Fables of the reconstruction

After Weighing the Evidence Carefully, I'd Say You're Nuts

Gun nut Dave Kopel is becoming my fav Volokhian:

My view is that there is not a scintilla of evidence to suggest that our President is a jihadi.

Just his view, ya understand. Not saying it's not possible Obama is a jihadi bent on destroying the U.S.  Funny stuff then follows in comments: Some say jihadis are more respectable than Obama, the rest of us laugh.

This Protest Sponsored By Your Local Gigantic Health Insurance Company

I drove past the corner of 20th & Market in center city Philadelphia today, and on the southeast corner was a demonstration against the health care reform bill. There were at least six people, one of them had an American flag and another had a Gadsden flag ("Dont Tread on Me"), and there was some kind of sign about "freedom". I then noticed a young man who looked like he had taken his jacket and tie off who was handing out literature. It was then that I twigged to the fact that Blue Cross is on that block.  Subtle, guys.

I wish I had gotten a picture, but I was laughing too hard.

Edelweiss and Anthrax

Over at Volokh, professional gun nut David Kopel looks at a Newsweek cover ("How Do You Solve a Problem Like Sarah?") and sees a strong likeness between Sarah Palin and -- wait for it - Maria from The Sound of Music:

[The Mother Superior] ships Maria off to a job outside the abbey–a job for which Maria is totally unprepared, and a job at which Maria’s predecessors have failed. After a rough start, Maria becomes a great success, due to her common sense, kind heart, wisdom, and readiness to defy convention. In the process, Maria also stands up to foreign totalitarian aggressors (winning the support of even her staunch critic Berthe), fortifies the nationalist sentiments of her country against those aggressors, and leads the people in her care to safety and freedom.

Ergo, the question “How do you solve a problem like Sarah?’ provides its own answer, at least to people who know the film from which the song comes: Make her the President of the United States.

Ergo, motherfucker! He then disavows actually wanting Palin to become President; he's just saying Newsweek hates her but is accidentally making her look really good.

This from one of the supposedly intellectual rightwing blogs.

Hilarity results in the comments including, among other things, that Kopel totally misunderstands the song.

Obama as Prof. Xavier

I perked up when I saw this headline over at the Heritage Foundation's blog:

Pelosi Plan Would Give Health Czar Super Powers

I'm thinking, "Telepathy, that's what that official needs! No, not telepathy -- a superhuman capacity to put up with bullshit." Because it turns out there are no mutant powers, it's just Heritage being total whackjobs again. Anyone who has even read the smallest part about what they're referring to will understand they're nuts. Or lying. Or both.

Fundamentally Dishonest

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway:

When anti-abortion activist James Pouillon was shot and killed in Michigan last month, the mainstream media response was significantly more muted [than when Dr. Tiller was assassinated]. While there could be different explanations or excuses for the insignificant coverage … .

To which I responded in comments:

Oh, I wish there had been more coverage of Mr. Pouillon and why he was outside that specific school:

It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about aborton.

He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone.

After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso. …

He was at the high shool because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets.

Of course, the fact that the murderer also killed a gravel company owner and was after a real estate broker when he was caught, neither of whom had anything to do with abortion, might be a fairly decent “excuse” for not giving the story more play.

Which she deleted. Because that's just how Get Religion rolls.

Rightwing Whackjobs Make News

Washington Post:

Carney-Nunes looked at the time stamp -- 6:47 a.m. -- and closed the file without replying. She knew Malkin had driven criticism of President Obama's back-to-school speech, streamed nationwide, as an attempt to indoctrinate students. Now Malkin was asking about a YouTube video of New Jersey public school children singing and enthusiastically chanting about Obama from a Black History Month presentation.

By nightfall, Carney-Nunes's name was playing on Fox News and voice mails on her home phone and cellphone were clogged with the furious voices of strangers. The e-mails kept pouring in, by the hundreds, crammed with words spam filters try to catch: She was a "nappy-headed" traitor; she would lose her job and go to jail; she was Leni Riefenstahl, the filmmaker who glorified Hitler. ...

Carney-Nunes, who writes children's books and was a year behind Obama at Harvard Law School, watched as strangers posted her personal information on the Internet. She read, "You're a dirtbag commie propagandist trying to infect children with your failed Marxist ideology." And "your Obama chant is right out of Africa." And "get ready for a massive attack!!!" And "my friend GLENN BECK will also shove this in your face until justice is served." She made copies (which she shared with The Washington Post) and then deleted the messages, hoping the tornado would set her back down.

"I was fearful," she said. "I was looking over my shoulder." The disrespect for the office of the presidency disturbed her. "I won a contest in college and President Reagan gave me an award, and that signed letter is still hanging in its frame in the foyer of my mother's home. We are very proud of that letter, even though my mother didn't vote for him." ...

An e-mail to Malkin Saturday seeking comment was not answered.

Carney-Nunes spends a lot of her free time teaching children how to bridge divides, but she has no idea how to build a dialogue with those who attacked her.

"How can I talk to those people?" she said. "These are people who persist in believing that Barack Obama is a Muslim, that he isn't a citizen of this country. You tell me: Where is the beginning of that conversation?"

That's the meat of the story, the rest is false-equivalence and it's-always-been-bad history, which makes Father Coughlin sound like just some scamp nipping at FDR's heels. How colorful!

The nation's political discourse seems sour, angry, even dangerous; "uglier than it's ever been" is a phrase often volunteered -- as if President George W. Bush had never been depicted as Hitler, declared a dunce and heckled by Code Pink during his second inaugural address.

I swear, that MoveOn ad contest entry is getting to be for political vitriol what that woman who was burned by McDonald's coffee is for tort law. Tell me, though, which Congressional Democrats likened Bush to Hitler? Which major cable news network coordinated Code Pink's protests? I'm having trouble remembering, because it didn't happen. But yeah, Bush was a dunce.

Lies Make Baby Jesus Cry

Over at rightwing godshop Get Religion, frontpager E.E. Evans says:

It’s no secret that President Barack Obama has been viewed in quasi-Messianic terms by some on the left….

[T]he Messianic language comes from the left ….

To which I replied:

“It’s no secret” is one of those weasel phrases people use when they don’t have any evidence to cite.

She deleted the comment, but also responded to it! Which, I suppose, is novel. By way of providing evidence, she says:

Davis/Mithras, here’s a sampling of perspectives —

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1207/7281.html

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=42227

http://www.foliomag.com/files/images/rolling_stone_obama.jpg

By the way “Mithras” if you want to make a point, try making it politely. Otherwise, the next time, your comment will surely as the sun comes out tomorrow be deleted again.

Ooooh, I'm in troubbbbllllle. E.E. Evans, professional religious person, thinks I am not polite. Oh well. But what I said was:

Evans-
Of your three links: It’s interesting that 2 of them are primarily about the comments of African-Americans (the third, Rolling Stone, has to be taken as a tongue-in-cheek Star Wars reference), but you identify these people as the left generally. (Also, citing Politico is a bit tendentious, don’t you think?) I believe there is a bit of a racial/religion ghost in your characterization.

Meaning, you're a fucking liar. Shockingly, she deleted that comment, too.

You know, I give the biblethumpers at GR credit for at least having comments, unlike most rightwing bloggers, but it's hard for them to maintain their mental rigidity and still let other people talk. So they make copious use of the spike. (That's journalism lingo, kids. Isn't the internet wonderful?) I don't do that, myself. I mean, if you allow opposing comments, then you have to read them but no one else probably will. But when you delete comments, then someone like me goes back to their own blog and calls you a fucking liar for everyone to see.

U.S. Generals, Off the Record: McChrystal is Just Like Shinseki

Poor babies:

The hallways at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center buzzed with sympathy for McChrystal, who has said the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan risks failure without a rapid infusion of additional forces. Obama and his advisers are now debating strategy in Afghanistan, with some officials arguing against additional deployments.

