Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues*

*Bob Dylan, The Witmark Demos.



The booklet that accompanies this new release says that it is songs like "Tomorrow is Such A Long Time", which would be sung forever. Then it says that cuts like "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" would only be remembered by people who lived through the 1960s. This would be true except that in the year 2010, 48 years since Bob Dylan cut his first tunes, we now have John Birchers running for office.

A personal note: Listening to the Witmark demos, I was reading Our Kind of Traitor by John Le Carre or David Cornwall in real life. I was struck that I started listening to Bob Dylan and reading John le Carre in the same year. I have downstairs in my house my Doubleday book of the Month club edition of Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which I got when it first came out. That's almost 50 years of loyal reading. I'm waiting for the music and publishing industry to finally recognize me. Oh and yes, John le Carre doesn't disappoint. But he seldom does.

This morning's electoral-vote. com estimates have 206 Democrats and 201 Republicans in the House and the rest tied. Unbeknownst to the average political junkie, of the remaining tied races we do not have any polling data on 24 of them. So we're running blind at this point.

There is more nonsense appearing everyday. Politico said that early voting in Nevada give Democrats reason for concern. But veteran report John Ralston in the Las Vegas Sun reported that Democrats are outvoting Republicans in the early voting. But he does write that the vote tallies are looking like your average mid-term elections. Throughout the Midwest, Democratic voters are the sizeable number of the early voters since this is part of the Democratic GOTV strategy. In Texas, the Democratic Party has filed charges against the loc al Teabaggers, who have been harassing minorities at the polling places and tryingto instruct them how to vote. This apparently will be the strategy all through the election to keep the minority vote suppressed.

This should not come as a surprise since the NAACP released their report today on "Tea Party Nationalism", a joint project with the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. The report documented the on-going ties between hate groups and the movement. The report documents the specific ties of Tea Party members with these groups and shows that Tea Party Patriots and ResistNet are the two largest growing parties of the movement. Naturally, the Tea Party Express denounced the NAACP as smearing the group and working for the "liberal Democratic agenda."

Unfortunately, we have crossed the Rubican on these matters. It simply doesn't phase any of these people the they may be in bed with anti-semites, white supremacists or racists. Even if they are, they deny it. But the subterranean connections between the more unsavory groups should worry people. You see them pop up all over the place. Joe Miller's security contigent has relationships with militia groups who were involved with the Oklahoma City Bombings. And with the anti-Obama hatred whipped up by these people, anything will happen.

If you needed to connect the dots between racism, nationalism and the corporate world, look no further than Think Progress' piece this morning by Lee Fang on the leaked memo concerning the secret June meeting of the Koch Brothers, the Chamber of Commerce, Glenn Beck and the corporate special interests to develop the strategy for the 2010 elections. And special guests at this meeting were Fat Tony Scalia and Clarence Thomas, last known to be sitting justices on the Supreme Court. If Ruth Bader Ginsberg went to a left-wing strategy session, the Fox News noise machine would be demanding her death. Here, two justices are sitting in on strategy meetings concerned with implementing the Citizens United decision.

And yes, they plan to meet at Rio Rancho in January to discuss their strategy for the 2012 elections. I hope you will be there.

Counterpunch has an article linking the Koch Brothers to Americans for Prosperity as well as many of the astroturf organizations fighting the Cap and Trade law, climate change and other strange corporate agenda items.

If you put this all together, you have the makings of a genuine American fascist movement. The difference between the businessmen's plot to topple FDR and these guys is that the businessmen of the 1930s were only interested in stopping the New Deal. These modern guys have brought with them an ideology and they have married their corporate interests to the radical fringes in our society. It's strange to see something like the World Capitalist Conspiracy, which manipulates the nationals with their own brand of xenophobia. This could be a new unique ideology.

The real job of Americans over the next few years is to fight this new coalition and thwart their ambitions.

The revelations today by Think Progress and earlier this week by the New York Times are not linked to the espionage scandal that will hit conservatives.