Marking 50 Years of Conservative Near Non-Progress on Race

This weekend "tens of thousands" of people gathered in the nation's capital to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the civil rights movement's 1963 March on Washington. The occasion of Martin Luther King's "I have a dream speech," the march is a touchstone in the civil rights movement.

For those on the right, the anniversary creates a bit of a PR problem, with conservatives currently indulging in a racial freak out over "young black thugs" in hoodies. After George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin, the stage was set. Republicans overwhelmingly came out in favor of racial profiling and the sort of street "justice" made legal by "stand you ground" laws.

Then a court knocked the legs out from under NYC's stop-and-frisk policy, ruling that the racial profiling involved was unconstitutional. The right reacted as if rape, murder, and various and sundry species of mayhem had all been declared legal, when all the court really did was rule that skin color didn't constitute probable cause.

Finally, they've managed to work themselves up into hysteria over the random murder of white Australian Chris Lane by three "black" teenagers (one of which happens not to be black). The right moves in fads, going from eye-clawing outrage to eye-clawing outrage until they get tired of being in a blind panic over things no one else really cares about. Right now, the flavor of the month is "scary black people."

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Censoring the Lessons of History

Today's manufactured outrage of the day, brought to you by the New York Post:

Anthony Weiner has come under intense fire from Jewish leaders for invoking Nazi Germany while criticizing the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program.

“Last year, more than 700,000 in New York were stopped — the overwhelming majority of them were young men of color. Ninety-seven percent of them did nothing wrong,” Weiner told largely black congregants in Staten Island’s First Central Baptist Church Sunday.

“And the mayor stood up and said, ‘Wait a minute, statistically this’ and ‘statistically that.’ Well, you can have 100 percent statistical reduction in crime if you stop everybody.

“You could have 1938 Germany, because everyone has to show their papers.”

Apparently, it's terribly offensive to compare a minority population subjected to police state tactics to another minority population subjected police state tactics. Although, I get the feeling that NYP, being a tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch, is grossly overstating the situation, cherry-picking their outraged Jewish leaders (who were likely Weiner opponents to begin with) and ignoring the ones who support him. It seems to me that the lessons of the Holocaust are lost if they're never applied. And to attack anyone who draws a historical parallel to one of the modern world's greatest crimes is to guarantee that those lessons are never applied -- and therefore, never learned. No one's saying "stop and frisk" is the Holocaust -- or even that it's anything approaching genocide -- merely that it's totalitarianism.

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Looking for the 'Horses and Bayonets' Bounce

That Google graphic is really all you need if you want to learn who won the debate last night. Snap polling is unreliable, but the consensus seems to be that Obama won. CNN's poll gives it to Obama, 48%-40%. Public Policy Polling's results [pdf] were more stark, with a 53%-42% Obama win. And CBS News reports an absolute blowout: 53% Obama to 23% Romney. Yeah, that's a two -- as in twenty-three.

But it's the fact that everyone's searching the "horses and bayonets" line that confirms these findings. That wasn't exactly a Romney gaffe, but it's sort of a gaffe that Obama forced on him. One of the few foreign policy positions that Romney didn't completely reverse himself on last night was his promise to throw $2 trillion at our already bloated military and build ships the Navy hasn't requested. And Obama whacked him for it:

But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn't spent enough time looking at how our military works.

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military's changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

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The Right, Ayn Rand, and Dr. King

Martin Luther King was a Republican. This statement was all the rage a year ago, when it was extremely important to remember that Tea Partiers marching around with racist signs were most definitely not racist. In fact, when Glenn Beck announced his big rally on the anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream Speech," he said it was to "reclaim" the civil rights movement -- as if King and his followers braved dogs and batons and jail to protect the downtrodden, oppressed rich white guy from tax increases. But it pays to remember where King was and what he was doing when he died.

John Nichols, The Nation:

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was not assassinated at a rally organized by a right-wing talk radio host, or at the inauguration of a conservative Republican governor.

King, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning campaigner for economic and social justice whose legacy we celebrate with a holiday that falls on Jan. 17 this year, died while supporting the right of public employees to organize labor unions and to fight for the preservation of public services.

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Republicans Worship a Constitution They Don't Understand

Imagine a group of self-proclaimed "Shakespeare experts" who claim to know everything that's not in the play The Tempest. They go on at length, explaining how this isn't in it and that isn't in it, giving everyone the impression that their knowledge of things not in the play in all-encompassing and complete. Logic would dictate that, since they know everything that is not in The Tempest, they would know everything that is. Even if only by the process of elimination, they should be able to recognize the text.