"It was definitely a hand slap," one Army officer said of the statement last weekend by national security adviser James L. Jones, a retired Marine general, that military officials should pass advice to President Obama through their chain of command. The Army officer, like others attending the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the politically sensitive issue.

Profile in courage: An anonymous officer criticizing the President publicly for telling a commander he should work on the strategic review that is underway rather than just announce his preferred strategy.

A number of senior Army officers compared McChrystal to Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who warned before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure the country -- advice that was dismissed as "wildly off the mark" by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.

"You know what happened to Shinseki," said one Army general, referring to what many officers believe was the Bush administration's punitive treatment of the general, now Obama's secretary of veteran affairs.

Yeah, I know what happened to Shinseki. He was called before Congress to answer questions, he didn't run to the Washington Post to bitch anonymously. And when he answered Congress's questions, he was forced out. Unlike McChrystal. 

Officers said there was no question that McChrystal and other commanders would carry out whatever decisions Obama makes. "We will tell you what we think, but we are also soldiers, so if the president gives an order, we will execute it," the senior officer said.

How nice of them.

Correlation is Not Causation

Let's play spot the fallacy. (Spoiler alert: Don't read the title of this post.) Item one:

Teenagers who eat with their families less than three times a week are more likely to turn to alcohol, tobacco and drugs than those who dine with their families five times a week. ...

Since the first CASA study in 1996 saw an association between the frequency of family dinners and rates of adolescent substance abuse, numerous other studies have pointed to the importance of the family dinner. They suggest that family dinners have a positive impact on nutrition, verbal abilities, mental health and workers’ stress. The news media passionately presses the cause; it’s a cornerstone of the slow-parenting movement.

To get the gist of the rest of the article, it's titled "The Guilt-Trip Casserole."

Item two, from rightwing religion blogger Mollie Ziegler Hemingway on the supposed "opt-out movement":

[P]arents in married relationships were more likely to own their own homes, have higher household incomes, be employed, and have at least a bachelor’s degree. They were less likely to receive food stamps than other family types. ...

It’s almost like all that morality stuff that religious groups are shoving down our throats has some merit or something. At least it has some policy implications.

To their credit, the New York Times does allow an actual researcher to debunk the "guilt-trip" point of the article:

Dr. Philip A. Cowan, a psychologist and former director of the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, suggests that the alacrity with which Americans embrace equations like family dinner frequency and substance abuse speaks to their need to find “silver bullet” solutions to profound problems.

But, he cautioned in an e-mail message, there is not a proven cause and effect that more family dinners equal less drug use. “To say that family dinners are associated with good outcomes is not the same as saying that family dinners cause good outcomes,” wrote Dr. Cowan, who has studied families.

The most likely explanation for the CASA results, he added, is that families who place importance on eating together — and can organize themselves to pull it off — are those who are more likely to produce good outcomes for their children anyway.

The conservative journalist Hemingway just goes all-in and says not only that marriage produces better outcomes but that it's all the doing of religion! And when I tried to point out the fallacy in comments, she deleted it. Which is par for the course with rightwingers: Dumb and dishonest.

And of course, both of these pieces place the burden on women to conform to someone else's idea of what a "good mother" is, or else their kids will turn out to be dropout junkies and sluts. The sexism is rank, and it doesn't get a mention in either place.

Birther Suit Dismissed and Orly Taitz Threatened With Sanctions

This is nice:

[Middle District of Georgia] U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land today tossed out a complaint by an Army captain fighting deployment to Iraq by questioning the legitimacy of President Barack Obama.

Land also put attorney Orly Taitz, who represents Capt. Connie Rhodes and is a leader in the national “birther” movement, on notice by stating that she could face sanctions if she ever files a similar “frivolous” lawsuit in his court.

“(Rhodes) has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as president of the United States,” Land states in his order. “Instead, she uses her complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the president is ‘an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.’”

Orly Taitz, JD, DDS, and "frivolous" in the same sentence. I am glad some people are sane.

Update: The judge's order (pdf) will be included in an upper-level law seminar I will teach next year called Things You Don't Want a Judge to Say About You or Your Client:

The present action is the second such action filed in this Court in which counsel pursues her “birther claim.” Her modus operandi is to use military officers as parties and have them allege that they should not be required to follow deployment orders because President Obama is not constitutionally qualified to be President. Although counsel has managed to fuel this “birther movement” with her litigation and press conferences, she does not appear to have prevailed on a single claim. In fact, Plaintiff previously filed the present action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas. That Court summarily dismissed her complaint upon finding that Plaintiff “has no substantial likelihood of success on the merits.” [Cite omitted.] Counsel then re-filed the same action in this Court.

Subtle practice point here: As an attorney, you know you're in trouble when the judge writes that you have a modus operandi. Also, it's bad form to shop your case around to every District Court you think might give you a sympathetic hearing just because it's located in a red state.

Captain Rhodes entered the Army in March of 2005 and presently serves as a medical doctor.  The American taxpayers paid for her third and fourth years of medical school and financially supported her during her subsequent medical internship and residency program. In exchange for this valuable free medical education, Captain Rhodes agreed to serve two years in active service in the Army. She began that term of active service in July of 2008 and had no concerns about fulfilling her military obligation until she received orders notifying her that she would be deployed to Iraq in September of 2009.

Captain Rhodes does not seek a discharge from the Army; nor does she wish to be relieved entirely from her two year active service obligation. She has not previously made any official complaints regarding any orders or assignments that she has received, including orders that have been issued since President Obama became Commander in Chief. But she does not want to go to Iraq (or to any other destination where she may be in harm’s way, for that matter). Her “conscientious objections” to  serving under the current Commander in Chief apparently can be accommodated as long as she is permitted to remain on American soil.

Captain, you've just been called a coward by a United States District Judge. Now how do you feel?

Plaintiff’s challenge to her deployment order is frivolous. She has presented no credible evidence and has made no reliable factual allegations to support her unsubstantiated, conclusory allegations and conjecture that President Obama is ineligible to serve as President of the United States. Instead, she uses her Complaint as a platform for spouting political rhetoric, such as her claims that the President is “an illegal usurper, an unlawful pretender, [and] an unqualified imposter.” ... She continues with bare, conclusory allegations that the President is “an alien, possibly even an unnaturalized or even an unadmitted illegal alien . . . without so much as lawful residency in the United States.” ... Then, implying that the President is either a wandering nomad or a prolific identity fraud crook, she alleges that the President “might have used as many as 149 addresses and 39 social security numbers prior to assuming the office of President.” ... (emphasis added).) Acknowledging the existence of a document that shows the President was born in Hawaii, Plaintiff alleges that the document “cannot be verified as genuine, and should be presumed fraudulent.” (... (emphasis added).) In further support of her claim, Plaintiff relies upon “the general opinion in the rest of the world” that “Barack Hussein Obama has, in essence, slipped through the guardrails to become President.” ... Moreover, as though the “general opinion in the rest of the world” were not enough, Plaintiff alleges in her Complaint that according to an “AOL poll 85% of Americans believe that Obama was not vetted, needs to be vetted and his vital records need to be produced.” ...

Cites omitted, but I'll note that some of them refer to page 148 of the complaint. That's not a brief, that's a book. I would sanction Taitz on that basis alone, which is one of many reasons I am not a judge.

Finally, in a remarkable shifting of the traditional legal burden of proof, Plaintiff unashamedly alleges that Defendant has the burden to prove his “natural born” status. ... Thus, Plaintiff’s counsel, who champions herself as a defender of liberty and freedom, seeks to use the power of the judiciary to compel a citizen, albeit the President of the United States, to “prove his innocence” to “charges” that are based upon conjecture and speculation. Any middle school civics student would readily recognize the irony of abandoning fundamental principles upon which our Country was founded in order to purportedly “protect and preserve” those very principles.

