Publicly at least, she treats them merely as things to be exploited to further the brand name that is Sarah Palin™.

What finally did it was seeing Palin on Fox News (where else?) last week going on and on for the umpteenth time about "you touch my kids and this mama grizzly is going to rise up." She puts on this act all the time, and it generally takes three forms:

1. Hiding behind her children. Whenever Palin is criticized about anything, she uses her kids as human shields and shrieks that it's actually an attack on her offspring. For example, when she spoke at Glenn Beck's come-to-Jesus rally back in August, she invoked her son Track, back home after a tour in the Army: "I’ve been asked to speak as the mother of a soldier, and I am proud of that distinction. You know, say what you want to say about me, but I raised a combat vet, and you can’t take that away from me." Of course, no one said anything against her son. And when author Joe McGinniss rented the house next door to Palin's earlier this year, she (or rather, her Facebook ghostwriter) screamed that he was there to lust over her daughter Piper. (She was lucky he didn't sue her for defamation.)

2. Using her children as props. When she unveiled the "death panels" canard last year to scare people into opposing health-care reform, she used her youngest son Trig as a prop: "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care." The claim was so egregiously false that the St. Petersburg Times' PolitiFact blog named it "Lie of the Year." She again used Trig earlier this year in demanding then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's hide for calling liberal Democrats "f---ing retarded," calling it an attack on her son. She does stuff like this all the time. Even as mayor of Wasilla, she used to drag her kids door to door while campaigning, and her current reality show is just as much about showing off her kids as it is about her own ambition.

3. Pimping her children out for publicity. Let's face it, does anyone really think her daughter Bristol made it to the last round of that dancing show solely on talent? It's an open secret that the voting process was abused by Palin fans to keep her in the running. Whether it's faking an engagement between Bristol and the father of her out-of-wedlock child solely to mollify the religious right during the campaign, making the same daughter the voice of teen abstinence (opposite one of the Jersey Shore idiots, no less!) or making Piper a literal right-to-life poster girl, Palin has a long history of pushing her kids into the spotlight whether they like it or not.

It's all a shtick for her. She uses her kids to promote herself and her red-blooded God-fearing know-nothing Americanism, then uses them again to shield herself from disapproval. And if anyone mentions them outside the exploitative bubble in which she keeps them, she goes into her "mama grizzly" act. She's the Kate Gosselin of politics.

I don't pretend to know how Sarah Palin treats her kids in private, but if it's anything like how she treats them in public, I feel sorry for them. To have a mother who sees them only as objects to be exploited rather than as children to be loved must be an awful thing.

The Soup That Eats Like Jihad

2010-10-08T09:12:00.005-04:00

All summer, demagogues have been stoking the fires of religious bigotry against Muslims. Sometimes it's rank politicking, like when Republicans couldn't wait to get in on Pamela Geller's jihad against the Muslim community center in downtown Manhattan. Sometimes it's downright scary, as in the arson attack against an under-construction Islamic center in Tennessee.

And sometimes it's just plain dumb.

Campbell's Soup has been around forever, inspiring everything from classic TV commercials to Andy Warhol's iconic artwork. But did you know that when you open up a can of tomato soup, you're actually supporting jihad? That's the latest conspiracy theory from professional Muslim-haters.

You see, the Canadian branch of the Campbell Soup Company recently decided to expand their customer base by certifying some of their products as halal, or compliant with Muslim dietary laws. The halal laws are generally very similar to the kashrut dietary laws for Jews: no pork or blood, animals must be slaughtered in a specific way, etc. In fact, the Koran says quite clearly, "The food of the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] is lawful unto you and yours is lawful unto them."

But since Muslims are involved, the usual suspects are screaming that Campbell's creation of a new market for their products is actually a surrender to the Global Islamofascist Boogeyman Conspiracy™:

Justin Phillips of Tea Party Nation: "Campbell's now making Muslim approved soups. Mmmmm Mmmmm not good. No more campbells for me."
Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch: "ISNA has admitted ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. So why is Campbell's Soup rushing to do its bidding? 'M-M-Muslim Brotherhood Good?'"
Pamela Geller: "Boycott Campbells, I say. Good in the Muslim Brotherhood. Warhol is spinning in his grave."

And so on. You get the picture. The official reason for the outrage is that the certification is being done by the Islamic Society of North America, a group which has been accused of being connected with terrorist groups in the Middle East and elsewhere. Never mind the fact that no actual evidence has ever been presented beyond nebulous claims of unspecified "ties."

Of course, the real reason for the outrage is Campbell's acknowledgment that Muslims with purchasing power exist. In the alternate universe inhabited by those who are freaking out over this quite ordinary business decision, all Muslims are terrorists who must be force-fed pulled pork sandwiches to exorcise the Islamic demons.

Now, if all this sounds oddly familiar, that's because it is. Decades ago, food companies decided to get new customers by selling their products to observant Jews. So they hired rabbis to come in, look at their operations, and certify that the products were kosher. Jew-haters went berserk, shouting that the Jews were imposing a secret "kosher tax" on food to fleece honest Christians. (While it is true that companies pay a fee to have their products certified as kosher, the fee is far more than offset by increased sales.) The rumor eventually died down and was mostly forgotten, although some anti-Semitic groups still claim the so-called "tax" exists.

The hullabaloo over Campbell's is exactly the same thing as the "kosher tax" canard. Just replace "Muslim" with "Jew" and "halal" with "kosher."

Someday, people will go shopping, see a little "H" or "ISNA" logo on the packaging, and think nothing of it, just like people today think nothing of kosher foods marked with a "K" or a U in a circle. And they will look back on this freakout and wonder how anyone could be so paranoid and gullible.

Not Their Brother's Keeper

2010-10-06T10:45:00.005-04:00

Gene Cranick lives, or rather lived, in a house in Obion County, Tennessee. Last week, his house caught fire and he called 911. The fire department arrived, sirens blaring - and did nothing. They watched as his house burned to the ground.

You see, Obion County requires all residents to pay an annual $75 surcharge above and beyond their existing local taxes for fire protection. And Cranick hadn't paid. When the fire engines arrived, the firefighters told him he was out of luck because he hadn't paid up. Cranick, who freely admits he forgot to pay the bill, offered to pay on the spot, but the firefighters refused. Instead, they simply stood around as Cranick frantically tried to get someone - anyone - to listen. His house went up in flames, killing his pets (three dogs and a cat) and literally reducing his life to ashes.

It was only when the fire started spreading to his neighbor's property that the fire department went to work. The neighbor had paid the bill, you see. So the firefighters saved the neighbor's house while ignoring Cranick's.

When the story hit the wires earlier this week, the general reaction was stunned incredulity. Commentators generally couldn't believe that professional firefighters, who devote their lives to protecting people's lives and property, would just stand around and watch a house burn because the homeowner hadn't paid a bill. Even Daniel Foster of the conservative National Review was horrified:

I have no problem with this kind of opt-in government in principle - especially in rural areas where individual need for government services and available infrastructure vary so widely. But forget the politics: what moral theory allows these firefighters (admittedly acting under orders) to watch this house burn to the ground when 1) they have already responded to the scene; 2) they have the means to stop it ready at hand; 3) they have a reasonable expectation to be compensated for their trouble?

Proving that some people will never let anything as bleeding-heart as doing what's right get in the way of ideological purity, Cranick was promptly attacked by the usual "I've got mine so screw you" crowd as a freeloader. And Glenn Beck (big surprise) put his vaunted compassion on display front and center:

And it goes nowhere if you go on to well, compassion, compassion, compassion, compassion or, well, they should have put it out. What is the fire department for? No. What is the $75 for? To keep the firemen available, to keep the fire trucks running, to pay for the fire department to have people employed to put the fire out. If you don't pay your $75, then that hurts the fire department. They can't use those resources and you would be sponging off of your neighbor's $75 if you they put out your neighbor's house and you didn't pay for it - I mean if your neighbor didn't pay for it, you did, and they put out their house, your neighbor is sponging off of your $75 and as soon as they put out the fire of somebody who didn't pay the 75 bucks, no one will pay $75.

Even putting aside the obvious failure here of government services by subscription, the callous selfishness is just staggering. What kind of people would not only stand around and watch as a man's house burns to the ground, but actually applaud the firefighters who allow it to happen? Would they also congratulate cops who let a woman who hadn't paid a police surcharge be raped and murdered? Or maybe they'd cheer on doctors who let someone bleed to death in the ER because he doesn't have health insurance.

In Genesis 4:9, Cain asks God, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The answer to that, as given by those who said that Cranick was rightfully SOL, is not just "no," but "hell no."

This, in a nutshell, illustrates so much of what is wrong in America today. In so many instances, we have forgotten what it means to be a society and to take care of each other. We need to rediscover that.

A Modest Mosque Proposal

2010-08-16T08:56:00.005-04:00

At a White House iftar dinner (a tradition dating back to the days of Thomas Jefferson) President Obama finally pointed out the blindingly obvious - that our Constitution guarantees freedom of religion to everyone, and that means New York's Muslim community has every right to build the Cordoba House community center and mosque in lower Manhattan.

As expected, the right wing exploded in often incoherent rage:

Rep. Peter King, the Long Island Republican who has made quite the media career out of opposing the center, said that since 9/11 "was carried out in the name of Islam" anything Muslim anywhere near the World Trade Center site would simply be "salt in the wounds." (It should be mentioned that King's boundless sympathy for the 9/11 victims did not prevent him from blocking a bill providing medical aid for first responders who fell ill from working at the Trade Center site.)
CNN's Eric Erickson tweeted that supporting Cordoba House on freedom-of-religion grounds is exactly the same as supporting human sacrifice, satanism and polygamy.
The American Family Association's Bryan Fischer said that no more mosques should be built anywhere in the United States because "each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government."
Pamela Geller, the Muslim-hating blogger who more than anyone else has driven the false "Islamic supremacist mega mosque" storyline, even went so far as to claim that Obama is pro-terrorist: "If you had any doubt who Obama stood with on 9/11, there can be no doubt in our minds now."

As best as I can make out, the hysterical opposition to the center is based on this line of deduction:

9/11 was carried out by Muslims.
All Muslims are the same.
The families of 9/11 victims, attack survivors and area residents should not be subject to the hurt and humiliation of having a reminder located so close. Plus, as Geller says, a mosque in lower Manhattan "is not a religious issue. This is a national security issue."
Therefore, nothing Muslim should be allowed anywhere near the Trade Center site.

Let's take a similar line of reasoning and apply it to a modest proposal, that Christian facilities should be located far away from schools, playgrounds and other places where children assemble:

For decades, the Vatican allowed priests to molest children.
All Christians are the same.
Abuse survivors' families and parishioners whose priests were hauled to jail for abusing children should not be subject to the hurt and humiliation of having a reminder located so close. Plus, protecting kids is not a religious issue. This is a child-security issue.
Therefore, nothing Christian should be allowed anywhere near schools or playgrounds.

Of course, this not only violates Christians' religious freedom, but also lumps all Christians in with the pedophile enablers in Rome. As it happens, King, Fischer, Geller et al are doing the exact same thing by pretending that our constitutional freedom of religion does not apply to Muslims and that all Muslims are the same as those who carried out 9/11. Stereotyping and bigotry is stereotyping and bigotry, whether it's applied to Christians, Muslims, Jews or anyone else.

The president should not have to underline such a basic American principle as the freedom of people to worship as they wish without government approval or interference. But with the fires of anti-Muslim bigotry being stoked higher and higher by reckless demagogues, he had to remind the nation that freedom of religion is for everyone, whether or not a particular belief may be popular with the majority.

Or, as Rep. Jerrold Nadler correctly told King, "We do not put the Bill of Rights, we do not put religious freedom to a vote."

Well put.

Newtered

2010-08-09T08:49:00.008-04:00

When Judge Vaughn Walker overturned California's Proposition 8 last week, he pointed out that the ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage is not just an unconstitutional violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's due-process and equal-protection clauses but is wholly unsupported by the facts. When he asked Prop 8's defenders during the trial to prove their claim that procreation is the sole purpose of marriage, they actually refused, saying, "You don't have to have evidence of this point." So in his ruling, he pointed out the obvious: that there is simply no legitimate (much less overriding) reason to deny gay couples the same rights granted to straight couples.

So Prop 8 is now a thing of the past (pending appeals) and it seems like much of America greeted the decision with a yawn. After all, gay marriage was already legal in five states and the District of Columbia, and the world is still here. In the six years since Massachusetts became the first state to legalize such marriages, the sky has not fallen and the state has not been overrun by locusts.

But the nation's self-appointed "defenders of marriage" issued a collective primal scream and insisted we're on the fast track to Sodom and Gomorrah, especially since Walker is rumored to be gay:

"There is only one issue before each of us Californians: Is Marriage of Divine or of Human Origin? Judge Walker pays no attention to this fundamental issue, and relies solely upon how Prop 8 made certain members of society 'feel' about themselves. Those of us who supported Prop 8 and worked for its passage did so for one reason: We truly believe that Marriage was instituted by God for the specific purpose of carrying out God's plan for the world and human society. Period." (Cardinal Roger Mahony, Archbishop of Los Angeles)
"It is unnatural...an older white guy handed down the decision and he happened to be gay. That might have had something to do with it." (Patrick Buchanan)
"Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling yesterday, in which he trampled on the will of seven million Californians, is a monstrous, egregious, reprehensible expression of judicial activism and tyranny." (American Family Association)
"Let's not be shocked that Judge Walker cannot comprehend the self-evident rational basis for prohibiting homosexual marriage, after all, he is a practicing homosexual. The Bible plainly tells us that once a person has seared his conscience to such an extent that he can exchange his natural sexual relationship with the opposite sex for homosexuality, his ability to reason becomes utterly compromised." (Christian Anti-Defamation Commission)

And so on. One of the people putting in his two cents is Newt Gingrich, past House Speaker, present Fox News mainstay and future possible presidential candidate:

"Judge Walker's ruling overturning Prop 8 is an outrageous disrespect for our Constitution and for the majority of people of the United States who believe marriage is the union of husband and wife. In every state of the union from California to Maine to Georgia, where the people have had a chance to vote they've affirmed that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Congress now has the responsibility to act immediately to reaffirm marriage as a union of one man and one woman as our national policy."

Now, it seems that Gingrich doesn't sanitize his website to make sure only supportive comments get through - unlike Sarah Palin, whose Facebook ghostwriter routinely strips her page of anything even remotely critical. You see, quite a few people noticed how it's just a tad self-righteous for a serial philanderer on his third wife to lecture anyone on what marriage should or should not be, and made clear their feelings in the comments. Some of the best include:

"Newt you cheated on your first wife then dumped her when she was in the hospital with cancer. Later you cheated on your second wife with a 27 year old congressional aide. Maybe you should pipe down about defending marriage."
"Marriage is between a man and a woman. Err... A man and 2 women. Err... a man and 3 women. Damn, why do women have to keep getting old."
"One man and one woman, huh? So Newt, is your 'one woman' Jackie, Marianne, or Callista?"
"No, I want to hear more from the twice-divorced man about how marriage has to be reserved for one man and one woman. I wonder if the two former Mrs. Gingriches would testify as to Newt's reverence for marriage."
"Which one of your multiple marriages was the most sacred to you?"

Doesn't Gingrich have staffers whose job it is to prevent him from stepping into such situations? They're obviously not very good at it. Or perhaps he listened to them and then posted the statement anyway. Either way, he looks like not just a fool, but a hypocritical fool as well.

You'd think Gingrich and other mountebanks would learn to keep their mouths shut on such things. But until they do, they will always provide good entertainment.

All Means All

2010-08-02T13:30:00.001-04:00

The Anti-Defamation League's website says it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all." They just issued a press release concerning the proposed Cordoba House community center in downtown Manhattan. They're against it.

The group's rather torturous justification goes like this: yes, we know Muslims have the same religious freedom as everyone else. Yes, we know the people who are building Cordoba House are not even close to the people who destroyed the World Trade Center. And yes, we know that opposition to the center is mostly being driven by paranoia and bigotry. Nevertheless, we're against it because it would hurt people's feelings. Freedom will just have to take a back seat this time.

Did the ADL forget the part of its mission statement about "civil rights for all?" Or did they compromise their principles in an attempt to win the support of people who react not out of logic and reasoning, but out of blind fear and hatred?

It's the latter. The ADL has a long history of standing up for what's right, but they've given themselves a very large black eye with this one. Advising a religious minority to compromise on their freedom so as not to ruffle the feathers of the majority, telling them not to rock the boat - hmm, where have we heard that one before? Oh yes, it's how Jews have been told to get along with our Christian neighbors for centuries. And we know how well that turned out, don't we?

When a religious minority is told not to worry, they have to give along to get along, that endangers religious freedom for everyone. And the ADL, of all people, should know that very well.

While their intentions in sparing 9/11 victims' families feelings may be good, they're going about it entirely the wrong way. People's feelings get hurt all the time, but that's no reason to throw away freedom. By that logic, person A can advocate that person B not be allowed to speak because A's feelings would be hurt by what B has to say.

"Civil rights for all" means just what it says. All means all. The ADL should reconsider.

Of Mosques and Men

2010-07-26T16:45:00.002-04:00

Cordoba House is a community center planned for an empty building in lower Manhattan, two blocks from the World Trade Center site. The center will include a swimming pool, day-care center, library, auditorium and mosque. It's basically a Muslim version of the YMCA, and the local community board approved it by a 29-1 vote. No big deal.

A very big deal. The mosque part has naturally gotten bigots, political opportunists and people who are just plain frightened by anyone who is "other" up in arms:

Pamela Geller, the head of a group called Stop Islamization of America, calls the project the "911 Mega Mosque" and demands that it be halted. (She also wrongly claims that the center will be opened on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.)
Sarah Palin called on "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" the center. (Upon being informed that "refudiate" is not a word, she compared herself to Shakespeare.)
Carl Paladino, a GOP candidate for governor of New York, is running on a platform of using eminent domain to seize the former Burlington Coat Factory building and turn it into a "war memorial."
A group calling itself the National Republican Trust PAC created a blatantly fear-mongering TV ad, using images of armed terrorists and the WTC rubble to oppose the center.
Geller (among others) whipped up public hatred in a rally near the center site, during which police had to come to the rescue of several Coptic Christians from Egypt who were targeted for speaking Arabic.

All these people basically say the same thing - that anything Muslim near the Trade Center site is an intolerable insult to the victims of 9/11 and that the center organizers are terrorist supporters, a claim for which there is no evidence at all. The Cordoba House organizers have thus been jammed into the impossible position of proving that they are not terrorists.

What a mess. And it's steeped in the belief that all Muslims are the same. Since the 9/11 terrorists were Muslims, the reasoning goes, all Muslims must be in league with al Qaeda, and every mosque is by definition a jihadist training center. The aforementioned ad is particularly blatant in tarring everyone with the same brush: "And to celebrate that murder of more than three thousand Americans," it says, "they want to build a monstrous 13-story mosque at Ground Zero."

Putting the factual errors aside, the catch-all word "they" excuses bigotry and stereotyping. "They" think. "They" say. "They" do.

By the same logic, all Christians are crusading Left Behind-type fanatics who cheer at the thought of all non-Christians (and even the "wrong" kind of Christians) burning in hell forever. Is that true? Of course not. But stereotypes are insidious, dangerous things.

Do some Muslims, even some American Muslims, genuinely believe that followers of other faiths should be injured or killed? Unfortunately yes, and they're the ones who get all the press. But you find publicity-hungry fanatics in every religion, and I have yet to hear anyone screaming about building a JCC somewhere.

When asked why the center should not be built, opponents always fall back on the same excuse: because it's Muslim.

Muslims were killed on 9/11 too, you know. Dozens of Muslims worked at the Trade Center or were passengers on the doomed flights. But they apparently don't count because nineteen people who claimed the same faith did something truly horrible. And Muslims living in New York (or anywhere else) are now required to live as second-class citizens for the same reason.

What would happen if Jews wanted to build a Chabad House two blocks from the Trade Center site? Or if Buddhists wanted to build a meditation center? Or, for that matter, if a Christian group wanted to build a community center near a bombed abortion clinic? Would we see the same sort of fear and loathing we see now?

Of course not. Because those religions are "peaceful." Have we really been so indoctrinated by post-9/11 fear and loathing that we automatically believe all Muslims to be hate-crazed killers? Are we really so ruled by our own fears that we can be stampeded into shrieking denunciation of a community center solely because of which religion is associated with it?

Those who scream about a fictional "mega mosque" or mosques in general are very clear about what they are saying: that the freedom of religion for which America is justly admired does not apply to everyone. In their world, Muslims are forbidden from following their faith if anyone else objects. Doesn't matter how ludicrous the objection might be, it's still forbidden. Just imagine the uproar that would occur if people objected to a church camp being built near, say, the site of the Salem Witch Trials.

That's the thing about freedom of religion - it's either granted to everyone or it's not freedom at all. If some people are deemed unworthy of that freedom, we become a nation divided into denominations, in which only the "favored" ones can operate freely and all others must stick to the shadows for fear of official sanctions.

(Tennessee Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey, in the GOP gubernatorial primary, has already come out in favor of denying freedom of religion to Muslims. "Now, you could even argue whether being a Muslim is actually a religion, or is it a nationality, way of life, cult whatever you want to call it," he said at a recent campaign event. "Now certainly we do protect our religions, but at the same time this is something we are going to have to face.")

So let Cordoba House be built. And let mosques be built wherever a Muslim community needs a place to pray. For every time a Muslim somewhere in the world sees that Muslims in America enjoy the exact same freedoms and opportunities as any other American, al Qaeda loses another follower.

Everyone wins. Except for the bigots, and they deserve to lose.

Going to the Dogs

2010-07-19T10:51:00.004-04:00

Every time you think the right wing can't find anything more petty or ridiculous with which to attack President Obama, they outdo themselves. To wit, take Michelle Malkin's latest sneer on how the Obama family dog Bo supposedly got his own private jet to Maine for the family vacation:

Not enough room on Air Force One for a Portuguese water dog and Reggie Love? Obama had to have a smaller jet (G3 Gulfstream, according to the story) serve as Air Force One instead of the 747 the president usually uses because of the size of the airport, but still, it's a dog - and we're all supposed to sacrifice in order to get through these tough economic times, right Mr. President? ... Um, Mr. President?

There was some concern because the jet carrying the First Couple's egos was a bit late in arriving due to rough weather over Shangri-La.

To no one's surprise, Fox promptly jumped all over it under the headline "Obama Family Dog Flies on His Own Private Plane," garnering the expected classy comments:

"As a tax payer I don't mind paying for the dog, At lease it's qualified"
"I'm not surprised in the least. Since taking office this president has never avoided an opportunity to stoop as low as possible to show the American public his disdain for us."
"be fair people, obamas other dog pelosi has a plane of her own, so why not bo"

And so on. But - all together now! - the story is fake.

You see, when Malkin wrote her blog post and Fox pushed it on their website, no one bothered to check the facts. If they had called the Waterville Morning Sentinel, the paper quoted to push this latest phony "scandal," they would have quickly discovered it to be a fake story:

Today's story about the arrival of the Obamas said the Obama's dog and one aide arrived on a small jet before the First Family, but there were other occupants on the plane, including several other staffers. The presidential party took two small jets to the Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport in Trenton because the airport was too small to accommodate the president's usual jet.

The airport was too small to use the Boeing 747 on which the president usually flies, so they used two smaller planes. The Obamas and some of their staffers went in one plane, Bo and the remaining staffers in the other.

That's it. That's all there is.

But as we all know, pesky facts never get in the way of a good smear, and this latest bit of nonsense is basically a rerun of the Fala attack on FDR back in 1944. Of course, that was phony too.

Next fake scandal: Obama's visit to a Black Power ice cream shop!

Not Even Trying Anymore

2010-06-16T21:44:00.006-04:00

Fox News likes to claim that it's "fair and balanced," but anyone who spends any time watching it knows that it's about as fair and balanced as a Stalinist show trial. Still, every once in a while, they do something that makes you wonder if they're not even pretending to be fair anymore.

This time, it was a report which aired on Tuesday's edition of America Live, making the startling claim of "a massive stretch of Arizona now off limits to Americans. Critics say the administration is, in effect, giving a major strip of the Southwest back to Mexico."

When the item was posted at Fox Nation with the headline, "Obama Gives Back Major Strip of AZ to Mexico," the usual suspects let fly:

"I cannot believe how absolutekly pisssed I am. We have this half arsed POTUS in training who will NOT guard and protect the borders of our Republic, as in the oath he took. How effin dare he ? He should be thown out of office and sent out on a rail. He GIVES UP on protecting our nation? What an effin waste of our trust and money. Impeach this S ofa B"
"Typical, Obama 'The Commander Chicken in Chief' surrenders to Mexico! We must put the Army on the southern border and support the troops with a few AC 130's all aiming south and what ever else it takes to 'Take Back that part of America!'"
"Enough is enough! American Patriots, this a call to action! Screw everyone else saying violence is not the answer. If the government will not protect this country then it is time for us to rise up and protect our country! I will not stand here and watch foreigners take over this country! No more power to the government it is time for the power of the people! Grab your weapons and defend our border! Lets set an example that no government will forget! Awake the sleeping giant once again!"

And so on. But - surprise, surprise! - the story is fake.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service determined that a 3500-acre strip of land on the southern edge of the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, directly adjacent to the Mexican border, was no longer safe for visitors. (It is not, as Fox claimed, "north of Tucson, eighty miles away from the border.") And so they posted a closure notice:

The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent. The Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge has been adversely affected by border-related activities. The international border with Mexico has also become increasingly violent. Assaults on law enforcement officers and violence against migrants have escalated. Violence on the Refuge associated with smugglers and border bandits has been well documented. Many of these activities are concentrated at, or near, the border. The concentration of illegal activity, surveillance and law enforcement interdictions make these zones dangerous.

