We mourn today the death of Paul the Octopus, that magnificent creation who successfully predicted the World Cup winners round by round. An amazing accomplishment. Paul had to endure death threats from German fans, who thought he was unpatriotic.
In Kentucky, Rand Paul's teabagger brownshirts stomped on the head of a Move-On female protestor. Unfortunately, it appears that Paul is beginning to pull away from Conway. If you watched the debate last night, you casn only shake your head. Paul was ill-informed, could not defend his own positions, and tried to avoid acknowledging his controversial stances on Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance.
Jerry Brown wins today's Best Ad. Open with Meg Whitman telling why she moved to California thirty years ago. "Everything seemed possible. There was so much innovation." Continue the superlatives. Cut to announcer "Who was Governor then?" Segue into what Jerry Brown did for California. Nicely done.
Mitch McConnell appealed to Americans to have patience because,Mitch Republicans can't do much in 2 years. (But Obama is supposed to save the country and create peace on earth in 20 months.) He said that the whole purpose of Republicans in Congress is to ensure that President Obama is a one-term President. He also said that the Republicans in Congress would be developing a platform for the Republican presidential nominee in 2012.
Think Progress is still on the American Chamber of Commerce ads like a dog on a bone. This time they documented over a dozen foreign oil companies, plus American branches of companies like BP, who are putting money in the till.
Washington is still weirdly oblivious as to the meaning of having secret money percolating in our electoral system. As we learned from Watergate, this leads to intimidation, blackmail and straight-up bribery. One commentator also wrote that it's also the money that's not spent that should be concerned--used as a threat against any politician who doesn't capitulate to the demands of the corporations. It does appear that the torrent of money is wearing some Democrats down and is forcing Democrats to practice triage on candidates.
Electoral-Vote has the House today Republicans 208, Democrats 206 with the rest tied. I wonder if they are just holding back until closer to election day. They also have Democrats up to 51 Senate seats. Chris Bowers over at Daily Kos still has Democrats at 52 in the Senate. Also, Bowers wrote why Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman will not change parties.
Nate the Great Silver is now a star on NPR. Yesterday, he said the Republicans look to win the House but then he went into numbers wonkland and said that their gains could be 20-60. Well, if it's below 40, it's tough luck. He also has Republican chances winning the Senate, close to none or about 11%.
Organizing for America plans to call 7 million people in the next 7 days. Strangely enough, the Alexandria site for this is the car dealership where my wife bought her car. It happens to be owned by a former college classmate of mine. ActBlue and other progressive websites are still burning candles for Democratic candidates.
On the other side, seven conservative (anonymous) astro-turf groups are trying to coordinate a GOTV drive. This is where the rubber meets the road. As I've written, Republican GOTV efforts this year are in disarray because the Republican party apparatus has collapsed.
The question I have are the Undecideds really undecided or are they like the Undecideds during Reagan first election. You were supposed to be too embarrassed by Reagan so you didn't tell anyone you would vote for him. Is this a portion of our population who knows that teabaggers are nutjobs but will vote for them? Or vice versa. Independents that can't reveal they are voting for a Democrat.
Election analyst Eric Rudenour wrote a blog yesterday where he recounted his own election success since the 1980s and predicted Democrats would lose 30 House seats and 5 Senate seats but retain control of both chambers. He has an excellent record and I wonder if he really is cheerleading.
Nate Silver said that nothing has happened in the elections since Labor Day. All the ads, all the Obama campaigning, all the debates have not changed any race so far. He also believes that Democratic "momentum" is Democrats coming home to the party and that accounts for the natural tightening of the races. It will be interesting to see what he thinks about the efforts by Howard Dean and David Plouffe in the GOTV department.
Things don't look good when the Washington Post does a positive profile of Chris Van Hollen and his role for the Democrats's House Committee. Van Hollen criticized Obama for starting too late in defining the election as a choice and that Obama did not focus on the positive points about Congress and the economy. Nancy Pelosi had been furious at the White House by its insistence on saying that Congress was broken, when the House passed more progressive legislation than any chamber since FDR. That it was the Republicans in the Senate, who were the obstacle. Otherwise, Congress was doing just fine, thank you.
If you want an economic illiterate, you will have one with John Boehner. Yesterday, he said he would push for a moratorium on all government regulation so as to create jobs. Food and Drugs? Mine safety? Oil drilling? What is this guy talking about? The other thing that Democrats did not make hay out of was Boehner's economic plan for the House. Analysts claim it will result in the loss of 1 million jobs. Then Boehner promises to cut some government program every week to reduce the deficit. He also promises to get government spending back to 2008 levels.
George W's memoirs are supposed to come out the end of election week. He had asked that they be postponed until then because he said some things would upset people in his party. Well, it can't be admissions about torture or that he knew Karzai was on the Iranian payroll. What it seems to me is his vigorous defense of TARP, which says saved the United States from a Greater Depression than the Great Depression. After all it was TARP and the Black President that created the Teahadists.
Our Alaska race is looking pretty dirty. Miller has admitted he committed ethical lapses at his job but, for unknown reasons, keeps avoiding why he is a disabled vet. He avoided this question in the debate and the follow-up question-and-answer period afterward. The reason for his discharge was " miscellaneous". Nobody has asked if while at Yale Law School did he join the Oathkeepers, the right-wing outfit of veterans, police and active duty military who will oppose any perceived infringement on the constitution. It was created at Yale by a libertarian activist.
Everybody is suing the state of Alaska for posting the write-in candidates in the voting booths because it would favor Lisa Murkowski. Lisa Murkowski has been up to some dirty tricks by reproducing endorsements from state Democrats and Washington Democratic Senator Patty Murray. Unfortunately, none of them are true. This race will take all night and it might be that no one will know the winner until next year like with Al Franken.
Colorado Republican teabagger candidate Ken Buck said yesterday that he does not believe in the separation of church and state. That's actually seen as a positive among the large Colorado radical right Christian crowd. In the campaign for the Conception starts with Ejaculation bill, pro-lifers are running ad that calls Barack Obama the "Angel of Death". Unrestrained by any laws on accuracy, they reproduced almost every falsehood about the President, the healthcare bill, funding abortions abroad, and end that a vote for this bill is a way to take "America back." Women's groups are finally waking up and running counter ads against both the bill, which would outlaw "non-barrier contraception" , and Ken Buck, who wouldn't prosecute a confessed rapist because the woman had had an abortion and he said it was a case of "buyer's remorse".
This Senate race is tied--if you want any indication about how far we have fallen.
Glenn Beck yesterday said that President Obama communicates with Satan. This seems to be a right-wing refrain nowadays. But consider this,Glenn Beck is a Mormon. President Obama and his family have been baptised by proxy by the Mormon Church. Mormons believe Jesus Christ is the brother of Lucifer. So does this make Barack Obama Jesus Christ? Inquiring minds want to know.