In three sentences, Judge Land proves why Article III rocks. Do you think the rightwingers are going to go after him? Guess who appointed him: George W.  (This is the first time that I can recall ever wanting to post a smiley emoticon on this blog.)

On to Footnote 5:

One piece of “evidence” Plaintiff’s counsel relies upon deserves further discussion. Counsel has produced a document that she claims shows the President was born in Kenya, yet she has not authenticated that document. She has produced an affidavit from someone who allegedly obtained the document from a hospital in Mombasa, Kenya by paying “a cash ‘consideration’ to a Kenyan military officer on duty to look the other way, while [he] obtained the copy” of the document. ... Counsel has not, however, produced an original certificate of authentication from the government agency that supposedly has official custody of the document. Therefore, the Court finds that the alleged document is unreliable due to counsel’s failure to properly authenticate the document.

Taitz failed to produce Obama's official Kenyan birth certificate! I can hear 60,000 wingnuts, or a million, give or take, sputtering in confusion.

One more thing: The judge went out of his way to not just dismiss the complaint, but to demonstrate that the plaintiff's allegations didn't survive any of the different legal tests that it would have to satisfy if she hoped to prevail. He didn't need to do that, but I suppose he didn't want to repeat the District Court in Texas' mistake of issuing just a summary order. After it failed one standard, he could have dismissed it on that basis alone, but he chose to show that the complaint lacked any merit, which provides the justification for the best part of the order:

Plaintiff’s counsel is hereby notified that the filing of any future actions in this Court, which are similarly frivolous, shall subject counsel to sanctions. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 11(c).

Rule 11 provides, among other things:

A sanction imposed under this rule must be limited to what suffices to deter repetition of the conduct or comparable conduct by others similarly situated. The sanction may include nonmonetary directives; an order to pay a penalty into court; or, if imposed on motion and warranted for effective deterrence, an order directing payment to the movant of part or all of the reasonable attorney's fees and other expenses directly resulting from the violation.

One thing I want to know is: Is Taitz admitted to practice in the Middle District of Georgia, or did she waive in pro hac vice? If the latter, then there is also some local counsel who vouched for her who is also going to suffer for inflicting this nonsense on the court. Good.

Rightwing Lunacy on U.S. History Education and Japanese Internment

I've been participating in a discussion over at zenpundit's place about the state of U.S. history education in both colleges and public high schools, with a particular focus on the treatment of FDR interning Japanese-Americans and Japanese legal immigrants.

Zen (who is a conservative but is in no way crazy) maintains that history teachers in secondary schools are incompetent and college history professors are "Marxoid." I can't speak to how U.S. history is taught in colleges nationwide, but the U.S. history professors I know deal with the facts, including the fact that most of the time the stories of minority groups and women haven't been told. (I know, anecdote isn't data, but there's no data in the post, either.) If that's Marxoid, sign me up, comrade. Zen's commenters go much further, claiming inter alia that

[S]ocial studies education helps create "guilt stricken uber-tolerant citizens of the world."  Public education has always included State socialization, what I’m going to explain is why the American Establishment has chosen to create this "New Man."

They also assert quite strongly that internment was the only reasonable course of action and inter arma silent leges. There is also the claim that it couldn't be racist because FDR did it!

Meanwhile, back in our dimension:

Texas high school students would learn about such significant individuals and milestones of conservative politics as Newt Gingrich and the rise of the Moral Majority — but nothing about liberals — under the first draft of new standards for public school history textbooks. ...

The first draft for proposed standards in United States History Studies Since Reconstruction says students should be expected “to identify significant conservative advocacy organizations and individuals, such as Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and the Moral Majority.” ...

So when conservatives talk about how liberals are trying to indoctrinate students with a certain political outlook, we can chalk it up to wingnut projection.

As an example of what public school U.S. history education actually looks like, here (pdf) are the Pennsylvania academic standards. The U.S. history portion starts on page 12. It is, as you would expect, a broad and even-handed exploration of the groups, individuals and events that shaped the country. Internment gets a mention, as does "terrorist threats." Booker T. Washington is in there, but so is Alan Greenspan.  I think what bothers the rightwingers is that Uncle Tom's Cabin is included as an example, but not Atlas Shrugged, which is probably a primary source in the ideal private high school in their minds.

A Reminder of How Much the Heritage Foundation Hates Workers

I read The Foundry, the blog of the Heritage Foundation, and it regularly contains some of the most batshit-crazy economic conservatism you'd ever want to see. Today's example:

 

Geddit? Construction workers don't work, unlike those on wingnut welfare like Conn Carroll.

Republican Talking Point of the Day

Going around this morning in various forms:

The latest budget projections will make the deficit issue number one for the midterm elections.

Facts Are Stubborn Things

The White House releases a video rebutting the Drudge attack that public option will destroy private insurance (I wish!):

And the comments to the video are a wingnut playground:

Avarice176 (4 minutes ago)  UGH ENOUGH OF THIS BULLSHIT PROPAGANDA! QUIT LYING TO US! This country's government is BROKEN. Wake the fuck up people.

nancyparton (5 minutes ago) redbeakman--what you said is right on target.

Tobias2012 (5 minutes ago) Pelosi and the lefty libs are lying through their teeth! This propaganda piece is is reminiscent of a the Hugo Chavez media! Is this America or what?

ungreatness (6 minutes ago) The facts? From someone who suckles at the proverbial teat of the president? Pffffft.

VirginianAmerican (7 minutes ago) WE THE PEOPLE SAY BULL SHIT!!! .

psychientology (7 minutes ago) But he has lied about everything. He says one thing and does the opposite and then says he didn't do it. We are not stupid. We have been but wed are wide awake now.

AI4QT (8 minutes ago) What a slick video. Nice try. How many takes did it take to get this done. Everything is perfect-- lighting, audio, upturn collar. Slick, no doubt. Only problem, I'm not buying what this Administration is saying to us about health care.

tlewis7777 (8 minutes ago) FreeEnterpriseBMX you're right on. Fix it to where those that don't currently have insurance have more viable options but don't change the whole system when a large majority of people like what they have.

FreeEnterpriseBMX (8 minutes ago) Lets look at some FACTS, instead of rhetoric, from the actual "health care" bill; REQUIREMENTS FOR INDIVIDUALS: Individuals must have insurance, enforced through tax penalty with hardship waivers. The penalty is 2.5 percent of income. REQUIREMENTS FOR EMPLOYERS: Employers must provide insurance to their employees or pay a penalty of 8 percent of payroll. Wow, more costs on the back of small business. Further increasing unemployment and raising costs on all goods, and services...

redbeakman (9 minutes ago) It also doen't change the fact that he said what he said. People can edit video. There was no vieo editing in his past comments about nationalization. She's impying something with no basis to back it up and no effort to discredit the film/"out of context statements" in question.

I figure a quarter are real wingnuts and the rest insurance industry astroturfers. Just a guess.

Cash for Clunkers

The Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), better known as "Cash for Clunkers" has been wildly successful. The $850 million budgeted for the program to last through November ran out in one week. That means over 200,000 people raced into their new car dealership and bought new, fuel-efficient cars. There have been some implementation problems, but the government is working on them. And Congress has now approved an additional $2 billion which hopefully will last longer now that the initial pent-up demand has been released.

As stimulus, sounds great, right? Not if you're a conservative:

The Cash for Clunkers program is pretty simple. The government pays buyers up to $4,500 to trade in an old car to buy a new, more fuel-efficient car. There was never any doubt it would work in the sense that people with old cars would take the cash. If you pay college kids to drink beer, you’re likely to be successful increasing beer sales. The issue in both cases would be whether the program was wise. The answer in both cases is pretty obvious.