Oh yes, and this was more than three years ago.

If you look at the PDF file's properties, you'll see the file was created (and last changed) on October 23, 2006. Which means the area was closed to visitors more than two years before Obama was elected. The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a statement confirming that the closure was issued at that time. Not only that, Fox's scary film clips of Mexicans climbing over the border fence are also from late 2006.

So why is Fox trumpeting it now? Three guesses, and the first two don't count. They did it because there's a Democrat in the White House, and any attack, no matter how phony, is acceptable.

Now I don't know about you, but I was shocked - shocked! - to learn the story is a lie.

So, to sum up, no one (especially not President Obama) is giving any territory to anyone. The strip of land has not been handed over to Mexico. The area was closed years before Obama became president. And Fox News is once again pushing a completely false story for purely political reasons.

One wonders if Fox's viewers will ever figure out just how badly they're being played for suckers.

Something in the Water

2010-06-15T17:47:00.005-04:00

There must be something in the water down in South Carolina for so many politicians to have gone off the deep end. First there was Governor Mark Sanford hiking the Appalachian trail, then there was Rep. Joe Wilson shouting, "You lie!" at President Obama during an address to Congress, then there was Lieutenant Governor André Bauer comparing poor kids getting school lunches to stray animals, then there was State Senator Jake Knotts calling not just Obama but also GOP gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley a "raghead."

And now we have Alvin Greene, the official Democratic nominee to take on Senator Jim DeMint in the November election. He has no website, no campaign manager, no yard signs, no nothing - and somehow managed to get 59% of the vote in last week's primary. When he went on TV in the aftermath of his surprise win, Greene appeared to be drunk, on drugs, or otherwise out to lunch. It was so ridiculous that CNN's Don Lemon actually told Greene, "Honestly, you don't sound okay" and asked if he was "mentally sound."

Oh yes, and he's under investigation for allegedly showing porn to a student at the University of South Carolina. (As Jon Stewart pointed out, "Most senators don't sexually harass college girls until they get elected.")

This has become a complete circus, and the Democrats are crying foul. Greene, they insist, is not a real candidate but a Republican plant, designed to give DeMint a DOA opponent this fall. Possible, given the bare-knuckle nature of South Carolina politics, but that doesn't quite make sense.

After all, even if Greene is a barely-there front man, you'd think he would have done something to ensure his nomination. By all accounts, Greene did nothing - no campaigning, no voter outreach, no press interviews. All he did was put up the $10,000 filing fee - and even that's suspicious, considering that he's unemployed and lives in his father's basement. And even if he was a plant, nobody made Democratic voters pick him over "establishment" candidate Vic Rawl, who had everything Greene did not, starting with a website. Greene's only advantage appears to be that his name was listed first on the ballot.

So is this an example of Republican sabotage, a testament to the ignorance of South Carolina's electorate, or both? Rawl is fighting the primary result, ensuring that this story isn't going anywhere.

See How Well It Works?

2010-06-15T15:40:00.002-04:00

There is an old joke in which someone buys a very expensive object which he is told will keep away dragons. When someone else points out that there are no dragons, he smugly replies, "See how well it works?"

Rex Duncan is an Oklahoma state legislator, and takes his job very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he is determined to protect his state against even imaginary enemies. Make that especially imaginary enemies.

You see, back in February he introduced a constitutional amendment which would prohibit state and local courts from considering Islamic religious law (also called Sharia law) when making decisions: "The courts shall not look to the legal precepts of other nations or cultures. Specifically, the courts shall not consider international law or Sharia Law." The amendment was passed overwhelmingly last month and will be on the ballot this fall for voter approval.

Good heavens, sounds like it's really needed out there - except that American judges don't use Sharia law in their deliberations. They never have. And they never will. In our secular legal system, judges don't use any religious law to decide cases.

But that hasn't stopped Duncan. Going on MSNBC a few days ago to defend the ballot measure, he found himself unable to point to even a single instance where a judge has used Sharia law to decide a case. "It has not [happened]," he admitted before recovering and larding on the fear: "It's a growing threat, frankly, and this again is a preemptive strike. They understand that this is a war for the survival of America. It's a cultural war, it's a social war. It's a war for the survival of our country."

Less than one percent of Oklahoma residents are Muslim. And even if the hardest of the hardcore think applying Muslim religious law wholesale is a great idea, that leaves a whole lot of Muslims, not to mention a whole lot of non-Muslims, who realize it's a terrible idea. But that doesn't matter to Duncan and his fellow fearmongers, who see a golden opportunity to whip up political support while demonizing a religious minority.

(And is it just me, or do all these people who use fear and loathing against Muslims fall silent when extremists demand that legislatures pass and judges enforce laws according to Christian religious doctrine? Just sayin'.)

So Duncan, following in the footsteps of so many other political snake-oil salesmen, is selling the people of Oklahoma an object guaranteed to keep away Sharia law. After all, see how well it works?

Worst. Press Conference. Ever.

2010-05-24T11:00:00.004-04:00

If cringing comedy is your thing, check out the latest offering from birther preacher James David Manning, who has a reputation even in birther-land for being, well, weird. Last week, he held a show trial at his Harlem church in which he accused "long-legged mack daddy" President Obama of having been born in Kenya. Not only that, he claimed Obama never actually attended Columbia University in the early 1980s, instead going to Afghanistan to fight for the mujaheddin against the occupying Soviets on behalf of the CIA. Wow, not even Orly Taitz at her loopiest ever said that.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Manning's little play court found Obama guilty of all charges. Of course, since it wasn't a real court, the legal value of this "verdict" is precisely zero. But since he was upset that no one apart from birthers and people who find comedy gold in birther antics paid any attention to him, he held a press conference at his church Friday afternoon at which he attacked the "bullying" media and Obama in equal measures.

All I can say is that Manning has a lot to learn about staging press conferences. The video shows about a dozen people, widely spaced out in the otherwise empty church, sitting quietly and listening. One woman asks him to clarify some of his accusations, particularly, "Why would Obama, with his Marxist background, be so eager to throw in with the CIA and go to Afghanistan and fight Socialists?" Manning, clearly irritated at having been caught in a rather basic contradiction, says the trial is over and refuses to answer. Another person, evidently one of Manning's own parishioners, asks if a day of prayer and fasting can make the "verdict" sink in. And so on.

Manning even claimed his fake trial was genuine because the police let it happen. "We have a verdict that is legal," he said. "Were it not so, we would have been arrested. You don't put the alleged sitting president of the United States on trial right in front of the police department if you don't have a right to do it."

Actually, it's more likely that the cops didn't interfere because holding a pretend trial is not a crime. Silly, yes, but not criminal. Now if Manning or one of his followers try to rush Obama and arrest him, the police might have something to say about that.

And so another birther bombshell is revealed to be a dud. Manning and his followers can rage all they like, but they're still just another bunch of conspiracy theorists, and their rage doesn't make it true.

Randbagged

2010-05-21T13:40:00.001-04:00

Exactly one day after winning the GOP Senate primary in Kentucky, tea-party darling Rand Paul got into a lot of trouble. Going on NPR and MSNBC, he was asked about his previous writings that government has no power to ban discrimination by private businesses. He stuck by what he said and all hell broke loose.

You see, in Paul's world, private property rights trump everything. Restaurants can tell black patrons to take a hike. Housing associations can tell Jewish buyers to go back to the shtetl. Companies can tell people who can't get up the stairs to the office that they're on their own, or just refuse to hire them at all. This, of course, flies in the face of the American ideal that everyone must be treated fairly, and has not gone over well with people who have faced discrimination or whose families faced it.

Oh yes, and he said today that President Obama is "un-American" for criticizing BP's turning the Gulf of Mexico into a big oil slick. "Accidents happen," he said dismissively, in one fell swoop losing the support of people whose homes and livelihoods are in danger because they are now covered with oil.

In between bouts of whining over having been called out on his positions, Paul says that the magic of the market will drive discriminatory companies out of business because people won't go there. But guess what? It doesn't work that way.

He seems to have forgotten about two hundred years of American history, when businesses routinely discriminated against anyone who was "other" and prospered while doing it. Blacks, Jews, Irish, Catholics, Hispanics, Asians - the list of excluded people goes on and on. (As a straight white male Presbyterian, Paul has likely never been the victim of any kind of discrimination.) And these biases in private business finally stopped only when government stepped in and said, "you can't do that."

Paul says that freedom includes the freedom to discriminate. This is, of course, well known in his libertarian and tea-party circles, but this week's ruckus is the first time the wider public has heard of it. And from the public reaction, they don't think much of it. Even the larger GOP is backing away from him, knowing that there's simply no way to win this fight.

Paul needs to realize that while in a perfect world no one would discriminate against anyone, we do not live in a perfect world, and people do discriminate. Government has a widely recognized and very legitimate function in putting a stop to bigotry both public and private.

And the longer Rand Paul takes to realize that, the quicker he will be an ex-candidate.

There's Gold in Them Thar Shills

2010-05-20T18:21:00.008-04:00

Glenn Beck's long list of offensive and just plain bizarre antics, from calling President Obama a racist to fantasizing about poisoning Nancy Pelosi, have cost him many of his advertisers. One of his few remaining sponsors, Goldline, sells gold coins to the public as an investment - and indeed, Beck appears in Goldline's ads as a paid endorser.

Now, Beck has a long history of scaring his fans with hysterical warnings of imminent hyperinflation and economic collapse. (Stephen Colbert once memorably ridiculed Beck's overheated rhetoric by welcoming viewers to his "Doom Bunker.") And in every warning, Beck always claims that gold is the perfect investment, the ultimate hedge against the wave of socialist cannibal zombies that will doubtless overwhelm us all. Cut to a commercial for Goldline, which has ridden this wave of paranoia to estimated annual sales of more than half a billion dollars.

But the problem, as Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) charged this week, is that Goldline routinely sells their products at such a high markup that gold prices would have to double in order for buyers just to break even. In other words, they rip off their own customers. He also had harsh words for how Goldline works with Beck and other right-wing talkers to create a market for their product by scaring listeners and viewers.

Beck, ever the martyr, placed himself on - well, a cross of gold, portraying himself as the lone voice crying out in the wilderness against the inflation which will (any day now, it'll happen, Krusty is coming, Krusty is coming) destroy us all. He also hit back in his usual adult manner by launching a website called Weiner Facts, which appears to consist mostly of Photoshopped images combining photos of Weiner with photos of hot dogs. Even for someone of Beck's arguably doubtful mental stability, it's pretty inexplicable.

An article by the liberal Mother Jones found that Beck and Goldline form the perfect symbiosis, feeding off each other in an endless cycle of paranoia, high-pressure sales tactics and overpriced merchandise. It's a particularly sordid cycle - Beck terrifies his viewers with outlandish warnings of what he claims is to come and says they can live only by buying gold. Goldline runs ads selling gold at outrageous markups to these same viewers, then turns around and gives Beck a large sack of money for being a "paid endorser." Repeat.

There are, of course, legitimate gold dealers who make a living without using their customers' fears as an excuse to rip them off. But Goldline, aided and abetted by Glenn Beck, does not appear to be one of them.

The Ultimate Birther Theory

2010-05-19T14:30:00.002-04:00

Orly Taitz, Joseph Farah and other birthers like to claim that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen and so cannot be president. First they said his Hawaii birth certificate is a fake and he was actually born in Kenya. Then they said okay, we'll admit he was born in Hawaii, but he's still not a natural-born citizen because his father was Kenyan. After that, it kind of devolved to the point where they're desperately trying to avoid acknowledging that they hate Obama simply because he's a black man with a foreign name.

In doing so, they have fallen back on everything from channeling 18th-century political philosophers to arguing the significance of "certificate" vs. "certification" to (probably) reading tea leaves and goat entrails. Nothing has worked; courts have repeatedly ruled that Obama, having been born in Hawaii, is a natural-born citizen and thus eligible. Not that this has slowed the birthers down in the slightest - take, for example, their little pretend trial in Harlem earlier this week.

But I've got them all beat. Like the birthers, I have scoured Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution with a fine-toothed comb and have made a startling discovery. It appears that only ten presidents were eligible and thus everyone occupying the Oval Office since then has been an unconstitutional usurper. Including Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Here's how it works. The relevant section of the Constitution, which the birthers quote all the time, reads:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Note the comma between the words "States" and "at." Under the rules of grammar, a comma is used to separate distinct phrases which can be removed from the sentence without rendering it unreadable. Given that, if you remove the "or a Citizen of the United States" section, you wind up with:

No Person except a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

So taking the commas into account, the phrase says that only people who were natural-born or other types of citizens, and who were citizens only when the Constitution was adopted in 1787, can be president. If the Founders had really wanted to add a grandfather clause allowing people who became Americans upon independence to be president, they would have left the comma out, and the phrase would have read:

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

If that's the case (and by birther logic it must be) every president born after 1787 was not eligible for that office and thus every law enacted since the administration of John Tyler (born in 1790) is null and void. Except for Zachary Taylor, who's OK since he was born in 1784.

So in the proud tradition of the birthers, I proclaim that a Grand Conspiracy involving every historian, scholar, journalist, politician, civics teacher, etc must exist to allow so many people to have become president when they were not eligible to do so. And if anyone disagrees with me, that only means they're in on the conspiracy too.

Now, you know and I know that this is a load of dingo's kidneys, but it's just the sort of load that the birthers would embrace with open arms. And they'll probably take this little thought experiment and run with it too.

Raising the Bar

2010-05-18T12:19:00.010-04:00

I thought the birther pretend trial in New York was comedy gold, but it actually got eclipsed today.

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), a holier-than-thou Bible-thumping family-values evangelical Christian conservative, resigned this morning after news reports exposed his affair with an office staffer. At first glance, it appears to be just another entry in the long, long list of mostly Republican moralists who claim a divine right to tell everyone else how to live their lives while being rather less than divine themselves, but this one has something just a little bit special.

Last fall, Souder's office released a YouTube video touting his participation in a 2008 Congressional hearing on abstinence education.

He's a big fan of this approach to sex-ed classes, blithely ignoring the many studies showing that it just doesn't work. But that's par for the course. What elevates the video from just another bit of hypocrisy to an instant classic is the fact that Tracy Jackson, the woman shown interviewing Souder, is the woman with whom Souder had an affair.

Yes, he actually made a video promoting abstinence outside of marriage with the very same woman he was shagging outside his own marriage.

You really can't make this stuff up. Souder has raised the chutzpah bar for everyone else. C'mon, all you self-righteous prudes, try harder!

Punishing the Child

2010-05-13T13:40:00.006-04:00

As the Catholic Church finally realizes that protecting child molesters while threatening their victims into silence might not have been such a great idea, and that dismissing the resulting outrage as "petty gossip" is an even worse idea, they clearly still have a ways to go.

St. Paul Elementary School, a private Catholic K-8 school in Hingham, Massachusetts, is currently in the news because they first accepted and then rejected a boy to enter the school in the third grade. Why? It's not because he has disciplinary problems or because his academics aren't up to snuff. It's because his parents are both women, and the Church says homosexuality is a sin.

Yes, the Church is actually pushing away an eight-year-old boy because it doesn't like his moms. And I thought the whole notion of punishing children for the supposed sins of their parents went out sometime in the 19th century.

The school claims they rejected the boy because "teachers wouldn't be prepared to answer questions her son might have because the school's teachings about marriage conflict with what he sees in his family."

Well, that's the teachers' problem, isn't it? I mean, they're supposed to be able to answer kids' questions. That's sort of the whole purpose of going to school. If they can't or won't answer a student's questions, they should pick another profession.

Now, to be fair, St. Paul is a private school and as such can set whatever admission criteria it likes. But they need to be consistent. If they're going to reject children of gay parents, they'd better be ready to kick out any kids whose parents are divorced, use birth control, are unmarried, eat meat on Fridays, conceived their children via fertility treatments, or commit any other violation of Church canon. Of course, that would make their enrollment plummet from the current 250 to - oh, about six or seven.

But we all know that won't happen. The Church will save its punishments for the children of gay parents. After all, it's so much easier to go after kids with a particular kind of "wrong" parents than to reconsider the doctrine which turns those parents - and their children - into sinners in the first place.

I Hate Science More Than You

2010-05-12T12:14:00.005-04:00

In yet more proof that mixing religion and government is generally a bad idea, we now have a tussle in Alabama between a Republican candidate for governor and a group calling itself the True Republican PAC. The issue - and I'm not making this up - is which Republican is more Christian, more godly, and more anti-science.

Yes, it started when the PAC, apparently a front funded by the state teachers' union, ran an attack ad saying Bradley Byrne "supported the teaching of evolution, said evolution best explains the origin of life, even said the Bible is only partially true."

Good heavens, the man must be some sort of secret Jew, or Muslim, or even (gasp!) an atheist. Fortunately, Byrne has defended God, Jesus and Alabama by fighting back and proceeding to out-God his critics:

As a Christian and as a public servant, I have never wavered in my belief that this world and everything in it is a masterpiece created by the hands of God. As a member of the Alabama Board of Education, the record clearly shows that I fought to ensure the teaching of creationism in our school text books. Those who attack me have distorted, twisted and misrepresented my comments and are spewing utter lies to the people of this state.

Well, so there!

Byrne's closest opponent in the primary is Roy Moore, a former state supreme court judge who became a hero to the Christian right by installing a 2½-ton monument of the Ten Commandments at the courthouse in 2001. "Today a cry has gone out across our land for the acknowledgment of that God upon whom this nation and our laws were founded," he proclaimed at the official dedication. "May this day mark the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and the return to the knowledge of God in our land."

Others disagreed with his call for an explicitly religious judiciary and sued. After a two-year legal fight, federal judge Myron Thompson ordered him to remove the monument as an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. Moore defied the order and was removed from the bench by his fellow Alabama State Supreme Court judges.

Moore is running on a program of "morality" and the "right to acknowledge God," complaining that "Judge Thompson's order was simply an unlawful order which contradicted not only the Constitution of the United States but every State Constitution to include that of Alabama which acknowledges the existence of God."

So we've got quite the God-off going on down in the heart of Dixie. With both main GOP candidates competing over who can make the best obeisance to the Almighty, it seems that the state's real problems - you know, jobs, health care and other boring secular stuff - will be ignored. Yes, people might be sick and out of work, but they can take comfort in the fact that the likely Republican nominee will be looking out for their immortal souls.

If the Bag Fits

2010-05-05T12:47:00.010-04:00

If there's one thing teabaggers are very good at, it's getting offended. They can pour out personal abuse and name-calling by the bucketful ("Obambi," "Odumbo," "Obozo," "Obowma," etc) but say one thing about them and they carry on like a five-year-old girl whose pigtails have just been pulled.

Case in point is the "teabagger" name itself. The tea-party movement came up with it early last year, right after Obama became president, and it became very popular very quickly. It was everywhere, showing up in such forms as "Tea Bag Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You" and "Teabagging 4 Jesus," among others. One protester in Washington even threw a box of tea bags over the White House fence, much to the consternation of the Secret Service.

All that was before someone in the movement learned how to use Google and discovered the term's other meaning. And before you could say "George Orwell," they abandoned the term "teabagger" en masse, insisted they had never used it in the first place, and whined about how only mean liberals, Democrats and Communists called them that.

It didn't work. Liberal bloggers and pundits have long taken immense glee in pointing out how the teabaggers adopted the term as their own and then ran away from it as fast as they could.

But when the tea partiers have an opportunity, however ridiculous, to whimper and cast themselves as the victims, they grab on with both hands and won't let go. For example, in the new book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Obama is quoted as saying that the Republicans' lockstep vote against the economic stimulus bill "helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans."

Cue the screams of outrage in three...two...one...

Michelle Malkin: "Really. How many more selective civility police lectures can we take from this vulgarity-clogged White House?"
Ian Lazaran: "Obama may be the most thin-skinned President we've ever had. It'll be funny to see him apologize for his crude, offensive, and juvenile language when this book officially comes out."
Diane Student: "I for one appreciate the gay slur. Oh yes, Mr. President, thank you so much!"

Not to mention some of the classier comments on Fox Nation:

"Obama you ignorant arrogant individual !!!!! if you don't have something intelligent to say then you should keep that hole in your face shut !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"I would much rather be a 'TeaBagger', than a communist, socialist, marxist, arrogant, rude dumbass like our prez is? How's that for civility??"
"Obama as always has NO class. For a president to use the gay slang 'teabaggers' tells you all about him."
"STFU you racist muslim dirtbag"

And so on. You get the picture.

The simple fact, of course, is that the tea-party movement originally called themselves "teabaggers," no matter how hard they try to forget it or bludgeon everyone else into forgetting it as well. Cloaking themselves in the political mantle of the original Boston Tea Party participants, the teabaggers loved calling themselves that and embraced the tea-bag image at every opportunity. Well, at least until they found out what it meant.

But hey, if the bag fits, wear it.

So Much for the Latino Vote

2010-04-28T15:41:00.002-04:00

"I think we should catch 'em [illegal immigrants], we should document 'em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going. I actually support micro-chipping them. I can micro-chip my dog so I can find it. Why can't I micro-chip an illegal?"

Pat Bertroche, running for the GOP nomination for a House seat from Indiana

High Times at the GOP

2010-04-28T11:41:00.004-04:00

Back in 2008, some people who were hired by the community group ACORN to sign up new voters figured out they could pad their earnings by submitting fake registrations for Mickey Mouse and other fictional characters. ACORN submitted the registrations to the county clerks because they had to - most states require canvassers to submit all received registration cards regardless of fraud or error. (The reason is simple: to prevent gatherers backed by one party from arbitrarily discarding registrations for other parties based on made-up allegations.) The group alerted the clerks' offices, the fakes were caught and invalidated, and the dishonest canvassers were charged with voter registration fraud.

In other words, the system worked. But it was a huge scandal at the time, with the Republican Party and its media divisions (Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, etc) all screaming about how the election would be tainted by a flood of fake ACORN votes. It was one of the reasons why the national group went under earlier this year.

Final tally of proven fraudulent votes based on ACORN registrations: zero.

So now we have another tale of fake voter registration, but it's somewhat different than the ACORN one. Earlier this month, the Orange County Register reported that the county Republican Party paid "bounties" of as much as $8 per head to canvassers who signed up new GOP voters. So the canvassers went around asking people to sign petitions in support of beach cleanups, cancer cures and even marijuana legalization - but didn't tell them that by doing so they were registering as Republican voters. (Does that mean you have to be high to vote Republican?) Hundreds of complaints have now arrived at California state elections offices from people claiming they were duped in this manner.

One canvasser, who submitted three registrations from people complaining they were lied to, dismissed them as morons: "I can tell you that half the people out there don't know the difference between a Republican and a Democrat." (And Tom Tancredo says we should bring back literacy tests since President Obama was supposedly elected by stupid voters. Perhaps he was looking at the wrong party.)

It's tempting to brush this off as an ACORN rerun, but it's not that simple. You see, back in 2006, the newspaper received the same sort of complaints, did some digging and found the same sort of GOP fraud that would be uncovered four years later. Back then, eleven canvassers were convicted of falsifying voter registrations, and eight of them went to jail. So they're trying the same thing again. Add in the fact that the "bounty" was paid directly by the Republican Party via the signature-gathering firm they hired and this is getting serious. The county Democrats are now demanding that the local US Attorney investigate the charges.

I don't care what your position or party is - if you have to con people to get them to register as a member of your organization, you have no business being in politics. The Orange County Republicans still have time to fix the mess, but only if they do some major housecleaning:

Take all the crafty canvassers, and the party officials who gave them the green light, and throw them to the wolves.
Contact all involved registrants and invalidate all registrations which were signed up fraudulently.
Stop offering "bounties" to canvassers based on how many registrations they bring in and support state legislation to bar the practice.
Promise never to pull such a scam again and submit to random checks to make sure they're being honest.

That should help clean things up. Because signing up marijuana proponents as Republicans makes the Harold and Kumar jokes just too easy.

Open Season

2010-04-27T09:39:00.012-04:00

With Arizona's new anti-illegal-immigrant law SB 1070 making waves across the country and the world, state and local police now have blank-check power to stop and arrest anyone with a "reasonable suspicion" of being in the country illegally. Of course, this raises the question of just how to determine whether someone is an illegal immigrant, and it always comes back to racial profiling.

We all know the law will not be used against white people. It's aimed squarely at Hispanics, and it is Hispanics who will pay the price. It doesn't matter whether they were born in the US, have green cards or really are here illegally - if they have brown skin, they will be targeted. Leave your wallet at home and you run the risk of going to jail. It will be ugly.

(And is it just me, or do the same teabaggers who wave Gadsen flags and scream about "Obama fascism" think it's just peachy when that very same government stops people on the street at will and demands their identity papers? Gee, maybe all that stuff about freedom and tyranny is only for white people.)

But there is a potentially even uglier consequence to this new law, one which I doubt its authors intended: namely, that it is now open season on anyone who is in the country illegally. Yes, once the law goes into effect this summer, any illegal immigrant basically has no legal protections against anything. You can do anything you like to them - robbery, rape, murder, whatever - and they won't go to the police. Why? Because they know that the instant they pick up the phone to call 911, out come the handcuffs and clang goes the jail-cell door.

Basically, the law creates "nonpersons" in Arizona. Sure, there is nothing in state law which specifically excludes illegal immigrants from police protection, but that's the effect of SB 1070.