Jeff Sharlet has a piece in this month's Mother Jones on how C Street and the politicians involved in it have their own foreign policy and have used tax-payer funds for trips to proselytize foreign leaders. The piece demonstrates how the Christian Right has sunk their hooks into Uganda and how they plan to "convert" Muslims. Sharlet's story about C Street in Syria actually rings a bell with me because a conservative told me that Blackwater had been guarding missionaries in Muslim countries like Syria.
How many more ways can people trash President Obama? Torture King, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen claims the "downfall of President Obama" came when he told the Republicans at a meeting on the stimulus that "he won". Thiessen is not honest enough to talk about the Republican leadership meeting a week before Obama took office where they gave orders that no one cooperate with the new President. Thiessen writes that it's Obama's fault that he didn't reach out to Republicans. If you read anything on the Left, they explode about all the times Obama tried to accomodate Republicans.
We are being conditioned for the interpretation of the election results. In the New York Times, President Obama mistook a protest vote, which brought him victory, for a mandate. We have the usual pundits say that Obama has governed too far on the Left and this is a reaction to that. We already hear from Democrats themselves that Obama should have emphasized job creation at the expense of healthcare. Paul Krugman grumps that the elections are a result of a failed economic policy. Of course, 15% of the teahadists say it is because of his race, not program.
What is so interesting to me is that during the first 20 months of Obama's presidency, the beltway pundits never wrote about how irrational the Republicans were. Now we are hearing about how the election results will force bipartisan cooperation. There is simply no evidence from any Republican that this is true. Jimmy Carter yesterday said the Democrats would lose the House but that would be good because President Obama can run like Harry Truman against the "Do-Nothing" Congress. Even Doug Schoen, former partner of Mark Penn, claims that having a Republican Congress would be the best thing for President Obama because they would give him an excellent foil. Democrats themselves invoke Clinton's comeback after the 1994 loss of Congress. David Broder continues to believe that John Boehner will act as a responsible Speaker of the House and actively negotiate with President Obama.
I don't believe any of them.
The Republicans are committed to the destruction of President Obama and returning to power in 2012 because they believe they are entitled to power and the presidency. Remember before President Obama, Republicans had the White House 20 out of 28 years.
Meanwhile, Pew has a poll out that says President Obama is in better shape than Reagan in his first term in so far as people wanting him to run again. About 47% want Obama to run again and 51% did not want Reagan to run again after the 1982 midterms.
Showing posts with label Chris Van Hollen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chris Van Hollen. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Thursday, September 9, 2010
You Don't Know What's Happening Here,Do You, Pastor Jones?
First up, the great International Quran Burning Day in Gainesville, Florida. I have yet read a piece that this whole stunt by one Pastor Jones is about erasing the tax liens on his properties. The Church also houses his for-profit enterprise and his congregation--all 40 of them--serve as "volunteer" labor for his business. Pastor Jones and his wife own real estate in the surrounding areas estimated to be worth $5 million and some of it is in arrears for taxes. It seems the whole Quran Burning event is a scam to raise money to pay off his taxes.
This is not so dissimilar to the Westboro Baptist Church scam, which generates protests at military funerals and sometimes anti-semitic and homophobic demonstrations. This so-called church basically consists of one extended family and a few followers. The whole purpose of their obnoxious stunts is to provoke physical attacks on their members so that the Church can file suit and collect damages. This is the whole raison d'etre of their existence and so far they have been very successful at it.
Our third scam artists are The Quitter from Wasilla and Glenn Beck, who are exploiting 9/11 in Anchorage, Alaska at an event where they are charging $250.00 for an entrance fee. Talk about Chutzpah since Glenn Beck frequently proclaimed how sick he was of hearing from 9/11 families. I guess he was repulsed because they didn't charge money.
During Labor Day weekend, I got to drive a brand-new Chrysler Minivan over highways refurbished under the Recovery Act. So, I was thrilled to hear President Obama come firing out at the Milwaukee Labor Day celebration and announce plans for a $50 billion infrastructure program. This was followed by a strong economic speech in Cleveland, where he drew the lines between his recovery policy and the Republican non-plan.
So where are we with the Midterms? I listened to Larry Plotkin on NPR on Labor Day claim the Republicans will take back the House by 22-25 votes and have a chance at taking the Senate. Charlie Cook doubled down on his prediction of Republicans taking back the House and suggested Democrats could lose the Senate. Charlie Cook today then criticized Organzing for America, suggesting they would not have any influence on this year's election. Another polling firm reneged on its prediction that the Republicans would retake the House yesterday. Then, the Gallup poll came out and the great 10 pt. generic lead by Republicans vanished and it was again tied.
President Obama's approval rating continued to tank. Oh wait, it remains the same as it has been for the past 15 months--pretty consistent given the situation of the economy. But most surprising is his approval rating among those who told pollsters they were not going to vote--75% approval. And there lies the Democratic strategy.
David Plouffe addressed the OFA members via video-conferencing about his plans for the mid-terms. His view is that the mid-terms will be decided by a series of races where the vote margins will be below 1,000 and percentages like 51-49%. OFA has been ramping up their efforts with the view of opening several offices in key states and nation-wide contacting 15 million Democrats or leaning Democrats, who are ambivalent about voting this year. Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage over Republicans and just moving a percentage of these ambivalent voters would affect the results of elections determined by low turnouts.
In addition to this, the AFL-CIO and other unions are gearing up for a massive voter turnout effort. To galvanize their memberships, the unions, civil rights groups and environmental groups are marching on Washington October 2 for a public display of strength.
Chris Van Hollen, who is handling the Democratic House races, "leaked" several internal polls that directly contradicted the media's narrative about a change in the House. He choose races where the incumbent Democrat was said to be threatened. In each it showed the Democrat in the lead.
That's not to say that Republicans right now don't have the intensity factor on their side, but their candidates are frightening and Democrats are exploiting that with independents. Gov. Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania has come right out and told independents that the Republicans this year are "wack-o's." David Axelrod echoed this sentiment saying the Republicans this year are farther right than George W. Bush. But ,Democrats face one astonishing fact--58% of the electorate believe the Republicans will have ideas different from George W. Pete Sessions and John Boehner have made it clear they are doubling down on the Bush economic policies despite the havoc they sowed. This is where President Obama in his campaign mode is useful to the Democrats by drawing a sharp contrast between his vision of the future and the Republican plans.
The line on the tax issue has been drawn in the sand--Obama backing middle-class tax cuts and Republicans insisting on maintaining tax cuts for the upper income brackets. There is alot of nonsense within the Beltway about the legislative fights ahead. Since Obama made his position clear yesterday, Huffington Post and other blogs are asking when Obama will cave on this issue, citing his avoidance of saying he would veto such tax breaks. It's amazing how the well-paid, high-income tax bracket media wishes to maintain this tax break, despite buckets of evidence that it would only increase our deficit by billions--actually hundreds of billions--and that it would do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. The same occurred during the Healthcare debate when the media cried over provisions affecting people earning over $250,000 a year.
