If You Can't Win the Argument, Scream Louder

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

"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

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

"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

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

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

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.