With various people now calling for an economic boycott of Arizona, the same people who shot their state in the foot now have a chance to undo the fiscal damage. Since undocumented immigrants will now essentially be fair game, why not profit off it? Set up a facility somewhere off in the desert where the most beautiful and handsome illegal immigrants will be sent and housed. Then invite in wealthy sickos to do whatever they like to these people, secure in the knowledge that no one will go to the police. Think of it as a real-life version of the 2005 horror-porn film Hostel.

Terrible idea? Sure it is. But so is the whole idea of making people criminal suspects based solely on their ethnicity. My advice to the Arizona legislature is to find another way of solving the problem, preferably one not so blatantly un-American.

Papers, Please

2010-04-26T11:23:00.007-04:00

It's a scene out of a seemingly infinite number of movies. Someone is walking down the street and minding his own business when a policeman (secret or otherwise) appears out of the blue, demanding to see his papers. Something is not in order and the helpless hero is dragged away, never to be seen again.

Okay, so it's not quite like that in Arizona, even after Governor Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law late last week. The new law, officially called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," allows Arizona police to arrest anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant - but just how does one determine that? Skin color? Accent? Clothing? I mean, people don't walk around with helpful signs saying "I'm In This Country Illegally." Maybe they will just demand to see the person's birth certificate. Is there anyone out there who makes a habit of taking their birth certificate when they leave the house?

We all know what will happen with this law. Someone who looks like an illegal immigrant (translation: Hispanic) will be stopped and required to provide proof that he is in the country legally. If said person can't immediately produce the right paperwork, he will be arrested, thrown in jail and maybe even shipped across the border to Mexico. High-dollar lawsuits will ensue and the law will eventually be thrown out as unconstitutional.

Or perhaps he will simply be killed by vigilante "border patrollers" for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Oh, and when Tom Tancredo - the immigrant-hater extraordinaire who last distinguished himself by demanding that people pass a "literacy test" before they can vote - says it's a bad bill, you've got a big PR problem.

Is illegal immigration a problem? Of course it is. Illegal laborers drive down wages for lower-rung workers and can commit identity theft by using other people's Social Security numbers to get work for themselves. Not to mention that illegal immigrants are more at risk for being crime victims.

But is criminalizing a vast swath of the population the answer, especially when it can all too easily ensnare many thousands of completely legal people at the same time? No. There has to be a better way.

Authentic Frontier Gibberish

2010-04-22T14:33:00.004-04:00

To quote Sam Cooke, Sarah Palin don't know much about history, not to mention energy, religion, economics, government, science and geography. She really is appallingly ignorant, not to mention incoherent (on a good day, she can make George W. Bush sound like an Oxford debating champion) and her popularity among the teabaggers says a whole lot more about them than it does about her. What she does know about, though, is how to cash in.

Last week, ABC estimated that ever since she got bored with being governor of Alaska and quit halfway through her term, Palin has raked in about $12 million (that's one hundred times her former gubernatorial salary) with most of it coming from her ghostwritten tale Going Rogue, her appearances on Fox News and especially her speaking gigs at a reported $100,000 a pop.

You'd think that at those prices, she can afford her own travel, but no. A contract unearthed by some enterprising California students requires anyone hiring Palin to provide either first-class plane tickets or a private jet which "MUST BE a Lear 60 or larger," not to mention deluxe hotel suites and bendy straws on her water bottles. It doesn't quite fit the folksy, "plain hockey mom" image she and her handlers try so hard to project.

Oh yes, and she is apparently so petrified of "real Americans" that she won't take any direct questions from them: "For Q&A, the questions are to be collected from the audience in advance, pre-screened and a designated representative...shall ask questions directly of the Speaker."

So what do you get for a hundred grand? Well, Palin spoke last week at a charity banquet for which 900 tickets were sold at $200 apiece. She isn't saying how much she made for this speech, but if it was her usual fee, she pocketed more than half of what the group collected. Charity begins at home, it seems.

Anyway, here's a sample of what she had to say:

I'm wanting to, though, kind of shift away from the political. I'm just getting off the trough from doing a lot of Tea Parties across the US, man those are a blast. [applause] They're rowdy and they're wild and it's just another melting pot, there's just diversity there and all walks of life and all forms of partisanship and non partisanship just wanting good things to happen in this part of the world. It's been a blast. The shift from the political, so now that I have that shift from the political but still have that desire to talk about the economy and talk about energy and resources and national security and all those things. I was telling Todd, okay, this is like [inaudible] on the vice presidential campaign trail, where you never really knew what you were getting into when you get into that line before you were interviewed. Obviously, sometimes I never knew what I was getting into in an interview. Obviously!

If anyone can extract any meaning at all from that mess, I salute you. I half-expected Olson Johnson from Blazing Saddles to stand up and say, "Now who can argue with that? Not only was it authentic frontier gibberish, it expressed the courage little seen in this day and age."

The rest of her speech was only slightly less jumbled. I suspect that as Palin rhetorically wandered all over the place, committing various crimes against the English language, the charity organizers realized just how much of their reputations they had flushed down the drain in pursuit of their "big name" speaker and were backstage drinking hemlock.

A hundred thousand dollars for that? I am definitely in the wrong business.

GOPman Sachs

2010-04-21T10:15:00.006-04:00

Even with all the tales of greed and fraud coming out of Wall Street over the last two years, the allegations against investment bank Goldman Sachs are pretty appalling.

The story so far: a big Goldman client named John Paulson packaged a derivative based on subprime mortgages and pitched it to Goldman as an investment opportunity for their other clients. Goldman agreed and sold it as such - but never told the buyers that Paulson deliberately designed the investment, named ABACUS 2007-ACI, to lose value. Knowing that the subprime market would tank, Paulson sold short, made a killing and left other clients holding the bag.

So where does Goldman figure in all this? Well, it seems they did one of two things:

They were unaware that ABACUS was purposely meant to fail, in which case their lack of due diligence was criminally negligent, or
They knew all along that it was a scam and sold it anyway, in which case they coldly ripped off some of their clients to make another one richer.

Now that the Securities and Exchange Commission has sued Goldman Sachs in civil court for fraud, the popular anger is once again brewing. When we invest our money with Wall Street, whether it's in a 401(k), a stock or bond portfolio, or something else, we expect the company we're working with not to screw us over. This is why the White House is trying to rein in the Wall Street casino, to put back the regulations which have been repealed since the early 1980s and which would hopefully prevent future economic meltdowns.

But since the White House supports putting the crooks and connivers under control, the Republican Party must, by definition, be against it. Yes, the Party of No has once again emerged as the party of Wall Street, vowing to do everything it can - filibuster, offer endless amendments, hold its breath until it turns blue, etc - to derail the financial-reform bill. They evidently still don't realize that the American people are mad at Wall Street for very nearly sending the whole economy down the toilet, and are unlikely to reward its backers in November.

So now the GOP is weighing in on behalf of poor downtrodden Goldman Sachs, saying they're being picked on by that meanie in the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, Senator Orrin Hatch went on the tube yesterday to complain that the SEC timed its lawsuit filing to fit the White House's legislative schedule and desire to pass the Wall Street reform bill. Fox News and other right-wing media outlets predictably ran with it, accusing the White House of "meddling" and darkly wondering whether they're "exploiting the charges to build the case for their financial regulatory overhaul."

Of course, the people doing all the shrieking and conspiracy-theorizing ignore two things: as an independent agency the SEC doesn't coordinate any enforcement action with the White House, and Goldman Sachs actually donated more money to Democrats than to Republicans. If the White House really was making an example of a Wall Street powerhouse, wouldn't they have picked one which supported the other side? Just sayin'.

Will the GOP realize that they're playing a losing game? Will they continue to sell their souls for Wall Street's tainted campaign cash? Of course they will. Expect the fall campaign to be especially nasty as the Republicans try and divert voters' attention from this simple fact.

Bring a Chicken to the Doctor

2010-04-20T22:00:00.014-04:00

Having failed to stop the nation's badly broken health-insurance system from being reformed, the Republicans now say they want to repeal the entire law (including the parts which prevent insurance companies from yanking your coverage when you get sick) and start over - meaning, of course, to do nothing at all. Part of this latest GOP push comes from Nevada, where Sue Lowden, running against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, says that patients should barter with their doctors over the price of care.

I am not making this up:

Yes, your intestines may be falling out or your skull may be cracked, but you can still paint your doctor's house to make sure you get treatment.

With Lowden quickly becoming a laughingstock, her campaign tried to insist that she actually said "bargain" rather than "barter," but the video clearly shows her saying the latter. Bargaining isn't such an attractive prospect either; can you really imagine someone with a broken leg saying he'll hobble out the door and try getting a better price from the doctor down the street?

Apparently believing that she hasn't gotten enough flak ever since her comment came to light, Lowden yesterday doubled down on it. Appearing on the talk show Nevada Newsmakers, she fondly remembered the time before people had access to health care and said it's a great idea to just bring a chicken to the doctor's office when you get sick:

So in Lowden's world, instead of asking which insurance you have, do doctors ask whether you're bringing Original Recipe or Extra Crispy? I have this image of a doctor saying, "Sure, I'll take out that appendix, but I need my car's oil changed first."

You know, I suspect that she really doesn't want this job and is trying to find a way to sabotage her own campaign. She cannot possibly be this callous or this dumb. Every time she tries to get herself out of this hole she blasted and then jumped into, she just keeps on digging deeper.

Reid, who's facing a tough re-election fight, must be on his knees right about now, thanking God, Jesus and Brigham Young for this manna from heaven. If he has any political savvy at all, he will run ads mocking Lowden's health care "plan" until she drops out in disgrace.

It's going to be a fun campaign. Tastes just like chicken.

A Modest Proposal on Gay Marriage

2010-04-19T16:45:00.003-04:00

For years now, the self-righteous wing of the Republican Party has insisted that allowing gays and lesbians to get married will cause all sorts of chaos, from earthquakes and volcanoes to, in the words of Bill Murray from Ghostbusters, "dogs and cats living together."

Well, same-sex marriage is now legal in five states (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Iowa and Connecticut) and the District of Columbia, and the world is still here. But the usual suspects keep shouting that allowing such weddings will doom us all, insisting that only men and women can get married because only men and women can reproduce.

Fine by me. Allow me to present a modest proposal to deal with this issue once and for all. If we're going to protect marriage, let's really protect it without all that mushy love business getting in the way. Since the right wing says marriage is only for making babies, let's treat it as such.

All couples who wish to get married must undergo fertility testing (at their own expense, of course) to see if they are mutually capable of making babies. If the test comes back negative, the marriage will be denied.
No one who tests as infertile will be allowed to get married.
No woman past the age of menopause will be allowed to get married.
All couples who test as fertile and still wish to get married must sign a sworn statement promising to produce a child within three years of the wedding date. All marriages of couples who do not produce a baby within three years will be annulled.
No divorce or annulment will be allowed for any reason other than the failure to produce a child.
All babies born in the third year must undergo DNA testing to make sure they really are the biological offspring of their parents and not merely "borrowed" to beat the deadline.
No one will be allowed to adopt who has not already made a baby the old-fashioned way.

I await the response of all those who insist that letting gays and lesbians marry will destroy civilization.

Bad Medicine

2010-04-13T09:25:00.005-04:00

Dr. Jack Cassell, a urologist in Mt. Dora, Florida, doesn't like the new health care law. That's fine. He is quite vocal about it. That's fine too. This is, after all, America, where everyone is free to speak their minds, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But he went too far when he put up a sign on his office door earlier this month saying, "If you voted for Obama, seek urologic care elsewhere."

After a furor erupted, Cassell backtracked slightly, saying he hasn't actually told any Democratic-voting patients to go away, "but if they read the sign and turn the other way, so be it." Since he evidently relies on his patients' identifying themselves as either real Americans or traitors, I wonder just how he plans to weed out one from the other. Will he put up a big poster of Sarah Palin to scare away pinkos as a crucifix scares away vampires? Or maybe he'll use such phrases as "socialist dictator" with patients and gauge their reactions.

Rep. Alan Grayson, the firebrand Florida Democrat whose district is home to Cassell's office, said he would file an ethics complaint with the state medical board on the grounds that refusing to treat Democratic patients is the same as refusing to treat black patients. He's wrong; the two are very different, and Grayson comes off as just trying to cash in on the fuss politically.

That is not to say that Cassell is acting professionally - quite the opposite. Even more so than in other fields, a doctor is expected to put his patients' needs above his own prejudices, and this goes double for something as (comparatively) unimportant as partisan politics. Telling sick patients who voted for the "wrong" candidate to get lost is, to put it mildly, extremely unprofessional, not to mention childish. And I would say the same thing had he put up a sign telling McCain voters to "seek urologic care elsewhere."

Cassell should rethink his choice of office decor. Either that or get a job which doesn't directly affect people's lives and health.

The Terror Begins

2010-03-24T20:52:00.004-04:00

It's been three days since the House of Representatives passed the health-care reform bill and two days since President Obama signed it into law. If you believe the tea partiers, that's two (and possibly three) days since tyranny came to our shores and killed off the America we all know and love.

It is, of course, nonsense. But the scary part is not that the tea partiers believe it. The scary part is that some of them, goaded on by their leaders, are descending into violence.

The offices of Democratic representatives around the country have been attacked and vandalized, often with rocks or bricks thrown through the windows.

A number of Democrats have received explicit death threats, both at their Washington offices and at their homes. Many have had to request Secret Service protection, not just for themselves but for their spouses and children as well, who in many cases were also directly threatened.

Virginia teabagger leader Nigel Coleman posted what he believed to be Rep. Tom Periello's home address on his Facebook page, telling his equally rabid followers to "drop by" and harass the man at home. But Coleman didn't even bother to get it right - he posted Periello's brother's home address. Shortly afterward, the brother found a threatening letter in his mailbox as well as a slashed and leaking propane gas line on his barbecue grill.

Coleman's response to the vandalism was, if possible, even more reprehensible than his original actions. "Do you mean I posted his brother's address on my Facebook?" he wrote on his blog. "Oh well, collateral damage."

Collateral damage.

This is not political discourse. This is terrorism. It might be conducted by Americans instead of Arabs, but it's terrorism nonetheless.

When Democratic representatives were spat on and taunted with racial and sexual epithets, the Republican leadership grudgingly told their followers to cool it. A bit late in the game, especially since that same leadership had spent months twisting people's minds with lies about "death panels" and "Marxism," endlessly using the language of war and killing, recklessly stoking the fires of hate ever higher until the day when something truly ugly becomes inevitable.

That day has arrived.

The teabagger movement has long turned a blind eye to the racists and crackpots and haters in their midst, but they can hide no longer. The Republicans, from Sarah Palin and John Boehner on down, can't hide anymore either. Like Dr. Morbius' "monsters from the id" in Forbidden Planet, the demon of fear and hatred they created has started to run amok.

So what happens now? Will the Republican and teabagger leaders tell their followers in no uncertain terms that violence is un-American and will not be tolerated? Or will they continue to remain silent, unwilling to surrender their weapon of an angry mob even if someone gets killed?

Even if they speak out from pure self-preservation, they'd better do it, and damn fast too. The first murder will doom the Republican Party for a generation and destroy the tea party movement forever.

The Tyranny of Health Care

2010-03-19T16:30:00.002-04:00

The loudest voices opposing health care reform howl about how passing the bill currently in Congress (or any bill, really) will usher in a new era of despotic socialism. They warn of the approaching thud of jackbooted feet trampling all over us, poking into every nook and cranny of our lives, requiring us to exchange iceberg lettuce for arugula and buy a $59.95 Michelle Obama Triceps Cruncher.

I got into a scrape on Facebook yesterday with a friend (at least, I hope she's still a friend) who calls the bill "tyranny." She hates everything about it, from the requirement that we carry some form of health insurance to the (minimal) regulation of some of the insurance industry's worst abuses to the fact that the bill even exists, as she claims it to be unconstitutional. Every change to the bill, including the removal of a public option, has been met with the same response: it's tyranny. As she is very politically involved, I asked what I thought to be a reasonable question: since she rejects all proposed reforms, how would she fix the system? After all, having many millions of Americans with no reliable health care combined with medical and insurance costs rising far faster than inflation is a serious problem.

It's a fair question; one cannot say "no" to everything. Simply raging against fictional socialist death panels and demanding that Congress "kill the bill" doesn't fix anything. Proposing an alternative would be nice, especially since the status quo is so unsustainable.

She did not take it well. As we went back and forth, she mostly dodged the question and then eventually blew up, accusing me of presenting my case in "partisan terms." She even posted on her own blog a long screed saying I was a "distraction" using "talking points straight off of Moveon.org's playlist." Neat trick, since I don't follow MoveOn.

Silly me, I thought I was talking about the basic facts of the health care brouhaha: the yanking of insurance on the flimsiest of excuses, the high-deductible coverage which doesn't cover much at all, the penny-pinching, the denial of care, the use of pre-existing conditions, the fact that money spent on health care pays off (and then some) in the form of higher productivity and thus higher tax revenues, the fact that 62% of bankruptcies involve medical debt and that 78% of such bankrupts had insurance which didn't protect them.

It appears not. Despite Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which specifically allows Congress to levy taxes in furtherance of the nation's "general welfare," any insurance mandate is apparently unconstitutional and tyrannical control of our lives, and any requirement to treat people who can't afford care is socialist slavery.

This shows an ugly trend in this whole debate: the attitude of "I've got mine, so screw you" on display everywhere. Stories of how people lose their insurance based on made-up excuses are greeted with shrugs. If someone loses their life savings or their home, well, them's the breaks. It's your own fault for getting sick in the first place. Or you should have shopped around to pick the right hospital after your stroke. Being comatose is no excuse.

One particularly sickening video posted yesterday showed a man with Parkinson's disease being harassed by protesters who call him a Communist. One man sneers in his face that "if you're looking for a handout, you're in the wrong end of town." Another scornfully throws a couple of dollar bills at him, shouting, "I'll decide when to give you money!"

Their message is simple: Go ahead and suffer. Go ahead and die. I don't care.

And this illustrates the deep divide between our two philosophies of life. Progressives believe that we are all in this together and that what strengthens the nation as a whole strengthens each of us individually. The teabaggers reject the idea that we, via government, are our brother's keeper and claim that anyone who believes otherwise is an apologist for slavery.

But even if requiring us to carry health insurance is tyranny (and that's a Brobdingnagian if) is it not more tyrannical to live in constant fear of getting sick or injured, not knowing whether your insurance will really protect you? Is it not a form of slavery to be all too aware that should you lose your job, you would be unable to buy coverage on the private market because of a "pre-existing condition" in a loved one? Since the United States is the only developed nation in the world without some form of universal health coverage and where the obscenity of medical bankruptcy is allowed, does that mean we are the only free nation on Earth?

Back during the bad old days of the Cold War, we were told that we had to possess thousands of nuclear weapons because the Soviets had them as well and that our freedom depended upon remaining under the threat of mutual annihilation. Do we now have a 21st-century version of that atomic Sword of Damocles? Can we be free only if we live in perpetual danger of financial ruin for the crime of getting sick?

Not in my America. My America is a nation where we look after each other and where no one is condemned to exist in pain and suffering, or be forced out of their homes, because they can't afford to see a doctor. If others believe that represents tyranny, then so be it. We have to agree to disagree.

Joy to the World - or Else

2009-12-11T11:48:00.005-05:00

One constant teabagger refrain is that government is too big, too intrusive and too all-encompassing. So one California teabagger naturally wants to require schools to play Christmas carols and students to listen.

Yes, the annual War on Christmas and the teabagger movement have come together in Redding, California. Merry Hyatt, president of the Redding Tea Party Patriots, is so incensed by her local public school not bombarding kids with holiday tunes that she's starting a ballot initiative signature campaign to fix this. If the initiative passes, schools would be forced to play carols - even overtly religious ones - and those who refuse would be dragged into court.

Hyatt, who as a substitute teacher really should know better, said she launched the initiative to push a specifically religious means of getting students to clean up their act: "He's the prince of peace; he's the only one who can get these kids to stop being so violent." She is unapologetic about her intentions, saying, "Bottom line is Christmas is about Christmas. That's why we have it. It's not about winter solstice or Kwanzaa. It's like, 'wow you guys, it's called Christmas for a reason.'"

She seems to be missing the point about a few things - such as that not everyone celebrates Christmas, and that not everyone who does celebrate it does it the way she does. Somehow, I doubt that Jews or other non-Christians would appreciate being forced to listen to Christmas music. And oh yes, there's a little thing called separation of church and state. Blaring such specifically Christian music as "Angels We Have Heard on High" or "Joy to the World" in a public school most definitely counts as advocating religion. Even if the initiative passes - and that's a big if - it would last about four seconds before being struck down as unconstitutional.

And for a supposedly get-government-off-our-backs teabagger, Hyatt apparently doesn't realize that her initiative would put government in charge of forcing religious beliefs on people. Anyone who has ever studied the history of governmental religious doctrine knows that it always ends badly. People who follow the "wrong" religions - or even the "wrong" form of the "right" religion - always end up being discriminated against or worse.

Of course, she seems to have no problem with forcing her own beliefs on people. She is saved and pure while everyone else is a godless heathen, you see.

Good Grief

2009-12-04T15:21:00.006-05:00

When President Obama spoke Tuesday evening on his policy for cleaning up the mess in Afghanistan he inherited from President Bush, the various TV networks naturally bumped their original programming to make room for it. It was, after all, a major address on a major issue. It is therefore a depressingly common sign of the times to see how some people are turning it into something completely ridiculous.

Specifically, Russell Wiseman, the mayor of Arlington, Tennessee, thought he saw something sinister in the speech's timing - namely, to displace ABC's annual showing of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Seriously.

On his private Facebook page, whose contents were promptly leaked, Wiseman griped:

Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation [sic] about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'....

As Lucy van Pelt would say, what a blockhead. Out of all the bizarre stuff said about Obama, this ranks way up there - or down there, depending on your point of view.

I was going to say something along these lines, but DailyKos got there first:

Just imagine the scene in the Situation Room - the President, with his secret Muslim agenda, Pentagon officials and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pouring over the holiday TV schedule to determine what would be the perfect day to announce they were sending 30,000 more soldiers into harm's way and to [f-word] over Russell Wiseman's kids.

Is there anything Obama's political opponents won't believe? Or will they happily continue to swallow anything which comes down the pike, no matter how crazy it is?

If Wiseman is any indicator, it's probably the latter one.

The God (Hit) Squad

2009-11-20T09:11:00.005-05:00

As the conservative frothing-at-the-mouth over President Obama gets even crazier (The swine flu vaccine is actually a biological weapon! Obama will get New York attacked again!) we now have what may be the single worst combination of religion and politics since the Inquisition.

A company called CafePress which makes and sells customized knickknacks such as T-shirts and bumper stickers now offers a line of products with the phrase "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8." Now at first, this may seem like asking God to provide the president with the wisdom to do the right thing, but no. The verse reads, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

All right, so it's not asking for divinely inspired wisdom, it hopes Obama won't be re-elected in 2012. Right?

Wrong.

You see, the chapter goes on to deliver some decidedly ungodly sentiments:

Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

It should be pointed out that CafePress does not create the designs for their products; those are provided by their customers, and the company generally accepts everything which is not actively illegal. Close-up views of the designs show they were submitted by teabagger websites such as SatireWorks.com, as well as accounts with the user names "Hang Em All" and "RightWingStuff."

After the story broke, CafePress took down the items, but later put them back up, saying:

We initially pulled the Psalm 109:8 content from our products today because broader media dialog indicated that these designs potentially suggested violence towards the president. Based on current public discourse and further review of the actual content, we have determined that it is fair political commentary and we are in the process of reinstating this merchandise. As with all of our content, these designs will continue to be reviewed and if at any time their meaning is construed as advocating violence we will revisit our decision.

This is hardly the only time when Christian-right zealots have called for the president's murder, but it may be the sneakiest and yet at the same time the most blatant. The people buying these things know the Bible backwards and forwards, and it lets them advertise their desire to see the president dead without actually coming out and saying it.

Stuff like this gives religion a bad name.

UPDATE: After further hullabaloo, CafePress re-removed the items, saying:

We try to create an atmosphere of self-expression. Many of the things we encounter are not black and white, but grey. When the dialogue is civil, we want to let the larger community work things out rather than making an uninformed ruling. The dialogue has played out and common sentiment has reached agreement - this merchandise is not appropriate.

Glad to know someone over there realizes it.

Worse than Nothing

2009-09-16T17:30:00.006-04:00

After months of compromise, backroom dealing and sellouts, the Senate Finance Committee, led by Senator Max Baucus, has unveiled its health-care reform plan. To put it mildly, the proposal is worse than nothing:

No public option
No requirement for employers to provide coverage
Seniors and people living in supposed "high risk" areas would pay up to 7.5 times the premiums of other Americans regardless of income
Premiums of up to 13% of adjusted gross income - before any deductibles, co-payments, co-insurance or any other out-of-pocket expenses
Verification of citizenship before any treatment
No public funds for abortion
Very high annual out-of-pocket limits - up to $5,950 for individuals and $11,900 for families
People denied or stripped of coverage due to pre-existing conditions must go without insurance for six months - and be responsible for all medical costs during that period - before being able to enroll in a "high-risk pool"
Anyone who rejects the insurance plan provided by their employer (even if it costs too much and covers too little) and can't afford to buy insurance privately will be fined

And so on. This sorry excuse for a plan is what we get when bipartisanship is put above getting a good bill. It's been brutally obvious for months that the Republicans have no interest in working on any kind of health reform bill. And to no one's surprise, the GOP immediately rejected the Baucus plan out of hand.