President Obama is also offering about $300 billion in tax breaks to corporations, particularly small businesses, once the base of the Republican Party. His offer to write-off R&D costs over the next two years is being met with phony counter offers by the GOP. There is a reason for this cat-and-mouse. If you examine President Obama's recent tax offers, you'll realize he just co-opted the best items in his 2012 rival's plans--Mitt Romney. Just as he did with parts of the healthcare reform. He's practicing his rope-a-dope two years early. (A P.S. it's doubtful that the corporate tax breaks will actually stimulate the economy.)
How this plays out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess but at least Obama will place the Democrats on the side of working and middle-class families and Republicans with the wealthy. This is almost a caricature of past political rhetoric but for the first time in a long while it is actually true. Even Democrats charging that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security is actually true for the first time in my memory.
Meanwhile Haley Barbour, the GOP King of GOTV, is heading that operation out of the Governors' Association since the RNC is dead. Barbour is also organizing the GOP to campaign solely on the economy and not get distracted by social issues. The Republicans for the first time in a while are waging a 50 state campaign, mirroring the past efforts by former DNC chairperson Howard Dean. However, even Haley knows he has some ringers. He's already pulled the plug on the GOP candidate for Governor in Colorado because he's lied about being an undercover FBI agent and other exaggerations on his resume.
The marriage of the teabaggers with the GOP is getting rocky. The teabagger win in Alaska by Rick Miller has propelled Democrat Scott MacAdams into contention and with a real shot at winning the election. I listened to Scott MacAdams on a podcast last night and realized if the teabaggers were actually populist and not an ideological campaign he would have been their nominee. Rick Miller has claimed various social programs are unconstitutional and he has vowed to ween Alaska off the federal tit. But his background is very suspicious. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has never held a job over 6 months, progressing from position to the next. It's clear that he doesn't believe a word he says but is a pure opportunist. It was Todd Palin who got him the nomination, not Sarah, to get even with the Murkowski family.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Sitka simply lucked into the Democratic nomination because he was asked to fill in at a candidate training seminar and asked to make a fake stump speech for the Senate. The attendees of the Alaska Democratic convention liked it so much they made him the candidate. Now ActBlue has taken up his cause and he is raising competitive money from the grassroots even though the national Democratic Party has neglected him. Even Rasmussen has him polling less than 5 points behind Miller.
Next up is Delaware where the teabaggers hope to bump off veteran Mike Castle, who has never lost an election. Christine O' Donnell has the Tea Party support and buckets of money. But she is plagued by her history of personal insolvency and campaign funding hijinx. She probably is the first Senate candidate in American history whose major issue is masturbation. She hopes to ban it. As the ads hit the airwaves, the nasty exchanges between the two Repubican camps have given Jeffrey Coons, the Democratic nominee, the opening he can exploit. He's hit the airwaves with a positive ad, highlighting his role in cutting budgets and acting in a bipartisan manner. Right now Castle has a huge lead over Coons. But if the teabagger wins , it's Coons in a walkaway.
One of the most important developments is a wholesale defection of Republican businessmen, including Reagan's RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, to Harry Reid. Sharron Angle has scared the daylights out of these men and they have gone very public in their support of Reid.
Various analysts still see Democrats holding between 51-53 seats in the Senate. Nate the Great has bumped his odds of a GOP takeover to 25% but he admits this is caused by fooling around with his methodology and not because of anything real. The Democrats are at a disadvantage because they are allowing North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas go by the boards. This means they have less margin of error. Somehow, I do think they will turn a few Republican seats. I'm still at 54-55.
Republicans still look like they will pick up some state houses. Nate the Great says 30 but others peg it at 27. The Texas gubernatorial contest is very close, with White actually leading in some polls. Alex Sink looks in a strong position to take Florida. And we are all praying Governor Jerry Brown will rise from the dead and start battling Meg Whitman in earnest. After spending over $100 million, she's just a couple points ahead in some polls and behind in others. The Republican Midwest sweep looks less certain than when I wrote about it. Minnesota and Wisconsin, which looked automatic, have gotten shaky with the GOP candidates acting in bizarre ways.
MEANWHILE--The 9th Circuit Court is not demanding the State of California actually defend Prop 8. Arnold and Jerry Brown both refused to support it in court. This leaves an interesting question whether the religious proponents can have the right to defend it. It's highly questionable. I think we may expect a ruling sooner than previously advertised.
Elizabeth Warren again visited the White House this morning. She's already cancelled her teaching position at Harvard this fall. Obama would only say she was advising him and Geitner on how to establish the Consumer Agency. An announcement soon would be a big boost for progressives prior to the elections.
There is also some discussion that the DADT repeal will be appended to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Again another point on the progressive agenda.
I am expecting a hurricane of books shortly. We have a new Mary Oliver, Tom McQuane, Gary Snyder, V.S. Naipul, John Le Carre and more all-stars to pick me up.
This is not so dissimilar to the Westboro Baptist Church scam, which generates protests at military funerals and sometimes anti-semitic and homophobic demonstrations. This so-called church basically consists of one extended family and a few followers. The whole purpose of their obnoxious stunts is to provoke physical attacks on their members so that the Church can file suit and collect damages. This is the whole raison d'etre of their existence and so far they have been very successful at it.
Our third scam artists are The Quitter from Wasilla and Glenn Beck, who are exploiting 9/11 in Anchorage, Alaska at an event where they are charging $250.00 for an entrance fee. Talk about Chutzpah since Glenn Beck frequently proclaimed how sick he was of hearing from 9/11 families. I guess he was repulsed because they didn't charge money.
During Labor Day weekend, I got to drive a brand-new Chrysler Minivan over highways refurbished under the Recovery Act. So, I was thrilled to hear President Obama come firing out at the Milwaukee Labor Day celebration and announce plans for a $50 billion infrastructure program. This was followed by a strong economic speech in Cleveland, where he drew the lines between his recovery policy and the Republican non-plan.
So where are we with the Midterms? I listened to Larry Plotkin on NPR on Labor Day claim the Republicans will take back the House by 22-25 votes and have a chance at taking the Senate. Charlie Cook doubled down on his prediction of Republicans taking back the House and suggested Democrats could lose the Senate. Charlie Cook today then criticized Organzing for America, suggesting they would not have any influence on this year's election. Another polling firm reneged on its prediction that the Republicans would retake the House yesterday. Then, the Gallup poll came out and the great 10 pt. generic lead by Republicans vanished and it was again tied.
President Obama's approval rating continued to tank. Oh wait, it remains the same as it has been for the past 15 months--pretty consistent given the situation of the economy. But most surprising is his approval rating among those who told pollsters they were not going to vote--75% approval. And there lies the Democratic strategy.
David Plouffe addressed the OFA members via video-conferencing about his plans for the mid-terms. His view is that the mid-terms will be decided by a series of races where the vote margins will be below 1,000 and percentages like 51-49%. OFA has been ramping up their efforts with the view of opening several offices in key states and nation-wide contacting 15 million Democrats or leaning Democrats, who are ambivalent about voting this year. Democrats hold a 4-3 advantage over Republicans and just moving a percentage of these ambivalent voters would affect the results of elections determined by low turnouts.
