All The News Unfit To Print

In case your television was broadcasting Sarah Palin and Michael Steele's 2,000 person rally in California, President Obama appeared at a rally on the campus of Ohio State University, where only 35,000 showed up. Our commentators felt that this might have been mis-timed because Wisconsin beat Ohio State in football the night before and Obama might not be able to rally his base. Maybe it's true but everyone there was enthused.

At least Obama can rally his base when he appears on Mythbusters to demonstrate whether Archimedes really did burn the invading fleet with mirrors.

Albert Hunt, the former Wall Street Journal columnist and now a writer for Bloomberg News, warns about the major scandal coming out of this election season, which will involve politicians, bribes and secret money. He says that this will be worse than Watergate.

Remember Congressman DeFazio trying to find out who was behind Concerned Taxpayers of America? Well, apparently, someone did find out whose backing Art Robinson, Climate Change denier and advocate for more nuclear testing for our own health. The Concerned Taxpayers is not an inaccurate title. It does refer to more than 1. It's two--Robert Mercer of a New York-based Hedge Fund and Daniel Schuster Inc. of Owings Mill, Maryland. That's it. So these anonymous two guys are buying up some ads to run against one Maryland Congressman and one Oregon congressman, who must have offended them personally. I wonder what they did to create such a fuss.

The Left in the United States owes all of us an apology for mis-using the word Fascist all these many decades. Because now is the time where it applies.

Exhibit A. Joe Miller, the Tea Party Thug candidate in Alaska, answers a question on how we can deal with illegal immigration and he answers "If East Germany can do it, we can." That's like conservatives telling me that even though we used North Korean techniques to torture people we're not as bad as North Korea. Put aside the issue of where illegal immigrants are coming from to land on the shores of Alaska. Or how many people really tried to smuggle themselves into East Germany? But notice, please, how fungible Miller's once stated libertarianism is and how quick he wants to use police state tactics.

But the kicker of the evening occured when Tony Hopfinger, the founder and editor of the Alaska Dispatch, started asking Miller about the reports of his illegal behavior at his former job. His father had e-mailed the tea party that this wasn't a problem because Miller did it on the weekend. Hopfinger tried to follow up. But Miller had his security people threaten Hopfinger with trespassing--this was public property--and they handcuffed him. The Alaskan police had to show up and uncuff the reporter.

Of course, the Miller camp immediately sent out an e-mail trying to rationalize their action. Now who is Tony Hopfinger? He is the host and moderator of tonight's Senate debate in Alaska. Can you imagine if this had happened with Tom Brokow, who moderated the Whitman-Brown debate? Remember this wasn't a mistake. This happened in full view and with the permission of the candidate.

Now who were the security guards? This is an issue the media has not picked up on but the tea baggers have security guards of dubious backgrounds. Miller's thugs look like Skin-heads. They come from a local security company named "Drop Zone Security", who boast members of the Alaskan militia, which is more right-wing than the Michigan militia, and former employees of Blackwater. We know these people from the twenties and thirties in Germany.

Maybe if we looked hard enough, we would find that Miller really is a member like Todd Palin of the Alaska Independence Party, which was founded by a man who wanted the United States to be consumed by fire. He blew himself up with dynamite while building bombs.

I refer all readers to Richard Evans' The Coming of the Third Reich (Penguin Press), which deals with the origins of Nazism, the development of its ideas and its rise to power in 1933. It should be mandatory reading for all Americans, who want to know what's going to happen.

The AP decided to run a story today that the 111th Congress probably accomplished more than the landmark 89th Congress of 1965-1966. Norman Ornstein, the last sane man at AEI, puts this Congress' actions on a par with the Congress that passed civil rights legislation and Medicare and Medicaid. Unfortunately, reaction set in on that Congress and Democrats lost 48 seats in the House that year. Ornstein has previously written that Barack Obama has accomplished in his short term more than any President since LBJ. Other scholars have noted he was accomplished more than Carter and Clinton combined.

Scott Rasmussen predicts Republicans will win 55 seats this year. That would surpass the 1994 Newt Revolution. I'm still not buying into this as of yet.

I know we like good honest debates between candidates. But I enjoy the Jack Conway-Rand Paul debates, which are descending into mud fights. Conway got in the best line: "As Attorney-General of Kentucky, I'm always amused to get a lecture in constitutional law from a self-certified opthalmologist." Bang. Zoom. Ouch. Paul wouldn't shake Conway's hand last night because he had questioned his faith. I knew that ad was a dicey gamble but I'm glad Conway is one Democrat who turned the religion cards against Paul. I hope in 2012 we see more of this, aimed at the self-righteous radical Christian right.

Republican John Raese is fighting back against Gov. Manchin's ad saying he lives in Florida. His response--"We have a home in Colorado also." I'm sure West Virginian voters will appreciate that. That makes it all the more reasonable he's running for Senate in a state where he doesn't live.

E.J. Dionne has a good piece in this morning's Washington Post about the multi-level strategy being used by the Republicans this year, where they can claim plausible deniability on the smear campaigns. He also points to the article in the new New Yorker piece about the radical right wing roots for some of the teabagger ideology.

It's so bad that even the New York Post endorsed Andrew Cuomo over Carl Palladino. So even some people in Murdoch land cringe at the lunacy of the teabaggers.

Remember my observation that the vast sums of money being raised by Republicans is somewhat neutralized because they pay so much for fund-raising? Well, John Bircher Sharron Angle blew through $10 million over the last 3 months. One-third of that was spent on fund-raising.

President Obama has boxed himself in on DADT. Instead of fighting the court ruling that it was unconstitutional, the Administration should have left itself wiggle room. It's clear to me that Gates wants to delay repealing it for his own good. It's also clear to me John McCain is playing some inside game with the Pentagon. McCain vows to filibuster the Defense Appropriations bill if it includes DADT, which he did before recess.

First, we will know the results of the elections by the time this comes up. We know the results will show a more conservative Senate and a nutty House. The prospects of getting any Congress to repeal it would be diminished. The House already repealed it. I would make McCain actually filibuster the Bill--make the Republicans speak on the floor of the Senate for ever. Then President Obama should acknowledge the DADT can't be repealed by legislative action and sign an executive order like Harry Truman did on integrating the army. This is a policy that needs to be killed as soon as possible and waiting for a process to do it isn't right to the men and woman in uniform who face discharge every day. Obama would have two years to recover from any backlash. We would already have experienced the first wave of reaction on November 2.

The other item on the agenda after recess will be the tax-cuts. The Administration has to play power politics on this. President Obama must make it clear he will veto any extension of the tax cuts for the wealthy on the basis of fiscal responsibility. I bet the House under the Republicans will suspend the PayGo rules to adopt these tax cuts.