++After the Bundy rancher episode,the John Birch Society, which was let back into the conservative movement at CPAC during the Obama years, promises that there will be armed confrontations with the federal government.
++Larry Klayman of Judicial Watch wrote a scree on in World Nut Daily calling for the overthrow of President Obama because of the Bureau for Land Management moving against Bundy's cattle grazing on public land.
++Bundy seems to believe the constitutional doctrine of Skousen, the radical rightwing Mormon who J. Edgar Hoover believed was "too anti-Communist". He later left the FBI and became a professor in Utah writing books against FDR and the federal government.
++The Bundy episode brought out the Oathkeepers,the libertarian paramilitary group,the militias from other Western states, and money from the Tea Party Groups.
++With the support of Bundy from Fox News and Sean Hannity, you begin to wonder what happen to the rightwing who was for law and order and patriotism.
++The question I have is will the May 15th demonstration here in Washington abandon their policy of not urging their followers to bring guns when they demand the removal of the federal government?
++With the killings around the Jewish Center in Kansas by a former leader of the KKK,CNN asked the penetrating question of "Whether the KKK can re-brand themselves?" and naturally found the Grand Dragon who said that they can have segregation without violence.
Showing posts with label John Birch Society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Birch Society. Show all posts
Monday, April 21, 2014
Monday, December 9, 2013
Afternoon Delight
++ Harry Reid postponed the vote to confirm Patricia Millett to the D.C. Circuit Court.
++We're Rich! The United States household income is $77.3 trillion because of the rise in stocks and real estate value.
++Heritage Action came out and opposed the Ryan-Murray Budget proposal, even though no one knows what it is.
++Rep. Walter Jones is moving to declassify 28 pages of the reeducated 9/11 report that concerns the role of Saudi Arabia.
++Dick Cheney came out against the Iran deal because of Obamacare.
++Darryl Issa is wrapping up his Obamacare tour in Arizona and reports everyone wants it repealed. Harry Reid told Republicans get over it.
++Conservative Republican Mark Obernshein who lost the Attorney General's election in Virginia by about 150 votes now protests that vote security in Fairfax, a traditional Democratic stronghold, was lax. Next week, the recount begins.
++Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin came up with a unique criticism of Nelson Mandela--he had the wrong position on abortion.
++Amazing fact on the Thom Hartman show, it took fifteen years from when the first bill was submitted to the passage of sanctions against South Africa.
++No one in this area reported on the Saturday meeting of the John Birch Society at Mt. Vernon to discuss how best to resist President Obama.
++Greg Sargent reports that the extension of unemployment assistance looks like it will be omitted from any budget deal.
++The Ukrainian President said he would agree to talks with the protestors to resolve the issues tearing that country apart.
++President Obama is currently in flight to South Africa with Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Laura. Bill is traveling separately.
++We're Rich! The United States household income is $77.3 trillion because of the rise in stocks and real estate value.
++Heritage Action came out and opposed the Ryan-Murray Budget proposal, even though no one knows what it is.
++Rep. Walter Jones is moving to declassify 28 pages of the reeducated 9/11 report that concerns the role of Saudi Arabia.
++Dick Cheney came out against the Iran deal because of Obamacare.
++Darryl Issa is wrapping up his Obamacare tour in Arizona and reports everyone wants it repealed. Harry Reid told Republicans get over it.
++Conservative Republican Mark Obernshein who lost the Attorney General's election in Virginia by about 150 votes now protests that vote security in Fairfax, a traditional Democratic stronghold, was lax. Next week, the recount begins.
++Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin came up with a unique criticism of Nelson Mandela--he had the wrong position on abortion.
++Amazing fact on the Thom Hartman show, it took fifteen years from when the first bill was submitted to the passage of sanctions against South Africa.
++No one in this area reported on the Saturday meeting of the John Birch Society at Mt. Vernon to discuss how best to resist President Obama.
++Greg Sargent reports that the extension of unemployment assistance looks like it will be omitted from any budget deal.
++The Ukrainian President said he would agree to talks with the protestors to resolve the issues tearing that country apart.