In addition to this, the AFL-CIO and other unions are gearing up for a massive voter turnout effort. To galvanize their memberships, the unions, civil rights groups and environmental groups are marching on Washington October 2 for a public display of strength.
Chris Van Hollen, who is handling the Democratic House races, "leaked" several internal polls that directly contradicted the media's narrative about a change in the House. He choose races where the incumbent Democrat was said to be threatened. In each it showed the Democrat in the lead.
That's not to say that Republicans right now don't have the intensity factor on their side, but their candidates are frightening and Democrats are exploiting that with independents. Gov. Fast Eddie Rendell of Pennsylvania has come right out and told independents that the Republicans this year are "wack-o's." David Axelrod echoed this sentiment saying the Republicans this year are farther right than George W. Bush. But ,Democrats face one astonishing fact--58% of the electorate believe the Republicans will have ideas different from George W. Pete Sessions and John Boehner have made it clear they are doubling down on the Bush economic policies despite the havoc they sowed. This is where President Obama in his campaign mode is useful to the Democrats by drawing a sharp contrast between his vision of the future and the Republican plans.
The line on the tax issue has been drawn in the sand--Obama backing middle-class tax cuts and Republicans insisting on maintaining tax cuts for the upper income brackets. There is alot of nonsense within the Beltway about the legislative fights ahead. Since Obama made his position clear yesterday, Huffington Post and other blogs are asking when Obama will cave on this issue, citing his avoidance of saying he would veto such tax breaks. It's amazing how the well-paid, high-income tax bracket media wishes to maintain this tax break, despite buckets of evidence that it would only increase our deficit by billions--actually hundreds of billions--and that it would do absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy. The same occurred during the Healthcare debate when the media cried over provisions affecting people earning over $250,000 a year.
President Obama is also offering about $300 billion in tax breaks to corporations, particularly small businesses, once the base of the Republican Party. His offer to write-off R&D costs over the next two years is being met with phony counter offers by the GOP. There is a reason for this cat-and-mouse. If you examine President Obama's recent tax offers, you'll realize he just co-opted the best items in his 2012 rival's plans--Mitt Romney. Just as he did with parts of the healthcare reform. He's practicing his rope-a-dope two years early. (A P.S. it's doubtful that the corporate tax breaks will actually stimulate the economy.)
How this plays out in the next few weeks is anyone's guess but at least Obama will place the Democrats on the side of working and middle-class families and Republicans with the wealthy. This is almost a caricature of past political rhetoric but for the first time in a long while it is actually true. Even Democrats charging that Republicans want to eliminate Social Security is actually true for the first time in my memory.
Meanwhile Haley Barbour, the GOP King of GOTV, is heading that operation out of the Governors' Association since the RNC is dead. Barbour is also organizing the GOP to campaign solely on the economy and not get distracted by social issues. The Republicans for the first time in a while are waging a 50 state campaign, mirroring the past efforts by former DNC chairperson Howard Dean. However, even Haley knows he has some ringers. He's already pulled the plug on the GOP candidate for Governor in Colorado because he's lied about being an undercover FBI agent and other exaggerations on his resume.
The marriage of the teabaggers with the GOP is getting rocky. The teabagger win in Alaska by Rick Miller has propelled Democrat Scott MacAdams into contention and with a real shot at winning the election. I listened to Scott MacAdams on a podcast last night and realized if the teabaggers were actually populist and not an ideological campaign he would have been their nominee. Rick Miller has claimed various social programs are unconstitutional and he has vowed to ween Alaska off the federal tit. But his background is very suspicious. He is a graduate of Yale Law School and has never held a job over 6 months, progressing from position to the next. It's clear that he doesn't believe a word he says but is a pure opportunist. It was Todd Palin who got him the nomination, not Sarah, to get even with the Murkowski family.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Sitka simply lucked into the Democratic nomination because he was asked to fill in at a candidate training seminar and asked to make a fake stump speech for the Senate. The attendees of the Alaska Democratic convention liked it so much they made him the candidate. Now ActBlue has taken up his cause and he is raising competitive money from the grassroots even though the national Democratic Party has neglected him. Even Rasmussen has him polling less than 5 points behind Miller.
Next up is Delaware where the teabaggers hope to bump off veteran Mike Castle, who has never lost an election. Christine O' Donnell has the Tea Party support and buckets of money. But she is plagued by her history of personal insolvency and campaign funding hijinx. She probably is the first Senate candidate in American history whose major issue is masturbation. She hopes to ban it. As the ads hit the airwaves, the nasty exchanges between the two Repubican camps have given Jeffrey Coons, the Democratic nominee, the opening he can exploit. He's hit the airwaves with a positive ad, highlighting his role in cutting budgets and acting in a bipartisan manner. Right now Castle has a huge lead over Coons. But if the teabagger wins , it's Coons in a walkaway.
One of the most important developments is a wholesale defection of Republican businessmen, including Reagan's RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf, to Harry Reid. Sharron Angle has scared the daylights out of these men and they have gone very public in their support of Reid.
Various analysts still see Democrats holding between 51-53 seats in the Senate. Nate the Great has bumped his odds of a GOP takeover to 25% but he admits this is caused by fooling around with his methodology and not because of anything real. The Democrats are at a disadvantage because they are allowing North Dakota, Indiana, Arkansas go by the boards. This means they have less margin of error. Somehow, I do think they will turn a few Republican seats. I'm still at 54-55.
Republicans still look like they will pick up some state houses. Nate the Great says 30 but others peg it at 27. The Texas gubernatorial contest is very close, with White actually leading in some polls. Alex Sink looks in a strong position to take Florida. And we are all praying Governor Jerry Brown will rise from the dead and start battling Meg Whitman in earnest. After spending over $100 million, she's just a couple points ahead in some polls and behind in others. The Republican Midwest sweep looks less certain than when I wrote about it. Minnesota and Wisconsin, which looked automatic, have gotten shaky with the GOP candidates acting in bizarre ways.
MEANWHILE--The 9th Circuit Court is not demanding the State of California actually defend Prop 8. Arnold and Jerry Brown both refused to support it in court. This leaves an interesting question whether the religious proponents can have the right to defend it. It's highly questionable. I think we may expect a ruling sooner than previously advertised.
Elizabeth Warren again visited the White House this morning. She's already cancelled her teaching position at Harvard this fall. Obama would only say she was advising him and Geitner on how to establish the Consumer Agency. An announcement soon would be a big boost for progressives prior to the elections.
There is also some discussion that the DADT repeal will be appended to the Defense Appropriations Bill. Again another point on the progressive agenda.
I am expecting a hurricane of books shortly. We have a new Mary Oliver, Tom McQuane, Gary Snyder, V.S. Naipul, John Le Carre and more all-stars to pick me up.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Bummer Friday
Beautiful weather but the zeitgeist is getting funky.