Go to their link if you care to, but if not let me summarize: (1) Buying a new, fuel-efficient car is bad for the environment, and (2) the effect of the program will be to make cars more expensive and hurt the economy.

No, I am not making that up.

And even when someone disagrees with their lunacy on one point, they're cited as support for another:

One car salesman, Andy Beloff, said, “People are loving it. It’s wonderful. It’s a great stimulus package.” But when asked if the government was running the program well, Beloff said, “No. No.”

So it's wonderful and not well-run. Gotcha. 

The point is simple: Conservative ideology depends on maintaining the belief against all evidence that markets function perfectly and the government can't do anything right. It terrifies them that a program might be popular, so they have to spin the popularity as a problem and lie about the results. Cash for Clunkers is a hugely successful program that is doing what it's designed to do. It's a commonsense, progressive solution that helps both the economy and the environment.

Just Like How They Believed the Hijackers Were Iraqi

Fifty-eight percent of Republicans either do not believe Obama is an American citizen or are not sure. This is compared to seven percent of Democrats (wonder who they voted for) and seventeen percent of independents. The overwhelming majority of the Republican birthers are in the South.

Hmm, southern white conservatives don't believe the first black President is legitimate. I am so surprised.

If Speaking English Was Good Enough for Jesus, It's Good Enough for Me

"We Get It"

Jason330 at Delaware Liberal:

If you want to comment here, do me a favor and think about what you are about to type. There is no need to repeat basic GOP talking points. For example, don’t tell us that Bill Clinton got a blow job and that Clinton’s infidelity exculpates every Republican adulterer forever. We know. We get it.

If your only point is that [you] don’t like unions or jews, we get it. If you are about to say that everything having to do with gays is a slippery slope that will lead to homosexual indoctrination classes in elementary schools [sic]. Don’t bother. We get it.

There is no need to comment here if you think Obama is not going to be popular in the future and that through the reflexive property of political algebra that conservatism is awesome. We get it.

If you are tempted to comment here that you want to keep your guns in spite of the fact that nobody wants your guns. There is no need. We get it. If you think every tax dollar not spent on the military or paving the street in front of your house is sickeningly wasted, you probably don’t need to note that in the comments section. We get it.

You feel strongly about all of that nutty shit. We get it. If your comment boils down to ticking off some wingnut bullshit that does not address the point of the post or offer some actual and original insights into your thoughts, aspirations or fears – don’t bother.

Thanks.

Funny and helpful.

Anti-Choice Terrorist Claims Membership in Operation Rescue, Justification for Killing

No big shock:

In a phone interview Friday, Roeder said he was upset at the president of Operation Rescue, Troy Newman, who had condemned the killing and said his organization had nothing to do with Roeder.

“He said that I never was a member and I never contributed any money,” Roeder said. “Well, my gosh, I’ve got probably a thousand dollars worth of receipts, at least, from the money I’ve donated to him.”

Roeder said he wrote Newman a letter from jail.

“I told him, ‘You better get your story straight because my lawyer said it’d be good for me to show that I was supporting a pro-life organization.’ ”

On the morality of killing Dr. Tiller:

•Justifiable homicide

Roeder said since about 1992 he considered killing abortion doctors an act of justifiable homicide.

He praised Paul Hill, who killed an abortion doctor and his bodyguard in Pensacola, Fla., in 1994, and said he agreed “100 percent with him.” Hill was executed by the state of Florida in 2003.

Roeder said that “a lot of people have problems with violence in general,” but in most cases, a person who prevents a killing is considered a hero.

“When a policeman shoots somebody on the street, for example, and stops somebody from taking the life of innocent people, that’s violence, and everybody’s fine with that,” he said.

He said after he got involved in the abortion issue, “I would counsel with many people, get their viewpoints.” Only 1 percent or 2 percent of those he talked to actually agreed with him regarding the killing of abortion doctors, he said.

Roeder is apparently receiving fan mail from across the country, praising him for his Godly actions, so I fear there are more like him out there who now have another role model to emulate.

The War to Keep Women Second-Class Citizens

Re the terrorist assassination of Dr. George Tiller:

Abortion opponents are bracing for a drop in support, especially from those in the murky middle ground of the debate. Worse yet, after years of persuading supporters to work within the law, they say they have already lost credibility among the most ardent abortion opponents who cannot help pointing out that one gunman achieved what all their protests and prayers could not.

“The credit is going to go to him,” Mark S. Gietzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, said of Mr. Roeder. “There are people who are agreeing with him.”

No shit, Sherlock. You encouraged Roeder and the other freaks like him to kill abortion clinic workers. When they do, then you officially disclaim responsibility while your followers gloat but it's the shooter who gets all the glory. So you're conflicted.

Such lovely people:

Every vendor who showed up at the clinic was warned that if they continued to do business with Dr. Tiller they would be boycotted. Those who ignored the threat were listed on anti-abortion Web sites. “We had nobody in town that would deliver pizza,” said an employee, Linda Joslin.

Protesters confronted his employees, demanding that they quit. If they refused, activists passed out fliers in their neighborhood accusing them of working for a baby killer.

Patients would encounter a gantlet of protest.

They would see a “Truth Truck,” its side panels displaying large color photographs of dismembered fetuses. Over the clinic gate, strung between two poles, they might see a banner, “Please Do Not Kill Your Baby.” Planted in the grass by the sidewalk were 167 white crosses, representing the average number of abortions that protesters said were performed there each month.

Protesters approached patients’ cars, offering them baby blankets and urging them to visit an anti-abortion pregnancy clinic they had set up next door. Sometimes they followed patients to their hotels and slipped pamphlets under their doors. A few years ago anti-abortion campaigners spent weeks in a hotel room with a view of the Tiller clinic entrance. Using a powerful telephoto lens, they took photographs of patients, which were posted on a Web site with their faces blurred.

Much of this activity was methodically tracked by Mr. Gietzen, who said he presides over a network of 600 volunteers, some of whom drove hundreds of miles for a protest “shift.” Protesters counted cars entering the clinic gate, and they tracked “saves” — patients who changed their minds. According to Mr. Gietzen’s data, over the last five years they had 395 “saves” for an “overall save rate” of 3.77 percent.

They also kept detailed “incident reports” of unusual activity. It was a bonanza if an ambulance was summoned; photographs were quickly posted as evidence of another “botched” abortion.

There seemed an endless supply of fresh accusations.

“Wichita shoppers unknowingly sprinkled with the burnt ash of fetal remains,” declared one news release, referring to the clinic’s crematorium.

“If I can’t document it, I don’t say it,” Mr. Newman of Operation Rescue said, moments before suggesting without any proof that Dr. Tiller had bought off the local district attorney, Nola T. Foulston, by giving her a baby for adoption.

Fucking despicable.

In 2001, protesters began appearing at Dr. Tiller’s church with Truth Trucks and a demand that the church ex-communicate the Tiller family.

“They were abusively shouting at people not to take their children into the church because there was a murderer there,” recalled the Rev. Sally C. Fahrenthold, then the interim pastor at the church, Reformation Lutheran.

For at least two years, protesters showed up each Sunday, sometimes disrupting services from the pews. Protesters obtained a copy of the membership address book and sent all members postcards showing aborted fetuses.

Assholes.

Not a single Kansas politician of statewide prominence showed up the next morning for Dr. Tiller’s funeral, which drew 1,200 mourners. Nor were any at Reformation Lutheran the next day, the first Sunday service after his death. ...

In his sermon, Pastor Michelson openly acknowledged his own apprehensions. “Our sanctuary has been violated,” he said. He urged his congregation to rise above fear and anger, and took note of the supportive letters and e-mail messages from churches all over the country.