++President Obama is currently in flight to South Africa with Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush and Laura. Bill is traveling separately.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Morning Coffee--New Guinea Dark Roast
Yesterday Drudge ran a piece headlined "Obama Plays Race Card". Anytime you read something like that watch the other side because that's what they're doing. The Race Card is question was the video sent by David Plouffe with Obama appealing to Organizing for America people that for such high takes mid-term elections there must be an effort to get out the Black, Latino and Women vote. In short, everyone Republicans are counting on not to show up. But I thought the one interesting twist to Obama's statement was his assertion that he wants first-time voters--in this case a 29-year old woman--to cast their second vote in the mid-term elections. This follows the Obama strategy to enlarge the voting base--which is diametrically opposed to the decades old strategy of Karl Rove to shrink the voting base by using wedge issues. This is the President who went out of his way to campaign on Indian reservations.
Meanwhile, the Arizona immigration law has spurred a wild array of responses. Civil rights leader and Hitler-admirer Pat Buchanan writes in "Whose country is this?" that illegal Hispanics are taking jobs away from blacks. He then goes on to say Barack Obama is failing his constitutional duties of upholding the law--which Pat says requires sending the 12-20 million illegals back home. He accuses Obama of being too beholden to the Hispanic lobby to uphold the law and condemning black Americans to poverty. Pat quotes Ronald Reagan as saying "a country that can not control its borders is not a country anymore." He laments the Balkanization of the country into ethnic enclaves like say white gated communities (no, he did say that.).
Governor Brewer of Arizona claims that the state will not suffer any economic consequences from boycotts. San Francisco passed a resolution to sever all business contracts with firms based in Arizona. The Arizona Republican opined that the real damage is done to the public's belief that the law is color-blind and you have a presumption of innocence. New York Times Supreme Court report Linda Greenhouse is so infuriated with the law that she claims she is not going to back to Arizona as long as it's not a "police state".
I received an e-mail from a rightwing Arizonan who wrote his friends that La Raza is pouring people into the state to protest and they're even bringing in Koreans! He protests that the media coverage of the law deflects attention away from the tea party movement and the huge national deficit. He also worries that the state will be sued and suffer financially. He hopes the law will be ruled unconstitutional since it really is bad. I guess so La Raza will stop busing people in from California.
The Arizona Indian nations have weighed in led by the Navahos. "So the squatters are trying to kick out the foreigners, how ironic?"
Some Latinos are reacting with good humor. One car read "I'm Mexican. Pull Me Over." Some vandals drew swastikas on government offices with refried beans.
Rachel Maddow gets kudos for tracking down the authors of the bill and establishing that they were funded by a New York C,Milton Eisenhowity foundation that encourages eugenics and the preservation of the bloodlines of early American settlers. The group is another one of these front organizations claiming to argue for immigration reform.
Kudos again to Rachel Maddow for her segment on the rehabilitated John Birch Society. Unfortunately, it seems that like Scott Brown the John Birch Society is using her name in vain to raise money. But Rachel solved one of the longest outstanding mysteries in American history. No, not flouride in the water. Who was Dwight David Eisenhower's Communist control officer? After all the John Birch Society maintained that Ike was an overt Communist agent. The answer is--none other than his brother Milton. Another mysterty solved--the anti-Christ is Javier Solana and Ike's control officer was brother Milton.
One aspect of the segment was new to me. The John Birch Society was created in 1958 for the expressed purpose of carrying on the legacy of Joe McCarthy. What Rachel doesn't mention is how the John Birch Society got rehabilitated. She had on as a guest Sam Tenenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism ( random House, 2009), who suggested that conservatives no longer had any major thinkers to keep the movement honest and that the fringes dominated because there are no enemies on the Right. For a follow-up, she should have on Frank Schaeffer who can tell her that the John Birch Society came back through the Religious Right, especially Tim Lahaye and his Left Behind series. LaHaye was a long-time, high-ranking member of the John Birch Society.
Barack Obama almost went black on us at the memorial service for the coalminers in West Virginia. He even got some call-backs from the all white audience as he started to get into his preaching rhythmn when he talked about God. In mid-eulogy, he started into his preaching cadence and came back to it at his finale. I still believe one of his best speeches during the campiagn was at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Georgia when he preached about the Walls of Jericho. I wish he would do more of this but then he would only invite more angry reactions.