Now imagine these scholars set up a big exposition where they would read Shakespeare's work so that everyone would be clear on what is and isn't in there -- apparently, there's been some confusion about this recently and it's important to clear it up. Further, imagine they read the whole thing, but accidentally skip Act II, scene II. And imagine that none of this panel of experts notices the omission. They roll right on, completely unaware that the audience is wondering who the hell this Caliban guy is and where he came from.

Might you conclude that maybe, just maybe, these "experts" weren't quite so expert as advertised? Welcome to the 112th Congress in the House of Representatives.

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Conservatives are Politically Correct Robots

Over the years, conservatism has undergone a sort of metamorphosis. And it's a strange metamorphosis because, in true conservative fashion, it involves changing back into something it once was. Where it was once about conformity and "right-thinking," it briefly became about independent thought and the potential of the individual. Ronald Reagan appealed to what was called the "self-actualized person"; a sort of existentialist self-help idea popular at the time that held that your responsibility is to define yourself and concentrate on your own potential, rather than that of the group. In Reagan's world, society was holding you back, you needed freedom to pursue your own ideas, and the state was both that society holding you back and a check on freedom. Take that or leave it for what it was, but the core of Reaganism was a focus on individualism.

Now, here's conservatism today:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Top of the GOPs
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

Let's not concentrate on what an obvious fool Michael Steele is. Let's concentrate on how many "individuals" we see here. I'm counting zero. Grover Norquist's questions have the flavor of a pop quiz. He's not interested in any ideas they may have, he's interested in a litmus test, which Republican Party voters can then use to check a candidate for the RNC chair against a scale of ideological purity. For example, they're asked to make a case for "the defense of marriage between one man and one woman." The idea that there would be a dissenter who believes in marriage equality is unthinkable and obviously disallowed. Conservatives are back to mindless conformity and "right-thinking."

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Happy New Year

One of these years, I'm going to write a end-of-the-year post that doesn't include the words "good riddance." Unfortunately, this won't be that year. We got a lot of suck this year, but at least it wasn't 2001-level suck, so that's something.

I'm not going to write a real long post today, just a few paragraphs. I haven't even prepared anything -- I'm just winging it.

Where Scarlett O'Hara was able to say "tomorrow is another day," we're able to say that tomorrow is another year. It's a year we can begin to rebuild America and begin to change the political landscape. No rush -- we've got a whole freakin' year. And then we have the next and the next and the next. We'll go on and on until the last day of this republic, constantly working to improve it and constantly defending those improvements from backwards-minded fools. If you defend these improvements long enough, they eventually become institutions. There's no going back to the days of slavery or Jim Crow, no taking away the vote from women and minorities and 18 year-olds. These improvements have been defended for so long that only fringe crackpots want to take us back -- and they stand no chance of doing so. Things that were once mad, unthinkable changes are now so deeply ingrained in our culture that it's unthinkable that they'd ever be changed back. A consensus has been built around these ideas, by the slow process of defending them with each generation. Despite what Republicans and the 'baggers say, America is now a freer country than it was at its founding and this is the result of progressive change.

So take it easy tonight. I'm not a big fan of designated drivers, because there is no more thankless way to spend a New Years Eve. If you're in the city, take a cab. Here in Madison, the buses will run all night, so check to see what the schedule is where you live. And, if you have to go with a designated driver, take that person out to dinner some night and show them a good time -- they deserve it.

We can say that tomorrow is another year only if we live that long. Make it through tonight and we'll get back to work next year.

--Wisco


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Fact: Republican Economic Policies Suck

If you give the rich tax cuts, they'll create jobs. That's what we keep hearing. But, like all political and media debates these days, no one is required to bring any facts, no one has to demonstrate why this is so or how it supposedly happens. It's a discussion of theology, not economics, and it's only true because Republicans believe it so strongly. St. Reagan said unto the multitude that it was so and lo, it was manifest. The dogma must not be questioned.

If facts are unwelcome, then a recent report will be taboo. It turns out that people who are well-to-do are wealth collectors and don't spend money they don't have to. Not much of a surprise there. I suppose that's one reason why they're rich.

Bloomberg News:

Tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 under President George W. Bush were followed by increases in the saving rate among the rich, according to data from Moody's Analytics Inc. When taxes were raised under Bill Clinton, the saving rate fell.

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Right Still Defending Their Pointless War

Barack Obama can't do anything right. It's simply not possible. There are times when the negativity toward the President has some validity, times when it's a bit of a stretch, and times when it's just stupid. This is one of the latter times. In commenting on Barack Obama's formal announcement of the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq, the right wing's jerking knees are on full display.

"In 'turning the page' on Iraq, the Great Speechifier could find no words with which to give meaning to our epic struggle there," writes Powerline's Paul Mirengoff. "Let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume this is because he thinks the struggle had no meaning, except as it related to domestic politics in the U.S. But then why give a speech about it?"