Dana Milbank doesn't take kindly to Glenn Beck showing up in town. The early videos of his arrival show the short-sleeved munchkin surrounded by security dressed as secret service types and white women reaching out to shake his hand. But Milbank is writing a book about Beck and doesn't think highly of the new messiah. He reminds readers that it has just been over a year since Beck called the first-African-American president a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Beck says that Obama is "moving all of us to slavery". He accused Obama of seeking "reparations" from white America, seeking to "settle old racial scores". This is also a chronic theme of Rush Limbaugh's rantings.
Beck has spoken about "radical black nationalism" in the White House and "Marxist black liberation theology" influencing Obama. He has also determined that the New Black Panthers have "ties to the White House in a myriad of ways" and are part of Obama's "army of thugs". Where do I join? Beck choose the date of his rally because of "divine providence". Like Sharron Angle running for Senate. Like Jan Brewer running for Arizona. Does God now have alzheimer's?
Beck now believes the civil rights movement was distorted by civil rights leaders, who may have known King personally but purposely distorted his ideas. Over the last century, Beck says, "no man has been free,because we've been progressive." He argues the anti-tax conservatives are the "real civil rights movement." Well done, Dana.
Ken Mehlman, the man who ran George W.'s 2004 campaign, has discovered he is gay. This is a man who presided over the Republican Party when it ran anti-gay referenda in every state to boost the turnout and encouraged the passage of DOMA in Congress. He is now saying he was quietly trying to persuade Republicans to go easy on the Gay. It's simply not believable. Now he wants to support the cause of same-sex marriage. He is in a long line of gay conservatives beginning with Roy Cohn, who run the Republican Party. There is a wonderful book there or else a piece for a psychology journal.
Nate "The Great" Silver is making me nervous. Do you remember when he was "poblano" over at the Daily Kos? Nate appeared on Hardball and started talking about "wave" elections and mentioned Speaker Boehner. This coming week, we'll see what Nate has produced.
Chris Van Hollen , who is handling the Democratic House elections, claimed this morning that the Democrats will hold both houses of Congress.
But Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien , all reputable political scientists, have done their preliminary House predictions by running a 1,000 computer simulations. They predict Republicans will take back the House with a majority of 229 seats to 206 for Democrats. They do include all the necessary scholarly caveats. But still...
If Republicans win back the House, they plan to do what I wrote about before--investigate the Obama Administration from soup to nuts. Politico reports today that Republican staffers are already researching the areas of these probes. Of course, a major one will be the DOJ's handling of the so-called New Black Panther voting intimidation case. You see white people are being intimidated now from voting like with ACORN. So we will have several investigations to prove Barack Obama is an African American and to link him to the more ephemera of African American culture.
One of the heroes of New Orleans is back in the news. "Brownie", the former head of FEMA and horse breeder, told the press that President Bush hid how horrible Katrina was from the American people. Brownie is heading to New Orleans to "celebrate" the five-anniversary of the disaster. The crime of the Government's response to Katrina was that FEMA for several consecutive years ran practice sessions on exactly this precise level Hurricane striking this precise city. The plans for this particular disaster were upgraded nearly every year beginning in the Clinton Administration. And yet nothing suggested by these run-throughs was ever carried out on the days it happened or weeks afterward.
Richard Trumpka, the AFL-CIO's President blasted Sarah Palin at a union gathering in Alaska. Not to be outdone, Palin called union leaders "thugs", the new refrain from the Republicans, and said that union members were better off supporting conservatives. Because you know, they would be better off if the auto industry had failed and the rest of their homes would face foreclosure. The good news this year is that all the unions are coordinating to raise their stake in the mid-terms to $100 million. While it can't outgun the some $400 million being pledged by conservative groups, the money comes with people to organize and get out the vote. Apparently, the Democrats' ability this year to run an effective get-out-the-vote campaign has caused Karl Rove to panic and he's scrambling to raise significant funds for a GOTV effort of his own since the RNC's effort is bankrupt.
So far, I've been impressed by how prepared the Democrats have been in blunting GOP attacks. They seem to be playing more offense at this stage than defense and have so far neutralized the negative ads run by Republicans. The Republican candidates provide a target rich environment for the Democrats to hang them by their radical right-wing agendas.
Some of the candidates are truly astonishing for both their character and their ideas. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor of Florida, had the honor of paying a $1.5 billion fine for Medicare fraud by his hospitals. Several candidates openly support banning abortion even in the case of rape and incest. Sharron Angle said that teenage women just have to make lemonade out of lemons. One of the best candidates is running against Russ Feingold. He claims he is a self-made millionaire, who started in business after graduating from high school. Turns out he married a very wealthy woman, was given a department of the family business to run, and also never graduated from high school. Rick Miller in Alaska may have won as a teabagger with Sarah Plain's endorsement and has the most anti-Alaskan campaign of them all. He wants to stop the pork from going to Alaska. They get roughly $2 for every $1 they contribute to the national economy. He could really run on "Vote for Me and You will Die."
The Congressional Budget Office is preparing for a war if Republicans win in November. They announced that any repeal of the Medicare provisions in the healthcare bill will cause about $450 billion in additional deficit. This raises the issue about pay-go rules. For instance, if the Republicans actually want to keep the tax cuts for the rich, Congress this time--unlike last time--has to pay for them. The actual cost of the tax cuts for the rich is roughly twice the cost of the healthcare reform bill for all of America. Now, we know Republicans will not cut defense so the tax cuts for the wealthy have to be paid for by cuts in anything the lower or middle classes might get. If you analyze this, Pat Ryan in his "Blueprint for the Future" actually gave the game away. His plan called for cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them for everyone else. He also listed entitlement programs that would have to be cut. That's what the end-game of the GOP tax-cuts for the rich actually means. And I believe that's why the GOP leadership is trying to push Ryan off to the side for now. They are afraid that their whole gig will be up.
An idea for Democrats: Make the real cost of the tax-cuts for the rich explicit. They have to be paid for and the rest of America must subsidize the wealthy. It is true that the deficit would increase but I don't think that's how it would play out this time with pay-go. Of course, all the tax cuts, including for the Middle Class, have to be paid for through pay-go rules. So watch this space for what actually goes next year.
Fidel Castro wants you to know that Bin Laden is a bought and paid for CIA agent.
Our anti-corruption effort in Afghanistan seems to have run into a few roadblocks. It seems that all the corrupt Afghan officials that need to be removed are paid CIA agents.
Dana Milbank doesn't take kindly to Glenn Beck showing up in town. The early videos of his arrival show the short-sleeved munchkin surrounded by security dressed as secret service types and white women reaching out to shake his hand. But Milbank is writing a book about Beck and doesn't think highly of the new messiah. He reminds readers that it has just been over a year since Beck called the first-African-American president a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Beck says that Obama is "moving all of us to slavery". He accused Obama of seeking "reparations" from white America, seeking to "settle old racial scores". This is also a chronic theme of Rush Limbaugh's rantings.