The real non-news story is about Obama's own poll numbers. He's been clocking about 50-51% in Gallup's tracking poll, some 20 points above any other person in our political system. What's interesting is that going back to last April, he's consistently maintained the same approval rating.
In the breakouts of the polling data, there are no great surprises. Obama has large approval ratings across the country, except in the South where he is about 40%. The Northeast continues to love him at about 67%. His approval rating among women far outstrips that among men. Everybody under 60 give him above 50% approval ratings; the youth most of all. But over 60, he slips, particularly among white males. Among whites in general, he is at 44% and among white males of the teabagger movement he drops dramatically. But remember he won only about the same 44% among white males last time--which correlates with past Democratic nominees.
Now in Sunday New York Times Democrats admitted they could lose the House this year. This piece was followed up by various talking head reports and the usual woe is us. The House changing back so soon? Hasn't happened in quite some time. If we were in a normal situation where one party was Center-Left and another Center-Right, I could see it as a reaction to keep the system in check. But Center-Left and Radical Right, I'm skeptical. As we've seen, the situations in states are galvanizing voters, especially among the demographics who usually don't vote in by-elections.
But let's say it happens. Bless Michael Steele. He's recruited over 20 African-Americans to run for the House. Some of these candidates admit it's opportunism because they would be farther up in line than their Democratic counterparts for committee positions. Now, let's say 15 of these candidates win and the margin for Republican control in the House rests with these new members. Can anyone believe that with their Democratic Black Caucus members nagging them that they could go along with "Hell No" John Boehner? Could the Republicans really maintain their authoritarian discipline in this situation? They had to have two people stand next to Rep. Cao the last session to make sure he didn't vote for healthcare reform. Things could get interesting.
Over the weekend another potential assassin was arrested in North Carolina. A nerdy white male with rifles and diagrams of scopes was apprehended at the airport because he wanted "to meet President Obama." He had police emergency lights in his car and scanners to monitor police radios. His website showed he was a music technician and a member of A Million Republicans, a group created by Tom DeLay. He had driven from Ohio to North Carolina for the occasion. All of this is giving white people a bad name. I wish they would cut it out.
Meanwhile, the Arizona immigration law has spurred a wild array of responses. Civil rights leader and Hitler-admirer Pat Buchanan writes in "Whose country is this?" that illegal Hispanics are taking jobs away from blacks. He then goes on to say Barack Obama is failing his constitutional duties of upholding the law--which Pat says requires sending the 12-20 million illegals back home. He accuses Obama of being too beholden to the Hispanic lobby to uphold the law and condemning black Americans to poverty. Pat quotes Ronald Reagan as saying "a country that can not control its borders is not a country anymore." He laments the Balkanization of the country into ethnic enclaves like say white gated communities (no, he did say that.).
Governor Brewer of Arizona claims that the state will not suffer any economic consequences from boycotts. San Francisco passed a resolution to sever all business contracts with firms based in Arizona. The Arizona Republican opined that the real damage is done to the public's belief that the law is color-blind and you have a presumption of innocence. New York Times Supreme Court report Linda Greenhouse is so infuriated with the law that she claims she is not going to back to Arizona as long as it's not a "police state".
I received an e-mail from a rightwing Arizonan who wrote his friends that La Raza is pouring people into the state to protest and they're even bringing in Koreans! He protests that the media coverage of the law deflects attention away from the tea party movement and the huge national deficit. He also worries that the state will be sued and suffer financially. He hopes the law will be ruled unconstitutional since it really is bad. I guess so La Raza will stop busing people in from California.
The Arizona Indian nations have weighed in led by the Navahos. "So the squatters are trying to kick out the foreigners, how ironic?"
Some Latinos are reacting with good humor. One car read "I'm Mexican. Pull Me Over." Some vandals drew swastikas on government offices with refried beans.
Rachel Maddow gets kudos for tracking down the authors of the bill and establishing that they were funded by a New York C,Milton Eisenhowity foundation that encourages eugenics and the preservation of the bloodlines of early American settlers. The group is another one of these front organizations claiming to argue for immigration reform.