Our "epic struggle" was a long quagmire of a war in search of a reason for being. When Obama said we had to "turn the page," he was giving people like Mirengoff an out. "I'm mindful that the Iraq war has been a contentious issue at home," the President said. "Here, too, it's time to turn the page." This is an argument these people had lost long ago. If you guys want to trot out non-existent WMD and fabricated ties to al Qaeda and the smoking gun coming in the form of a mushroom cloud, it's your funeral. President Obama basically said, "Look, what's done is done. It's over with now and we can't change the past. We could talk about the lies and the incompetence and the brainlessness of the Bush administration and their neoconservative allies in the media, but that won't change anything. We've got bigger fish to fry right now."

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Teabaggers Don't Really Understand Money

It's official; teabaggers don't really get it. When it comes to financing, they're as clueless as they are about economics. A movement that's defined mostly by the things they're against, the Tea Party has made one of those things very clear -- they're against spending money. It's a newly-found stinginess when it comes to federal spending, coming after nearly a decade of out-of-control money-shoveling by the Bush administration. See, it doesn't count when a Republican does it, because pointlessly invading foreign nations is patriotic. Keep in mind, these talk radio-fueled morons are the same ones who attacked the patriotism of anyone who opposed that big money fire that was the invasion of Iraq. But hypocrisy on the right is nothing new.

What is new is consistency. The teabaggers don't want to spend money -- not tax dollars, not pre-tax dollars. This is destroying them.

Politico:

Some leading tea party activists are concerned that their efforts to reshape American politics, starting with the 2010 elections, are being undermined by a shortage of cash that’s partly the result of a deep ambivalence within the movement’s grass roots over the very idea of fundraising and partly attributable to an inability to win over the wealthy donors who fund the conservative establishment.

Many tea party organizations have shied away from the heavy-handed solicitations that flood the e-mail boxes of political activists. And the handful of tea party groups that have raised substantial amounts, either by embracing aggressive fundraising or through pre-existing connections to wealthy donors, are viewed suspiciously within the movement.

Local groups have been left to literally pass hats seeking donations at their meetings or rely on their organizers' bank accounts, while some national groups have failed to live up to their bold fundraising predictions.

Case in point, Karin Hoffman of a Florida teabagger group called DC Works for Us; "We don't even want money. We want people to contribute money directly to the candidates. A grass-roots movement doesn't even really need money and shouldn't really have money. To what end?"

To what end? Coordinated effort and targeted funding. Like it or not, elections are a game -- and I mean that in terms of competition. If there's going to be a winner and a loser, it's never incorrect to call it a game. I think people on both sides can agree that the person with the best ideas isn't always the person who wins. The candidate who wins is the one with the best resources and, if all things are roughly equal, the one who manages those resources wisely. It might be truer than you'd like to believe to say that elections aren't won, elections are lost. Giving money to candidates directly means that the big names -- i.e., the establishment -- get all the money. For a reformist movement, this is a stupid strategy.

But hey, no one ever accused teabaggers of genius. You don't confuse socialism and fascism if you're extremely well-informed and you don't misspell protest signs if you're overly-educated. No, these are people who believe that Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh have their best interests at heart. And they ignore where the ideology of these hacks has brought them.

Financial Times:

The slow economic strangulation of... middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the "personal recession" that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed "median wage stagnation" by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 -- having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the ­multiple is above 300.

The trend has only been getting stronger. Most economists see the Great Stagnation as a structural problem -- meaning it is immune to the business cycle. In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 -- the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start. Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

You see it happening all around you. The America we built after WWII is dying off, replaced by a country that caters only to the wealthy. Supply-side economics -- Reagan's "trickle down theory" -- has failed to trickle down, even after giving it nearly four decades to work. The truth of the matter is that if you weight the economy toward the wealthy, they keep that money. And they keep it because wealthy people become wealthy by being wealth collectors. Otherwise, they're just like you are -- they aren't going to spend money they don't need to spend. This means they aren't going to hire people they don't need to hire and they aren't going to raise wages unless they absolutely have to. The idea of the rich as the wealth- and/or job-creators is a total myth... And we have a four decades long experiment to prove it.

But don't tell the teabagger that. They won't hear it. They know that all this crazy economic mumbo-jumbo will work if we just give it one more try. Another four or five decades maybe, and then you'll see. Barack Obama cut middle class taxes, but he doesn't want to extend the failed tax cuts for the rich, which means that he's a Communist! -- like Hitler. They know this, because they listen to fantastically wealthy people tell them that on the radio. The word you're looking for right now is "chumps."