Only later, during an interview, did he mention all the hate mail.

It's Concise, You Have to Give Them That

Seen on the bumper of a Dodge driven by a somewhat overweight white man on a highway in the upper part of what they call "slower Delaware":

The Socialist Republic of
Obama Bin Biden
May God Prevail

And there you have it, folks.

John Yoo: A One-Man Crime Wave

Publius:

As I noted earlier, John Yoo played a starring role in the new IG report (pdf) on the Bush administration’s surveillance program (PSP).  And it wasn’t a flattering one.

Yoo’s actions were dishonest and inappropriate on so many different levels that I’m going to try to break them up into three categories:  (1) procedural abuses; (2) legal inaccuracies; and (3) factual inaccuracies.

The details are summarized pretty quickly and convincingly. John Yoo conspired with other top malefactors in the Bush Administration to violate all Americans' civil liberties and then lied to cover it up. He should be standing trial.

Yet that same John Yoo is a professor at a respected law school and is paid to write occasional columns for my once-great local newspaper.

Sexual Orientation Discrimination Outlawed in Delaware

The first state, coming in near the back of the pack:

Anyone who loses a job, a housing opportunity, an insurance policy, a public contract or a spot in a public facility because of sexual orientation now has legal remedy. For the first time, that kind of discrimination is no longer legal in Delaware.

Finally. What took you so long? Next: marriage and other privileges granted other people.

Via Fred Clark.

Saddam Said He Bluffed on WMD to Deter Iran

Given that he must have known he was going to be executed, I think he had no reason to lie about this:

Saddam Hussein told an FBI interviewer before he was hanged that he allowed the world to believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he was worried about appearing weak to Iran, according to declassified accounts of the interviews released yesterday. The former Iraqi president also denounced Osama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said he had no dealings with al-Qaeda.

Hussein, in fact, said he felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a "security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region."

Bush, knowing all this or at least having good reason to believe it, boxed Hussein into a corner by demanding Iraq prove it had no WMD, which would have weakened Hussein against the Iranians. Instead, by deposing him, all we've done is strengthened Iran's influence in the region immeasurably, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and hundreds of billions of American dollars.

QOTD: Block That Image!

Alex Pareene at Gawker:

If K-Lo's boyfriend Mitt Romney was caught on video nailing an underaged Thai sex slave she'd probably find a way to make it Keith Olbermann's fault.

(Via Silver.)

QOTD: No True Scotsman

Without comment:

"The responsible white separatist community condemns this," he said. "It makes us look bad."

The First Black President Nominates the First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice

And the first black President hands the Republican Party a dilemma: Further alienate the country's fastest-growing minority group or abandon their "Party of No" resistance strategy at the first test?

It's like the Civil War wreath-laying thing for Memorial Day. Yes, Obama continued the practice of honoring the dead traitors. It's an expression of his avowed Lincolnism - malice for none, charity toward all.  But he also began the practice of sending a wreath to the memorial to African-American Union soliders - the ones that the Confederates would routinely murder or enslave if they managed to capture them. The contrast is nice and instructive.

It's so nice we elected not just the smart one, but the shrewd one.

Poor, Oppressed White Men

Mark Halperin reveals the big problem with Obama replacing Souter with a woman:
I love that the "white man" depicted is from a stock photo site. It doesn't matter to Halperin which white man gets the job, so long as one gets the job.

Treason!

Shorter Porter Goss:

Liberals stabbed America in the back! The CIA needs to be able to torture in secret for freedom to survive.

I'm Torn: Jindal or Palin in '12?

I have been saying that if the economy starts to improve sufficiently that we do okay in the '10 midterms and Obama's popularity stays relatively high, that I would contribute to Sarah Palin's 2012 election effort. I would love to see her run for the GOP presidential nomination with her wingnutty message, which I don't think is going to improve with a few more years in Alaska. But if oil prices continue to tank, she might not even get re-elected next year, so I guess I need a backup. And that backup, based on his morose performance last night, is Gov. Bobby Jindal.

An extreme right-wing Catholic and a man with negative charisma, Jindal once claimed to have participated in an exorcism that not only "cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, [but] Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer."

But don't take my word for it, listen to right-wing genius David Brooks on Jindal's response to Obama's speech last night:

It's also remarkable that Jindal, like Bush, looks like Alfred P. Newman:

The Thing Is, It Makes Us Less Secure

David Axe at War is Boring:

I had just returned from Chad. I had drinks with Jimbo and Blackfive boss Matt Burden. While Matt sat quietly, Jimbo told me how he was frustrated with professional reporters who only report facts, and don’t help use those facts to promote U.S. national security. He said he envisioned building a privately run intelligence network that would use freelance reporters, operating under Blackfive’s auspices and sponsored by corporations, to gather information for transmission to intel analysts in the U.S. He asked if I would be interested in joining up.

I said no, in no uncertain terms. In fact, I recall cursing and yelling.

Jimbo - Jim Hanson - is dumb as a box of rocks, but this takes things to a new level. Axe is pissed off because such a plan would get journalists killed. Personally, I'm pissed off not because Hanson wants journalists to feed information to the intelligence types, but because Hanson is talking about propaganda, not just spying. If you wanted to set up a spy network using journalists, you only need one thing: Cash. But passing along gossip is one thing, shaping stories to fit a certain ideological end is another. If people did sign up for that, they've actually harmed the national security of the United States of America, because they're depriving people of the truth as best as they can discover it.

(Via Robert Farley.)

Mold Spores, Commies and Crazy Libs

A reminder of what the mainstream of the Republican party is like:

"My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs right out of the section," [Bradley Schlozman] said in an e-mail in 2003. "I too get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section attorneys," he confided to another friend.

He hoped to get rid of the "Democrats" and "liberals" because they were "disloyal" and replace them with "real Americans" and "right-thinking Americans."

He appears to have succeeded by his standards, according to an inspector general's report released Tuesday. Among the newly hired lawyers whose political or ideological views could be discerned, 63 of 65 lawyers hired under Schlozman had Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.

Conservatives like to hype the threat of the ideological bent of liberals, but the fact is, it's projection. Mold spores? You know what? I look forward to running over your fucking asses with a bulldozer for at least 2, maybe 4 years. Fuck you.

Quote of the Day: Rx for Rs

John Cole:

The key to electoral success for the GOP is not an elite strike force of blithering idiots spamming everyone’s email with bullshit about Obama’s birth certificate. The nation doesn’t need a trillion twitters about William Ayers, they need a Republican party that isn’t batshit insane. Spending all this time pretending the only problem is insufficient text message spam is going to get you nowhere, because the reason we elected a bunch of Democrats the last couple of years is because the Republicans and their ideas suck.

Before I read this last night, I was wondering about the etymology of the term "batshit insane". Does it derive from "going batty"?

Wingnut Welfare

Wow, the Heritage Foundation's blog, The Foundry, is a parade of far-right wild-eyed fears and hates. One of the recent posts is "The Real Danger of World Government":

[T]he greatest danger of a left-leaning Obama administration may be the danger of capitulation to a new world government.

Damn, it seems like the danger has been the same ever since the movie Red Dawn came out. Before.

In the past, “One World Government” has been seen as a rallying cry of a fringe group, not something that many in the mainstream would either fear or desire. But, suddenly today it is on the lips of world leaders.

The proof? A single quote from an advisor to the President of France. Q.E. fucking D, as they say.

[T]he financial crisis was not caused by a lack of international regulation. Financial crises in the past have tended to occur more due to intervention than due to lack of regulation, and each of the banks that failed in this crisis was regulated by at least one country. ...

Yes, this proves regulation is bad, not that the regulation was badly done. Of course.