Kudos again to Rachel Maddow for her segment on the rehabilitated John Birch Society. Unfortunately, it seems that like Scott Brown the John Birch Society is using her name in vain to raise money. But Rachel solved one of the longest outstanding mysteries in American history. No, not flouride in the water. Who was Dwight David Eisenhower's Communist control officer? After all the John Birch Society maintained that Ike was an overt Communist agent. The answer is--none other than his brother Milton. Another mysterty solved--the anti-Christ is Javier Solana and Ike's control officer was brother Milton.
One aspect of the segment was new to me. The John Birch Society was created in 1958 for the expressed purpose of carrying on the legacy of Joe McCarthy. What Rachel doesn't mention is how the John Birch Society got rehabilitated. She had on as a guest Sam Tenenhaus, author of The Death of Conservatism ( random House, 2009), who suggested that conservatives no longer had any major thinkers to keep the movement honest and that the fringes dominated because there are no enemies on the Right. For a follow-up, she should have on Frank Schaeffer who can tell her that the John Birch Society came back through the Religious Right, especially Tim Lahaye and his Left Behind series. LaHaye was a long-time, high-ranking member of the John Birch Society.
Barack Obama almost went black on us at the memorial service for the coalminers in West Virginia. He even got some call-backs from the all white audience as he started to get into his preaching rhythmn when he talked about God. In mid-eulogy, he started into his preaching cadence and came back to it at his finale. I still believe one of his best speeches during the campiagn was at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Georgia when he preached about the Walls of Jericho. I wish he would do more of this but then he would only invite more angry reactions.
The real non-news story is about Obama's own poll numbers. He's been clocking about 50-51% in Gallup's tracking poll, some 20 points above any other person in our political system. What's interesting is that going back to last April, he's consistently maintained the same approval rating.
In the breakouts of the polling data, there are no great surprises. Obama has large approval ratings across the country, except in the South where he is about 40%. The Northeast continues to love him at about 67%. His approval rating among women far outstrips that among men. Everybody under 60 give him above 50% approval ratings; the youth most of all. But over 60, he slips, particularly among white males. Among whites in general, he is at 44% and among white males of the teabagger movement he drops dramatically. But remember he won only about the same 44% among white males last time--which correlates with past Democratic nominees.
Now in Sunday New York Times Democrats admitted they could lose the House this year. This piece was followed up by various talking head reports and the usual woe is us. The House changing back so soon? Hasn't happened in quite some time. If we were in a normal situation where one party was Center-Left and another Center-Right, I could see it as a reaction to keep the system in check. But Center-Left and Radical Right, I'm skeptical. As we've seen, the situations in states are galvanizing voters, especially among the demographics who usually don't vote in by-elections.
But let's say it happens. Bless Michael Steele. He's recruited over 20 African-Americans to run for the House. Some of these candidates admit it's opportunism because they would be farther up in line than their Democratic counterparts for committee positions. Now, let's say 15 of these candidates win and the margin for Republican control in the House rests with these new members. Can anyone believe that with their Democratic Black Caucus members nagging them that they could go along with "Hell No" John Boehner? Could the Republicans really maintain their authoritarian discipline in this situation? They had to have two people stand next to Rep. Cao the last session to make sure he didn't vote for healthcare reform. Things could get interesting.
Over the weekend another potential assassin was arrested in North Carolina. A nerdy white male with rifles and diagrams of scopes was apprehended at the airport because he wanted "to meet President Obama." He had police emergency lights in his car and scanners to monitor police radios. His website showed he was a music technician and a member of A Million Republicans, a group created by Tom DeLay. He had driven from Ohio to North Carolina for the occasion. All of this is giving white people a bad name. I wish they would cut it out.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
One Day Before The Operation
Not as dramatic as Three Days Before The Shooting, but tomorrow at dawn I'll see whether my African-American female doctor can restore the sight in my left eye. She has the most amazing hands I've ever felt--she'll probably coax the sight back. And her sidekick is Chinese. I imagine my brother-in-law would run screaming down the street seeing both of the doctors. He's still afraid Obama is going to take his guns and he is furious at illegal immigrants but couldn't answer me when I asked him if they were deported, who would do his lawn on Marco Island. The pre-op exam at Johns Hopkins was spooky-another Doctor, who I believe was a Gypsy, rattled off how many times I had malaria, amoebic dysentary, and proclaimed my cardiac event two years ago a massive case of heart burn. That's before I started talking. Maybe the CIA is doing something useful like keeping tabs on my medical history since she could not have gotten it from any recent doctor of mine. Actually I'm confident the Great Dr. Scott will pull it off.