Genuine bipartisanship works like this:

Democrat: This is my bill.
Republican: I don't like sections A, B and C.
Democrat: All right, then let's work together to resolve the disputes.
(Interlude, consisting of compromise)
Democrat: I got rid of section A, made minor changes to section B and you're going to have to live with section C.
Republican: I think that's reasonable. I'll vote for it.

But this is the kind of "bipartisanship" we've been seeing from the Republicans:

Democrat: This is my bill.
Republican: I hate this bill and everything about it. I won't vote for it.
Democrat: I don't need your vote to pass the bill, but I want it anyway.
(Interlude, consisting of teabagging and wild shrieking)
Democrat: OK, I ripped the guts out of the bill, turned it into a shadow of its former self, and made it so that it's worse than doing nothing. Now will you support it?
Republican: No. And you're a Communist.

Too many Democrats still labor under the impression that the GOP wants to compromise. They don't. Everyone knew the Republicans would reject anything Baucus could have come up with, and indeed he has done nothing but waste everyone's time and effort.

Since the Republicans have shown bad faith at every stage of the process, the Democrats should just tell them to go jump in the lake. They should use their strong majorities in both houses of Congress to pass a real health-reform bill, one which actually makes people healthier instead of insurance companies richer. If the GOP doesn't like it, too bad. They don't have the votes to block it.

Will the Democrats get some cojones and actually do it? Or will they continue to sell their souls for Republican votes they don't need and can't get anyway?

Lighten Up

2009-09-14T14:50:00.006-04:00

I was going to comment on Saturday's teabagger rallies, but thinking about them makes my brain hurt. So instead, here's something a little different.

Back in 2004, Republican Jack Ryan was the man to beat in the Illinois Senate race. He had the money, the coverage, the endorsements and the support of the Christian right. And then Jeri Ryan showed up.

Jeri, better known as Borg babe Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, was once married to Jack before the union dissolved in a messy divorce. One of the messiest parts revolved around Jeri's allegations of Jack's appetites being, well, nonstandard.

I [Jeri] made clear to Respondent [Jack] that our marriage was over for me in the spring of 1998. On three trips, one to New Orleans, one to New York, and one to Paris, Respondent insisted that I go to sex clubs with him. They were long weekends, supposed "romantic" getaways. ...

The clubs in New York and Paris were explicit sex clubs. Respondent had done research. Respondent took me to two clubs in New York during the day. One club I refused to go in. It had mattresses in cubicles. The other club he insisted I go to. ... It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling. Respondent wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused. Respondent asked me to perform a sexual activity upon him, and he specifically asked other people to watch. I was very upset. We left the club, and Respondent apologized, said that I was right and that he would never insist I go to a club again. He promised it was out of his system.

Then during a trip to Paris, he took me to a sex club in Paris, without telling me where we were going. I told him I thought it was out of his system. I told him he had promised me would never go. People were having sex everywhere. I cried, I was physically ill. Respondent became very upset with me, and said it was not a "turn on" for me to cry.

When the divorce files were unsealed and made public, Jack first called his ex-wife a liar and then dropped out of the race. With only a few months to go to the election, the national GOP had to scramble for a replacement candidate, especially after Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka turned them down. The party eventually went out of state to get Alan Keyes, the party's token black conservative, to stand in on the ballot. The far-right (he has since become a birther) Keyes never had a chance and was creamed in November by a state senator named Barack Obama.

Fast-forward five years. Republican uber-pundit Jonah Goldberg has spent most of the last year shrieking about Obama's election and America's subsequent transformation into a socialist (or fascist, he can't seem to make up his mind) tyranny. After all, look at how many teabaggers were arrested and/or beaten to a pulp on Saturday by Obama's private army of ACORN operatives and indoctrinated schoolchildren.

There weren't any? Really? I'm pretty sure I heard something about how America is now a dictatorship where dissent is punished harshly. Oh well, never mind.

Anyway, Goldberg has decided who is to blame for our current situation. It's Jeri Ryan.

Yesterday, Goldberg posted to his Twitter page:

Lightened up?

The lady's husband took her to places she did not want to go, which clearly upset her and left her feeling betrayed, and this guy's response is to tell her to lighten up? Did he not have enough tweet room to tell her she should have taken one for the team?

And the Republicans wonder why their party is so often seen as hostile to women.

Rise of the Tenthers

2009-09-11T11:10:00.006-04:00

Evidently believing that birthers and deathers insufficiently cut the mustard, the latest arrivals in the world of political crackpottery are the tenthers. These people claim fealty to the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution, which reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

For years, the amendment has been cited by libertarians and states-rights activists to oppose federal laws they don't like on the grounds they're not specifically mentioned in the Constitution. The amendment was used prior to the Civil War to defy federal anti-slavery laws, and again a century later to defy federal desegregation laws. Both instances ended badly for the contemporary tenthers.

According to the tenthers, the federal government cannot regulate food safety, assault rifles, highway standards or financial markets. Federal laws against such crimes as destroying aircraft, hunting endangered species, discrimination and mail fraud are all invalid. All government operations from Social Security and Medicare to the Veterans Administration and the GI Bill must be chucked into the garbage. All that would be left up to the states, and if they don't want to run such programs or punish such crimes - well, them's the breaks, even it results in a crazy-quilt patchwork of a national legal system.

This year, a number of state legislatures have introduced or even passed "sovereignty resolutions" invoking the amendment to declare themselves exempt from whatever laws the federal government might pass. Particularly in Texas, some have taken this movement to its logical extreme, promoting outright secession from the country.

Now we can add Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty to the tenthers' ranks. Last night in a Republican Governors Association conference call with conservative activists, he made plain his feelings about the cause of health care reform. "It's frightening," he said, "it's ludicrous, it's a bad idea and the country is against it." (Actually, the country is for it, but folks like Pawlenty have never let facts get in the way of their talking points.)

Asked if he would use the amendment to block health reform in his state, Pawlenty replied:

Depending on what the federal government comes out with here, asserting the Tenth Amendment might be [a] viable option, but we don’t know the details. As one of the other callers said, we can't really even get the president to outline what he does or doesn't support in any detail. So we'll have to see. I'd say that's a possibility. You're starting to see more governors, including me, and specifically Governor Perry from Texas, and most Republican governors express concern around these issues and get more aggressive about asserting and bringing up the Tenth Amendment. So I think we could see hopefully a resurgence of those claims and maybe even lawsuits if need be.

(Note that he mentions only Republican governors considering this move. You know, partisan politics just might be involved here.) Pawlenty and other tenthers conveniently forget another part of the Constitution. Article I lays out Congress' powers, and Section 8 in particular says:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States. [emphasis added]

Isn't it reasonable to say that keeping the American population as a whole healthy makes us a stronger and more defensible nation? Doesn't making sure that people won't have to worry about losing everything if they get sick fall under the category of "general Welfare?" Seems to me that the Constitution clearly allows Congress to pass such laws.

Sorry guys, but you can't have it both ways. You can't claim ultimate supremacy of the Constitution while using one part of it to reject another part. Next!

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

2009-09-10T16:22:00.009-04:00

On the morning after President Obama's health-care speech to Congress, the Interwebs were buzzing about Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC). You see, at one point Obama explained that any reforms "would not apply to those who are here illegally," whereupon Wilson shouted, "You lie!" A breach of etiquette, to be sure.

Anyway, Wilson showed not only that he can't tell the difference between the House of Representatives and a teabagger rally, but also that he doesn't know what he's talking about. He wasn't just wrong, he was very obviously wrong. If you look at the bill and search for the words "undocumented" or "alien," you will very quickly find this on page 143:

SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS.

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

Pretty self-explanatory, don't you think? If you're in the country illegally, you're not covered by the bill. Plain and simple.

All summer, one of the teabaggers' favorite refrains was that senators and representatives supposedly didn't bother to read the bill text. If nothing else, Wilson just proved them right, at least as far as he's concerned. If he had actually taken the time to read the bill he so loudly opposes, he wouldn't have made such a jackass of himself on the House floor last night.

The Ick Factor Rides Again

2009-09-09T14:44:00.011-04:00

It's happened so many times you'd think it would be obvious by now. If you talk loudly about the "sanctity of marriage" to prevent gays and lesbians from participating in that same sanctity, if you fly your "family values" on a very large and public flagpole, if you set yourself up as a yardstick by which everyone else should structure their moral lives - if you do all that, you'd darn well better walk the walk. Mark Sanford, John Ensign, David Vitter, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, Helen Chenoweth, Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston - the list of hypocrites goes on and on.

And now we can add Michael Duvall, a California state representative from Orange County, to that roster of shame. He is a conservative Republican who opposes gay marriage while touting his own marriage and two children.

Indeed, he is so far to the right he received a 100% rating from the Capitol Resource Institute, an explicitly Christian lobbying group set up "to educate, advocate, protect, and defend family-friendly policies in the California state legislature." (Of course, their definition of "family" excludes same-sex families.) And just for good measure, he introduced a bill banning the creation and sale of T-shirts with the names of dead soldiers alongside such political statements as "Bush Lied," etc.

So what did he do? The OC Weekly reports that just before the start of a committee meeting, he was regaling a colleague with some rather gross details of his romps with not one but two women not his wife when his microphone went live, broadcasting his words on TV. (I will not get into the sordid intricacies of Duvall's bragging, mostly because thinking about them makes me want to saw off the top of my head and scrub out my brain with a Brillo pad. If you're a masochist who revels in the Ick Factor, have at it.)

As if to prove that yes, it can get worse, both women are lobbyists for companies regulated by his committee. For his part, Duvall never even tried being discreet:

Legislative sources say they have witnessed Duvall, who is vice chairman of the Assembly's powerful Committee on Utilities & Commerce, socializing after-hours with [Heidi] Barsuglia [one of his lobbyist mistresses]. Sources - who asked for anonymity because of Duvall's power in the capital - say Susan Duvall usually stays in Orange County during the week, when her husband flies to Sacramento. They also say they have seen Duvall with Barsuglia in restaurants, "arm-in-arm" at political fund-raising events and even shopping together for groceries just blocks from the capitol building.

"Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in Sacramento," a capitol staffer recently told me. "He's old and fat. She's hot, blonde and about 20 years younger. He could have never gotten a woman like that before he got this job.'"

So we have the specter - again - of a moral high-horse type who doesn't bother to live up to his own standards, and who is literally in bed with the lobbyists to boot.

After the scandal broke, Duvall tried explaining it away by issuing a statement saying "I deeply regret the comments I made in what I believed to be a private conversation." Didn't work; the howls kept coming. So late today, he finally gave up and resigned:

I am deeply saddened that my inappropriate comments have become a major distraction for my colleagues in the Assembly, who are working hard on the very serious problems facing our state. I have come to the conclusion that it would not be fair to my family, my constituents or to my friends on both sides of the aisle to remain in office. Therefore, I have decided to resign my office, effective immediately, so that the Assembly can get back to work.

Note that he doesn't regret the hypocrisy or the corruption, only that he was caught bragging about it.

You really think they would have figured it out by now: if you can't or won't keep it in your pants, don't lecture anyone else about it.

Be True to Your (Socialist) School

2009-09-09T10:18:00.012-04:00

There is a scene in the 1984 movie Red Dawn in which our all-American heroes sneak into town only to find it dominated by the Communist invaders. Tanks are on the streets, the local movie house is showing Alexander Nevsky and propaganda posters blaring "A New Man Arises from the Ashes of Capitalism" decorate buildings. In other words, it's pretty much the sort of world wingnuts were expecting to find this morning after President Obama delivered his school speech yesterday.

You may recall that the White House announced last week that the president would give a back-to-school speech telling kids to work hard and stay in school. The right wing promptly panicked en masse, convinced he would tell them to embrace socialism, inform on their parents, hand their elders over to the death panels, worship at the Church of Barack, etc. With parents pulling their kids out of class and principals refusing to show the speech at all, Obama told kids to...work hard and stay in school.

This morning, the sun rose on an America pretty much exactly the same as the one it set on last night. Not surprisingly, this has made no impact on the paranoid right whatsoever.

Florida GOP chair Jim Greer, who started all this nonsense with his primal scream warning of "Obama's socialist ideology," now says that the White House rewrote the speech to take out all the red stuff. Pressed by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux, he reluctantly admitted to not having any actual information to back up his claim.

Not to be outdone, Rush Limbaugh said that Obama's call for students to take responsibility for their education actually meant the exact opposite:

The theme of his speech today was take personal responsibility, which none of his policies encourage. None of his policies even allow it. You want to take care of your own health care? No way! You're going to get a government-mandated health care plan regardless, and you can't do anything about it. You can't assume responsibility for your own health care. You can't assume responsibility for your own job. You can't assume responsibility for your own car. "No, no, no! You're too stupid to do any of that." So he goes out and tells these kids, "You've gotta take personal responsibility"? He never even does that in his own life.

So let me get this straight - after years of Limbaugh telling everyone to take responsibility for their own actions, a president says just that and his response is to go on the attack. It's a logical pretzel, but I gave up trying to make sense of Limbaugh's rants years ago.

The comments on Fox Nation were no more well-informed:

"I don't care what he says. I do not want to hear it, because everytime his lips move, he is lying. He got what he wanted, all the parents read the dang thing anyway. I do not watch the propaganda on tv...and I wouldn't want my kids to see him on tv. He is on enough, anyway. ...I don't trust him, he is only after power and politics. If the left wants seperation from church and state, I want seperation from school and politics."
"If we had not complained about his original plan and speech it would not have been rewritten. We would have had a lot of ammunition if he had delivered the original. Alas, it is better to protect our children from this communist. I have no doubt that Obama and his shadow government will most certainly supply plenty of vile and objectionable statements and actions in the near future."
"Maybe our commie pres. should be taken care of business instead of B.S.ing our children? I don't trust this man ..........or his 'speeches'...or his 'czars'.......or ANYTHING about him! **=="
"ENOUGH OF THIS LIBERALISM,my granddaughter is 5 years old in kindergarten.I just learned her teacher was doing polling last week on what president they would vote for.They are just starting out the new year and I don't know if this was the build up.They were using jellybeans for whatever reason.I see Obama building his civilian army from the ground up.This reminds me of the Hitler youth.PBS over the week-end showed Van Jones talking to students at another school venue earlier in the year.Parents better take charge and ask questions of their teachers.Don't let the village raise the child.Parents monitor your child's school work.This did not happen overnight,the times are changing,text books are changing,teaching humanism,evolution,and global warming religion in it self.Van Jones,self described communist in the White House.We have fired,sentence people for treason.What secrets has Obama given up? Obama just said this week-end he cannot remember promises he has made after he drinks his wine.Perhaps he should step away from the wine,America is too important to loose; Obama's comment was made at a event.It reminded me of the Kennedy wake to what politicians said about Ted getting too much alcohol in his system to remember what happened the night before. Obama is a radical and there is no other way to put it. If Obama were not the president he should not be exposed to any president because of his radical views,they searched Van Jones out and brought him in,a communist."

And so on and so forth, a continuing torrent of deranged paranoia.

Anyway, we now know just what the Republicans stand for - blowing off homework and dropping out of school. Perhaps they should just rename themselves the Grand Obtuse Party and get it over with. At least that way they don't have to learn new initials.

Stupid Is as Stupid Does

2009-09-07T13:06:00.014-04:00

In my house, "stupid" is a bad word. But sometimes it's the only one that fits.

The White House announced last week that President Obama would make a back-to-school speech to America's students on the importance of education. No big deal - Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush made similar speeches. This time, however, the right wing exploded in blind paranoid rage, calling the speech "indoctrination" and comparing it to recruitment for the Hitler Youth.

Displaying a fine disregard for irony as well as facts, wingnuts galore told parents to pull their kids out of school to prevent them from hearing a speech urging them to stay in school.

With parents driven to hysteria by all the screaming, the media has finally realized that the people pushing this stuff really are nuts. John Harwood of that red network CNBC put it best:

Let's face it, in a country of three hundred million people there are a lot of stupid people too, because if you believe that's it's somehow unhealthy for kids for the president to say work hard and stay in school, you're stupid.

So after these last few days of idiotic tumult in the schools, we now have the prepared text of Obama's speech tomorrow. Just as everyone feared, it's chock-full of socialist exhortations to lock up all ObamaCare opponents in FEMA concentration camps and worship Chairman Obama for the god he is.

Nah, just kidding. As the sane parts of the country knew all along, it's your standard education speech. Obama will talk about students' responsibility for their own education, their need to put down the Xbox and pick up the textbook. To do any less would be a disservice not just to themselves but to the country as a whole:

Every single one of you has something you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Maybe you could be a good writer - maybe even good enough to write a book or articles in a newspaper - but you might not know it until you write a paper for your English class. Maybe you could be an innovator or an inventor - maybe even good enough to come up with the next iPhone or a new medicine or vaccine - but you might not know it until you do a project for your science class. Maybe you could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team.

And no matter what you want to do with your life - I guarantee that you'll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can't drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.

And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that - if you quit on school - you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.

So - that's that, right? You wish.

I absolutely guarantee that the usual crowd of teabaggers and blind Obama-haters, who have never let facts get in the way of anything, will not let this go. Rather, they will seize on Obama's comments to "prove" that he's pushing socialism, regardless of any facts or sanity. Or they will claim that the prepared text is merely a ruse, and that he will tell kids something very different tomorrow.

Or something else equally crazy and, yes, stupid.

Glenn Beck vs. Art

2009-09-04T11:48:00.006-04:00

Glenn Beck, Fox News' very own demagogic combination of Howard Beale and Father Coughlin, has outdone himself. Yes, after ranting about President Obama's racism, Nazi health care and indoctrination in schools, he has taken on the world of art.

In a bit truly stunning for its tinfoil-hat craziness, Beck railed against the supposed Communist and Fascist art (what, they couldn't make up their minds?) installed at New York's Rockefeller Center more than seventy years ago.

Rockefeller Center is home to MSNBC - and also to Fox News, as Keith Olbermann gleefully pointed out on his own show. (You'd think Fox would catch something like that. But it's more likely that Beck has no one at all tasked with stopping him from making a jackass out of himself.)

And when Beck howls that people "need to see things that are hidden in plain sight," one should mention that other people see things no one else can see, and they have to take a lot of pills for it.

Many have wondered before just how connected Beck is to reality, but this one really takes the cake. People who actually know something about art history hooted in derision, and even some mainstream conservatives are starting to see him not as a voice of the populist masses but as a paranoid and increasingly unhinged conspiracy theorist.

Every time he starts shrieking about a (misspelled) oligarchy or how an elected president is about to "seize power," he sucks everyone connected with him, even tangentially, into the same nutty black-helicopter crowd. His advertisers are fleeing in droves, and one wonders just how much of a liability he'll have to become before Fox News realizes there's no upside in keeping him on the schedule.

Why the GOP Is Ignorant

2009-09-02T12:19:00.011-04:00

Next Tuesday, President Obama will deliver an online speech to the nation's children just as the school year begins, in which he is scheduled to "challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning."

Now, one would think this is pretty standard for a president. After all, both Presidents Bush made the same sort of speech. But since the president involved is Barack Obama, the Republican Party is naturally having a hissy fit over it.

To be specific, Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer is having a hissy fit over it. In a press release sent out yesterday, Greer blasted Obama for daring to tell America's children to do their homework:

As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology. The idea that school children across our nation will be forced to watch the President justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other President, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power.

And it goes downhill from there. The full thing must be seen to be believed.

From Greer's diatribe, one would think Obama plans to read to America's schoolchildren from The Communist Manifesto, lead them in a rousing chorus of "The Internationale," start the Pledge of Allegiance with "I pledge allegiance to Barack Obama" and end it with "Allahu Akbar!" It has no connection with reality whatsoever.

But since it is (a) critical of Obama and (b) completely nuts, the usual suspects - Glenn Beck, Michelle Malkin, etc - are predictably jumping all over it. Other pundits and bloggers told parents to keep their kids home from school on Tuesday, ensuring that they won't be exposed to the president with the side effect of missing any lessons which happen to be taught that day.

So not only do we have yet another example of the pettiness of right-wing rage, we also see just how much they value their kids' education. After all, if they're willing to pull them out of school to protect them from hearing someone talk about the importance of learning, one wonders from what else they're willing to protect them - the tyranny of 2+2=4, perhaps.

Let's face it - this latest in a (very) long line of supposed Obama outrages has nothing to do with what he will actually say. It's about the man himself. He could personally shoot Osama bin Laden in the head on the Fourth of July to the strains of "Onward Christian Soldiers" and he would still be attacked as a Socialist Muslim who wants to destroy America.

At least we now know why the Republicans so often appear to be deliberately ignorant. It's because they hate studying.

Supersocialist

2009-08-31T09:47:00.005-04:00

Back in 1952, the Man of Steel appeared in an issue of the comic book The Adventures of Bob Hope, urging us to "hop on the welfare wagon" and support health care for all because it's good for everyone:

If that comic were published today, not only would Glenn Beck et al rant that Superman's "S" insignia stands for "Socialist," he would be accused of being an America-hating Marxist and hounded for his Smallville birth certificate to boot.

We're all in this together. Making sure we as a nation are as healthy as possible makes us more productive, meaning we get a better economy and a better quality of life for everyone. We knew it even at the height of McCarthyism and the Red Scare, so why is it so hard to realize now?

Into the Lion's Den

2009-08-28T15:09:00.003-04:00

The other night, I attended a town hall meeting by my Congressional representative to discuss the health reform bill currently in Congress. Actually, I tried to attend the meeting, but it was full up long before I got there. Instead, I found myself on the lawn outside the meeting place, where the man hoping to defeat my rep in 2010 set up a campaign rally. The usual crowd of teabaggers (holding signs like "GOVT. HEALTHCARE HOTLINE / 1-800-YOU'RE-DEAD!"), pro-lifers (with their requisite gory photos of aborted fetuses) and Lyndon LaRouche disciples (sporting posters of Obama with a Hitler mustache) was very much in attendance.

The general atmosphere was like something out of another dimension, where up is down, black is white, and an effort to make sure everyone can get the health care they need is actually a plot to destroy America.

Person after person railed to me against "socialism," "death books," "Marxism" and other canards, citing the paranoid ravings of Glenn Beck as if they were holy gospel.

"Have you read the bill?" I was asked over and over, and my response of "yes, have you?" flummoxed them. Such people apparently believe that their refusal to read the bill for themselves means that no one else will read it either, and so they're caught unprepared when talking with someone who actually took the time and effort to debunk the scare stories.

People carried signs denouncing the bill as "unconstitutional" and demanding its supporters be tried for treason. They have evidently never read Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, which clearly gives Congress the power to "provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States." One would think that health care definitely belongs in the category of "general Welfare."

And then there were the arguments over the "death panels." I argued myself blue in the face that there are no death panels and that it's all a monstrous lie. I explained the actual purpose of the attacked section - namely, if you choose to discuss a living will and/or other advance care planning with your doctor, Medicare will cover the cost of the consultation - and it made no difference whatsoever.

Same thing with the Veterans Administration's supposed "death book," Your Life, Your Choices, whose actual purpose is to educate veterans about advance care planning. People had already made up their minds, and no amount of facts was going to change them.

When people over 65 denounced "government run health care" and I mentioned a little something called Medicare, they didn't even slow down. When they fulminated against "socialism" and I asked if they receive Social Security, they accused me of twisting their words against them.

But the absolute low point was a woman in a wheelchair shakily taking the microphone to say that as a "cripple" she was on the list of "disposable" people who would not receive care. The crowd replied with a mixture of cheers (for her) and boos (for Obama and anyone else who supports the bill).

"That's not true!" I blurted out, only to be shouted down.

The thought of someone deliberately twisting that woman's mind with fear and terror into believing something no sane person would ever suggest is simply obscene. And the realization that far too many Americans wholeheartedly believe it as well makes me despair for our nation.

Death Panels 2.0

2009-08-24T15:02:00.007-04:00

With the "death panels" smear having gone down in flames, exposed for the monstrous lie it is, the right wing is taking another tack in attacking the Obama Administration - saying it wants elderly veterans to die.

Call it Death Panels 2.0.

All during the Bush Administration, the Veterans Administration distributed a booklet titled Your Life, Your Choices, educating veterans about advance care planning and encouraging them to discuss the issue with their families, doctors and spiritual advisers. Advance care planning, which became widely known after the Terri Schiavo fiasco, lets people dictate the terms of their health care in advance should they become incapacitated. For example, via a living will you can tell your doctors to keep you alive by any means needed, or you can direct that treatment be withheld. With a health care proxy, you can specify that someone else has the right to make health-care decisions on your behalf.

The point of such planning is that you control your treatment and thus spare your family from having to make painful decisions on your behalf. So it is thus not surprising that the booklet, first issued by the Clinton Administration and retained for twelve years, is being distorted beyond all recognition.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed and again on Fox News, Jim Towey called Your Life, Your Choices a "death book," saying that it "presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political 'push poll.' For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be 'not worth living.'"

If he genuinely believes veterans (or anyone else, for that matter) would tell their doctor to pull the plug based solely on a worksheet, he must really think they're morons.

Of course, since the booklet is freely available online, Towey exhibits the same haughty arrogance shown by other death-panel scaremongers - he apparently believes his readers are either too stupid or too lazy to look it up for themselves. Anyone who actually looks at the booklet quickly sees that the worksheet helps veterans consider their feelings about the subject and thus decide for themselves what treatment they may want done (or not done, as the case may be) if the worst happens. It does not favor one outcome or another. Indeed, it explicitly says, "You can help assure that your wishes will direct future health care decisions through the process of advance care planning."