No wonder the movement is dying under the weight of its own stinginess. These people really don't understand money at all.

-Wisco


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Cap-and-Trade is Dead. Now What?

Cap-and-trade is the purest form of socialism. It would be a tremendous destructive force on our market and a hidden tax that would destroy the economy. This is why Republicans and "centrist" Democrats killed it dead, dead, dead yesterday. Common sense conservatives just can't get behind it. This is why George H.W. Bush instituted a cap-and-trade system to fight acid rain -- because Ronald Reagan's Vice President was a Marxist. It's why it was the solution offered by McCain/Palin in 2008 -- because Sarah Palin is a commie. Never mind that Bush Sr's program worked, the economy didn't collapse, and unbridled socialism didn't run rampant throughout the land. Those are facts and facts are for elitists.

As we all know, conservatives hate history. If tax cuts have never worked as a way to reduce the deficit, that's irrelevant -- this time they will for sure. So by the same token, if cap-and-trade as a market-based solution was a success story in the past, this time it won't be. They have the zen of a cow in the field munching grass; always in the "now," without any past or future. The only real difference is that where cows are incapable of learning from the past, Republicans refuse to. The past is filled with facts and facts are the greatest enemy of the modern conservative, so the past is the enemy. Maybe even a lie.

But are Senate conservatives the only ones to blame here? As is always the case these days, the answer is no. By now, you know how they're going to react to something. They're going to react negatively. Without fail. Never mind that cap-and-trade was their own damned idea, Republicans are 100% guaranteed to hate it if it comes from a Democrat. Because they're children. You don't have to be a psychic to see this coming a mile away. What was missing on this issue is the same thing that's been missing on so many issues; leadership.

Andrew Revkin, New York Times:

On a host of issues, Obama campaigned as a voice of reason, willing to listen to all views, amid all the polarized shouting. But on climate and energy, he has not yet, apparently, found the strength to break free of the 20th-century-style left-right fight to forge a positive path that is true to the scope and time scale of the climate and energy challenge and could resonate with Americans, particularly the young generation that will inherit the environment being shaped by decisions, or indecision, now.

Revkin points out that Obama has given no major address on the issue, has not "invited a variegated stream of researchers and analysts of climate science and policy to the White House," and has failed to counter congressional voices of idiocy like Sen. James Inhofe's. In short, the administration has been MIA on this issue -- an issue of the utmost importance to our future.

But that may be the glass-half-empty point of view. As Revkin points out, "Could it be that the White House has concluded what some political analysts have quietly told me -- that only a Republican president could muster the Senate votes to pass a meaningful climate bill?" If that's the case, I wouldn't hold my breath. Given the '12 GOP field so far, they're going to have a hard time offering a serious challenge. And none of the nutjobs lining up for the job seems to be very interested in reality. Even if one were to wake up out of their stupor and admit that global warming was real, they'd probably blame it on illegal immigrants or abortion.

We'll pass it off to Time's Joe Klein now:

[A] Supreme Court ruling, now three years old, [says] carbon dioxide is a poison that needs to be cleaned up. Next year, the Environmental Protection Agency will begin regulating the hell out of CO2. The business community won't like that, nor will many Republicans. "Putting a price on carbon is the only alternative," says Senator Maria Cantwell, who has offered a bill--with Maine Republican Susan Collins as co-sponsor--that would force the 2000 top polluters to participate in an auction to purchase the right to spew; 75% of the income would be returned as a "dividend" to taxpayers, the other 25% would go to alternative energy...

And so, yesterday's death of environmental legislation should be considered a pre-election maneuver. Given a choice between taxes and potentially punitive regulations, the wise--the more elegant; the less expensive--choice is a tax every time.

The administration can use the EPA as a hammer to force a legislative solution and, if that fails, continue to use it as a hammer to force CO2 reduction. Reducing CO2 is not optional, it's not something we can just give up on because Republicans have chosen to be idiots about it. If they need to be forced into a corner, then release the border collies and herd them into a corner.

I just wish that border collies weren't to sweet to bite.

-Wisco


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A Rant in Defense of Democracy

If you've talked to anyone who buys into rightwing talk radio, you've heard the argument; the United States is a republic, not a democracy. It's actually a silly argument. Democracy is a system, while a republic is a structure. What they mean -- or what I think they mean -- is that the US isn't a direct democracy. Citizens don't vote on everything, we elect representatives to do that. Those representatives go on to work within the structure of a republic; i.e., a lawmaking governing body. Still, democracy is more something you do, not something you are. To me, saying, "This is a republic, not a democracy," sounds a lot like, "This is a cake, not a baking." We vote for people to go to Washington and vote for a living -- the whole system hinges on democracy.