If America does decline in my lifetime, we might start the date of the decline with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, a thoroughly shabby affair with everyone behaving badly. I can't imagine someone spending nine years researching this episode but Ken Gormley did and has offered up about 800 pages in The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Versus Starr (Crown, 2010). All the seedy details are here with some of the tragic aftermath for players like Webb Hubbell and Jim McDougall. I urge no one be sucked into reading this tome because it gets addictive just like the real saga itself and you could spend your time more constructively thinking about the paintings of Agnes Martin.
After the impeachment, the timeline would go something like this: the 2000 Presidential elections and the Brooks Brother riots in Miami to stop the vote counting; 9/11; and the multi-year wind-up to the Iraq War; Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the vaporising of the global economy in 2008. Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Obama for calling this the lost decade. For Rush and Drudge and the right-wing echo chamber it was boom times, but for our country it was a time, as George Will wrote today, our luck ran out.
CPAC, the conservative political action committee, starts its meetings today with a unique co-sponsor--the John Birch Society. I guess now Bill Buckley is dead conservatives can feel free again to swim among the conspiracy theories. The meeting started off with Marco Rubio, conservative candidate for the Republican Senate primary in Florida, attacking Obama for using teleprompters ,while he used one himself. South Carolina's neo-confederate Senator Jim DeMint barely could contain himself when Rubio spoke.
There are wonderful workshops like "We need a Catholic teaparty." and " Nullification when we are faced with tyranny." Ken Blackwell, the Attorney-General in Ohio during the 1984 presidential elections, lamented "anti-Christian pogroms in the United States". Richard Viguerie slapped down the Mount Vernon Declaration of yesterday as "pablum". And for younger conservatives there are game rooms where you can punch Harry Reid and take target practice against Nancy Pelosi. They expect that celebrities like Joe the Plumber might surprise the younger folks during their games.
Yesterday, the Washington Post printed Justice Scalia's response to a screenwriter trying to work up a teabagging script, which would lead to nullification and secession. Scalia politely answered that he could be of no help on this issue since the Civil War ended the issue for the Supreme Court once and for all.
A South Carolina Republican has introduced a bill in that state's legislature to refuse any payments in dollars in the state. Rather the only currency would be gold and silver coins. Of course, this is all unconstitutional but when have conservatives cared about the constitution.
The Senate Republicans have been meeting with lobbyists to tell them they are even trying to kill a stripped down Jobs Bill because Harry Reid decided the larger one had too many tax breaks for the wealthy, corporations and those with large estates. Lobbyists expressed anger that their work had been in vain.
Brarack Obama finally had to create a Deficit Commission by executive order because the original Senate Republicans who sponsored the original bill had voted against it. His first nominees were former Republican Alan Simpson and Clinton administration official Erskine Bowles. Simpson sniped that if his party had been interested in deficits they could have vetoed something when they held the Presidency for eight years and Congress for six. Alan Simpson always had a great sense of humor. When challenged about a past youthful indiscretion in an election, he responded," I said I had experience. Some of it is good and others bad."
If you want a mind-boogling read, go into Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish and scroll down to Marc Thiessen's explanation to a Catholic news service how torture is in line with Catholic teachings and the theory of Just War. No one ever expects the Spanish Iniquisition! But even the Catholic Church has changed its tune since then. Apparently, Thiessen forgot.
Liz Cheney, the daughter of Darth Vader, now says that Clinton's trial of the first Twin Tower bombers in New York City subsequently caused 9/11.
Meanwhile, the Black Man continues to clean up with the capture of several of the top military leaders of the Taliban and more executions of Al Qaeda leaders by drones.