So Towey is lying. But we already knew that.

What we didn't know is that for years, Towey repeatedly lobbied the VA to buy millions of copies of Five Wishes (his own for-sale "living will with a heart" booklet) but was turned down. So by smearing the free VA booklet, he's not only lying and fear-mongering, he's also trying to drum up business.

This is really terrible. Base political opportunism combined with scaremongering and crass exploitation makes for a very bad combination. Preying on elderly people is always bad, but preying on elderly veterans who have given their all for their country is particularly awful.

Now He Tells Us

2009-08-21T08:39:00.004-04:00

Several years ago, quite a few people noticed a distinct pattern to how the Administration blared scary terrorist warnings - namely, that a disproportionate number of them were announced in such a way as to offset bad publicity or to ratchet up the fear level in advance of the 2004 election. MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann called it "the nexus of politics and terror" and often commented on how terror plots were foiled with such perfect timing.

Now we know that was no coincidence. Tom Ridge, President Bush's first Secretary of Homeland Security who resigned less than a month after the 2004 election, has come forward to confirm what so many of us already suspected - that the terror alert system was blatantly politicized to bolster Bush's poll numbers and to ensure his re-election.

In his upcoming book The Test of Our Times, Ridge writes that when a new Osama bin Laden videotape surfaced only a few days before the election, he was pressured to raise the alert level despite the lack of any actual need for it: "There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, 'Is this about security or politics?' Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president's approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level."

Not surprisingly, other former Administration insiders have disputed his claim, but it all comes together. Prior to the election, it was obvious that the system was being misused. Terror alerts were issued in such a way as to wipe out Democratic poll advantages, divert from whistle-blower testimony about the FBI's pre-9/11 activities (or lack thereof) and distract from the Abu Ghraib revelations. And the number of alerts dropped off sharply right after the election, when they were no longer needed so urgently.

But really, we should not be surprised. After all, the Bush team politicized everything, from the criminal justice system to science to 9/11 itself. Every function of government was twisted to serve not the nation, but George W. Bush and the Republican Party.

Disgusted, yes, but not surprised.

A Different Kind of Marxist

2009-08-19T10:26:00.004-04:00

When it comes to health-insurance reform, the Republican Party has officially moved from opposition to obstructionism. First they screamed that the "public option" was socialist (despite the similarly "un-American" existence of Medicare), then they screamed that "co-ops" are the same thing and thus still socialist. It seems that the only non-socialist reform is none at all, leaving us stuck with what we have now. This works just fine for a few of us, works less well or barely at all for many more of us, and leaves almost fifty million of us out in the cold altogether.

So with their determination to oppose anything supported by the White House, it seems the GOP has become a bunch of Marxists. No, not Karl - Groucho:

Yes, it's true. The movie Horse Feathers predicted the Republican reaction to the Obama Administration a full seventy-seven years before it took office. After all, as Oscar Wilde said, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life."

Since the GOP has made it very plain that they will oppose health reform no matter what, it's way past time for the Democrats to tell them to take a hike. The Dems have a strong majority in Congress, and it's about time they used it.

Fearing Fear Itself

2009-08-14T09:34:00.012-04:00

After the Terri Schiavo spectacle a few years ago, many people started thinking about living wills, health care proxies and other methods of avoiding the same nightmarish limbo. So when the health-care reform bill was introduced in Congress last month, it included a provision (section 1233, pages 424-434) extending Medicare to cover "advance care planning consultations" should you choose to discuss such options with your doctor.

Eminently sensible. After all, making it easier for you to plan ahead for such a tragedy is a good thing.

But that was before Sarah Palin, former governor and present full-time provocateur, seized hold of the section and mangled it into something out of the Holocaust. Screaming about nonexistent "death panels" and raising the equally imaginary specter of killing off the elderly and disabled, she lied and lied and lied, scaring the pants off people solely to advance her political ambitions and gain street cred with the GOP.

(Of course, Palin would not be Palin without some rank it's-OK-for-me-but-not-for-you hypocrisy. You see, last year she proclaimed "Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska," praising the exact same things she now denounces. Why am I not surprised?)

As if on cue, the airwaves were promptly filled with equally dishonest shrieking. Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich and others all fear-mongered about how the bill supposedly decides which Americans would get the axe. The fact that it wasn't in the bill, would never be in the bill and indeed would never be considered by anyone in their right mind was irrelevant. There were people to terrorize and cheap points to score.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Americans that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In 2009, fear has won. In an unconditional surrender to mindless demagoguery and lies, the Senate Finance Committee yesterday stripped the provision from the bill. Senator Charles Grassley claimed it was dropped because it could be "misinterpreted or implemented incorrectly."

By him, perhaps? Grassley had lied to his constituents only the previous day, depicting the section as "a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma."

It was so incredibly false the thesaurus does not have enough words to convey just how false it was.

And yet it worked.

Yes, you have been protected from the horror of being able to decide your own fate without having to worry about paying the cost of the decision. If you want to plan ahead for a possible future, you're on your own.

And to everyone who terrorized their fellow Americans with blatant untruths - let's just wait and see what happens. God forbid you or your loved ones wind up condemned to exist in mute suffering, unable to express anything, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. All because in the name of partisan politics you made it harder for everyone to plan ahead.

Way to go, guys.

It's All Happening at the Zoo

2009-08-12T15:27:00.006-04:00

When the late great Molly Ivins wrote, "You pick up the paper in the morning and it's kind of like finding Fidel Castro in the refrigerator," she was describing Texas politics. But it works for pretty much anything, such as this item from the Tulsa World:

Republican mayoral candidate Anna Falling said Tuesday that putting a Christian creationism display in the Tulsa Zoo is No. 1 in importance among city issues that also include violent crime, budget woes and bumpy streets. "It's first," she said to calls of "hallelujah" at a rally outside the zoo. "If we can't come to the foundation of faith in this community, those other answers will never come. We need to first of all recognize the fact that God needs to be honored in this city."

The notion of an explicitly Christian creationism exhibit at a zoo (much less a publicly-owned zoo) is sort of like the Pope becoming a Bar Mitzvah - the two just don't go together. It seems Falling has never considered the possibility that people who go to the zoo want to learn about animals and science. People who want to learn about creationism would go to - oh, I don't know - church, maybe.

And Falling apparently doesn't care about what just might take precedence on a mayoral agenda - you know, all that boring secular stuff like budgeting and education and police departments.

But just for the heck of it, what would a creationist zoo exhibit look like? Would we see a mock-up of the Garden of Eden, showing the snake tempting an Eve whose naughty bits are tastefully shielded? Would we have a display showing all the animals which went extinct because they never made it onto the Ark? Perhaps something showing which animals were created on which day. The possibilities are endless.

Falling herself, at least according to her campaign website, appears to be just another generic fundamentalist wacko, charged by God with pushing her personal religious beliefs on everyone else whether we want them or not. Indeed, in her zoo speech she promised to turn city government into a Gilead-ish system of clerical control: "Unless the churches of Tulsa are brought into City Hall to begin to address our community's greatest ills - the City of Tulsa will go bankrupt, spiritually, morally and financially."

The article on the Tulsa World's website has already garnered hundreds of comments, from the aghast ("she's kidding,right? right? please someone tell me she's kidding,right?") to the supportive ("Maybe some need to ask themselves 'why be offended by this honest effort to work on root cause of rot in this city?'") to the puckish ("You can see animals at the Tulsa Zoo performing the acts of creationism most any day of the week!").

Somehow, I think Falling's mayoral campaign is not long for this world. After all, the people of Tulsa see all too well how she's turning their city into a laughingstock. Even if she doesn't.

It Must Be True in a Parallel Universe!

2009-08-10T14:22:00.003-04:00

Some arguments by opponents of health care are distorted, some are bizarrely so, and some are just...well, read on.

"How House Bill Runs Over Grandma" is a tastefully titled editorial from the July 31 Investors Business Daily. In the middle of pushing the Obama-wants-to-kill-everyone-over-the-age-of-65 lie, they present this tidbit:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Hawking is a theoretical physicist who is almost completely paralyzed from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (better known as Lou Gehrig's disease) but hasn't let that stop him. In addition to being a college professor, he has written a series of books in which he explains such mind-bruising topics as cosmology and quantum gravity in language accessible to everyone, not just those with multiple PhD's.

Oh yes, and he lives in the UK. In fact, he's lived there all his life. Not only is he not ineligible for health care, he was hospitalized earlier this year.

You may think IBD's editors just might be slightly abashed that their central "gotcha" point is in fact wildly wrong, but I doubt they noticed. After all, they're too busy pushing health-care lies to be bothered with something as trivial as accuracy.

On the other hand, since Hawking theorizes the existence of "baby universes" via black holes, perhaps the editorial is true in one of those other universes. Makes more sense than the rubbish they usually churn out.

Paranoia on Parade

2009-08-07T21:16:00.017-04:00

"A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on. "

Mark Twain (also attributed to Winston Churchill)

The White House's plan to reform America's health system has been attacked by wild distortions and lies designed not to inform but to terrify. Sarah Palin reached the nadir (so far) of this fear campaign yesterday, shrieking,

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

It's all complete garbage, a dark and twisted fantasy spun out of thin air by people desperate to stop reform in its tracks but who are utterly unable to argue their case on the merits. (And by the way, Sarah, for someone who whines all the time about how your family is supposedly hounded by the media, you sure do love using them as props whenever it suits your purposes.)

In doing so, they are simply falling into line with the standard right-wing playbook: if the facts do not support your position, screw the facts and lie like hell, scaring the crap out of your audience wherever possible.

Horrifyingly, this terror campaign is working. Congressional town hall meetings have been inundated by mobs whipped into a frenzy by false talking points, and have been the location of numerous fights and physical attacks. At least one representative has received death threats and one other has decided to cancel town halls entirely rather than have them become occasions for more mob intimidation.

Thuggish paranoia is on the march in America, and the home of the brave has become the home of the frightened. People's minds are pumped full of terror on a daily basis, and some will believe anything, no matter how ridiculous, as long as it caters to their fears.

For example, a few days ago the White House announced an E-mail address to which people can send the more pernicious lies encountered in this whole miserable situation so they can be quickly debunked. The right wing issued a bloodcurdling scream en masse, and a new phony talking point was born. "The White House wants you to turn in your neighbors!" this one goes. "Report anyone who does not agree with the president!"

And people are believing it.

(Deep and disgusted sigh)

What kind of a country are we, where our people fall so easily for the most outrageous lies? Have we really forgotten how to determine if something is true or not? How many ways can we say, "It is a lie?" How many times must we say, "It is not true?"

A few years ago, it was revealed that the Bush Administration ran a massive (and massively illegal) spying program, snooping on Americans' phone calls, E-mails, web browsing, and anything else they wanted. It was also revealed that the Administration attempted to set up a civilian corps of informants who would spy on people in their own homes and report anything "suspicious." (That one was never put into operation not because it was illegal or immoral, but because the American people would never have accepted it.)

Those violations of our privacy were real. This one is imaginary. And it is a particularly bitter irony that the very same people who a few years ago lambasted the Bush Administration's critics are now leading the shrieking chorus of paranoia. When the Bush spying operation was revealed, Senator John Cornyn, who started this latest freak-out, notably snapped, "None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."

Ah, what a difference a change in presidents makes.

The fear level is stoked ever higher by the talking heads who revel in terrorizing their listeners and viewers and who live for turning them into quivering lumps of paranoid jelly. Rush Limbaugh growls with dreary regularity that President Obama is like Hitler. Glenn Beck's broadcasts have become so drenched in paranoia that he actually had to plead with his viewers not to be violent. (They do not appear to be listening.)

Is it any wonder Obama receives 400% more death threats than President Bush did? How long will it be before someone with more guns than brains takes Limbaugh or Beck or Palin or whoever seriously, and decides to murder the president for the supposed good of the country? Or perhaps it will be "just" a senator or representative, perhaps at a town hall meeting. Have the people who get their kicks from terrorizing people with sickening lies considered that possibility? Or will they get it only when someone gets killed? (Then again, they didn't get it when Kansas doctor George Tiller was killed in church after years of vilification on Fox News.)

In the meantime, I'm making a direct appeal to anyone who reads what I write today. Don't believe the scare stories. Do the research. Think for yourself. Verify what you are told and decide for yourself whether it is true or not. And if it's crap, call them on it. That would be a very American thing to do.

If You Can't Win the Argument, Scream Louder

2009-08-05T12:40:00.001-04:00

Earlier this year, lobbyists and Republicans joined together to manufacture astroturf "tea parties" at which President Obama was attacked for economic policies which actually began under the previous administration. Fox News did their part as well, abandoning any pretense of journalistic integrity as they aggressively promoted the protests. One Fox reporter even went so far as to rail on air against "the Democrat fascist stimulus package."

The "tea parties" were something of a bust, attracting far fewer (and far crazier) attendees than their organizers were hoping for, but you know what they say - if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

And so they are indeed trying again, this time under the guise of derailing the current push for health-insurance reform. With Congress away for the August recess, many senators and representatives are holding "town hall" meetings with their constituents. This is, of course, a good thing - our representatives in Congress need to hear from us, loudly and regularly.

But right-wing lobbyists and political groups are packing such meetings with their own supporters, whose only purpose is to yell, scream, disrupt and intimidate by any means necessary. And not surprisingly, GOP TV - er, Fox News - is once again backing this to the hilt.

In fact, a memo leaked last week outlines the exact strategy in almost gleeful terms:

Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington...

You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep's presentation. Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early... The purpose is to make him uneasy early on and set the tone for the hall as clearly informal, and free-wheeling. The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.

Since opponents know they have no case (after all, does anyone really like fighting insurance companies which refuse to pay for needed treatment?) and aren't even trying to argue on the merits, they have resorted to plan B - outright thuggery. This is not dialogue or conversation, this is designed to shut down dialogue and prevent conversation.

Furthermore, where does it go from here? Let's face it - when people are sent solely to disrupt meetings, any difference between screaming at participants and beating them up is only one of degree.

Tactics like this are profoundly anti-democratic (with a small "d"). Of course we have the right, indeed the duty, to challenge our elected representatives when we don't agree with them. This is America, and I wouldn't have it any other way. But when it crosses the line from discourse to stage-managed harassment, it becomes unacceptable.

And is it just me, or are there a lot of older people screaming about "government control of health care" at these things? Do they not know they even have health care thanks to a little something called Medicare?

The mind boggles.

Her Own Worst Enemy

2009-08-04T10:36:00.008-04:00

"We have met the enemy and he is us," the comic-strip character Pogo famously said. So it is with Orly Taitz, the Soviet-born dentist-turned-correspondent-school-lawyer who has put herself at the forefront of the birther movement. In her relentless quest to prove that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen and so cannot be president, she has done more damage to her cause than a whole squad of debunkers could possibly accomplish.

For example, take this little tête-à-tête yesterday with MSNBC's David Shuster and Tamron Hall:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

She seems to believe that rambling incoherently and yelling at the interviewers will somehow make everyone flock magically to her side.

And if that wasn't enough, she also shrieked on her website (sorry, no link - a virus tried to infect my computer the instant the page came up):

I also did MSNBC TV show with David Schuster [sic] and Tamaryl [sic] Hall- two of them are just Nazi brown shirts, they and their network should be prosecuted under RICO act, a number of people will have to serve lengthy prison terms for aiding and abetting treason

Way to go, Orly. Hope your dentistry skills are up to snuff, because I don't think this lawyering thing is working out.

One Year of Birther Madness

2009-08-03T10:10:00.008-04:00

As amazing (appalling?) as it sounds, it really has been an entire year since this Barack-Obama-is-not-a-natural-born-citizen-and-so-can't-be-president nonsense began. (For the record, Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.) The birthers have not only managed to push themselves onto the national stage, but actually pose a real threat of taking over the Republican Party.

A poll released July 31 on the DailyKos website revealed that an astounding 58% of Republicans either believe that President Obama was not born in the United States or don't know for sure. Some GOP politicians visiting their districts face crowds of constituents jeering their assurances that Obama is a natural-born citizen, while others prefer not to confront a growing segment of their party rather than admit the simple truth. As the rest of the country watches in a sort of horrified train-wreck fascination, the GOP is fast spiraling down the hole of birtherism, and may not be able to climb out.

So in (dubious) honor of the one-year anniversary of Birther Madness, here is a list of the birthers' arguments (so far) and why they don't hold water. In no particular order:

1. The image of Obama's birth certificate is a fake.

No, it's real. It was verified as both genuine and accurate by the Hawaii Department of Health.

2. The "Certification of Live Birth" presented by the Obama campaign is not the same as a birth certificate and is not accepted when applying for a passport.

Sure it is. It's the exact same document anyone receives from the state when requesting a copy of their birth certificate, and is the standard form issued by Hawaii (and, indeed, many other states) for all births. It is perfectly acceptable at all levels of government as proof of citizenship, including for passport applications. The "certification" vs. "certificate" business is a matter of semantics and nothing more.

3. Why doesn't Obama release his original "long form" certificate?

Why should he? He already proved his citizenship status by releasing his birth certificate, and the Hawaii state government has confirmed its authenticity multiple times. It's not his job to cater to the birthers' paranoia - or anyone else's paranoia, for that matter - and surrendering will only keep this farce going ad infinitum.

4. Hawaii allows children born in other locations to receive Hawaii birth certificates.

Hold on to your hats, people - all states allow this. Children who were adopted from out of state or who were born while their parents were traveling receive birth certificates from the state of their parents' residence. It happens all the time. The birthers' argument fails because (a) Hawaii did not allow this until Obama was in his twenties and (b) all birth certificates include the place of birth regardless of where the child was born. If the child was born in New York City, it gives the place of birth as New York City. If the child was born in China, it gives the place of birth as China. No exceptions.

5. Anyone can contact the Hawaii state government, say his or her child was born in-state, and get a Hawaii birth certificate and thus American citizenship.

No evidence for this claim has been presented. This one apparently represents the next round of birther (il)logic. As long as the long-form certificate is unavailable, the birthers can claim Obama's hiding something. But if he gives in and releases it, they can then claim the document is meaningless because it could possibly be fake. Such is birther doublethink: the long-form document is both crucial and useless, relevant and irrelevant.

6. Sun Yat-Sen, who was born in China, fraudulently obtained a birth certificate saying he was born in Hawaii.

He did indeed - in 1904. Hawaii was an American territory at the time and so he did not become an American citizen. Both Hawaii and the United States had very different citizenship laws than they had after statehood in 1959.

7. Obama has dual citizenship because his father was a Kenyan citizen.

Not any more. Kenyan law allows dual citizenship in children, but terminates it on the child's 21st birthday unless he renounces his other citizenship and swears an oath of allegiance to Kenya. Since Obama did neither, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on August 4, 1982.

Besides, if dual citizens cannot be president, then any country in the world - Iran, for example - has the power to remove an elected American president simply by declaring him to be a citizen of their own country as well as the US. Is that really what the birthers want? I didn't think so.

8. Both parents must be American citizens in order to be a natural-born citizen.

Wrong again. American law recognizes only two types of citizen: natural-born and naturalized. All that is required for natural-born status is for a person to be born either (a) in the United States or (b) outside the United States to at least one citizen parent. The first requirement covers Obama, who was born in Hawaii, while the second covers John McCain, who was born in Panama when his father was stationed there as a naval officer. (Somehow, I doubt all this would now be happening had a white man with an Anglo-Saxon name been elected.)

Not only that, three other presidents have been born in the U.S. to one non-citizen parent: Chester Arthur's father was Irish, Woodrow Wilson's mother was Scottish, and Herbert Hoover's father was Canadian. Were they illegitimate presidents as well?

9. Obama's stepfather listed him as an Indonesian citizen on his school registration form.

Since no evidence of Obama's alleged Indonesian citizenship has ever been presented, it seems Lolo Soetoro simply lied so his six-year-old stepson could go to school. Oh yes, and the very same form clearly gives Obama's place of birth as Honolulu.

10. American citizens were not allowed to enter Pakistan when Obama went there in 1981.

Not true. The State Department's 1981 travel advisory does not bar Americans from visiting Pakistan and even gives instructions on how to obtain a visa.

11. Obama's grandmother said she was there when he was born in Kenya.

The cropped recording of Ron McRae's interview with Sarah Obama (conducted via translator over a bad phone connection) ends abruptly after her statement, even cutting off McRae mid-word. In the complete recording, Sarah Obama and her translator immediately realize the error and tell McRae over and over that Barack Obama was in fact born in America.

12. The certificate provided by the Obama campaign was printed on a laser printer, which had not yet been invented in 1961.

No one said the released certificate is from 1961. It was issued by the Hawaii Department of Health in 2007.

13. The short-form certificate Obama released is not recognized as valid by the Hawaii state government.

Barely true once upon a time and for the wrong reasons. The state Home Lands program leases state land to people with at least 50% indigenous Hawaiian ancestry. Because eligibility for this one program concerns ethnicity rather than place of birth, it used to require long-form certificates when applying but now accepts short-form certificates as well. Since Obama never claimed to be of indigenous Hawaiian descent nor applied for the program, it has nothing to do with him anyway.

14. Obama's birth announcements, sent to Honolulu newspapers by the state Department of Health, could have been falsely placed there by Obama's parents or anyone else.

No evidence for this claim has been presented.

15. A Kenyan birth certificate for Obama has been discovered.

A photo of the supposed document was announced by Orly Taitz and trumpeted by WorldNetDaily, but was exposed as a hoax within hours.

There will be other arguments, I'm sure. As long as the sky remains blue and Barack Obama remains president, Lord knows there will be others.

The Seductive Power of the Dark Side

2009-07-28T16:28:00.012-04:00

A friend of mine posted an item on Facebook today touting the 2009 Citizen's Continental Congress, a political gathering taking place later this year. Its manifesto is a hodgepodge of causes ranging from the paranoid to the legally dangerous to the just plain loony. And it does it all not just while wrapping itself in the flag, but while grafting it to its skin as much as possible.

This thing veers all over the political map, embracing ideologies from the birthers to the conspiracy theorists. It claims that the United States is a Communist nation (it isn't), Barack Obama never released his birth certificate (he did) and we're living under tyranny (we're not).

Since my friend apparently accepts this silliness as is, it got me thinking: why do so many otherwise sensible people fall for this sort of stuff?

In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker asks Yoda if the dark side of the Force is stronger than the light side. "No," the Jedi Master replies. "Quicker, easier, more seductive." And so it seems to be with so many of these wild claims.

Take the current debate over health care. Few would argue that our present system of health coverage is the best there is. Fifteen percent of Americans have no health insurance at all; when they get sick or injured, they must either pay huge sums out of pocket or go to the hospital emergency room for free care, in which case the taxpayers pick up the tab.

The rest of us have insurance, either through one's employer, through the government (military, VA, Medicare or Medicaid) or bought privately. But in far too many cases, people still find themselves in desperate straits, losing their coverage through "rescission." This euphemism masks the noxious practice of yanking coverage just when it's needed the most, usually for the flimsiest of reasons.

I can hear people out there saying, "But that could never happen to me." Don't be so sure. Last month, the American Journal of Medicine released a study with some frightening conclusions:

62% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were at least partially caused by medical debt (up from just 8% in 1981)
78% of people who went bankrupt due to medical costs had health insurance when they became sick or injured

Think about that. Even if you have health insurance, it may well not protect you from financial ruin.

That is more than appalling. That is obscene.

But the current Democratic proposal for reforming the system (the Republicans didn't bother to offer any proposals of their own) is being attacked by people who don't want the system reformed. They call it "socialized medicine" or "medical fascism" and spread scare stories to frighten people into knee-jerk opposition. You will be forced to accept government health coverage! Government inspectors will enter your home to monitor your parenting! The government will mandate euthanasia for seniors!

Of course, all of these are nonsense, as can be quickly learned from actually reading the legislation text. (Secure that their rhetorical targets either cannot or will not look for themselves, writers of the aforementioned scare stories helpfully provide the exact page numbers, making debunking a snap.)

But my point is this: Even when something is clearly in their best interest, people can still be suckered into opposing it. People can and will believe the most ridiculous things possible. After all, look at how many still think the moon landings were faked, or that Jews control the world, or that 9/11 was an inside job.

But why? Perhaps it's because, as Yoda said, it's simply easier. Sometimes people are all too willing to let someone else do the thinking for them. Sometimes people are so scared of change they will grasp at anything, no matter how insane, which promises normalcy, even if that normalcy will hurt them. It's always a distressing development when people embrace this lunacy, and it's even more distressing when a friend does so.

When Luke asks how he can distinguish the good side of the Force from the bad side, Yoda answers, "You will know. When you are calm, at peace."

Maybe all that's required is to slow down and think with a clear head.

Birther Backfire

2009-07-16T12:45:00.021-04:00

For the last few days, birthers far and wide have been tickled pink by the tale of one Stefan Frederick Cook, a major in the Army Reserve who received orders to go to Afghanistan. Rather than comply, Cook sued the Army, claiming his orders were illegal because the commander-in-chief is not eligible to be president. His attorney is Orly Taitz, the California dentist-turned-birther-lawyer who is in trouble with the state bar association for a whole host of unethical practices, including soliciting clients, improper communication with judges, threatening violence, and so on.

After Cook sued, the Army withdrew the orders, whereupon Taitz ran to WorldNetDaily (where else?) and declared victory:

"We won! We won before we even arrived," she said with excitement. "It means that the military has nothing to show for Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is illegitimate - and they cannot fight it. Therefore, they are revoking the order!"

Um, no. It actually means the Army realized that sending a publicly insubordinate officer to a war zone is not a good idea. Rather than run the risk of said officer spreading sedition through the ranks, they took the smart route.