These leaders want not only to abandon capitalism as we know it, but they want to force these ideas upon all countries by regulating companies at the international level. This kind of anti-market world governance would not make peace more likely, nor would it make free trade more possible or financial crises less frequent.

It's the end of capitalism as we know it! And I feel fine.

Man, it must be nice to a right-wing nutcase and know if you play your cards right someone, somewhere will give you a job spewing your insane theories.

Republican Economic Arguments

My long-time low-IQ buddy Pejman Yousefzadeh, in a post titled "Poseurs", thinks he's found a nut:

[A] number of left-of-center pundits are now arguing that to oppose Keynesian policies is to be (a) stupid, (b) malevolent or (c) all of the above.

Jon Henke rips these pundits apart in his inimitable manner. In doing so, he points out that even Paul Krugman–no right-winger, he!–has stated that monetary policy, not Keynesian spending sprees, will be the tool with which the economy can best get out of its slump.

Oooh, burn! As Thers implies, rightwingers have to be desperate to make an argument from authority based on Krugman. Not only are they implicitly buying into whatever other positions on economics Krugman takes, but you just know they had to quote-mine dishonestly to make it appear Krugman is against using fiscal policy right now.

At the Henke link, the leadoff quote from Krugman is:

Decades of experience shows that this is a bad idea, that when governments try to fight garden-variety recessions by cutting taxes or increasing spending they almost always get it wrong.

We're not in a "garden-variety recession", are we? And the quote is from 2000.

How about this one from 2001:

The conventional wisdom among economic analysts is that fiscal policy is not necessary to deal with most recessions, that interest-rate policy is enough.

Is this recession like "most recessions"? The capper is a 2003 quote that says, essentially, fiscal stimulus is what you turn to when monetary policy isn't working to stimulate growth. Which is a great point, since monetary policy isn't working to stimulate growth right now.

Can we find a more recent quote from Nobel Prize laureate and all-seeing oracle Paul Krugman on Keynesian stimulus? Yes we can! From November 14th of this very year:

We are already, however, well into the realm of what I call depression economics. By that I mean a state of affairs like that of the 1930s in which the usual tools of economic policy — above all, the Federal Reserve’s ability to pump up the economy by cutting interest rates — have lost all traction. When depression economics prevails, the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply: virtue becomes vice, caution is risky and prudence is folly. ...

[T]he effective federal funds rate (as opposed to the official target, which for technical reasons has become meaningless) has averaged less than 0.3 percent in recent days. Basically, there’s nothing left to cut.

And with no possibility of further interest rate cuts, there’s nothing to stop the economy’s downward momentum. Rising unemployment will lead to further cuts in consumer spending, which Best Buy warned this week has already suffered a “seismic” decline. Weak consumer spending will lead to cutbacks in business investment plans. And the weakening economy will lead to more job cuts, provoking a further cycle of contraction.

To pull us out of this downward spiral, the federal government will have to provide economic stimulus in the form of higher spending and greater aid to those in distress — and the stimulus plan won’t come soon enough or be strong enough unless politicians and economic officials are able to transcend several conventional prejudices.

Prejudices which Henke and Pejman ably demonstrate.

Hey Pej, the answer is (c). But you are right that someone is a poseur.

My Advice to the "Next Right": Ideology -> Strategy -> Message

[A front pager at The Next Right asked a leading question, "What comes first - the ideas or the message?", and I left the following as a comment.]

I'm a liberal, so take my input for what you think it's worth:

You all are focusing on the wrong dichotomy of ideas v. message. The progression has to be ideas (or more accurately, ideology, which is not a dirty word), followed by designing a strategy to vindicate that ideology, which then leads you to craft a message to execute that strategy.

Movement conservatism did this very well until recently. Here's my rundown of that history with my "harsh lefty tilt": You had disparate groups of people who regarded themselves as conservatives milling about with no direction in the 60s. These included racists who were appalled at the federal government protecting the civil rights of African-Americans, cold warriors with Maoist-like beliefs that constant conflict and perhaps even nuclear war with Communist Russia was inevitable and even desirable, religious fundamentalists enraged and baffled at the sexual revolution and the liberation of gays and women from traditional norms, and the wealthy who were convinced that the New Deal and the Great Society would bankrupt the country (and them).

The ideology of conservatism is based on the idea that people are basically evil, and that a successful society creates traditional norms and institutions in spite of and in order to control that evil. In this view, good people were obligated to use power in order to keep everyone else in line and prevent social changes that almost certainly would lead to bad results. The strategy that developed was to sell this idea to the various conservative factions on the theme of virtuous strength v. degenerate weakness.

To the racists, conservatism could say, "You're right. You are the noble white people who built Western Civilization and the United States, the greatest country on Earth. Now these darkies want to take it all away." To the fanatical anti-communists, conservatism could say, "You're right. Capitalism is the highest form of human virtue because it requires people to compete for resources and demonstrate their skill and intelligence in a true meritocracy. Anything that hinders that competition is evil, and Communism is the quintessence of evil - it is an international conspiracy solely meant to destroy capitalism." To the religious wackos, conservatism could say, "You're right. God the Father preordained the natural state of things that should be reflected in human society, but Satan is leading these sluts and sodomites astray. You are the good people who are doing God's work in fighting their evil ways." To the rich, conservatism could say, "You're right. The mob of poor have discovered that they can vote themselves funds from the public treasury, from your pocket, and if they succeed they'll never work again and society will collapse. We have to stop them."

From there, you could cross-market. The obvious thing would be to unite the messages aimed at the anti-communists and the rich, inspiring the anti-communists to venerate wealth (even if they weren't wealthy themselves) and the rich to provide funding for the cold war infrastructure (even if they thought the Pentagon and CIA examples of bloated, big-spending government). It was also easy to get the religious and the anti-communists together over the subject of atheism both at home and abroad. For another example, you could sell the idea to both the racists and the religious that the worst sexual degenerates were blacks.

But the real genius was discovering a focal point for all these positions. Uniting all of these ideas was that the evil people used government to effect the changes that each conservative group was trying to oppose. Thus, the party of small government was born. Even an anti-communism in the form of a large military was a doctrine of small government - if you think of International Communism as the ultimate form of big government.

Armed with an ideological strategy that could appeal to various groups, movement conservatism then turned to crafting an electoral strategy. The key, of course, was the South. That had the largest concentration of votes in each of the racist, religious and anti-communist blocs. (The rich are there for their money, not their votes, since there aren't enough of them.) The putrid heart of this regional strategy was racism and the regional paranoia that remained from the Civil War. Southern conservatives viewed themselves as a separate, more noble society under constant attack from the outside. This feeling of being under siege solidified the South for the GOP for decades. From this base of North-South conflict, conservatism then aimed at pitting the suburbs (the rich and the anticommunists) and the rural areas (racists and the religious) against the cities (blacks, the poor, homosexuals, and feminists).

The rest is uncontroversial. The right used the money of the rich and the troops provided by the churches to create what liberals called "the Mighty Wurlitzer", which is:

a propaganda machine that can hone a fact or a lie, broadcast it, and have it echoed and recycled in Fox News commentary, in Washington Times news stories, in Wall Street Journal editorials, by myriad right-wing pundits, by Heritage seminars and briefing papers, and in congressional hearings and speeches. Privatization of Social Security, vouchers for school, Vince Foster's supposed murder, Hillary's secret sex life, you name it -- the right's mighty Wurlitzer can ensure that a message is broadcast across the county, echoed in national and local news, and reverberated in the speeches of respectable academics as well as rabid politicians.

This propelled Reagan to power, but the plan began to fall apart in the 90s when Gingrich and the Congressional Republicans overreached and shut down the government. Like the Beer Hall Putsch, like the Tet Offensive, the revolutionaries thought their bold act would result in a glorious uprising of the people! And it turned out, the people hated it. Oops. Anti-government conservatives running government is like the dog who chases cars but when he finally catches one, he doesn't know what to do with it.