But this argument has seemed to evolve. It comes up whenever you bring up democracy in any form. They seem to have come to believe that democracy is in itself a bad thing. I used to think that this was simply idiotic semantics -- Democrats=democracy, Republicans=republic. Democrats are bad, therefore democracy is a bad word. Republic is a good word, because it's right there in Republican. It's a sort of quasi-logical equation that assumes the governing philosophies of both parties can be summed up with single words; we're a republic, not a democracy, because Republicans are always right and Democrats are always wrong.

And I really don't have any problem at all believing that many in the Republican base really do see it that way. Yes, it's simplistic to the point of infantile, but these are people marching around with misspelled signs warning that Obama is a socialist, just like Hitler (there's no "H" in "socialist," guys). They obviously don't waste a lot of time with reason or facts. They live in a world where whatever you want to believe -- no matter how far-fetched or nonsensical -- is true, true, true if you just believe it with all your little wingnut heart. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama is really an illegal alien. Despite all evidence to the contrary, global warming is just a socialist plot to bring down capitalism. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the framers of the Constitution were hyper-Christian zealots and the United States is therefore a hyper-Christian nation by design. Despite all evidence to the contrary, there were WMD in Iraq -- Saddam just moved them someplace else. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Republican Party represents the people.





But clearly, these room temperature IQs didn't cook up this whole "democracy-bad, republic-good" thing on their own. They don't come up with anything on their own. Sheep in rugged-individualist clothing, they believe what they're told to believe -- even if it contradicts other edicts handed down from on high. If polls show a certain policy or proposal is unpopular with a big enough segment of the population, they play the Will of the People card. If another poll shows something is wildly popular, then it's back to "democracy is bad." I could excuse this wild inconsistency in philosophy if there were some sort of nuanced argument behind it where one situation differs from another, but Republicans -- and their base especially -- hate nuance. Either a fifth-grader can grasp the concept instantly or it's just some fancy-pants elitist intellectual claptrap.

All of this boils down to one over-arching belief among the Republican elite -- that you are stupid. And, if you aren't, you should be. Good Americans march around with their "OBAMA=HITLER" signs. Those are the patriots; this big homogeneous mass whose belief-system is whatever you tell them it is. And if you dare to disagree with that belief-system, you're a traitor and it's tyranny and you hate America and Jesus and the troops in the field and love terrorists and commies. End of story.

But the "democracy is bad" argument has a deeper root than just convenience. It has a basis in the political philosophy of a leading thinker on the right, Leo Strauss. Strauss really did believe that the masses were stupid and that a ruling elite should guide them. And this would require the destruction of the middle class, making the population more dependent on corporations.

Robert Barker:

[I]n the 60s and '70s, a group of alarmed conservative ideologues viewed the predominantly middle class US social upheavals as negatives. Women demanding equal pay and reproductive rights, African-Americans standing up for voting rights and equal access to public facilities, working people pushing for fair wages, activists screaming for a clean environment, a growing anti-war movement. These all spelled bad news for extreme conservative ideologies.

Suddenly the far right ideologues thought what they were seeing were indications of our social order disintegrating. It confirmed their trepidation, which echoed an alarm of the early founders like John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who argued that augmented democracy could lead to social anarchy. A ruling elite operating under the "pretext" of democracy loomed as the most steadfast form of government to these people. And a strong middle strata like we developed in the '60s and '70s meant people had too much time on their hands; and too little fear. As a sociologist it is obvious to me that the industrial, commercial, and service rendering of mid- social stratification is the hallmark of national economic success. Citizen' standing up for their Constitutional rights is to my thinking very American; to the right wing ideologues it caused trepidation.

A strong middle class meant that people could organize and the right knew how bad that could be from the success of the labor movement. Inherently authoritarian, the right believed -- and still believes -- in a strict, top-down social hierarchy. "In reaction to the liberated sixties enters the philosopher and far right ideologues, disciples of Leo Strauss and his elitist, nihilist, domination theory," Barker tells us. "Reminiscent of Nietzsche, Strauss believed in the ruling elite or autocracy as the best form of government. He taught his students to practice Illusions of nationalism, morals, religion and democracy, while surreptitiously tearing these populous precepts and paradigms apart." Strauss's students include leading Republican thinkers like William Kristol, Richard Pearl, and Paul Wolfowitz.

You don't know what's good for you, they know what's good for you -- therefore, democracy is bad. This authoritarian hierarchy takes the form of corporations these days, which explains Republican protection of them. In a world without Straussian political philosophy, Joe Barton's apology to BP, for example, would be unthinkable. Yet Barton was merely stating what was the accepted Republican line the day before. And Barton, shunned by his party for nothing more than poor timing, has no trouble finding defenders in that vast pool of idiots called the Republican base. Corporations should neither be questioned nor held accountable for their actions, because that's tyranny!