But it now looks like there is far more to Cook's story than was first apparent. On February 1, 2009, he contacted Taitz to sign up for her (now dismissed) class-action lawsuit challenging President Obama's citizenship status. He is also a frequent blogger on the Free Republic website under the user name "roaddog727" - specifically, he posted one item, titled "WHITE PAPER, Obama's Eligibility to be President of the United States," on March 25.

Why are those dates important? Because on May 8, three months after signing onto Taitz's lawsuit and six weeks after posting his blog entry, Cook volunteered for a yearlong tour in Afghanistan beginning on July 15.

That's right, he asked for orders from a chain of command he does not recognize as lawful.

After his requested orders were issued on June 9, as a volunteer reservist he could have asked for their revocation at any time - but he didn't. Instead, he waited until just one week before his deployment date to file suit on July 8.

In a nutshell, this stinks to high heaven. It has all the hallmarks of a hoax, and a particularly messy one at that. It sure looks like Cook asked for the posting only because he wanted to use it as a vehicle to propel his birther claims onto front pages across the nation. (It is as yet unknown what role, if any, Taitz played in his decision to sue the Army.) But the plan exploded in his face, with bad consequences.

You see, Cook's civilian job is at a Pentagon contractor called Simtech. Not surprisingly, the Defense Department took a very dim view of someone who abuses the reservist system as part of a blatant political stunt and yanked his security clearance, thus barring him from DOD facilities. Since he was unable to do his job due to his own willful actions, Simtech fired him. So he has now lost his job, and by this point is probably wishing he had never heard of Taitz.

The Army Reserve will probably take an equally dim view of his actions. I see a court-martial in Cook's future, and a malpractice lawsuit in Taitz's.

We Must Keep the Master Race Pure

2009-07-09T14:28:00.002-04:00

"Leave it to the Finns and Swedes to come up with something. Because that's a - we are, we're a, we keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other - I mean the Swedes - the Swedes have, uh, pure genes. Because they marry other Swedes. Because that's the rule. Finland - Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody."

Fox & Friends anchor Brian Kilmeade, bemoaning the fact that Americans have a habit of breeding with people outside their own racial and/or ethnic groups

Palin's Puzzler

2009-07-04T10:59:00.009-04:00

Well, that was unexpected.

When Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who was touted as the "Thrilla from Wasilla" before doing so much to sink John McCain's presidential ambitions, abruptly resigned yesterday, the big question was, "Why?" Palin supporters immediately pointed to her popularity in the Republican Party (or at least the know-nothing-and-damn-proud-of-it wing) and speculated that she's setting herself up for a presidential run in 2012.

But if a first-term governor is considering a White House bid, she does not up and resign with a year and a half left to go in her term. Especially when the next presidential election comes two years after the end of her term. Pre-announcement buzz was that she would not run for re-election, which would have made a lot more sense.

Her rambling speech, veering from attacking the media for reporting on her many ethical problems (you could almost hear her snarling, "and I would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!") to comparing her time as governor to a basketball game, did not impress. Perhaps it was designed to appeal not to rational and thinking adults, but to mindless dittoheads. She is, after all, in a race with Rush Limbaugh to lead the ignorant wing of the GOP.

But why did she time her resignation speech the way she did - on a Friday right before the Fourth of July? Experienced politicos know that bad news is always dumped into the press on Fridays, where it will get lost in the much-less-watched weekend news coverage. That goes double for news dumps right before a holiday, and triple right before a weekend holiday. You just don't announce something under such circumstances unless you want it to vanish without a trace.

So it certainly sounds like Palin resigned to head off something bad. All indications are that she made a spectacular mess of the governor's office - e.g, being largely absent from Juneau ever since accepting the VP slot and alienating the GOP-controlled legislature to the point where her nominee for Attorney General was soundly rejected. And let's not even get into her murky ethics, from charging the state for living expenses in her own home to firing the head of the state police for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law arbitrarily.

Rumors are flying that she is about to be indicted on federal corruption charges. As mayor of Wasilla, Palin awarded a contract to build a sports center to a company which raked in the cash while leaving the town almost broke. In exchange, the company gave her free supplies to build her house, sponsored her husband's snowmobile team and hired her to do one of their TV ads.

And if all that isn't enough, Palin has threatened to sue anyone, including media outlets such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, for defamation if they report on said rumors. She (or her lawyers) surely cannot be this stupid. As a public figure, Palin must prove actual malice in order to make a defamation case stick against anyone, and in the case of news reporting or blog commentary, this is virtually impossible.

She must be doing it purely as an intimidation move, to try and shut up her critics - but she seems to have no idea what the First Amendment says. At a time when she needs every friend she can get, this is not a smart move.

We'll have to see what happens. But suddenly announcing her resignation on a political take-out-the-trash day does not bode well.

Maggie the Monster

2009-07-02T11:47:00.009-04:00

Frank Lombard, an official at Duke University, was arrested last week and accused not only of molesting his five-year-old son, but of offering him up as a plaything for other creatures like himself. It's a horrible story, and one that should turn the stomach of any parent. But since Lombard is gay and his son was adopted, homophobes near and far seized on the case as "proof" that gays should not be allowed to adopt.

It should go without saying that gay people are no more likely to molest children than straight people are. It should, but unfortunately some people just don't get it.

But that's not what moved me from sickened sympathy to boiling anger at this situation. What finally did the trick was a column by Maggie Gallagher (of National Organization for Marriage/Carrie Prejean infamy) in which she depicts adoption as a Stalinist good ol' boy network which turns a blind eye to pedophilia:

But adoptions are government acts. What did [Lombard's] fellow social workers who approved this adoption know? What did they overlook? What questions didn't they ask because, well, he was "in the club" - one of them?

Adoption is the way we strip a child of his or her natural protection - his mom and dad - and the government steps in to give this baby a new and better father or mother. Preferably both, I say. But I'm old-fashioned.

Does Gallagher even know anyone who was adopted, or any parents who adopted their kids? I highly doubt it, otherwise she would never have written such a thing.

Adoption is not a punishment for the birth parents. It is not some sort of Big Brother intervention. And it definitely is not some kind of secret society, reserving special benefits for those on the inside.

Both our children were adopted. Our son's teenage birth parents voluntarily placed him as a newborn. Our daughter's unknown birth parents abandoned her as an infant. Were they seized from their birth parents and handed over to us willy-nilly, "stripped" of their "natural protection?"

Of course not. But by depicting adoption as she did, Gallagher shows herself to be even more woefully ignorant, not to mention just plain stupid, than she already is.

In her rush to smear all gay parents (and single parents, too) by connecting them to this one loathsome person, Gallagher also smeared me. And my wife. And our kids. And all families formed via adoption.

She should be ashamed of herself.

Caveat Emptor

2009-06-29T09:12:00.007-04:00

Out on the far fringes of American politics are the "birthers," who insist that Barack Obama never presented a valid birth certificate, is not a natural-born citizen and is thus constitutionally ineligible to be president.

There is, however, one slight problem with this theory: Obama released his birth certificate, showing that he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1961, last year during the campaign. It was certified as genuine by the Hawaiian Department of Health, is the exact same sort of document issued by states all over the country, and is fully accepted at all levels of government as proof of both identity and citizenship. The certificate proves that Obama is indeed a natural-born citizen and is thus eligible to be president.

Of course, the birthers (particularly Joseph Farah of the WorldNetDaily website) argue the certificate is a fake and demand that Obama release his original "long form" certificate. The problem is that if Obama caves in to this shrieking and does so, they will immediately claim that certificate is a fake. There is simply no way to win with these people.

So why not cash in on it? I can't believe it really took this long for someone to get around to it, but someone calling himself "colmado_naranja" claims to have an Kenyan birth certificate for Barack Obama and is offering it for sale on eBay. (The seller has of course refused to post a photo of the alleged document, claiming it "would lead to a flood of facsimiles on the Internet [and] would inadvertently decrease the value of the certificate as well.") The bidding starts at $1000, but you can buy it outright for $1 million.

eBay has yanked the listing numerous times, pointing to their rules against the selling of real or fake government documents on the site. Naturally, this made WorldNetDaily add them to its ever-growing list of conspirators to install an ineligible fraud in the White House.

But what if some ~~sucker~~ patriot really does manage to plunk down gobs of cash for this thing? Personally, I think they'll wind up with something like this:

The guy who's trying to peddling this thing obviously hopes his victims never heard the phrase caveat emptor - let the buyer beware.

Back to Everyday Craziness

2009-06-25T14:18:00.011-04:00

Now that South Carolina governor Mark Sanford has been located safe and sound - it turns out he sneaked off to Argentina for a few days of romping with a woman not his wife - we now rejoin our normal political insanity, already in progress.

Let's see, to whom can we turn to bring a note of complete batshit craziness to our everyday life? Of course - Representative Michele Bachmann! You may recall Bachmann from her earlier close encounters with weird conspiracy theories, including:

Claiming the White House is conspiring with other countries to introduce a one-world currency
Accusing then-candidate Barack Obama and others in Congress of being "anti-American"
Calling the SCHIP health-insurance program for children a "magnet" for illegal immigrants
Saying that a law expanding AmeriCorps and increasing opportunities for volunteering creates "re-education camps for young people"
Urging violence over the issue of global warming, saying, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back"

This list could go on forever, but you get the idea. She does not so much embrace every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike as rip its clothes off, throw it down on the bed and have her way with it. (No word yet on whether she believes President Obama to be a dictatorial Muslim usurper .) Indeed, her image as an inhabitant of Bizarro World reduced her to claiming, "This is not Michele Bachmann being a kook."

Anyway, she's back. In the middle of one of her usual rants about the community-organizing group ACORN last week, Bachmann loudly said she will refuse to fill out anything on her Census form. The rationale for this was that since the government is hiring outside organizations for the Census' door-to-door legwork, she's afraid that ACORN (boogity-boogity) will somehow get hold of and misuse the data.

Never mind that refusing to participate in the Census is illegal. Or that violating a Census participant's privacy can get you five years in prison and a $25,000 fine. Or that socioeconomic questions asked either in the short Census form or the longer American Community Survey form are used to determine how federal tax dollars are distributed among states and localities. Or even that ACORN won't be involved at all in collecting Census responses.

Paranoia must be assuaged, you see, and so Bachmann stepped up to the plate again today, warning that Census data can be misused. And she did it by invoking the specter of the Japanese-American internment during World War II:

If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the census bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations, at the request of President Roosevelt, and that's how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I'm not saying that's what the Administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private, personal information that was given to the census bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up.

You can almost hear her screaming it from the rooftops: "Obama and ACORN will put you all in prison!"

Her tactics are typical: spew out fear and paranoia by warning of hideous things that no one is planning (indeed, that no one in their right minds would possibly consider) and then walk it back ever so slightly by saying "well, I don't think they're planning that."

But considering the killings which have taken place in the last few months - killings very likely inspired by the continuing torrent of hate and fear in the conservative media - is it paranoid to worry about the safety of Census workers? What if someone really believes that the local Census worker who comes to the door is actually on a secret mission to identify "undesirables?" What happens then?

Bachmann's wingnut craziness may be entertaining, but it masks a very disturbing trend in America. Can we stop it before more people get killed?

This Is Gonna Get Ugly

2009-06-24T10:43:00.009-04:00

Meet Mark Sanford. He's the Republican governor of South Carolina and a staunch family-values conservative. He is anti-abortion, anti-gay, makes a big deal about the "sanctity of marriage," and generally likes to get on his moral high horse to tell everyone else how to run their lives.

Oh yes, and he just got back after a week in which he sneaked away to sunny Buenos Aires, Argentina. He didn't tell his family where he was going, even skipping out on them for Father's Day. He left his cell phone off and was completely incommunicado. He did, however, apparently get back in touch with the office a couple of days ago to say he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail.

But there's a slight problem - even the southernmost tip of the Trail near Atlanta is about five thousand miles from Buenos Aires. So either Sanford lied to his staff about his whereabouts or his staff lied to cover for their boss. Neither one is good.

So what was Sanford actually doing down there? Was he there to take advantage of Argentina's medical tourism? Or was it something a little less family-friendly?

I'm betting it's the latter. When you tell a lie that transparent and that easily debunked, it means you probably weren't there to feed the homeless.

For his part, the now-resurfaced Sanford is not helping his image. When he got off the plane, he was cornered by a reporter asking why he left the country and didn't bother to tell anyone about it. His response? "I wanted to do something exotic."

Oh, that sounds good.

This sure looks like it's going to get very ugly, very quickly.

Update: The American embassy in Argentina apparently had no idea he was in the country. Add in Buenos Aires' legendary kidnapping risk and a prominent American like Sanford would have to be certifiably insane to go there without any security or even informing the embassy.

Sanford will hold a press conference at 2PM EDT. Get the popcorn.

Tehran Spring

2009-06-23T10:04:00.005-04:00

The streets of Tehran, and most cities in Iran, are filled with people protesting last week's blatantly stolen presidential election. The Iranian government's attempts at a media blackout have failed miserably as social channels like YouTube and Twitter are filled with back-channel information. The people get their message out any way they can. The eyes of the world are on Iran, and no one wants a Persian replay of China's 1989 Tienanmen Square crackdown.

Here at home, the Republicans are naturally playing politics with this whole thing, with often unintentionally hilarious results:

Rep. John Culberson of Texas called his party "oppressed minorities" because the House leadership cut off debate on a bill.
Rep Pete Hoekstra of Mississippi went even further, tweeting that the Iranian people's struggle for a free and fair election was just like "what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

Sure, they're exactly alike.

After President Obama spoke out in favor of the protesters, the GOP jumped all over him demanding that he do more. Senator Lindsey Graham called the president "timid and passive," and the usual suspects muttered darkly that with Obama's "Muslim past," he is surrendering to Tehran.

Of course, anyone who knows anything about recent Iranian history knows full well that tough talk from Obama on the situation in Iran would backfire. Badly.

After Mohammad Mossadegh became prime minister in 1951, he nationalized Iran's oil resources and thus ran afoul of the American and British oil companies. The United States responded by sending in the CIA to foment a coup, which overthrew Mossadegh in 1953.

Installed in his place was Shah Reza Pahlevi, who quickly did his backers' bidding by handing his country's oil back to the corporations and turning the country into a repressive autocracy. Clamping down on any dissent and political opposition, the Shah radicalized the Iranian people, making them easy pickings for the hardline Ayatollah Khomeini.

After Khomeini overthrew the Shah in 1979 and set up his own repressive government, he never failed to refer to the United States as the "Great Satan." And while the Iranian government no longer depicts the US as a satanic monster, the memory of the American intervention and the Shah's rule is very much alive and well in the country's political psyche.

Which explains why Obama is watching his words carefully when it comes to Iran. He knows very well that any overt American support for the protesters would rally Iranian public support around the government, stolen election or no stolen election.

But the Republicans don't care about that. There are points to be scored, no matter how cheap.

Barack Obama, Murderer

2009-06-18T13:52:00.007-04:00

Well, no, not really.

Tuesday evening, President Obama was in the middle of a televised CNBC interview when a fly started buzzing him. So he did what anyone else would do - he swatted it. Fly forgotten, interview continues.

Enter PETA - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. These are the same people who are behind some of the most ridiculous, ill-conceived and just plain offensive campaigns ever, including:

Lobbying the town of Fishkill, New York to change its name to "Fishsave" (the "kill" part actually comes from the Dutch word for "creek" or "stream")
Comparing factory farms to the Holocaust
Asking college students (among whom binge drinking is already endemic) to drink beer instead of milk
Showing up in Ku Klux Klan-like robes outside the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show
Trying to rename fish "sea kittens" on the grounds that people are less likely to hurt cute kittens than fish

And so on. So they naturally could not let this one go unchallenged. Attacking Obama for his part in keeping the pest population down, a PETA blogger archly reminded the president that "he isn't the Buddha, he's a human being, and human beings have a long way to go before they think before they act."

Cue the inevitable media circus, topped off by Stephen Colbert's hilarious take on this whole brouhaha.

Once again looking like a bunch of self-righteous fools, PETA backtracked ever so slightly by claiming that Obama should have disposed of the insect without killing it. They even sent one of their $8 "humane bug catchers" to the president for free.

So PETA is not among those who call Obama a crazed murderer - for now.

He's only been in office a few months, after all.

Worst. Conspiracy Theory. Ever.

2009-06-18T12:01:00.005-04:00

There have been a wide range of conspiracy theories thrown around about President Obama, ranging from the potentially dangerous (the president is a dictatorial Muslim usurper) to the just plain silly (the president has it in for Republican Chrysler dealers).

But this one really takes the, er, cake.

You may recall that this past spring, First Lady Michelle Obama set up an organic garden on the White House grounds and invited kids from all over to come help grow stuff. On Tuesday, she held a party at which kids harvested and ate the fruits (as it were) of their labor, including peas and lettuce.

Web gadfly Matt Drudge (a reliable conduit for wacko right-wing accusations making their way into the mainstream media) thought the timing - two months from planting to harvest - was a tad suspicious, and said so on his website:

Once you get past that he got the dates wrong (March 20 was when ground was broken, planting actually happened on April 9) his sneering comment on "Michelle's miracle grow" speaks volumes. He's actually saying, "She cheated! It can't be organic! Those veggies can't be real!"

Well, putting aside the simple fact that swapping store-bought vegetables for home-grown ones is like something out of a movie farce (in real life, Jim Jones did just that in Guyana to try and hook potential Peoples Temple members back in the 1970s) this nonsense was quickly shot down by people who have experience with actual, you know, gardening.

Apparently deluged with dark mutterings from readers, Susan Reimer put it succinctly on the Baltimore Sun's website:

The snap peas and the greens were ready to harvest - but that's no surprise for Washington, D.C., and a spring as rainy as ours has been. And the soil was amended with compost before it was planted. When I did that in a new bed I installed, the plants went crazy. The kale, chard and lettuces look exactly as they do at the Farmers' Market in Annapolis that I visit each Saturday. But there are no cukes yet, no peppers, mostly tomato flowers, and one tiny eggplant. The sweet potatoes and okra are just seedlings.

So we now have a winner for the Stupidest Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever!

Until the next one, that is.

Don't Blame Us

2009-06-12T10:02:00.004-04:00

Two days after a deranged neo-Nazi (redundant, I know) attacked the Holocaust Museum in Washington and killed a security guard, the rightest of America's right-wing pundits are scrambling to claim that they bear no responsibility for the tragedy.

Their reasoning? James von Brunn was actually a leftist.

Therefore, President Obama and the liberals are to blame.

Really.

Harry Binswanger of the Ayn Rand Institute told an approving Glenn Beck that "von Brunn's culture is a tribe of racist anti-Jewish, anti-Negro, anti-immigrant, everything, and therefore he's the phenomenon of the left, because racism is a form of collectivism. The right wing is individualist, believes in individual rights, freedom, the dignity of each individual life. You know, Hitler was national socialism, right?" (Of course, Adolf Hitler was no more a socialist than was Gordon Gekko.)

Latching on to Binswanger's nonsense, Beck one-upped his guest by jumping through hoops to attack Obama: "We have a guy in the White House right now who, if you're gonna link people to this guy [von Brunn] who have nothing to do with this shooting, let's talk about the relationship with Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright."

The right-wing NewsMax website targeted Obama directly as well, claiming that "it is no coincidence that we are witnessing this level of hatred toward Jews as President Barack Obama positions America against the Jewish state."

Rush Limbaugh also got into the act, saying that von Brunn "has more in common with the marchers and protesters we see at left-wing rallies."

And in what may well be the most offensive and insane take on the tragedy, conservative blogger Erick Erickson writes that "the gunning down of guards outside the Holocaust Museum in Washington has [Daily Kos founder and über-blogger] Markos Moulitsas and his band of leftist brothers positively demanding a ticker tape parade for the deranged shooter."

All this frantic activity shows utter desperation on the part of the right-wing media. Limbaugh, Beck and their ilk know all too well that by shoveling out bizarre delusions 24/7 that Obama will take away everyone's guns or set up concentration camps or bring back the Hitler Youth, they stoke a climate of fear and paranoia.

And eventually, fear and paranoia boil over, resulting in what we saw on Wednesday.

They did it.

They know they did it.

They created and maintained the atmosphere which allowed von Brunn and who knows how many other like-minded nuts to believe that their insane ravings are right and good and well within the mainstream. And they do so while consistently opposing common-sense laws which would keep guns out of these people's hands.

So they have to blame someone else - anyone else - for the inevitable results of their own actions.

How many more killings will it take for them to wake up?

Again

2009-06-11T12:07:00.003-04:00

It happened again.

James von Brunn, who has a long history of virulently hating Jews, blacks and everyone else who is not white and Protestant, walked into the Holocaust Museum in Washington yesterday and opened fire, killing a security guard before he was shot himself and arrested. There are so many angles one can take with this horrible story it's hard to know where to begin.

Soon after President Obama took office, a report requested by the outgoing Bush Administration on the dangers of violent right-wing extremist groups (the KKK, armed militias, violent racists and anti-Semites, etc) was leaked. Led by Fox News, the GOP screamed that the report was actually about mainstream conservatives, to the point where Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano knuckled under and retracted it. Will everyone who led this shrieking chorus now apologize?

As a convicted felon who in 1981 walked into the Federal Reserve's HQ in Washington armed with a shotgun and threatened to kill everyone inside, von Brunn should never have been allowed anywhere near a gun. How did he get it? Did he buy it at a gun show, at which background checks are still not required? Did he bribe the owner of a gun store to let him have one anyway? Did he get it from one of his neo-Nazi comrades?

Will the guns-for-everyone crowd finally remember the first part of the Second Amendment, the part about a "well regulated militia?" I'm pretty sure the Founding Fathers didn't intend the nation to be filled indiscriminately with mechanisms of death and mayhem.

And will all the pundits who pollute the airwaves with hatred and paranoia, who spin wild fantasies that a president with the middle name of "Hussein" is a traitorous tyrant who must be stopped at any cost, who regularly use the language of war and violence - will they finally realize that there are people out there who take their overblown rhetoric literally?

They will - for maybe a day. Then it will be back to business as usual.

Until the next time, that is.

But You Already Knew That

2009-06-10T14:16:00.002-04:00

"What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality."

Neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, admitting that the world as seen on Fox News bears little or no resemblance to the actual world we live in

Praying for Death

2009-06-10T08:52:00.005-04:00

Out on the lunatic fringe of Christian-right politics is a preacher named Wiley Drake, who last distinguished himself by being the 2008 vice-presidential running mate of Alan Keyes. (You may remember Keyes from the 2004 Senate campaign in Illinois; after the original GOP candidate imploded in a sex scandal, he was called in as a last-minute replacement and went on to get creamed by a guy named Barack Obama. Today, Keyes spends his time cozying up to the craziest of the crazies, insisting that Obama is a secret Muslim who was actually born in Kenya.)

Drake is fond of what he calls "imprecatory prayers," a ten-dollar phrase which means praying for someone to die. Now, as children we all had such moments, usually on the playground when you ask for God to send a bolt of lightning to zap a bully or something. But Drake really means it.

In 2007, he urged his followers to pray for the deaths of Joe Conn and Jeremy Leaming (which Drake misspelled as "Learing"), two staffers at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. You see, they apparently got on Drake's bad side by reporting that Drake's church was under investigation for specifically endorsing Mike Huckabee's presidential run and thus violating IRS tax-exemption rules.

Well, nothing happened. Conn and Leaming are still very much alive and well.

Last week, he openly celebrated the murder of Kansas doctor George Tiller: "I am glad George Tiller is dead. I said to the Lord, 'Lord I pray back to you the Psalms, where it says that they are to become widowers and their children are to become orphans and so forth.' And we began calling for those imprecatory prayers, because he had obviously turned his back on God again and again and again." Not surprisingly, this did not go over well with Christians and other people who see murder as, you know, bad.

Undeterred by the resulting criticism, Drake is now trying again. This time, he's setting his sights a tad higher than two staffers and a doctor - he's going for the big kahuna, the whole nine yards, all the marbles.

Yes, he's praying for the death of President Obama himself.

One day after cheering Tiller's murder, Drake went on Alan Colmes' radio show and specifically said that since Obama's policies somehow show that he follows the "wrong" form of Christianity, he has to go.

Colmes: When you say you are praying for the death of someone using imprecatory prayer, you then said - I asked, then, "for whom else are you praying in that fashion?" And you said "President Obama." Are you praying for his death?

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: So you're praying for the death of the president of the United States.

Drake: Yes.

Colmes: Do you, are you concerned that by saying that you might find yourself on some kind of a Secret Service call or FBI wanted list or, uh, do you think it's appropriate to say something like that, or even pray for something like that?

Drake: I think it's appropriate to pray the Word of God. I'm not saying anything. What I am doing is repeating what God is saying, and if that puts me on somebody's list, then I'll just have to be on their list.

Colmes: Uh, you would like for the president of the United States to die?

Drake: If he does not turn to God and does not turn his life around, I am asking God to enforce imprecatory prayers that are throughout the Scripture, uh, that would cause him, uh, death, that's correct. I think we'll see, in the days ahead, other imprecatory prayers answered. God says clearly in his word that we are to continue to pray, and he will answer our prayers.

Since Drake is supposedly a Southern Baptist, the group's president backed away from his comments as fast as he could. Johnny Hunt called it a "terrible statement, [a] very unbiblical statement."

Is Drake determined to prove that Christian demagogues can be just as insanely bloodthirsty as their Muslim counterparts? He's certainly doing a good job at it.