Beck has spoken about "radical black nationalism" in the White House and "Marxist black liberation theology" influencing Obama. He has also determined that the New Black Panthers have "ties to the White House in a myriad of ways" and are part of Obama's "army of thugs". Where do I join? Beck choose the date of his rally because of "divine providence". Like Sharron Angle running for Senate. Like Jan Brewer running for Arizona. Does God now have alzheimer's?
Beck now believes the civil rights movement was distorted by civil rights leaders, who may have known King personally but purposely distorted his ideas. Over the last century, Beck says, "no man has been free,because we've been progressive." He argues the anti-tax conservatives are the "real civil rights movement." Well done, Dana.
Ken Mehlman, the man who ran George W.'s 2004 campaign, has discovered he is gay. This is a man who presided over the Republican Party when it ran anti-gay referenda in every state to boost the turnout and encouraged the passage of DOMA in Congress. He is now saying he was quietly trying to persuade Republicans to go easy on the Gay. It's simply not believable. Now he wants to support the cause of same-sex marriage. He is in a long line of gay conservatives beginning with Roy Cohn, who run the Republican Party. There is a wonderful book there or else a piece for a psychology journal.
Nate "The Great" Silver is making me nervous. Do you remember when he was "poblano" over at the Daily Kos? Nate appeared on Hardball and started talking about "wave" elections and mentioned Speaker Boehner. This coming week, we'll see what Nate has produced.
Chris Van Hollen , who is handling the Democratic House elections, claimed this morning that the Democrats will hold both houses of Congress.
But Joseph Bafumi, Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien , all reputable political scientists, have done their preliminary House predictions by running a 1,000 computer simulations. They predict Republicans will take back the House with a majority of 229 seats to 206 for Democrats. They do include all the necessary scholarly caveats. But still...
If Republicans win back the House, they plan to do what I wrote about before--investigate the Obama Administration from soup to nuts. Politico reports today that Republican staffers are already researching the areas of these probes. Of course, a major one will be the DOJ's handling of the so-called New Black Panther voting intimidation case. You see white people are being intimidated now from voting like with ACORN. So we will have several investigations to prove Barack Obama is an African American and to link him to the more ephemera of African American culture.
One of the heroes of New Orleans is back in the news. "Brownie", the former head of FEMA and horse breeder, told the press that President Bush hid how horrible Katrina was from the American people. Brownie is heading to New Orleans to "celebrate" the five-anniversary of the disaster. The crime of the Government's response to Katrina was that FEMA for several consecutive years ran practice sessions on exactly this precise level Hurricane striking this precise city. The plans for this particular disaster were upgraded nearly every year beginning in the Clinton Administration. And yet nothing suggested by these run-throughs was ever carried out on the days it happened or weeks afterward.
Richard Trumpka, the AFL-CIO's President blasted Sarah Palin at a union gathering in Alaska. Not to be outdone, Palin called union leaders "thugs", the new refrain from the Republicans, and said that union members were better off supporting conservatives. Because you know, they would be better off if the auto industry had failed and the rest of their homes would face foreclosure. The good news this year is that all the unions are coordinating to raise their stake in the mid-terms to $100 million. While it can't outgun the some $400 million being pledged by conservative groups, the money comes with people to organize and get out the vote. Apparently, the Democrats' ability this year to run an effective get-out-the-vote campaign has caused Karl Rove to panic and he's scrambling to raise significant funds for a GOTV effort of his own since the RNC's effort is bankrupt.
So far, I've been impressed by how prepared the Democrats have been in blunting GOP attacks. They seem to be playing more offense at this stage than defense and have so far neutralized the negative ads run by Republicans. The Republican candidates provide a target rich environment for the Democrats to hang them by their radical right-wing agendas.
Some of the candidates are truly astonishing for both their character and their ideas. Rick Scott, the Republican candidate for governor of Florida, had the honor of paying a $1.5 billion fine for Medicare fraud by his hospitals. Several candidates openly support banning abortion even in the case of rape and incest. Sharron Angle said that teenage women just have to make lemonade out of lemons. One of the best candidates is running against Russ Feingold. He claims he is a self-made millionaire, who started in business after graduating from high school. Turns out he married a very wealthy woman, was given a department of the family business to run, and also never graduated from high school. Rick Miller in Alaska may have won as a teabagger with Sarah Plain's endorsement and has the most anti-Alaskan campaign of them all. He wants to stop the pork from going to Alaska. They get roughly $2 for every $1 they contribute to the national economy. He could really run on "Vote for Me and You will Die."
The Congressional Budget Office is preparing for a war if Republicans win in November. They announced that any repeal of the Medicare provisions in the healthcare bill will cause about $450 billion in additional deficit. This raises the issue about pay-go rules. For instance, if the Republicans actually want to keep the tax cuts for the rich, Congress this time--unlike last time--has to pay for them. The actual cost of the tax cuts for the rich is roughly twice the cost of the healthcare reform bill for all of America. Now, we know Republicans will not cut defense so the tax cuts for the wealthy have to be paid for by cuts in anything the lower or middle classes might get. If you analyze this, Pat Ryan in his "Blueprint for the Future" actually gave the game away. His plan called for cutting taxes for the wealthy and raising them for everyone else. He also listed entitlement programs that would have to be cut. That's what the end-game of the GOP tax-cuts for the rich actually means. And I believe that's why the GOP leadership is trying to push Ryan off to the side for now. They are afraid that their whole gig will be up.
An idea for Democrats: Make the real cost of the tax-cuts for the rich explicit. They have to be paid for and the rest of America must subsidize the wealthy. It is true that the deficit would increase but I don't think that's how it would play out this time with pay-go. Of course, all the tax cuts, including for the Middle Class, have to be paid for through pay-go rules. So watch this space for what actually goes next year.
Fidel Castro wants you to know that Bin Laden is a bought and paid for CIA agent.
Our anti-corruption effort in Afghanistan seems to have run into a few roadblocks. It seems that all the corrupt Afghan officials that need to be removed are paid CIA agents.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Evening Coffee
There has been alot of commentary in the blogosphere concerning the miserable state of our union and can we get out of the structural problems we have. The gloom is most pronounced on the Left than the Right, which mobilizes its cohorts against socialism, black men and God knows what else.
A book I will write about in the near future is Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, 2008). Prof. Wolin has had a long and distinguished career in academia, writing definitive books on the democratic process. For years, a long time contributor to the New York Review of Books until his critiques of our corporate capitalist society got too pointed even for the review. In effect, this book is how large financial entities have bought the entire political system and manipulate it for their purposes, destroying the fabric of American society in the process. This edition of the book adds a new preface expressing admiration for the election of Barack Obama but sounding a deeply pessimistic note whether he can make any significant difference to our structural problems. He says that Obama seems to want to go back to the status quo ante, the time before our system was dominated by the cult of the free market. He claims that isn't likely to happen and that he must articulate a new paradigm for our political economy before it's too late. Wolin has progressed over the years from being a liberal political scientist to one that now seems to be sounding alarm bells from the Left. His notion of inverted totalitarianism is very intriquing and worth exploring. The problem I have is that what he says is not untrue.