On the other hand, if you're having trouble feeding your kids, tell them to go dumpster diving. If that sounds like France before the revolution, it is -- because autocracy is good. We can forgive a corporation anything, but you've got to muddle along as best you can without any help, because E Pluribus Unum means "get off your lazy ass." At no point and in no situation will a Republican say, "We're all in this together."

So you've got Rand Paul saying that criticizing BP is un-American, while saying that the solution to unemployment is to go out and get your slacker ass a job. We've got the reliably lunatic Rep. Steve King thinking the coast is clear to say that Barton was right on the money. We've got Rep. Darrell Issa saying that, if the GOP takes the house in November, he'll stop investigations into corporations and start seeing if he can figure out some way to get Obama impeached.

At every turn, if there's a choice to be made between moneyed interests and you, they'll chose moneyed interests. Every time. Because they don't trust you, they don't believe in you, and -- frankly -- they're scared to death of you. And you have way too much political power. You're a problem and they're solving it.

So the US isn't a democracy, it's a republic. Because democracy is bad.

-Wisco


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The Ultimate Failure of Wedge Issue Politics

The problem with wedge-issue politics is that even when the wedge manages to divide Americans, it doesn't always manage to divide the electorate. This would seem contradictory, but only if you don't think too deeply about it. See, when you create a wedge issue, what you're really trying to do is create a sort of anti-voter -- someone who'll vote against something and for you by default. It's worked with abortion, where the right has convinced people to vote against their own economic interests, because the "pro-business" (read "pro-corporate") candidates they put up are also abortion rights foes. But when the split takes on identity politics -- especially in a negative way -- this strategy may not work out in the wedgers favor.

Take the anti-gay stance of most of the right; there are still gays who vote Republican, but not enough to make the statement "the party has lost the gay vote" untrue. No mainstream Republican anywhere is ever going to be put over the top by a strong showing from the LGBT community.

But they've got the math on their side. Despite the right's rhetoric, gays aren't an ever growing segment of the population. Gay's aren't everywhere, waiting to take over America and destroy families. They're pretty much a fixed percentage. In this wedge issue, Republicans believe they can afford to lose that population, because the single-issue voters they're creating on the other side are so few that they don't really matter. As society changes -- and it will -- we'll hear less and less of Republicans scapegoating gays. But until then, they'll keep fearmongering. People vote against things, not for things. So you're always on the lookout for a group you can portray as the devil. Don't vote for me, vote against them.





But occasionally, some idiot governor and legislature in -- oh, let's say Arizona -- will cook up a wedge that they think works in their state. The stand these fools take may be popular, but nationally, the only single-issue voters it creates are those who'd vote against Republicans. Public Policy Polling explains how Arizona's illegal immigrant crackdown law is playing both nationally and in the state.

There's no doubt that the new Arizona immigration law is popular nationally, but that still doesn't mean the issue's going to work to the GOP's advantage this fall.

When we polled Colorado in early March [US Senate candidates] Michael Bennet and Jane Norton were tied. Last week we found Bennet with a 3 point lead. One of the biggest reasons for that shift? Bennet went from leading Norton by 12 points with Hispanic voters to a 21 point advantage. That large shift in a Democratic direction among Hispanics mirrors what we saw in our Arizona Senate polling last month- Rodney Glassman went from trailing John McCain by 17 points with them in September to now holding a 17 point lead.

See, while Arizona's law may be popular nationwide, that doesn't automatically mean that people will vote for any candidate who takes the state's position. In fact, it's not even working so hot in that state. On the other hand, Hispanics are very worried about the law, so they are willing to become single-issue voters. Like the right's anti-gay stance, the issue is probably creating more anti-Republican single-issue voters than pro-. But unlike gays, the Hispanic population is large and growing. In other words, in looking for a brand new devil for people to vote against, the GOP picked a fight with the wrong bunch.

"This has always been Democrats' belief about immigration politics," writes Ben Smith for Politico, "That among the voters for whom this is a single, motivating issue, whites may get more attention, but Hispanics are more numerous." This seems to have been the case.

But the better lesson here is that being right -- being moral, ethical, tolerant, and wise -- pays off in the long run. Take a look at the olympic-sized pool of hot water Kentucky candidate Rand Paul finds himself in right now. Turns out that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is extremely popular, to the point of being nearly universally supported. When it comes to issues of equality, the good guys always seem to win in the end. If you doubt that, wait for the huge public outcry about gays in the military. It could start any minute now -- but you probably shouldn't hold your breath.