The Republicans continue in high dungeon with a concerted attack on the first anniversary of the stimlus package. As I've written before, the stimulus package was not big enough but was the only one possible given the politics of the time. Republicans, while bragging on stimulus projects in their own districts, claim the stimulus actually caused job loss. In fact, it saved or created 2 million jobs and will end up preserving 2.5 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office. But apparently the constant attacks are paying off. The Tea Baggers are now holding rallies that the stimulus actually caused the Recession. The Republicans are banking on people forgetting their own, pivotal role in creating what would have been the next Great Depression. Maybe with enough lying, they will convince the voters.
Meanwhile in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, our new Republican Governor has decided to gut educational programs for k-12 and eliminate mental health programs--started after the VTech killings--all for the purpose of saving the slight lowering of the car tax two years ago. No other purpose. Virginia will also be the first state to challenge in court the EPA's authority to monitor carbon emissions. Why? Because they can.
The great deconstruction continues. Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minneapolis and a born-again creationist, wants to project his national image by completely gutting the state's welfare and educational system. The local papers in Minnesota have warned voters that the very high standard of life in the state would be permanently damaged by these actions. Minnesota has always bragged about their enlightened policies to health care, education and mental illness. All of this built up over generations would be completely destroyed for one man's national ambitions.
The new Republican governor of New Jersey, Karl Rove's buddy, aims to make the state a model for the South. Without any consideration of alternatives, he has taken an ax to the state's budget with a special emphasis on eliminating education.
Finally, congratulations to Rachel Maddow for being named the Commencement speaker at Smith College. The announcement was greeted by shrieks of joy by the Senior class. Rachel Maddow is one of the few fresh faces in our media that provides sound and thoughtful analysis with a sense of humor. She deserves all good things.
If America does decline in my lifetime, we might start the date of the decline with the impeachment of Bill Clinton, a thoroughly shabby affair with everyone behaving badly. I can't imagine someone spending nine years researching this episode but Ken Gormley did and has offered up about 800 pages in The Death of American Virtue: Clinton Versus Starr (Crown, 2010). All the seedy details are here with some of the tragic aftermath for players like Webb Hubbell and Jim McDougall. I urge no one be sucked into reading this tome because it gets addictive just like the real saga itself and you could spend your time more constructively thinking about the paintings of Agnes Martin.
After the impeachment, the timeline would go something like this: the 2000 Presidential elections and the Brooks Brother riots in Miami to stop the vote counting; 9/11; and the multi-year wind-up to the Iraq War; Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of New Orleans, and the vaporising of the global economy in 2008. Rush Limbaugh ridiculed Obama for calling this the lost decade. For Rush and Drudge and the right-wing echo chamber it was boom times, but for our country it was a time, as George Will wrote today, our luck ran out.
CPAC, the conservative political action committee, starts its meetings today with a unique co-sponsor--the John Birch Society. I guess now Bill Buckley is dead conservatives can feel free again to swim among the conspiracy theories. The meeting started off with Marco Rubio, conservative candidate for the Republican Senate primary in Florida, attacking Obama for using teleprompters ,while he used one himself. South Carolina's neo-confederate Senator Jim DeMint barely could contain himself when Rubio spoke.
There are wonderful workshops like "We need a Catholic teaparty." and " Nullification when we are faced with tyranny." Ken Blackwell, the Attorney-General in Ohio during the 1984 presidential elections, lamented "anti-Christian pogroms in the United States". Richard Viguerie slapped down the Mount Vernon Declaration of yesterday as "pablum". And for younger conservatives there are game rooms where you can punch Harry Reid and take target practice against Nancy Pelosi. They expect that celebrities like Joe the Plumber might surprise the younger folks during their games.
Yesterday, the Washington Post printed Justice Scalia's response to a screenwriter trying to work up a teabagging script, which would lead to nullification and secession. Scalia politely answered that he could be of no help on this issue since the Civil War ended the issue for the Supreme Court once and for all.
A South Carolina Republican has introduced a bill in that state's legislature to refuse any payments in dollars in the state. Rather the only currency would be gold and silver coins. Of course, this is all unconstitutional but when have conservatives cared about the constitution.