People, it turned out, wanted efficient but effective government, and while they bought into the strength v. weakness rhetoric, weakness was to them always exemplified by the government program someone else liked, not the one they liked. The capstone was Bush's hands-off approach, which resulted in nightmares like Katrina and now the financial crisis.

It gets worse: The demographics are against you. The hardcore racists, religious bigots and anti-communists are all old now. (See the exit polls for any of the successful anti-gay marriage referenda - the young people hated them.)  Old people like big government programs like Medicare and Social Security, so what's left to cut? The former communists are our buddies now, and the Muslims aren't scary enough to take their place, it turns out. Finally, the South is no longer Solid. Yankees are moving in. Blacks got their act together and are in political control across large swaths of the region.

The linkage between conservative thought, an ideological strategy aimed at various unaffiliated and disaffected groups, and an electoral strategy aimed at a winning number of states and Congressional districts, is broken. You need to forge a new one. The important step is to identify the current or emerging unaffiliated and disaffected groups, and determine if by uniting them you could seize power again. If so, then craft the message that will unite them. Who those groups are, I really don't know. I think you're just going to have to effectively hang out for a decade or two and see what develops that you can run on.

If I could help you, I wouldn't, of course. You're all pretty evil in both your purpose and in effect. Movement conservatism is a theology of hate that has perpetuated some of the worst aspects of the American character. I've been as honest in this post as I can be, but maybe the fact that I think you're bad people colored my analysis and made it seem more hopeless for you in the short run than it really is. Perhaps you can get the old gang back together by, say, convincing religious blacks and Hispanics that gays and sluts are the real menace. I don't think it will work, but please - go ahead and try.

Second Verse, Same as the First: Another Judge Orders Gitmo Prisoners Released

At least it's the semblance of legal process:

In the first hearing on the government’s evidence for holding detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp for nearly seven years, a federal judge ruled on Thursday that five prisoners were being held an unlawfully [sic] and ordered their release. ...

Ruling from the bench, Judge Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court in Washington said that the information gathered on the men had been sufficient to hold them for intelligence purposes, but was not strong enough in court.

I think the decision will be stayed pending appeal, just as the order to release the Uighurs was. While the odds are a little better than before the election, on balance I find it unlikely that anyone will be released until Obama takes office, no matter what the evidence is.

Please note that these prisoners were not detained in a war zone, much less captured on a battlefield. They were detained - note the passive voice - in Bosnia in 2001 and never got a hearing until now. Seven years.

"I’d Consider Myself Extremely Well-Informed."

Any interview that ends this way is just fine by me:

NS: Thank you, have a good day.
JZ: Go fuck yourself.

The rest of it is pretty good, too.

Possible Dirty Tricks Operation in Pennsylvania

DocJess at DemConWatch:

The big problem we had yesterday was the number of callers who reported that this was the second or third call that they'd gotten TODAY. The standard, correct, and TRUE answer is that we were calling from the National Campaign, but there were other groups with access to the same lists who could have called. Namely, Women for Obama, Jews for Obama, Hispanics for Obama, Catholics for Obama, etc., etc., PLUS Move-On, SEIU, the state Democratic Party....but there was something to the information we were getting from respondents that was a little off.

It took a few hours to figure out, but it turns out that SOMEONE - and I do not know who (although I certainly have my suspicions) is calling our people and saying the following: Hi, I'm so-and-so for the Obama campaign, reminding you that Election Day is Tuesday, and your polling place is (this location).Problem is, that "polling place" is incorrect. The ramifications of which are obvious.

So we're all over this, but for all of you that think PA is won - how do the opinion and tracking polls pick up that people may be sent to the wrong location, stand in line for an hour, and then get told that no, this is not your polling place? Will the voters be willing to go to another place? Wait in line again?

The "wrong calls" are targetted to younger and lapsed voters, also to new-to-the-area voters, and they very well might not know where their polling place is.

The other obnoxious thing we found out is that some older voters are receiving calls which offer to send cars for them. And when we ask WHO is coming for them, they realize that there was no name left, no contact phone number. Another set of problems.

I will alert my phonebankers today to this problem. I will also ask permission from the campaign to have our people affirmatively warning voters of this tactic.

Three Deuces

What the hell's wrong with Tennessee?

Stevens Jury Circus Continues

Cue the calliope:

A federal judge on Sunday dismissed one of the jurors in the trial of Senator Ted Stevens after losing contact with her after her father’s death.

Wow. She just took off. I understand, her dad died, but someone from the family could make a phone call. No? Okay.

Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court plans to seat an alternate juror on Monday morning and to order the jury to start their deliberations from the beginning.

Apparently, the prior problems with Juror No. 9 have calmed down, after Judge Sullivan gave the whole panel a sermonette on "civility and mutual respect".

I would have imagined this is good news for Stevens, but apparently not:

The move was a setback to Mr. Stevens, Republican of Alaska, who is trying to hold onto his seat and wanted a verdict before Election Day.

I wouldn't mind a conviction on Friday. Otherwise, take your time, guys.

Republicans Are So Weird

 

Hiding Behind Subordinates

Start with this:

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director [Peter Feldman] told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson."

People are strangely eager to exonerate McCain's national campaign:

TPM's Greg Sargent wrote this afternoon that McCain Pennsylvania spokesperson Peter Feldman pushed local television outlets to cover Todd. So far there's been nothing to link McCain headquarters to the debunked attack.

But Peter Feldman is also the person who uttered these words:

“The fact is that once Governor Palin was elected and had an opportunity to look closely at the [Bridge to Nowhere] project, she killed it. She fought for Congress to kill the provision, but they sent the funds anyway. Palin fired the kill shot by not using a dime of that money on the bridge. ”

(Palin campaigned as a champion of the bridge when she was running for governor. The project was killed a year before she took office. )

And this:

Peter Feldman, a spokesman for Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, called [New York governor David] Paterson’s remarks “disappointing.” He said that Mr. Paterson was “playing the race card” by suggesting that Ms. Palin’s comments about Mr. Obama’s career as a community organizer were a kind of coded racial appeal.

Feldman has also commented on the two campaigns' joint 9/11 statement, McCain's New Jersey Latino outreach, and on the first debate to New York media. He's elsewhere described as "regional communications director" or "McCain campaign spokesman in New York and New Jersey."

The point: He's not some single-state flack, he's a high-level campaign official who is authorized to speak on behalf of McCain on a variety of issues. He simply served as cut-out for this particular op.

Then consider this:

A new e-mail making the rounds among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania this week falsely alleged that Mr. Obama “taught members of Acorn to commit voter registration fraud,’’ and equated a vote for Senator Barack Obama with the “tragic mistake” of their Jewish ancestors, who “ignored the warning signs in the 1930’s and 1940’s.”

The email was sent by the Pennsylvania Republican Party and was signed by top Pennsylvania Republican fundraisers, including a former state supreme court judge.

[A] statement in the letter [made the claim] that Mr. Obama was “associated with a known terrorist, William Ayers, who thought the terrorists didn’t do enough on 9/11.”

Mr. Ayers was quoted in the Sept. 11, 2001 edition of The New York Times, printed before the attacks, saying he believed that his group, The Weather Underground, “didn’t do enough.” The Weather Underground had bombed several government buildings in the 1970’s that resulted in several deaths — including those of three police officers. He was not referring to Al Qaeda or the Sept. 11 attacks.

And, working off of a common refrain of Mr. McCain that Mr. Obama had once described Mr. Ayers as “just a guy in the neighborhood,’’ the letter goes on to ask, “If a known terrorist lived in your neighborhood, would he just be a guy in your neighborhood, or would you be calling the FBI to have him removed?”