What we see when we look at American history is a process of acceptance. A bunch of people say, "Hey, let's all hate those guys!" a lot of people try it out for a while, see it isn't helping any, and move on. It's not the best process or the way I'd go about it, but it is what it is. And every single time, the people who say, "You know, we probably shouldn't hate the Irish-blacks-gays-Jews-women-Catholics-Hispanics-Chinese-etc.," win out in the end. Every time. My advice would be to skip the stupid step and just get right to the acceptance, but this is the real world and it's got a lot of fearful people. And fearful people vote Republican. So long as that's the case, the GOP is going to be on the prowl for people to be afraid of and the process toward acceptance will take a detour through stupid.

Democrats should always be the ones getting in on the ground floor with tolerance. It's always the best bet in the end and sometimes -- like now, with the GOP trying to whip up anti-Hispanic panic -- the rewards are almost immediate.

-Wisco


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If This is a Christian Nation, We're Doing a Crappy Job of It

It seems lately that everything's going to hell. We've got a gusher of oil spilling out into the Gulf of Mexico, We've got major flooding in Nashville, and the state of Arizona has lost its mind. If there was ever a need for divine intervention, now would be an excellent time. Luckily, we had a National Day of Prayer yesterday, which cleared everything all up. We're good now.

Nah, just kidding. While the devout prayed for grace from on high, some clown crashed the stock market by trying to type with xylophone mallets. Turns out our economic well-being rests in the ability of some Wall Street wizard to type an "m" instead of a "b." Yay for the power of prayer.

I know I'm going to lose some of you here, but I've always said the only difference between praying and doing nothing is intention. If yesterday was an example of what a people can accomplish when they all get together and pray, then my advice is to knock it off -- you aren't helping. Want to get something done? Get up off your knees and do something.





Still, if there's one thing that religion teaches us, it's to believe in something despite all evidence to the contrary. This is why praying is a good thing, while not praying is a bad thing. It has nothing to do with effectiveness, that's just the way things are... because religion says so, that's why. And, since not praying is a bad thing, a ruling that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional is the worst thing ever. Hands down. So, despite the fact that this particular National Day of Prayer was an exceptionally bad day, it must be defended. And who better than those two luminaries of religious and political thought, Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly:



Yeah Bill, you walk into the Supreme Court and you see the Ten Commandments, so that means we're supposed to be all Judeo-Christian. But you also see the Prophet Mohammad, so I guess that means the founders wanted Sharia law too. And the image isn't exactly of the Ten Commandments, it's of Moses carrying the tablets -- you can only see Commandments six through ten [PDF]. So I guess breaking the first five was cool with the Founding Fathers. Finally, the frieze was created in the twentieth century, so pointing to it as evidence of what the framers of the Constitution wanted is complete BS. You can shut up now, Bill.

But let's pretend that the Horsecrap Twins here have a valid argument, that all evidence points to the Ten Commandments being the basis of our law, thus making us the most Christian nation this side of Vatican City. How good a job are we doing in this Christian nation business? How many of God's laws -- the Ten Commandments -- are our laws?

Let's look, shall we?

There are actually fourteen or fifteen commandments, but they were boiled down into a handy decalogue because the first one is just a statement ("I am the Lord your God") and a couple of the rest are redundant. Different religions break them up the redundant ones in different ways, but the main idea of all of them is the same.

First up, "You shall have no other gods before me/You shall not make for yourself an idol." I don't claim to be an expert, but I don't think that either of those is a violation of federal law. In using the Ten Commandments as the basis of our law, we fail here.

Next, "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God." Again, seems pretty God damned legal to me. So far, no good.

"Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy." I seem to have noticed people working on Sundays without the cops arresting them. Totally legal. We're really starting to suck at this Christian nation stuff.

"Honor your father and mother." Please... there are TV sitcoms that revolve around breaking this one. Ray Romano remains at large.

"You shall not kill." OK, now we're getting someplace. Murder is totally illegal. War and capital punishment however...

"You shall not commit adultery." This one will get you in a court of law, for sure. But is it a violation of federal statute? It is not.

"You shall not steal." OK, I'll give you that one. Some would argue that there are forms of legalized theft, but that's another story. By legal definition, theft is a crime. Score one for God.

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Perjury? Totally illegal. Lying in other circumstances? Usually not.

"You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." There's an entire industry devoted to coveting women. Hell, you're on a porn delivery machine right now. Set Google image search to unfiltered and type in "ass." You're not going to see a lot of donkeys. Thinking your neighbor's wife is hot? Totally legal.

"You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbor." Not just legal, but actively encouraged. It's called "consumerism."