Deus Vult

2009-06-09T13:06:00.003-04:00

After President Obama spoke in Cairo last week to the Muslim world, reaching out to the people whom President Bush had slapped away for years, you could hear neoconservative heads exploding all over the place. Ed Cline in particular accused Obama of making "obeisance" to his supposed Muslim masters, and pressed all the usual hot buttons in urging a continued holy war against Islam.

My reaction to all this was "deus vult."

In 1095, Pope Urban II declared a crusade to "liberate" the Middle East from Muslim control. In reply, crowds of fired-up Christians yelled out "deus vult" - God wills it - and went on to slaughter horrendous numbers of Jews, Muslims and others in the name of God.

One wonders if God was ashamed of what had been done in the holy name.

For more than seven years, the Bush Administration waged the Global War on Terror as a religious war - precisely what should not have happened. From Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin's derision of Allah as a satanic idol while preaching in uniform to official military evangelizing of the local population in Iraq and Afghanistan to the biblical quotes on the president's daily Pentagon briefings, everything was cast in a stark my-God-can-kick-your-God's-butt light.

The problem with a religious war is there can be no compromise and no middle ground. Anything less than total war is tantamount to surrender. Worse yet, it tells people of the opposing faith that they are the enemy, even if the vast majority of those people would never take up arms in such a war.

This is the dilemma in which we now find ourselves. President Bush and his crowd did indeed see Islam and all Muslims as the enemy, but how can you differentiate between "bad" Muslims and "good" Muslims? In a religious war, you ultimately cannot. Casting the battle against terrorist groups who follow a twisted view of Islam as a struggle against an entire faith guarantees that such a fight will go on forever, with new generations of recruits perpetually induced to sign up by whatever religious insult is offered at any one time.

Cline is most certainly wrong when he said that "Islam has been and is certainly now at war with the U.S. and with the West." How can a religious faith be at war with anything? If he had said that some people who follow a faction of Islam are at war with the US, he would be more correct.

Rather ironically, he also says that, "There is no reconciliation possible between...reason and faith... As with reason versus any other faith or religion, it is a matter of 'either-or.'" Considering that the previous Administration saw the world precisely in such black-and-white religious terms, it's an odd argument for him to make.

After 9/11, the entire world was with us in our battle with al Qaeda - especially the Muslim world, who rightly saw Osama bin Laden and his murderous ilk as a threat to them as well. But President Bush threw that all away, preferring to fight the War on Terror as a global crusade - with all the connotations that word implies. The Administration and the larger Republican Party did everything they could to cast Muslims of all stripes as a vague and threatening Other, and all American Muslims were seen as potential traitors and terrorists. Is it any wonder that the Muslim world now sees us with deep suspicion, and is it any wonder that President Obama now has a lot of work to do to correct that image?

Let's look at it this way: suppose 9/11 had been carried out not by nineteen followers of bin Laden's perverted brand of Islam, but by nineteen followers of an apocalyptic Jewish sect. (And don't say "Jews would never do that" - look at Baruch Goldstein.) The vast majority of Jews loudly denounce what was done in their name and promise to root out the killers in their midst. And then the White House reacts by declaring war on Judaism itself, claiming that the religion is inherently violent and terroristic, no matter what actual Jews may say or do. The military goes on to invade and destroy Israel, desecrate the tallitot and tefillin of Jewish prisoners, and distribute Christian Bibles in Hebrew to convert local Jews to the "right" faith.

Makes you think, doesn't it?

President Obama was absolutely right last week in Cairo. We can no longer afford to treat 1.5 billion people as "less than" because they follow the same basic faith as do a band of fanatical killers. Such an approach would be tantamount to treating all Jews like Baruch Goldstein, or all Christians like Torquemada. If we want the Muslim world to live with us in peace, we have to live with them in peace, and that starts with treating them like adult human beings instead of religious untermenschen.

The Freedom Concerts Scam

2009-06-01T08:57:00.013-04:00

It's that time of year again. The days are growing longer, the air is getting warmer and the kids are looking forward to summer vacation. Which also means it's time for Sean Hannity to start plugging his "Freedom Concerts" series on his TV and radio shows.

"It's all to raise money for a great cause," Hannity says, "the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, which gives scholarships to the children of slain heroes." Great idea - kids whose parents died while serving our country certainly deserve all the help we can give. Lord knows they've earned it.

But the Freedom Concerts aren't as advertised. Only a tiny fraction of the ticket money ever gets to the people who need it.

While the fine print has mysteriously disappeared from Hannity's website, a number of bloggers preserved it for posterity: "The following fees are included in the above ticket prices: $4.75 facility fee, $4.25 parking fee, and a $4.00 donation to the Freedom Alliance." (Note: This is from 2007, but since Hannity no longer tells anyone how much of the ticket price is actually donated, let's assume nothing has changed.)

Putting aside the fact that parking costs more than the actual donation, the amount given is the same no matter how much you spend on a ticket - four dollars. Ticket prices can go to $300 or more, but let's say you get one of the cheap seats at $75, which means 5.3% is donated.

Now that you have your ticket, take a moment to note the fine print - the $4 does not go directly to the scholarship fund, but rather to the Freedom Alliance as a whole. This tax-exempt group, founded by Iran-Contra scoundrel and Fox News talking head Oliver North, exists primarily to push all sorts of right-wing causes. According to their website, "the Mission of Freedom Alliance is to advance the American heritage of freedom by honoring and encouraging military service, defending the sovereignty of the United States and promoting a strong national defense."

Oh yes, and they also throw a few bucks to the troops here and there. The FA's most recent Form 990 (the IRS form filed by tax-exempt groups) says they took in $12,459,317 in 2007. But if you keep looking, you find some surprising information on what was spent where:

Salaries: $1,063,018
Postage and shipping: $1,424,627
Printing and publications: $1,151,428
Grants and allocations: $895,347

That works out to 7.2% of their revenue being spent on grants. (By comparison, the United Negro College Fund spends 56% of their revenue on grants.) And if that doesn't grab you, consider that they actually spend more just on stamps than on the people who are supposed to be getting help.

But wait, it gets worse. If you run down the list of scholarship grants as given in the Form 990 (none of which are more than $6000, a small fraction of actual college costs) and add everything up, you get the grand total of $597,500.

$597,500 out of $12,459,317 is 4.8%. Combine that with the 5.3% of the cheap-seats ticket price and you get a final percentage of 0.25% of your money actually going for scholarships.

And if you get one of those $300 tickets, just 0.064% goes to the supposed purpose.

So when Hannity and his ilk flog their Freedom Concerts as a fundraiser for the kids of dead soldiers, they are actually perpetrating an extraordinarily cruel and heartless scam. They are ripping off well-meaning concertgoers who think they're helping the children of America's fallen warriors. Raking in the dough, they keep most of it for themselves while giving a pittance to those who need it the most.

There should be a special place in hell reserved for people like this.

Let the Slime Begin

2009-05-27T16:24:00.006-04:00

In the twenty-four hours since President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the GOP and the right wing have gone crazy all at once. Amid all the snide remarks to her gender and ethnicity, two stand out as quite possibly the stupidest reasons to reject a nomination - ever.

For starters, Mark Krikorian attacked Sotomayor for the way she pronounces her name: "Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English...and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to."

But that one looks positively sane next to some Republicans who actually blasted Sotomayor for, of all things, her tastes in food. In a 2001 speech, the judge talked about how the cuisine of her Puerto Rican heritage helped to shape her identity: "For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events."

That was a big red flag for the super-patriots among us for whom anything other than burgers and hot dogs is akin to Communism:

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo - pigs' tongue and ears - would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn't certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama's Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

"It's pretty disturbing," said Levey. "It's one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality. But it's almost like she's proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality."

This is truly nuts. And this is the best they've got! The GOP obviously cannot challenge the nomination on its merits, so they're going all-in on the slime right at the get-go.

It's going to be a long and dirty summer.

Everybody Run, the National Park Visitor's Got a Gun

2009-05-24T22:37:00.004-04:00

The gun lobby has been quite busy these last few months stoking paranoia throughout the land, spreading fantasies that President Obama will take everyone's guns away. Meanwhile, they've also been pressuring Congress to take a truly stupid step - allowing people to carry guns, concealed or open, in America's national parks. The NRA sold the bill as a measure allowing park visitors to protect themselves against the marauding fiends who presumably rampage through our national parks with abandon.

Except they're not.

By any standard, America's national park system is one of the safest places to be in the country. According to the National Park Service, the FBI recorded 382 major crimes (i.e., murder, rape, robbery or aggravated assault) throughout the park system in 2007. With 275 million people visiting 34 million acres of federal parkland, that means you had a 0.000139% chance of being the victim of a violent crime.

By comparison, the state of South Dakota (population 800,000) recorded 1347 violent crimes, giving you a 0.17% chance of being a violent-crime victim there. So in other words, your chances of being a crime victim in South Dakota are one thousand, two hundred and eleven times greater than being a crime victim in a national park.

But that doesn't matter to the gun lobby. To the NRA, guns must be allowed anywhere at any time, consequences be damned. And there will be consequences. Imagine people getting into an argument over parking spaces, or camping sites, or anything else, and finding out the hard way that someone has both a .38-caliber pistol and an itchy trigger finger.

Another clue that the gun lobby might not have thought this one through is the existence of President's Park, a national park on the east coast. Steeped in history, the park is a focal point for news coverage, is visited by world leaders, and is admired by Americans of all ages.

President's Park, you see, is the White House. And somehow, I doubt the Secret Service would appreciate hordes of Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights by packing heat anywhere near the president.

This is a dumb idea, plain and simple. The amendment, sneaked into a bill reining in credit-card companies, was dutifully passed by Congress and sent to the White House. President Obama will probably sign the bill to achieve its major purpose, but Congress should remedy this nonsense at the first opportunity.

Mustard-Gate

2009-05-08T11:38:00.005-04:00

It has now been 108 days since Barack Obama became president, and in that short time the Republican Party and their media mouthpieces have gone nuts trying to paint him as a secret Commie Muslim who is a milquetoast abroad and a tyrant at home. You know, the usual tactics of a political movement which has absolutely nothing to offer the American people apart from fear and loathing.

But this time, they may just have outdone themselves, descending from standard political hackery to all-out batshit craziness.

The other day, Omaba and Vice President Biden stopped in at a Virginia burger joint. Nothing fancy about it, just lunch combined with a standard "man of the people" photo op. So what happened? Well, let's allow Fox News' Sean Hannity to explain:

Yes, because Obama likes his burger with some spicy bite, he is somehow an un-American crank worthy of sniggering derision. Real Americans apparently like ketchup, and you're clearly a Communist/terrorist/etc if you happen to want something else. (Better not tell Hannity that some of us actually like - gasp! - green chile on our burgers!)

This is so stupid there are hardly words for it. I like to believe that even Hannity doesn't buy into the crap he shovels out, but stranger things have happened. Maybe he really has hypnotized himself into thinking that you can judge whether someone is a real American depending on which lunchtime condiment they prefer.

Or perhaps he's smirking because he just sold his audience another whopper.

The Operative Budget

2009-04-01T12:44:00.008-04:00

Ron Ziegler, Richard Nixon's press secretary, once had the thankless job of telling the White House press corps that his boss had lied like a cheap rug. "This is the operative statement," he said in 1973 as he told the assembled reporters to ignore whatever he had said in the past. "The others are inoperative.''

The Republican Party now seems to be having seances with Ziegler's ghost for inspiration.

Last week, the party leadership staged a disastrous "budget unveiling" which did not feature any actual budgeting. In the chorus of boos and catcalls which followed, the GOP hastily explained that the stunt was never actually intended to present a budget (suuuure it wasn't) but was merely a warm-up for the actual budget unveiling. And so, the supposedly best and brightest of the GOP assembled this morning to present what Ziegler might have called their operative budget.

No one in the party seems to have realized that this shindig took place on April Fool's Day. So as expected, their budget is a joke. Less amusingly, it's a disaster for anyone who doesn't have gobs of money - in other words, 99.99% of us.

The proposal brings back the good old days of supply-side tax cuts, dropping the top tax rate to 25% for anyone making over $50,000 a year ($100,000 for joint filers). Everyone else pays a 10% rate.

So let's do some math. Let's suppose Bob and Carol Moneybags earn a combined $400,000 annually, so they currently pay 35%, or $140,000, in federal income taxes. (For simplicity's sake, let's assume they have no kids and no deductions.) Under the Republican proposal, their rate would be cut to 25%, or $100,000, for a tax savings of $40,000.

Now let's look at Ted and Alice Worker, who together make $56,000 a year. Their current tax rate is 15%, so they pay $8400 in tax. The GOP plan cuts that to 10%, or $5600, for a tax savings of $2800.

So let's compare. The Moneybags' tax savings are more than fourteen times that of the Workers, despite the fact they make only seven times as much, so the budget proportionally gives far less in tax savings to the people who need it the most.

But wait, there's more. The GOP plan also "eliminates nearly all existing tax deductions, exclusions, and other special provisions" - mortgage interest, child care, medical care, job hunting, et cetera - that have made it possible for the middle class to retain some fiscal viability even in the current economy. The upshot of this is that a full third of lower- and middle-class taxpayers (that is, those of us in the bottom 60% of the income scale) would actually pay more under the GOP plan than they do now.

So in other words, Bob and Carol would royally screw Ted and Alice.

And if all that weren't bad enough, the GOP budget would impose an across-the-board freeze for all non-military spending (the Pentagon budget would increase to $714 billion by 2019) just when we need it the most. More money for schools? Too bad. More money to fix roads and bridges? Buy a Learjet and fly above them. The economic stimulus? Gone.

But holders of Treasury bonds and other forms of public debt would do just dandy, thank you very much. The GOP envisions the annual interest paid on the national debt to increase from $170 billion in 2009 to $643 billion in 2019 - a 278% increase with absolutely nothing to show for it.

And in a truly bizarre example of how to pull numbers out of one's hindquarters, the GOP offers this graph as "proof" that they know best:

Yes, the Republicans insist they know how their budgeting will affect government revenue in seventy years. The party must have an official Bureau of Making Crap Up in order to get something like this.

The actual legislation text says that "within ten years of enactment of this legislation, individuals would choose one of the two tax systems: the current tax code or the simplified system." So the GOP is openly admitting that their plan would make the existence of one tax system for the rich and another for everyone else de jure rather than de facto.

Furthermore, the GOP's insistence that their budget plan will work is based on the assumption that everyone is willing to pay a higher tax rate rather than go for the lower one. Of course, no one will do that; everyone will naturally go for the lower rate, which blows the party's rosy scenario right out of the water.

Anyway, with the stimulus scrapped entirely, the Republicans are betting that any economic recovery will occur purely due to tax cuts, which has been proved time and again to be fallacious. Tax cuts by themselves don't have any significant economic effect, particularly not such trickle-down cuts as the GOP is proposing.

So rather than come up with solutions to fix our economic woes, the Republicans have delved into the all-too-recent past to dredge up George W. Bush's tax policy - exactly the sort of nonsense that got us into this mess in the first place.

The GOP really is a broken record, condemned to repeat the same twaddle endlessly. Congress should send this supposed "alternative plan" packing until the Republicans show they have some connection to reality.

Aaand It's Gone

2009-03-31T10:18:00.012-04:00

Last week's South Park episode "Margaritaville" turned its harshly satirical light on the current global financial crisis as only Trey Parker and Matt Stone can. In a scene which speaks volumes, Stan goes to the bank to deposit $100 only to have the bank lose it within a few seconds:

Bank teller: We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaand it's gone.
(long pause)
Stan: Uh, what?
Bank teller: It's gone. It's all gone.
Stan: What's all gone?
Bank teller: The money in your account - it didn't do too well, it's gone.
Stan: What do you mean? I have a hundred dollars.
Bank teller: Not anymore you don't. Poof.

And so on. In a case of life imitating art imitating life, we now have a story which should get anyone's blood boiling. When most American companies moved away from traditional pension plans, they set up 401(k) retirement plans instead and invested the money in the stock markets. 401(k) holders have thus been particularly savaged by the Wall Street plunge, but if you have an old-fashioned pension, your retirement fund is safe, guaranteed by the federal government - right?

Wrong. The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency tasked with insuring pension plans, made some rather unorthodox investment decisions. The PBGC has traditionally invested very conservatively in bonds, with an emphasis on long-term stability and security rather than short-term gains.

But in early 2008, as economists the world over were shouting warnings that the housing bubble was popping and that Wall Street was about to crater, the PBGC board signed off on a plan to change its investment model. The agency thus moved more than half of its $64 billion fund to more speculative ventures, including emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

Aaand it's gone.

The PBGC won't say just how much of the fund has vanished, but they admit that at the end of its last fiscal year, the fund was down by 6.5% and its stock investments were down by 23%. But the last fiscal year ended in September 2008, before the worst of the market carnage, and the agency has so far refused to give figures for this year. That doesn't sound good.

So who's responsible for what sure looks like a case of outright criminal negligence? Charles E.F. Millard, who headed the agency until the Obama Administration took over in January, just happens to be a former managing director of Lehman Brothers - which invested heavily in subprime mortgages and then went under last fall when the subprime market collapsed. At the time the strategy was changed, he claimed that "the new investment policy is not riskier than the old one."

Uh huh.

After the market collapsed, Millard was asked whether his strategy might have been, well, stupid. "Ask me in twenty years," he replied dismissively. "The question is whether policymakers will have the fortitude to stick with it."

Um, Chuckie, the retirees who are now broke because of your greed-fueled shortsightedness don't have twenty years. They're too busy trying to survive to "stick with it."

If there's anyone who deserves to go to jail in this whole miserable economic crisis, it's Millard and whoever else is responsible for this.

GOP Underpants Gnomes

2009-03-27T11:47:00.003-04:00

Ever since President Obama was inaugurated back in January, the Republican Party has done nothing but say "no" to anything he has suggested. No plans, no alternatives, no nothing. It got so ludicrous that in his press conference this week, Obama chided the Republicans for their incessant carping yet never proposing anything else.

Eventually, the GOP realized they really don't want to be known as the Party of No and so loudly went before the cameras yesterday to unveil their budget. Except they didn't.

Rather, what they presented was a 17-page (19 if you count the front and back covers) pamphlet called "The Republican Road to Recovery" which contained precisely zero budget numbers. Instead, it spends all its time complaining about the president's proposed budget with a few cheap shots thrown in for effect:

According to Senator Kennedy's campaign website, the [wind farm] project [off the coast of Massachusetts] would undermine "the ecology of the Sound and will jeopardize the public interest." The Senator once remarked, "Don't you realize - that's where I sail!"

In fact, the only thing even approaching a budget number is yet another big tax cut for anyone making over $100,000 a year. Yes, another one.

In a nutshell, the pamphlet is, shall we say, light on details. For example, this is how the GOP proposes to fix the nation's housing crisis:

That's it. No details, just a feel-good graphic.

The rollout was a disaster, with media, pundits and bloggers all complaining that the supposed "big announcement" was little more than a bait-and-switch scam. Even the conservative National Review blasted the party, saying that the stunt was "a bottle full of air."

In their defense, the GOP claimed they would introduce their actual budget - with real numbers, no less! - in Congress next Wednesday.

Has anyone else noticed that next Wednesday is April Fool's Day?

This whole fiasco reminds me of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park, who also claimed to have a terrific plan:

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

That's the standard GOP operation right now: offer meaningless platitudes, skip whatever actual work needs to be done, and just say that everything will be fine.

And they wonder why no one trusts them.

Holy Disgusting

2009-03-09T11:49:00.003-04:00

For years, the Catholic Church has been trying to put the horrors of the sexual abuse scandals behind them and bring the Church into something resembling the present.

And then they blow themselves all the way back to the Middle Ages.

A man from Brazil, who had been raping his two stepdaughters for years, was arrested after it was discovered that one of them was four months pregnant.

She is nine years old. Her sister, who is "only" fourteen, is physically handicapped.

Brazil has some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, barring the procedure in all cases except those involving rape and danger to the mother's life. With both conditions having been met in spades, the procedure was performed and the the girl's life was saved. The stepfather is now in jail where he belongs, and I for one hope he never gets out.

And then Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the mother and the girl's doctors for performing the abortion, telling a Brazilian TV network that "the law of God [is] above any human law." Attempting to show that he is not a complete jerk, the archbishop graciously did not excommunicate the rape victim herself.

With Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemning the Church's outrageous take on the tragedy, it was noticed that the stepfather was not excommunicated.

That was not an accident, Sobrinho said. "It is clear that he committed a very serious sin," he said as he defended the Church's actions, "but worse than this is the abortion."

Let me get this straight: a monster who rapes children and gets a nine-year-old girl pregnant is actually better than the girl's mother and the doctors who save her life?

According to the Vatican, yes. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, weighed in over the weekend. "It is a sad case," he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, "but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated."

And the Church hierarchy wonders why Catholics are leaving in droves. It's only a matter of time before the Church's medieval outlook on life ensnares them as well.

Capitol Hill, Den of Marxists

2008-12-03T13:22:00.002-05:00

Years behind schedule and millions of dollars over budget, the Capitol Visitor Center has finally opened, presenting a thumbnail view of the Capitol Building's history and what Congress does.

But it wouldn't be America if someone didn't like it.

Jim DeMint, a Republican (naturally) senator from South Carolina, issued a statement on his website blasting the new visitor center for rampant leftism and insufficient fealty to religion:

The current CVC displays are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society's problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans' rights "are endowed by their Creator" and stem from "a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence." Instead, the CVC's most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, "We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution." This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation's real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings.

DeMint appears to see his job not as representing his constituents, or making policy, but rather to ensure that Americans have the correct religious viewpoint. He is apparently ignorant of the simple fact that not all of us share his religious beliefs. Nor does he know (or care) that in America, church and state and kept separate to protect each from encroachment by the other.

The senator needs a refresher course.

God, Head of Security

2008-12-01T13:13:00.003-05:00

People from Appalachian states like Kentucky have an image of being ignorant, inbred yahoos who substitute pithy slogans for actual thinking, while people who live in these states wonder why they can't shake that image.

Well, maybe it's because of things like Chapter 39G, Section 10, Paragraph 2(a) of the Kentucky Revised Statutes. Section 10 in effect presents the job description of the state Homeland Security director, and includes such duties as coordinating with the federal Department of Homeland Security to protect the state against various threats.

So far so good. But before all that mundane stuff comes a paragraph detailing the director's prime duty:

Publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth by including the provisions of KRS 39A.285(3) in its agency training and educational materials. The executive director shall also be responsible for prominently displaying a permanent plaque at the entrance to the state's Emergency Operations Center stating the text of KRS 39A.285(3);

In case you're wondering, Chapter 39A, Section 285, Paragraph 3 reads as follows:

The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln's historic March 30, 1863, Presidential Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours in American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy's November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: "For as was written long ago: 'Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' "

Yes, the main job of the state Homeland Security director, even before he gets to all that stuff about, you know, security, is to praise God.

Proving that some people in the state government rise above the prevailing gene pool, neither the department's website nor its mission statement give the legally required credit to the Almighty. State Rep. Tom Riner, who inserted the God Clause back in 2002, is having a hissy fit over this minor oversight.

Perhaps the state government expects a tent revival to ward off terrorists. What next? Will all state residents receive crosses, garlic and holy water? (And do crosses even work to ward off Muslims anyway?)

This is why people think states like Kentucky are filled with ignorant hillbillies.

The Circular Firing Squad Assembles

2008-11-06T11:57:00.002-05:00

With the election over, the knives have come out. Yes, open warfare has broken out between the staffers of John McCain and Sarah Palin, each one blaming the other for Tuesday's loss.

McCain's people let slip to the media that Palin was rather fuzzy on some basic facts. For example, she thought Africa was a country rather than a continent and she didn't know which countries are party to the North American Free Trade Agreement. (Answer: the United States, Canada and Mexico.) They also said that her now-infamous shopping spree was far more expensive than previously disclosed and that many of the clothes have mysteriously disappeared.

Even Fox News - Fox News! - has found it hard to defend her.

In retaliation, Palin's people have gone crying to Rush Limbaugh and the nuttiest of the wingnuts, complaining that all the people saying bad things about this poor helpless woman are just a bunch of sore-loser poopyheads. And the real wingnuts in the GOP have vowed not only to boycott Fox News, but to push all the insufficiently pure out of the party, leaving only the true believers behind.

Yes, they're serious. The American people rejected on Tuesday a Republican Party controlled by the crazies, so the solution is quite simple: more crazies!

I, for one, welcome a GOP controlled by people who are firmly dedicated to denying reality. After all, that's a sure-fire recipe for permanent Democratic control of our government.

The Morning After

2008-11-05T12:30:00.002-05:00

Wow.

Just - wow.

What a night. After eight years of disastrous government, of endless and useless war, of a completely preventable economic collapse, the grownups finally got elected last night. The American people soundly rejected the fear-and-smear politics that has marked the GOP for the last twenty years, and told Karl Rove and his acolytes to go back to their caves.

As John McCain made his concession speech last night, you could see it in his face - the crushing realization that had he not jettisoned his principles and caved in to the God-guns-and-gays wing of the party, he might well have won the election. But no, he allowed Sarah Palin to be foisted onto the ticket and handed control of the campaign over to the crazies.

And now we have the results.

Barack Obama gave us real-world solutions to our domestic and international crises, while McCain could only mumble about Joe the Plumber and Bill Ayers.

The GOP sneered at Obama's Ivy League education as "elitist," portraying Palin's six-schools-in-five-years college career as something to be emulated. What they never figured out is that when it comes to important things like government, we want our leaders to be not just good, but the best.