While that would seem to imply to uninformed voters that Mr. Ayers was on the lam, Mr. Ayers is now a professor of education at the University of Illinois, and worked with Mr. Obama on two charitable boards with mainstream, civic support in Chicago. Charges against him were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

The campaign says the email "had been released without their authorization and that they had fired the strategist who helped draft it, Bryan Rudnick." Mr. Rudnick claims it was authorized. I believe him.

To sum up, the McCain campaign and the Republican party in Pennsylvania have implied that a vote for Obama is a vote for Hitler, and that black Obama supporters will beat, sexually assault, and mutilate McCain supporters. They have done it in a way that leaves all the heat on local operatives, and insulates the national campaign.

The best part: I predict McCain will drop 5 points in the polls here over the weekend.

"A Big Scary Black Man Carved a 'B' in my Face Because I Like McCain"

So, as you undoubtedly will not be surprised to learn, that story cratered:

Police say a campaign volunteer confessed to making up a story that a mugger attacked her and cut the letter B in her face after seeing her McCain bumper sticker; now she's facing charges. ...

"She indicated that she has prior mental problems and that she does not remember how the backward letter B got on her face," Pittsburgh Police Spokeswoman Diane Richard told reporters today.

Referring to my volunteering experience this year is already old, but I am going to do it again: Of all the social subgroups I encountered while doing voter registration, thugs were perhaps the least interested in politics. Street criminals don't give a rat's ass about the presidential election, not least because they're stone-stupid. You want me to believe that a mugger is so inspired by Sen. Obama's message of hope and change that he's willing to carve someone up for supporting McCain? You might as well tell me three little old ladies left the house on a cold morning in order to stand in line to vote and didn't wear coats.

Oh, I know: It's not really a story about a criminal who is so attracted to a politician's message of social unity that he's ready to cut anyone who gets in the way. It's really a race-war story. You can expect to hear the same thing before and after the election, in slightly more sophisticated form, from the slightly-less-crazy members of the Republican party. For example, the voter registration fraud thing? Black people breaking the law. Obama raising crazy campaign money? Foreign and fraudulent donations, probably from swarthy types. Tax cuts for the working class? Welfare for lazy minorities. 

As for Ashley Todd specifically, I don't blame McCain or the Republicans for her particular mental problems. Every campaign attracts the loons, and the Obama campaign is no exception, believe me.

Credo

I read in today's paper what a woman wrote explaining why she's a Democrat. Let me tell you why I'm not. I'm a Republican because:

I believe in a sovereign God who sometimes gives us what we deserve.

I believe Muslims are our enemies.

I believe in life. A baby is not just a fetus, but a living being no matter where it resides.

I believe there is a good reason for the death penalty.

I believe in fiscal responsibility, for the government and for us.

I believe the government is way too big and rife with greed and corruption.

I believe in the truth. People believe lies because it's much easier than finding the truth.

I believe in personal responsibility. That includes spanking your children.

I believe American women should raise their own children and American men should be men enough to pay for children they've produced.

I believe a man and woman make marriage. Period.

I believe in America first and foremost and we ought to take care of our own people, our own land, and illegal aliens should go home.

I believe in guns and knowing how to use them properly.

I believe war is a fact of life and we should always win.

I believe in lower taxes. I know how to spend money better than Congress any day of the week.

I believe in voter ID.

I believe there is a moderate and a socialist in this election. I agree with a two-party system, but Obama isn't a messiah or a democrat.

He's a Muslim socialist.

Marcia Stirman, Alamogordo

What a good Christian she is. More on the party of Lincoln:

The head of a New Mexico Republican women's group is being pressured to resign after calling Barack Obama a "Muslim socialist" and claiming that "Muslims are our enemies."

Marcia Stirman is the head of the Republican Women of Otero County. 

She included her criticism of Obama in a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News. In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Stirman said she didn't trust Muslims because "they are our enemies." She added, "Why we're trying to elect one is beyond me." 

Obama, who is Christian, has been forced to deny rumors that he is a Muslim throughout his campaign.

The head of New Mexico's Republican Party said that Stirman's comments do not reflect the party's values and beliefs.

Of course her comments represent the party's values and beliefs. The Republican base are ignorant bigots.

New RNC Mailer Associates Obama and 9/11 Hijackers

The outside of the mailer depicts the view from inside a building, with people looking out at the view, and what do they see? The front of an airliner. My first reaction when seeing the image was that it depicted tourists on a skyscraper observation level seeing a plane about to crash into the  building. Upon closer examination, it appears to be a scene from an airport, with a plane parked at a gate and the people inside with luggage.

That's the plausible deniability part: It's just an airport. But the emotional reaction they were going for is the one I had. It reminds you of the horrifying scene that many people must have imagined happened on 9/11, with people inside the World Trade Center helplessly looking out as the hijacked jet hurtled toward them.

The caption - in ransom-note letters - to the image on the outside says "Terrorists Don't Care Who They Hurt."

And when you open the mailer, the page facing you says, "Barack Obama. Not Who You Think He Is."

This mailer has gone out to voters in Virginia. It is a clear attempt to associate Obama with the hijackers of 9/11. He's "not who you think he is" - he's a secret Muslim terrorist in league with al Qaeda. If politics is TV with the sound off, then it's also the imagery and large print portions of mail pieces like this, where people don't bother reading the small type, just as they don't follow what people on TV are saying.

If you want to fight this stuff, donate your money or donate your time. Do something.

Twelve days left.

Missourians: Who Is This Man?

Because he needs to get locked up:

A Missouri Democratic Party employee who videotapes Republican gubernatorial candidate Kenny Hulshof on the campaign trail was assaulted by an unknown man at an event Tuesday in West Plains.

Vinay Vaz, known on the campaign trail as Hulshof’s “tracker,” was pushed and accosted by a man in a suit at a public park.

Vaz videotaped the incident and it was posted on YouTube this morning.

YouTube? Whoops!

Update: West Plains, Missouri, is also the place where someone put up this billboard:

 

Real America.

Best Keep an Eye on Those Dangerous Obamaniacs

Lovely:

A dead bear was found dumped this morning on the Western Carolina University campus, draped with a pair of Obama campaign signs, university police said.

A black bear, that is.

Maintenance workers reported about 7:45 a.m. finding a 75-pound bear cub dumped at the roundabout near the Catamount statute at the entrance to campus, said Tom Johnson, chief of university police.

“It looked like it had been shot in the head as best we can tell. A couple of Obama campaign signs had been stapled together and stuck over its head,” Johnson said.

There sure are some strange people out there in the "pro-America" parts of the country.

(Via Ray.)

Car Tires Slashed Outside Obama Rally

Fayetteville, North Carolina:

Someone slashed the tires of at least 30 vehicles parked outside the Crown Coliseum on Sunday during a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, authorities said.

Sheriff’s deputies are investigating. The tires were cut while people were inside the Crown Coliseum listening to speeches, said Maj. E. Wright of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

Many of the damaged vehicles were parked on Wilkes Road. Representatives from Obama and Sen. John McCain’s campaigns said they were unaware of the acts.

Susan Lagana, the North Carolina communications director for Obama, said it was extremely disappointing and unfortunate that “people would have to experience something like that.”

Mario Diaz, communications director for McCain, did not respond to a call late Sunday. ...

Of course.

Lynne Steenstra said she thought that the slashings were scare tactics designed to keep her and others from supporting Obama.

Even though it cost her roughly $120 to get her Dodge Caravan towed and fixed, Steenstra said the act would not intimidate her from voting.

“It hasn’t deterred us one bit,” Steenstra said. “It has only encouraged us more.”

Feb 12 1987 - Aug 12 2007