The Senate Republicans have been meeting with lobbyists to tell them they are even trying to kill a stripped down Jobs Bill because Harry Reid decided the larger one had too many tax breaks for the wealthy, corporations and those with large estates. Lobbyists expressed anger that their work had been in vain.
Brarack Obama finally had to create a Deficit Commission by executive order because the original Senate Republicans who sponsored the original bill had voted against it. His first nominees were former Republican Alan Simpson and Clinton administration official Erskine Bowles. Simpson sniped that if his party had been interested in deficits they could have vetoed something when they held the Presidency for eight years and Congress for six. Alan Simpson always had a great sense of humor. When challenged about a past youthful indiscretion in an election, he responded," I said I had experience. Some of it is good and others bad."
If you want a mind-boogling read, go into Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish and scroll down to Marc Thiessen's explanation to a Catholic news service how torture is in line with Catholic teachings and the theory of Just War. No one ever expects the Spanish Iniquisition! But even the Catholic Church has changed its tune since then. Apparently, Thiessen forgot.
Liz Cheney, the daughter of Darth Vader, now says that Clinton's trial of the first Twin Tower bombers in New York City subsequently caused 9/11.
Meanwhile, the Black Man continues to clean up with the capture of several of the top military leaders of the Taliban and more executions of Al Qaeda leaders by drones.
The Republicans continue in high dungeon with a concerted attack on the first anniversary of the stimlus package. As I've written before, the stimulus package was not big enough but was the only one possible given the politics of the time. Republicans, while bragging on stimulus projects in their own districts, claim the stimulus actually caused job loss. In fact, it saved or created 2 million jobs and will end up preserving 2.5 million jobs according to the Congressional Budget Office. But apparently the constant attacks are paying off. The Tea Baggers are now holding rallies that the stimulus actually caused the Recession. The Republicans are banking on people forgetting their own, pivotal role in creating what would have been the next Great Depression. Maybe with enough lying, they will convince the voters.
Meanwhile in the great Commonwealth of Virginia, our new Republican Governor has decided to gut educational programs for k-12 and eliminate mental health programs--started after the VTech killings--all for the purpose of saving the slight lowering of the car tax two years ago. No other purpose. Virginia will also be the first state to challenge in court the EPA's authority to monitor carbon emissions. Why? Because they can.
The great deconstruction continues. Tim Pawlenty, the Governor of Minneapolis and a born-again creationist, wants to project his national image by completely gutting the state's welfare and educational system. The local papers in Minnesota have warned voters that the very high standard of life in the state would be permanently damaged by these actions. Minnesota has always bragged about their enlightened policies to health care, education and mental illness. All of this built up over generations would be completely destroyed for one man's national ambitions.
The new Republican governor of New Jersey, Karl Rove's buddy, aims to make the state a model for the South. Without any consideration of alternatives, he has taken an ax to the state's budget with a special emphasis on eliminating education.
Finally, congratulations to Rachel Maddow for being named the Commencement speaker at Smith College. The announcement was greeted by shrieks of joy by the Senior class. Rachel Maddow is one of the few fresh faces in our media that provides sound and thoughtful analysis with a sense of humor. She deserves all good things.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Impotent, old, rich white men shout at clouds
I can't wait until Wednesday when 80 prominent conservative "thinkers" will unveil "the Mount Vernon Statement" in homage of George Washington. The organizers of this historic event bill it as the next generation of the 1960 "Sharon Statement", which was produced at Bill Buckley's house in Connecticut by a group of young conservatives. The "Sharon Statement" served to define the conservative movement for years.
To appeal to the new generation,the headliners of the Mount Vernon Statement are well-known conservative foundation "welfare queens" Ed Feulner, who receives several times the salary of the President of the United States as the President of the non-profit Heritage Foundation, former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and former head of the commission on pornography Ed Meese, Media Research Center leader Brent Bozell, leading American Wahhabist and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, Christian Right leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center and American Conservative Union head David Keene, who puts on CPAC every year. Almost all of them now qualify for Social Security and Medicare. All they are missing is David Horowitz, the 71-year old veteran of Ramparts magazine and a born-again conservative. This is a very exciting line-up, which would qualify as the Old Timers' Game.