After the 2004 election, Michelle Goldberg, a self-styled secular Jew, decided to investigate the rise of Christian Nationalism and the threats it poses to our pluralistic, secular society. What she produced is an excellent examination of how the Christian Right has infiltrated local communities with the spefic agenda of taking hold of charities, community organizations and school boards. We have seen this in the Texas School Board case. She broadens her scope to include the resurgence of the John Birch Society and the Reconstructionists. She shows how these extreme elements have been successfully eroding our legal system and its protections for minorities of all types. Kingdom Coming (W.W. Norton, 2007) has been updated to provide ways the ordinary American can organize and fight back. Having immersed myself in the scholarly literature on this subject, I think she does a good job in getting the players right and their intellectual heritage correct.
One redeeming note in all this is that 88% of the children of fundamentalists drift away and either join a normal denomination or become secularized. The almost frenetic pace of their proselytizing is due to an internal mechanism that they know, if they are honest, that they are in jeopardy of dying out as a potent force. They may be our next "bubble".
The Young Turks interviewed Rachel Tabachrick , a researcher on fundamentalists, the other day. She talked about the New Apostolic Reformation and the Neo-Charismatics. She claimed this movement was as large as the Southern Baptist Convention, almost 15 million people, and had large ambitions both for domestic and foreign missions. She claimed they had organizations in all 50 states and around the year 2000 they carved out missionary areas abroad. She maintains they aim to take control of communities and claim they can gain influence over government through their charities. They believe there is no need for a theocratic takeover of the government; that they can obtain their goals through democratic means. She talked about a vast media empire they have built through GOD TV, a series of magazines and a series of "transformation" movies. They have introduced a new structure of a post-denominational church and intend to eliminate denominations at the end time.
She claims that this movement represents a sea change in evangelical efforts and that it was the brainchild of a Dr. Peter Wagner, who was a specialist in missions and a veteran of Billy Graham's organization. In the late 1980s, Wagner had developed the strategy to missionize the world by the year 2000, joining in the millenial hype. The movement sees themselves as involved in "spiritual warfare" and have developed a sophisticated demonology for their end-time beliefs. They will forego the Rapture and be the warriors for God against the Anti-Christ. They are multiethnic and multiracial and proclaim the need for martyrs. This was especially true when they campaigned against gay marriage in California.
Their importance in some ways comes from their leading star in the political culture--Sarah Palin. We saw Sarah Palin blessed by the Kenyan preacher at her Wassila Assembly of God Church, a moment captured on Youtube. But what we never learned during the campaign that she had joined the so-called "prayer warrior" network through Mary Glazier in Alaska some twenty years before. We also never learned of Sarah Palin's extensive contacts with Apostolic Reformation people abroad. It was only after the election did Charisma magazine, the periodical of the movement, write about it at length. No wonder they refer to her as Esther.
What threats do these people pose? They do not believe in religious pluralism at all. And they try to "demonize" others such as gays and secular types who do not share their worldview. In doing some background, another dimension to Glenn Beck's attack on Jim Wallis of the Sojourners is Wallis' background fighting these groups. He is considered a dangerous enemy because he is an evangelical himself.
Concretely, let's take the case of Rev. Hagee's Christian Zionists out of Ohio. He is one of the leaders of this movement. With his group Christians for Israel, he has managed to gain entry to leading American politicians, including Joe Lieberman, and Israeli cabinet members, including Bibi Netanyahu. While his theology is anti-semitic (all Jews are exterminated in the end-time) and anti-Catholic, he supports and encourages financial support of the extreme right in Israel to build more Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. His activities run directly against American foreign policy and are inflammatory and directly jeopardize the hopes of any Middle East Peace Agreement.
With the "Hataree" Militia, the people of "God's Army" , another militia group affiliated with the fundamentalists have come forward to condemn the plot against the Michigan policemen. Yet it was also clear that they wanted the public to know they existed.
Michelle Goldberg reminds us in her book that Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other religious groups only make up 4% of the American society and that all of them are vulnerable to Christian extremism. By the time of his book, the Pew Foundation conducted a poll that showed that the number of avowed Christians in the country had dipped to 77%, but if radicalized can threatened the remaining population through these efforts to winnow into community structures, subvert the courts and cultivate powerful friends on the Hill. Ms. Goldberg shows how the reproductive rights of women have been severely limited through a succession of moves by the Religious Right without the overturning of Roe V. Wade. She warns us that we can become a meaner,repressed society with severely limited options if we let these people gain any more influence.
But here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I don't have to worry about this now that Governor Bob McConnell announced this month as "Confederate History Month", something the previous two governors refused to do. The Governor acted on the request of the Sons of the Conferacy who stated that the civil war was intended as a "second American Revolution" to "preserve freedom and liberty". This is the man who ran on the platform to bring jobs to Virginia. His sidekick the Attorney General has filed suit against the EPA to prevent them from regulating carbon emissions, filed another suit to prevent the healthcare bill from affecting Virginians, and issued,along with the Governor, orders not to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in the university and college system. And ,instead of declaring "Civil War History Month", the Governor just sounded the dog whistle for racism.
Our friend and champion of Indian Rights, Wilma Mankiller , the first woman Paramount Chief of the Cherokee Nation, has died at the age of 64 from cancer. I wrote about her and her declaration of sickness in a previous post.
I'll end on an upbeat note. Chris Van Hollen, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which handles the house races, made it clear that there will be no repeat of 1994 this year in the mid-terms. Apparently, he sat down in january with two former chairs--Vic Fazio and Martin Frost--to game out a strategy to avoid such a dire scenario. While he went into the weeds in describing the precinct by precinct approach and the democrats capitalizing on the mayhem the tea party has created for the Republicans, he pointed to a renewal of Democratic enthusiasm after the health care bill and signs that Democrats are being galvanized into action by none other than Sarah Palin's attacks on Democratic congresspeople. As for their part, the RNC lost a few more members today as pressure mounts of Michael Steele to quit. People at the RNC privately fear that the economy will improve and that the Obama network will significantly turn out the vote for the mid-terms. In that case, the Republicans feel they will lose or at least seem to fail.
Karl Rove made a strange appearance for the Census. Right-wing attacks on the census have led to dramatic drop-offs in responses from Republican areas, thereby jeopardizing congressional districts. This has been particularly true in Texas. Karl Rove's appearance was mean to be reassuring to the right-wingers so they don't boycott the Census entirely.
.
