"John McCain was a War Hero ...and a Space Man"

At the Tucson rally, Sarah Palin sported her black leather Emma Peel sex outfit and John McCain looked like Popeye in an S&M parlor. Sadly, McCain looked like grandpa when you have to watch him before he wanders off somewhere. Sarah Palin pronounced "We are all teabaggers now." Sort of reminds me when McCain said, "We are all Georgians now" when he wanted to liberate South Ossetia. Now the former Presidential candidate is dependent on the star power of his understudy to win the Republican primary. McCain right now is only four points ahead and would be losing if the Minutemen didn't have their own candidate. Both McCain and Palin emphasized that the Republicans were the party of "Hell No". But it was nice of Sarah to say that John was a space man--maybe she should have said space cadet.

Newt Gingrich said that America is in a similar situation as in the 1850s before civil war broke out. It's interesting that he didn't mention that George W. Bush resembles in stature James Buchanan.

A Marine Sgt. "C" wrote a scathing blog chastising teabaggers for suggesting civil war. He detailed his own training and asked whether any of the teabaggers were in the same shape. He also recalled what happens to communities and towns during any civil war and listed the armaments he and his colleagues would bring to bear on them. He also reminded them that he took an oath to protect the Constitution and that once they declared their insurgency they were no longer civilians but "the enemy". He told them to get a life and that sometimes in politics you win and sometimes you lose.

John Boehner sent out a money-raising saying that the Obama Administration wants "to import foreign terrorists to our communities and give them the same rights Americans have."

Commandante Steele rejected a "civility statement" offered by DNC Tim Kaine. He said Democrats would use it against Republicans and that he would consider it in his own time. This reminds me of something alot of us do in emerging democracies. We try to get all competing parties to agree to a Code of Conduct so as to restrain extreme behavior. It's too bad that it has come to this in the United States.

Roger Ailes warned the staff at Fox News, who criticize Glenn Beck, to stop "shooting in the tent". He referred to Beck as a member of the family and all members of the family should be respected.

There was another assassination attempt against an Arkansas congressman who voted for healthcare.

Teabaggers, along with Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber, descended on Spotlight , Nevada for a "Conservative Woodstock" "without the LSD". The town of 700 looked forward to the tourist trade. The some 7,000 people were protesting Harry Reid, who lives there. He issued a statement that it was "gratifying for him to now realize he himself could be the key to Nevada surviving its current hard times."

ONE REPUBLICAN REMAINS SANE: Senator Richard Lugar came out in favor of the New Start Treaty. Senator Lugar promised that he and Senator John Kerry will speed up the hearings on it so that it could be ratified quickly. Watch this space to see whether the GOP has gone completely bonkers if they resist ratification. The treaty allows both the United States and Russia to pressure Iran over its nuclear program and to jointly work on stopping nuclear proliferation by other countries.

While Congress has criticized Obama's treatment of Bibi, the President gave the Israeli leader until late today to response to his requests. As I wrote yesterday, the timing of the pressure has everything to do with the Arab League meeting and this New Start Treaty. If Israel agrees to talks with the Palestianians it strengths the pro-American Arab countries in their confrontations with pro-Iranian forces. Together with a new nuclear treaty, it puts Tehran in a diplomatic box for the time being.

North Korea says that after sinking the South Korean ship yesterday that next time there will be a nuclear attack.

Charles Cook still thinks Republicans will pick up 40 seats in the House. But everyone agrees that the GOP fund-raising plea that they will repeal healthcare is a mirage and they know it.

Obamacan Frank Schaeffer doesn't believe this. Writing on the FireDogLake website in a piece entitled "Republicans: Violent Losers", he says that the pundits have it all wrong. He says that the Republicans are about to pay a historic price for the biggest miscalculation in American history since Charles Lindberg sided with the Germans. He says he is telling his reality-based friends that the Democratic Party will retain the majority in both houses of Congress and that Obama will win a second term. He says that the Republican Party is in the grip of its own propaganda and that it has committed the ultimate act of political folly--believing their own BS.

"The leaderless Republican Party--or should I say the dwindling rabble of reactionaries who still identify themselves as Republicans--is not just politically leaderless; they are also morally leaderless. This, speaking metaphorically, is a lynch mob in the making. And they have just lost a big fight in our congress. What will they do next?

Why do the Republican leadership allow this mob to rule? Because they have no choice.

The Republican leadership have literally gotten in bed with hate. And like all such bargains with the devil it was easier to begin their relationship with rube America than to end it.

...Either way: be it the next right wing act of domestic terror or the realization by the American public that the Republicans are plain wrong on the facts; the Republicans are on their way down.

They have made a historic miscalculation on health care reform. They have embraced a group of potentially violent and always embarrassing fellow travelers . The American peoplemay have been confused about the facts but they soon won't be. And most Americans are not hate-filled people who applaud other Americans spitting on congressmen or throwing bricks through office windows --or worse to come."

Tell us what you think, Frank. Frank Schaeffer is a prior lifetime c0-founded the Religious Right in the United States.

Lee Fang on the website Think Progress analyzes all the ways Republicans and their operatives cash in on teabaggers "Tea Party Profiteers: How Republican Operatives Are Exploiting Economic Anxiety For Power, Cash". www.thinkprogress.org \

www.PublicEye.org ,the website of Political Research Associates, challenges the "centrist/ extremist theory" that explains right-wing populism. This theory arrived in 1955 with the publication of essays edited by Daniel Bell entitled The New American Right. In short, this theory sees all dissident movements of the left and the right as composed of outsiders--politically marginal people who have no connection to the mainstream electoral system or nodes of government or corporate power. Social and economic stress snaps these psychologically-fragile people into a mode of irrational political hysteria , and as they embrace an increasingly paranoid style they make militant and unreasonable demands to defend their social and economic status. Because they are unstable ,they can become dangerous and violent. The solution prescribed by centrist/extremist theory is to marginalize the dissidents as radicals and dangerous religious political extremists. Their grievances and demands need not be taken seriously. Furthermore, law enforcement can then be relied upon to break up any criminal conspiracies by subersives who threaten the social order.

The writer complains that this is a status-quo oriented frame of reference that too often dismisses dissidents of all stripes. The new paradigm for analysis began in the 1970s, which said that most of this people were not joining right-wing populist movements because they were acting out personal pathology, but out of anger and desparation. The articles goes on to describe the world-view that fuels these movements and explains why combating them requires a totally different strategy from the one suggested by Bell. The article reminds me of the book "The Eliminationists".

A 2007 study on authoritarianism explained the evolution of the Republican party into the repressive, authoritarian party it became. What is so interesting is that while the psychology of right-wing populism and the Republican Party overlap quite a bit, there is a basic and fundamental conflict that can not be resolved. I believe you will see this conflict break out in the open as the year moves ahead.

I recommend Jane Mayer's review of Marc Thiessen's torture book in the new New Yorker. As one suspects, everything he writes about the CIA torture program is a lie and she eviscerates him chapter and verse.

CONGRATULATIONS TO DIANE RAVITCH. She has written the most important book on public educationin many a year and how it is being destroyed. Even though she may have wavered into heresy during her days supporting Leave No Child Behind, a small "d" democrat ultimately never abandons their fundamental principles. She does a remarkable job in detailing the history of all the education reform proposals since the 1980s and details how the "billionaire boys' club" of foundations are destroying public education by applying the principles of market reform to a public good. She also channels her old friendship with Al Shanker to elucidate what we are educating children for. "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" is a powerful indictment of the reforms initiated by George W. Bush and continued through Arne Duncan under President Obama. I hope she stirs up a big debate.