Let's suppose you get very sick and have to be rushed to the hospital. What sort of doctor do you want working on you? Do you want someone who went to Harvard Medical School, been board-certified in numerous specialties, keeps up with the latest research, regularly takes refresher courses, and generally makes sure that she's the best damn doctor around?

Or do you want someone who graduated at the bottom of her class from some fourth-rate school, barely passed her medical boards, and just manages to avoid losing her license every other month?

The tale of the Regular Joe solving everyone's problems with some down-home common sense makes for a good story, but in the real world we see what that gets us - a government that lurches from disaster to disaster, consumed by the arrogance of power.

With the Democrats taking control of the White House as well as both houses of Congress, we now have a real chance to restore economic and social justice to America. No more trickle-down economics that ends up trickling on the people who need help the most. A strong middle class makes it better for everyone. And even though there are bumps along the way (e.g., California's apparent passage of the ballot initiative banning gay marriage) it's time to treat all Americans as first-class citizens.

So let's roll up our sleeves and get to work. We've come a long way, but we've got a long way to go.

One Day to Go

2008-11-03T09:41:00.002-05:00

Election Day is tomorrow, and that means both campaigns are pulling out all the stops. It is said that the final few days of any campaign tells you far more about the person running for office than all the speeches and debates can possibly do. Let's compare:

Barack Obama bought thirty minutes of prime time television to tell America in plain English how he will rework the nation's tax policies, work to fix the economic crisis, and rebuild our shattered international image while dealing with potential threads.
John McCain sent out his surrogates to call Obama disloyal.

Quite a difference, no?

But now it's all up to you. No matter who you support, get out to the polls tomorrow and cast your ballot. Make a difference. Exercise your right to steer our nation's future.

Vote!

Go to Hell. Go Directly to Hell. Do Not Pass Go. Do Not Collect $200.

2008-10-28T10:59:00.006-04:00

It had to happen. With just one week left before Election Day, the GOP wingnuts have gone completely insane. They are throwing anything and everything they can think of at Barack Obama in a last desperate attempt at scaring people into voting for John McCain.

To wit, see Christian talk-radio host Janet Porter's latest column, in which she claims in stark us-versus-them tones that "You Cannot Be a Christian and Vote for Obama:"

[T]his election is not about race. It's not about the economy. It's about obeying God...

Be forewarned: If you willfully disobey God on life and marriage because of race or false hope for the economy, you will usher in the kind of change that brought the Soviet Union to collapse.

But the warning goes far beyond that. To those who think that God's grace gives them license to willfully disobey Him without consequences – think again:

"Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!' (Matthew 7:21-23)"

Yes, the GOP's God-guns-and-gays wing really is threatening Americans with hellfire and brimstone should we vote for Obama. Promising mayhem for voting the "wrong" way is nothing new for the Republicans, but I think this is the first time they have actually threatened us with eternal damnation.

And then she goes even further, saying that anyone who does not vote for McCain cannot be a Christian: "[O]bey Him in the voting booth and out of it. If not, do us all a favor and quit calling yourself a Christian."

Last I heard, God hasn't endorsed anyone this year.

Religious hatred has no place in American elections or anywhere else, and it only goes to show how desperate they are that they would stoop to these methods.

McCain is toast and they know it, so the Republicans have nothing to lose. But regardless of how McCain may go down in flames next week, such tactics may well ensure that the party goes down in flames with him.

Mud Will Be Flung Tonight

2008-10-27T13:27:00.005-04:00

With eight days to go, John McCain's campaign clearly realizes it's over. Staffers have begun circulating their resumés, a senior McCain aide accused Sarah Palin of "going rogue," and the finger-pointing is rampant over at campaign HQ.

McCain and Palin have absolutely nothing positive to say on their own behalf - and that was before the story of Palin's $150,000 luxury shopping spree (paid for by the Republican Party) broke.

Remember John Edwards' infamous $400 haircut, about which the GOP spent weeks fulminating? The McCain campaign outspent him by 37,500%.

And the wretched excess for this supposed "plain folk hockey mom" just keeps on going - during just the first two weeks in October, the party shelled out $22,800 on Palin's makeup and another $10,000 on hairstyling. With Newsweek reporting that many GOP donors are "furious" over how their contributions were spent, the party seems in real danger of alienating their most deep-pocketed backers.

So the campaign has gone all-in on the mudslinging.

Palin's appeal last week to the "pro-America" parts of the country blew up in her face and she was forced to apologize, but the campaign continues to depict Barack Obama as a threatening Other. Rep. Michelle Bachmann, who last distinguished herself by bragging that her Minnesota constituents have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, even called Obama "anti-American" and demanded a media exposé of similar senators and representatives.

A few weeks ago, Obama told the much-exploited "Joe the Plumber" that he wants to "spread the wealth around" rather than have it concentrated in only a few hands. So naturally, the McCain campaign seized on Obama's comment to paint him as some sort of secret Communist. The usual suspects (Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, etc) did their jobs admirably, parroting GOP talking points ad nauseum. Orlando TV reporter Barbara West even quoted Karl Marx's famous definition of Socialism ("from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs") and asked Joe Biden on Thursday, "how is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?" (Biden's response was to laugh and ask, "Is this a joke? Or is that a real question?")

So now we see what the GOP really boils down to. With all their usual wedge issues (terrorism, gay marriage, etc) having failed, with a barely-there candidate and a loose-cannon running mate, and with an economy in which income inequality in some major American cities is at third-world levels, all they have left is hate and fear. But the more hate and fear the GOP unleashes at Democrats, the more the American people turn away in revulsion.

Of course, the Republicans haven't yet figured that out. And the longer they take, the bigger the Democratic victory next week will be.

It's Over

2008-10-16T17:04:00.005-04:00

Twenty years ago, Michael Dukakis blew his chance at being elected president when he was asked whether he would support executing someone who (theoretically) raped and murdered his wife Kitty. Already seen as so mild-mannered to be almost comatose, his response was to launch into a dry spiel on why he opposed capital punishment. His campaign promptly went into a death spiral from which it never recovered.

We may have seen John McCain similarly self-destruct during last night's debate. Smirking and snickering, giving his rictus-like grin, blinking furiously as he clearly struggled to hold his temper, the Republican nominee came across as little more than a cranky old man. One half expected him to jump up from his chair and yell at Barack Obama to get off his lawn.

From his relentless invoking of a supposedly undecided "Joe the Plumber" (who, as it turns out, is neither undecided nor a plumber) to his insulting "air quotes" when rejecting health-based exceptions to an abortion ban, McCain all but poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. (And let's not even get into his exploiting his Bangladesh-born daughter to bash Obama over abortion. As a parent via adoption myself, I find that crass and tacky at the very least.)

The real John McCain was on display last night for all to see - someone who is painfully out of touch with the real world and has no real interest in finding out about it. Safely ensconced within one of his dozen or so homes, he has no clue that there is a whole country outside his little bubble where people agonize over how to pay the mortgage and parents go hungry so their kids can eat. And since he has absolutely nothing to offer apart from yet another budget-busting tax cut for the rich, he has no choice but to try and distract people with manufactured non-issues.

When he once again brings up one-time radical William Ayres, no one outside the rabid GOP wingnuttia cares. Even fewer people are at all sympathetic when he whines about being criticized for the anti-Obama shouts of "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" at his rallies.

And when he does nothing but throw tons of mud at Obama, blame the target for fighting back and then immediately claim that "of course, I've been talking about the economy," he comes across as confused and bitter.

With McCain's campaign now sagging into a nosedive, his staffers are predictably turning on each other. Some are blasting the candidate's reckless selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate and letting her run wild, calling her an "albatross" and a "total disaster." Every time she accuses Obama of "palling around with terrorists," McCain's poll numbers drop ever lower.

Too late, they realize that ignoring the real issues which confront Americans and instead running the campaign from a sewer is the contemporary equivalent of Pat Buchanan's "culture war" speech at the 1992 GOP convention. It's something that may fire up your core supporters but leaves the rest of us aghast.

The McCain campaign is toast. It's over.

McCain's Señor Moment

2008-09-19T09:45:00.005-04:00

After all these months on the campaign trail, it is painfully obvious that John McCain is a spin doctor's worst nightmare. His constant confusions, misstatements and gaffes have dogged him all the way, and while the press has largely given him a pass on it, they're piling up to the point where they can no longer be ignored.

But he really outdid himself this week. Interviewed for the Spanish-language radio network Union Radio, McCain was asked whether he would meet with Spanish president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero if elected.

"I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion," he said. So far so good.

But then he went off the rails.

"And by the way," he continued, "President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very, very tough fight against the drug cartels. I am glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. And I intend to move forward with relations and invite as many of them as I can, of those leaders to the White House."

The question was not about Mexico.

Asked again whether he would invite Zapatero, McCain dug himself in deeper. "All I can tell you is I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not. And that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America and the entire region."

Spain is not in Latin America.

At this point, the candidate was so clearly lost that the interviewer took pity on him and tried explicitly to get him back on track. "Okay, what about Europe?" she said. "I'm talking about the President of Spain."

"What about me what?" McCain replied.

Oh, dear God. The man seems to have no idea where he is or what he's talking about. I can excuse his not knowing the name of the Spanish president, but he really should have boned up on it beforehand - after all, he was going on Spanish-language radio.

But does he really not know where Spain is?

The campaign went into full panic mode, rolling out its talking heads to insist that McCain is not suffering from dementia but he actually intended to call Zapatero a dictator. (For the record, Zapatero was democratically elected and is committed to democratic government in Spain.)

Both explanations are dreadful. If you believe the first one, then the GOP nominee is clearly not playing with a full deck and would be a disaster as president. But if you believe the second one, then McCain is dedicated to continuing the Bush policy of ticking off every ally we have in the world, meaning he'd still be a disaster as president.

There is, of course, a third explanation - that McCain simply misheard the question (although the interviewer repeated it more than once) or got confused because previous questions had concerned Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and other South American leaders who disagree with the United States. But that's not very reassuring either, because one expects the president to know one country's leader from another. Which brings us back to the same question of whether McCain is firing on all cylinders.

In any event, rather than simply admit that McCain got it wrong, his handlers instead created a diplomatic kerfluffle by claiming that he deliberately snubbed the president of Spain. The Spanish embassy released a statement saying, "The only plausible explanation for McCain not wanting to meet with Zapatero, is that, like Bush, he is still angry about Spain pulling its troops out of Iraq in 2004. If McCain carries that much of a grudge then how in the world will he rebuild our relationship with Europe, as he has said he would do."

Great choice, guys.

With six and a half weeks left until the election, only God knows what else he will come up with.

Big Bad Maverick

2008-09-16T11:52:00.002-04:00

It appears that the Maverick™ is having a tough time of it lately. Whether it's his claim that only people who make more than $5 million a year can be called "rich" or his insistence that our economic problems are merely "psychological," John McCain seems to be a little, well, out of touch with what's going on in the world.

Over the weekend, the venerable investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed into bankruptcy. Merrill Lynch almost went the same route only to be assimilated by Bank of America. Wall Street responded by sending the Dow down by more than 500 points.

And McCain's reaction to all this was to proclaim that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

One might suspect that he hasn't been taking his Geritol.

Barack Obama immediately pointed out that McCain is clearly and "disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans."

McCain struck back, and he did it mostly by whining.

"This economic crisis is not the fault of the American people," he said. "Our workers are the most innovative, the hardest working, the best skilled, most productive, most competitive in the world. My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong. No one can match an American worker. Our workers sell more goods to more markets than any other on earth. Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today."

Translation: that mean Negro is saying bad things about the people who actually do the work.

Where did the straight-talking McCain go? The John McCain who was always eager to stand up for what's right, even if that meant going against his own party, is dead and gone. In his place is someone who refuses to accept criticism and take his lumps when he deserves it. Instead, this new and definitely not improved McCain always hides behind something or someone.

You can't say anything about him because he was a POW. You can't say anything about Sarah Palin because that's sexist. You can't say anything about the Iraq or Afghanistan wars because you're not supporting the troops. And you can't say anything about the economy because you're attacking the working class.

Meanwhile, his lying has gotten so egregious that Karl Rove - Karl Rove! - called him on it.

It appears that the Straight Talk Express has broken down, and it ain't moving again.

Book-Banning Experience

2008-09-05T13:35:00.004-04:00

As the GOP faithful rallied round Sarah Palin this week, accusing the media of sexism for daring to question her qualifications and background, yet another in a very long line of disturbing stories emerged from her tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

It appears that once she got elected, Palin asked the town librarian if she would purge the library of supposedly inappropriate books. Aghast, Mary Ellen Emmons immediately rejected the demand and Palin responded by firing her. But since Emmons was a popular figure in town, there was a backlash and Palin backed down, reinstating her.

And so the tale of Sarah Palin, caribou hunter and would-be book banner, becomes just a little more sordid. Last month, her church hosted the leader of Jews for Jesus, which would have been blared on Fox News etc. for months on end had it been Barack Obama's church. Add to that the mess over her firing the head of Alaska's state police in retaliation for his refusing to fire her sister's ex-husband, her claim that the Iraq War is a "task that is from God," and more. It just seems to get worse and worse.

(The McCain campaign knows they've got a potential time bomb on their hands in Palin. That's why they have barred the press from asking her any questions in interviews or Q&A sessions. Instead, reporters will be restricted to receiving talking points via the same scripted, choreographed, spoon-fed pabulum that the rest of will receive - i.e., speeches.)

Of course, her nasty and condescending speech Wednesday night only went to show why she was the pick of the Christian Right. Whether it was her sneering references to Barack Obama as a community organizer or her scornful description of the Democratic nominee "turning back the waters and healing the planet," she displayed the mentality that defines the Republican Party. Can't think of a good reason why people should vote for you? No problem! Attack the other guy as an uppity Negro who hates decent white God-fearing Americans.

And considering how the McCain campaign can't seem to get anything right - for example, their confusion of Walter Reed Middle School in California with Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington - it will only get dirtier right up to Election Day.

Better stock up on soap now.

Eagleton Redux?

2008-09-01T14:11:00.004-04:00

Back in 1972, George McGovern announced the picking of Thomas Eagleton as his running mate to widespread press coverage. Two weeks later, Eagleton was unceremoniously dumped from the ticket - also to widespread press coverage - once it was revealed that he had undergone electroshock therapy and been hospitalized numerous times for psychiatric problems. McGovern never recovered from the fiasco and went on to get creamed in November.

Are we seeing the same pattern here?

Ever since John McCain announced his VP pick of Sarah Palin on Friday, unpleasant facts have been coming out of the woodwork:

Palin and her staff pressured public safety commissioner Walt Monegan to fire a state trooper who just happened to be in a bitter divorce and custody fight with Palin's sister. When he refused, Palin fired Monegan and replaced him with a known sexual harasser who lasted only two weeks before being pushed out himself.
Vetting was at best minimal - the McCain campaign knew nothing about the trooper scandal even though it had been big news in Alaska for weeks, and the vetting process seems to have consisted only of a single chat between McCain and Palin.
She has no foreign-policy experience at all, with Cindy McCain and Fox News being reduced to claiming that she does know about foreign policy because Alaska is right next to Russia.
As mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she fired the town police chief for supporting her opponent in the 1996 election, then was almost recalled in the ensuing uproar.
She publicly said she has no idea what the vice president's job is.
She admitted that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter Bristol is pregnant. (Ironically, Palin opposes actual sex education in schools in favor of "abstinence education," which has repeatedly been shown not to work.)

And if all that wasn't enough, there are also widespread rumors that Trig, the family's youngest child, is actually Bristol's, but was passed off as Sarah's.

So with signals of a looming train wreck all around us, just why was Palin selected? Putting aside all the beauty-queen and May-December wisecracks, it appears she was picked for two reasons and two only.

She is a woman (or, as Samantha Bee nailed it on The Daily Show, a "vagina-American") whom the GOP hopes can win the support of former Hillary Clinton voters despite having positions completely opposite to Clinton's.
She is a faithful devotee of the Christian Right, falling into line on everything from banning abortion to opposing gay marriage to teaching creationism as science in public schools.

Indeed, there are rampant murmurings that McCain actually wanted Joe Lieberman or Mitt Romney as his running mate, but both of those were nixed by the Christian Right, without whose support he cannot win in November. In other words, she was picked to convince the jihadist wing of the GOP that he will do whatever they want as long as they vote for him.

Not only that, the contempt shown for women embodied in the Palin pick is staggering. The Republicans genuinely believe that women are so dumb that they will automatically support anyone with two X chromosomes, regardless of her actual positions on anything. Poll results show that women realize this, and are not pleased.

So yes, McCain got some momentary good press out of the Palin announcement. But this seems to be turning into a nightmare very very quickly.

VPILF

2008-08-29T15:44:00.002-04:00

John McCain has successfully (at least for the moment) stolen Barack Obama's post-convention thunder by naming Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. But seeing as how she's held elective office for less than two years, has zero foreign-policy experience and is even under investigation in her home state for firing the head of the state police when he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law, she may be more trouble to the McCain campaign than she's worth.

But someone didn't wait for the announcement to start sounding off on her. On August 4, someone registered a website domain at http://www.vpilf.com touting Palin for the VP job. Now it just so happens that Palin is a former beauty-pageant contestant, and "VPILF" stands for "Vice President I'd Like to F***."

Really.

Now I started wondering who was behind the website, so I did a little digging. It seems that according to the registration info, it was set up through a masking company in Arizona:

Registrant:
Domains by Proxy, Inc.

DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: VPILF.COM
Created on: 04-Aug-08
Expires on: 04-Aug-09
Last Updated on: 04-Aug-08

Administrative Contact:
Private, Registration VPILF.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Technical Contact:
Private, Registration VPILF.COM@domainsbyproxy.com
Domains by Proxy, Inc.
DomainsByProxy.com
15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
United States
(480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598

Domain servers in listed order:
NS47.DOMAINCONTROL.COM
NS48.DOMAINCONTROL.COM

Domains by Proxy is a company whereupon anyone can register a website and keep their personal details private. So with the domain registered in Arizona, and the GOP nominee being from Arizona, is it too outrageous to wonder whether this is an arms-length ploy by the McCain campaign to "sex up" their VP candidate?

Considering that Karl Rove's winged monkeys are running the McCain campaign, that certainly doesn't seem out of the question. On the other hand, it seems remarkably shabby for even McCain's own handlers to treat Palin as just another pretty face.

On the other other hand, they've pulled stuff like this before. Is there more to this story?

Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't

2008-08-25T10:57:00.003-04:00

For what it's worth, I never thought Barack Obama would pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate in the fall election, not after all the bad blood during the primary season. But now that Obama has tapped Joe Biden, John McCain has jumped in with both feet. Yes, he quickly unveiled a campaign ad accusing Obama of telling Hillary's supporters to go jump in the lake.

"She won millions of votes but isn't on his ticket," the ad's voiceover says. "Why? For speaking the truth." The way McCain makes it sound, Obama is a thin-skinned elitist who couldn't handle her criticism of him. And he probably hates women to boot.

This is, of course, a crock. If Obama had picked Hillary as his VP, McCain would doubtless have run a different ad reminding voters of all the supposed "Clinton scandals" back in the 1990s, questioning Obama's judgment at selecting such a person to be his running mate.

This is not the first time the McCain campaign has played this game. Back when Obama made his tour of the Middle East and Europe, McCain ran an ad accusing Obama of dissing wounded soldiers in a military hospital in Germany because he didn't meet with them. Only after the ad ran - and it was shown that the Pentagon had advised Obama not to visit the soldiers - was it revealed that the GOP had prepared another ad just in case.

You see, if Obama had visited the troops, McCain would have run an ad accusing Obama of doing so purely for political purposes.

Visit the troops: get accused of using them as props.

Don't visit the troops: get accused of dissing them.

You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

And Everybody Hates the Jews

2008-08-07T11:54:00.002-04:00

Rep. Steve Cohen is a Democrat who represents Memphis, Tennessee in Congress, and is doing a pretty good job of it. He is so popular that the GOP isn't bothering to run a candidate this year, not even a sacrificial one. But he does have a primary election today, and one of his opponents has run what just may be the nastiest ad of the year:

"Our churches?" "Our churches?" Nikki Tinker is saying in code what is impolite to say openly: "That Jewish guy doesn't represent us. Vote for an honest Christian instead."

And this is a Democrat speaking. Imagine what a Republican would say.

Take My Wife - Please!

2008-08-05T17:20:00.003-04:00

John McCain has a sense of humor which can be charitably called odd. Whether it's singing a let's-bomb-Iran ditty to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann," joking about killing Iranians with American cigarette exports, or his jest about a woman being raped by a gorilla, his attempts at humor tend to backfire messily.

And now we have another example.

McCain was in Sturgis, South Dakota yesterday, campaigning at the annual Buffalo Chip biker rally. Now, it is admittedly odd for a 71-year-old man to proclaim kinship with a bunch of big Harley riders, but stranger things have happened. In the midst of the flesh-pressing and speech-making, he made a rather interesting comment about his wife Cindy, who was standing right next to him: "I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip."

A little explanation is needed here. Every year, one of the high (?) points at the Sturgis rally is an event which ESPN described far better than I can:

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year."

So was McCain really volunteering to put his wife on display? I would call it just another of his off-the-cuff attempts at cracking a joke, except the video clearly shows him reading from a prepared text.

If Barack Obama had offered Michelle up like this, the media would roast him for weeks on end - assuming, that is, he survives whatever Michelle would put him through. She's no dummy, and she sure looks tough as nails.

So McCain may have won the biker vote by showing up at Buffalo Chip, but he might have lost the women's vote with his rather crass comment. And there are a lot more women than bikers.

Obama the Anti-Christ?

2008-08-04T10:04:00.005-04:00

John McCain - or rather, his handlers - clearly realize that he has nothing going for him. He has no new ideas or new solutions. His entire campaign is based on continuing the very same policies that have dragged the current president down to historically low opinion ratings and the country into an abyss. He has surrounded himself with Karl Rove acolytes who believe that the only way to win an election is to turn your opponent into a baby-eating, grandparent-murdering monster. And if your opponent is intelligent and charismatic with a lot of good ideas, that makes it all the more challenging.

Hence McCain's latest crop of ads and talking points. His surrogates' claims of "presumptuousness" on Barack Obama's part is really just a thinly-veiled way of calling him an uppity Negro who needs to be taught his place in the world. And his TV ad comparing Obama's "celebrity" status with that of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, known nowadays primarily for boozily forgetting to put on underwear, has been widely derided as appealing to racist fears of black men hooking up with white women.

But his latest web ad goes even further.

Now, at first glance, McCain is satirizing Obama's Great White (as it were) Hope image and taking it to absurd extremes. No big deal, and the Ten Commandments clip is pretty funny in this context. But there is something deeper here.

McCain can't hope to win in November without the support of the Christian Right voters who put every one of Tim LaHaye's ultra-violent Left Behind books at the top of the best-seller list. Now it just so happens that the series' principal villain is a man who comes to power by proclaiming peace and international brotherhood but ends up doing the work of Satan.

In other words, the ad is sneakily calling Barack Obama the Anti-Christ.

Classy.

But maybe that's giving McCain's team too much credit. After all, they thought the "McCain Cribs" web video, which patronized and looked down on the young voters whose support they want, was a good idea. So they might not have actually meant to call Obama the epitome of evil.

Nah, who are we kidding? Of course they meant it. They're trying to reach the people who insist that Obama is some sort of black supremacist secret Muslim, hoping to scare them into voting for a nice white Christian man instead of some black guy with the middle name of "Hussein."

But will they get away with it?

Something Greater Than Ourselves

2008-08-01T11:05:00.003-04:00

Once in a while, something happens that makes us pause and turn away from such purely Earth-based subjects as politics and elections to make us appreciate the majesty of the Universe.

This morning, my kids and I watched a live feed of a total solar eclipse from halfway around the world. Even on a computer screen, watching the Moon slowly cover the Sun and the solar corona shine out in the darkened sky is an awesome experience.

The astronomy behind an eclipse is easy enough to understand - from Earth, the Sun and the Moon appear to be the same size. Every few years, everything lines up so perfectly that the Moon's shadow falls along a narrow path across Earth's surface. Anyone in that path sees the Moon blot out the Sun for a few glorious minutes.

But knowing the science behind an eclipse and actually seeing one, even remotely, are two very different things. Seeing the effect when the sky darkens and the Sun's coronal halo becomes visible is to know that there are greater things in the Universe than our ephemeral squabbles here on Earth.

The Dark Bush

2008-07-25T15:54:00.003-04:00

With Batmania once again sweeping the nation thanks to The Dark Knight, I suppose it was inevitable that the movie's imagery would be used for political purposes. In today's Wall Street Journal, Andrew Klavan makes a rather odd comparison:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film The Dark Knight, currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society - in which people sometimes make the wrong choices - and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

The Dark Knight, then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's 300, The Dark Knight is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans.

The chutzpah is breathtaking. Comparing President Bush to Batman? Let's take a moment to stop our heads from spinning and go down a quick list of reasons as to why this is nuttier than a can of cashews. Batman may be psychologically damaged and a bit weird at times, but he does not:

Respond to the Joker's crimes by killing the Penguin.
Kidnap the Riddler, whisk him to the Batcave, and torture him until he confesses to crimes he didn't commit.
Tell Commissioner Gordon to stuff it while blowing up half of Gotham City and spying on the other half.
Go on TV and tell the world that anyone who disagrees with him obviously loves the Joker and wants to see a large smoking crater where Gotham City used to be.

You get the idea. You can see political parallels in just about any movie, but this one is really a stretch, to put it mildly.