One of the intriguing elements of the original "Sharon Statement" and Bill Buckley's role in building a conservative mvement was the exclusion of the John Birch Society. Bill Buckley, with the permission of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, wrote a long manifesto against the John Birch Society and had it read into the Congressional record with the approval of Senator Tower. The diatribe was then widely distributed to alert conservatives that the John Birch Society was beyond the pale.
That's what makes this crew's association with the Sharon Statement intriguing. David Keene's CPAC this year is being co-sponsored by the John Birch Society for the first time I remember. It's probably the promise of funding from the Koch Industries, whose family members always funded the John Birchers in the past. Buckley's original statement was also a salvo against the old conservatives like the Taft Republicans. It was a young man's challenge to the Old Guard. Here is the Old Guard, very old in fact. Are they just declaring their position as the leaders of American conservatism or are they in fact actually interested in drawing anyone new to their ranks? I guess you would have to pass a class, race and age test.
A coalition of tea party groups and right-wing activists will be using Keene's CPAC this year to support a guiding document of their own--The Contract from America. Semantically, I'm not sure whether this is a secessionist document, or a message from "real Americans". And the old ambulance chaser himself Newt Gingrich is following up his 1994 Contract with America , with another "New Contract with America" in the hopes that his student Eric Cantor can recapture the House, reliving Newt's glory days before he fell because of a sex scandal.
All this nonsense only underscores what I have said before that the conservative nomenklatura is too fossilized to change. Reminiscing about the Gipper is fine but two younger generations will have no clue what they are talking about. Intrestingly, all but Meese turned against Ronald Reagan in his last two years because of his changing stance to the Soviet Union and his desire for the reduction in nuclear arms. None of these men have produced an original idea in years and now they sure retire to their porches and shout at people on their lawns.
To appeal to the new generation,the headliners of the Mount Vernon Statement are well-known conservative foundation "welfare queens" Ed Feulner, who receives several times the salary of the President of the United States as the President of the non-profit Heritage Foundation, former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and former head of the commission on pornography Ed Meese, Media Research Center leader Brent Bozell, leading American Wahhabist and President of Americans for Tax Reform Grover Norquist, Christian Right leader Tony Perkins of the Family Research Center and American Conservative Union head David Keene, who puts on CPAC every year. Almost all of them now qualify for Social Security and Medicare. All they are missing is David Horowitz, the 71-year old veteran of Ramparts magazine and a born-again conservative. This is a very exciting line-up, which would qualify as the Old Timers' Game.
One of the intriguing elements of the original "Sharon Statement" and Bill Buckley's role in building a conservative mvement was the exclusion of the John Birch Society. Bill Buckley, with the permission of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, wrote a long manifesto against the John Birch Society and had it read into the Congressional record with the approval of Senator Tower. The diatribe was then widely distributed to alert conservatives that the John Birch Society was beyond the pale.
That's what makes this crew's association with the Sharon Statement intriguing. David Keene's CPAC this year is being co-sponsored by the John Birch Society for the first time I remember. It's probably the promise of funding from the Koch Industries, whose family members always funded the John Birchers in the past. Buckley's original statement was also a salvo against the old conservatives like the Taft Republicans. It was a young man's challenge to the Old Guard. Here is the Old Guard, very old in fact. Are they just declaring their position as the leaders of American conservatism or are they in fact actually interested in drawing anyone new to their ranks? I guess you would have to pass a class, race and age test.
A coalition of tea party groups and right-wing activists will be using Keene's CPAC this year to support a guiding document of their own--The Contract from America. Semantically, I'm not sure whether this is a secessionist document, or a message from "real Americans". And the old ambulance chaser himself Newt Gingrich is following up his 1994 Contract with America , with another "New Contract with America" in the hopes that his student Eric Cantor can recapture the House, reliving Newt's glory days before he fell because of a sex scandal.
All this nonsense only underscores what I have said before that the conservative nomenklatura is too fossilized to change. Reminiscing about the Gipper is fine but two younger generations will have no clue what they are talking about. Intrestingly, all but Meese turned against Ronald Reagan in his last two years because of his changing stance to the Soviet Union and his desire for the reduction in nuclear arms. None of these men have produced an original idea in years and now they sure retire to their porches and shout at people on their lawns.
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