A book I will write about in the near future is Sheldon S. Wolin's Democracy, Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism (Princeton, 2008). Prof. Wolin has had a long and distinguished career in academia, writing definitive books on the democratic process. For years, a long time contributor to the New York Review of Books until his critiques of our corporate capitalist society got too pointed even for the review. In effect, this book is how large financial entities have bought the entire political system and manipulate it for their purposes, destroying the fabric of American society in the process. This edition of the book adds a new preface expressing admiration for the election of Barack Obama but sounding a deeply pessimistic note whether he can make any significant difference to our structural problems. He says that Obama seems to want to go back to the status quo ante, the time before our system was dominated by the cult of the free market. He claims that isn't likely to happen and that he must articulate a new paradigm for our political economy before it's too late. Wolin has progressed over the years from being a liberal political scientist to one that now seems to be sounding alarm bells from the Left. His notion of inverted totalitarianism is very intriquing and worth exploring. The problem I have is that what he says is not untrue.
After the 2004 election, Michelle Goldberg, a self-styled secular Jew, decided to investigate the rise of Christian Nationalism and the threats it poses to our pluralistic, secular society. What she produced is an excellent examination of how the Christian Right has infiltrated local communities with the spefic agenda of taking hold of charities, community organizations and school boards. We have seen this in the Texas School Board case. She broadens her scope to include the resurgence of the John Birch Society and the Reconstructionists. She shows how these extreme elements have been successfully eroding our legal system and its protections for minorities of all types. Kingdom Coming (W.W. Norton, 2007) has been updated to provide ways the ordinary American can organize and fight back. Having immersed myself in the scholarly literature on this subject, I think she does a good job in getting the players right and their intellectual heritage correct.
One redeeming note in all this is that 88% of the children of fundamentalists drift away and either join a normal denomination or become secularized. The almost frenetic pace of their proselytizing is due to an internal mechanism that they know, if they are honest, that they are in jeopardy of dying out as a potent force. They may be our next "bubble".
The Young Turks interviewed Rachel Tabachrick , a researcher on fundamentalists, the other day. She talked about the New Apostolic Reformation and the Neo-Charismatics. She claimed this movement was as large as the Southern Baptist Convention, almost 15 million people, and had large ambitions both for domestic and foreign missions. She claimed they had organizations in all 50 states and around the year 2000 they carved out missionary areas abroad. She maintains they aim to take control of communities and claim they can gain influence over government through their charities. They believe there is no need for a theocratic takeover of the government; that they can obtain their goals through democratic means. She talked about a vast media empire they have built through GOD TV, a series of magazines and a series of "transformation" movies. They have introduced a new structure of a post-denominational church and intend to eliminate denominations at the end time.
She claims that this movement represents a sea change in evangelical efforts and that it was the brainchild of a Dr. Peter Wagner, who was a specialist in missions and a veteran of Billy Graham's organization. In the late 1980s, Wagner had developed the strategy to missionize the world by the year 2000, joining in the millenial hype. The movement sees themselves as involved in "spiritual warfare" and have developed a sophisticated demonology for their end-time beliefs. They will forego the Rapture and be the warriors for God against the Anti-Christ. They are multiethnic and multiracial and proclaim the need for martyrs. This was especially true when they campaigned against gay marriage in California.
Their importance in some ways comes from their leading star in the political culture--Sarah Palin. We saw Sarah Palin blessed by the Kenyan preacher at her Wassila Assembly of God Church, a moment captured on Youtube. But what we never learned during the campaign that she had joined the so-called "prayer warrior" network through Mary Glazier in Alaska some twenty years before. We also never learned of Sarah Palin's extensive contacts with Apostolic Reformation people abroad. It was only after the election did Charisma magazine, the periodical of the movement, write about it at length. No wonder they refer to her as Esther.
What threats do these people pose? They do not believe in religious pluralism at all. And they try to "demonize" others such as gays and secular types who do not share their worldview. In doing some background, another dimension to Glenn Beck's attack on Jim Wallis of the Sojourners is Wallis' background fighting these groups. He is considered a dangerous enemy because he is an evangelical himself.
Concretely, let's take the case of Rev. Hagee's Christian Zionists out of Ohio. He is one of the leaders of this movement. With his group Christians for Israel, he has managed to gain entry to leading American politicians, including Joe Lieberman, and Israeli cabinet members, including Bibi Netanyahu. While his theology is anti-semitic (all Jews are exterminated in the end-time) and anti-Catholic, he supports and encourages financial support of the extreme right in Israel to build more Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands. His activities run directly against American foreign policy and are inflammatory and directly jeopardize the hopes of any Middle East Peace Agreement.
With the "Hataree" Militia, the people of "God's Army" , another militia group affiliated with the fundamentalists have come forward to condemn the plot against the Michigan policemen. Yet it was also clear that they wanted the public to know they existed.
Michelle Goldberg reminds us in her book that Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and other religious groups only make up 4% of the American society and that all of them are vulnerable to Christian extremism. By the time of his book, the Pew Foundation conducted a poll that showed that the number of avowed Christians in the country had dipped to 77%, but if radicalized can threatened the remaining population through these efforts to winnow into community structures, subvert the courts and cultivate powerful friends on the Hill. Ms. Goldberg shows how the reproductive rights of women have been severely limited through a succession of moves by the Religious Right without the overturning of Roe V. Wade. She warns us that we can become a meaner,repressed society with severely limited options if we let these people gain any more influence.
But here in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I don't have to worry about this now that Governor Bob McConnell announced this month as "Confederate History Month", something the previous two governors refused to do. The Governor acted on the request of the Sons of the Conferacy who stated that the civil war was intended as a "second American Revolution" to "preserve freedom and liberty". This is the man who ran on the platform to bring jobs to Virginia. His sidekick the Attorney General has filed suit against the EPA to prevent them from regulating carbon emissions, filed another suit to prevent the healthcare bill from affecting Virginians, and issued,along with the Governor, orders not to protect the rights of gays and lesbians in the university and college system. And ,instead of declaring "Civil War History Month", the Governor just sounded the dog whistle for racism.
Our friend and champion of Indian Rights, Wilma Mankiller , the first woman Paramount Chief of the Cherokee Nation, has died at the age of 64 from cancer. I wrote about her and her declaration of sickness in a previous post.
I'll end on an upbeat note. Chris Van Hollen, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), which handles the house races, made it clear that there will be no repeat of 1994 this year in the mid-terms. Apparently, he sat down in january with two former chairs--Vic Fazio and Martin Frost--to game out a strategy to avoid such a dire scenario. While he went into the weeds in describing the precinct by precinct approach and the democrats capitalizing on the mayhem the tea party has created for the Republicans, he pointed to a renewal of Democratic enthusiasm after the health care bill and signs that Democrats are being galvanized into action by none other than Sarah Palin's attacks on Democratic congresspeople. As for their part, the RNC lost a few more members today as pressure mounts of Michael Steele to quit. People at the RNC privately fear that the economy will improve and that the Obama network will significantly turn out the vote for the mid-terms. In that case, the Republicans feel they will lose or at least seem to fail.
Karl Rove made a strange appearance for the Census. Right-wing attacks on the census have led to dramatic drop-offs in responses from Republican areas, thereby jeopardizing congressional districts. This has been particularly true in Texas. Karl Rove's appearance was mean to be reassuring to the right-wingers so they don't boycott the Census entirely.
.
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