All told, if we're using the Ten Commandments as a basis for our law, we're doing a pretty crappy job of it. Only one is always illegal and most are always legal. Now how do you think Bill and Sarah would react to a piece of legislation outlawing covetousness or war? And if lying became illegal, they'd both need to find new lines of work.

So, can we get by without a National Day of Prayer? It doesn't seem to be working and it can't get any worse. Right now, the only purpose it seems to serve is to allow Christians like O'Reilly and Palin to pretend we're a Christian nation. Otherwise, it doesn't actually seem to accomplish anything at all. This Christian nation can't even manage to put together a system of Christian laws, what makes you think we'd have any better luck with prayers?

-Wisco


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Sophistry, FOX News Style

Greg Sargent calls it one of the "Great moments in Fox News." Others call it a straw man. FOX ran the headline "White House Fends Off Specter of Katrina in Federal Response to Oil Spill" yesterday -- for a story that included no real comparisons to Katrina. FOX is famous (or infamous) for their use of the rhetorical straw man "some people say" -- as in "some people say President Obama is a Communist" or "some people say President Obama was born in Kenya." Of course, it's not untrue, some people do say these things. But those "some people" are ideologues, lunatics, and rightwing media blowhards. Some people also say that the sun orbits the Earth, but no one gives a damn what these people think, because they're crazy.

That word you may be trying to remember from your school days right now is "sophistry." Sophistry is -- in a broad sense -- the use of rhetorical tricks or near-logical arguments with the intention to mislead or deceive. Some people do say that the oil spill in the gulf is Obama's Katrina, but those people work for an organization called "FOX News."

This is another little trick FOX pulls -- FOX News interviews FOX News and confirms for FOX News that FOX News agrees with what FOX News is reporting. Huckabee, like Hannity, hosts a FOX News show. It's at this point that "sophistry" may be leaving your mind and that "circle jerk" is probably entering it.





"Fox claims [the] White House is 'fighting off a growing perception' that the Gulf spill is 'Obama's Katrina,'" Greg Sargent comments, "a perception that Fox is of course doing its best to encourage."

FOX isn't alone here. The entire rightwing media has launched a campaign to get people to think this is "Obama's Katrina." Rush Limbaugh has also made the comparison -- that'd be the same Rush Limbaugh who said that the chaos following the flooding was basically the fault of blacks in the area, not Bush's slow response. Of course, because he doesn't have to defend Bush anymore -- or because he knows his audience has the memory of a goldfish -- he can pretend that he always said the catastrophe was all the president's fault and that Obama is now just as bad as Bush was. It's a minor victory; at least Limbaugh is finally, though indirectly, admitting that the nightmare that was the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was Bush's fault. That is, until he needs it not to be again. Conservatives' memories can be very protean that way. One narrative morphs into a completely different one, then back again when re-revisionism is required.

So how true is the oil spill-Katrina comparison? Not very. Unlike FOX, I won't leave you to rely on my say-so by interviewing myself. Media Matters has a good timeline of the oil rig incident, as does Talking Points Memo. But Michael Shear makes the case simply in a Washington Post article:

The gulf oil spill is no Katrina, in which 1,836 people died amid the near total devastation of one of America's great cities. In the case of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 11 people perished, but the worst impact of the oil on animals and shorelines have yet to be fully felt.

There will be no armed gangs committing racially motivated murders. There will be no incidents of police brutality. Thousands won't be trapped for days in a sports arena without food, water, or medical attention. As bad as this oil spill is -- and it's bad -- it can't compare to the chaos after Katrina. Anyone making the comparison is insulting the victims of that national tragedy, both the living and the dead.

I often say that the right is without shame. And it's propaganda campaigns like this that lead me to that conclusion. Anyone willing to look at the "Obama's Katrina" claim objectively can see that the argument is a hot, steaming bowl of BS. But right doesn't care, because the people they're talking to aren't interested in being objective, they're interested in seeing their biases confirmed. And, if that confirmation requires an astonishing leap of logic and a complete abandonment of personal and national memory, then so what? It's not like they give a crap about truth. If they did, they wouldn't watch FOX News or listen to Rush Limbaugh. They tune in because they get the lies they want to hear. You want to hear about how Barack Obama is actively trying to kill us all? Great! We've got Sarah Palin talking about Death Panels after the break.

Maybe the White House did screw this up -- I have no problem believing that. But so far, all the evidence I've seen shows that BP was lying every step of the way. If the White House failed to get a handle on this early, it's because they made the mistake of believing a corporation with literally billions of dollars of legal culpability on the line. To say this would be an error in judgment would be a titanic understatement. Corporations, like the rightwing media that serve them, lie -- it's what they do. Expecting them to be forthright about it -- with that much money on the table -- would be a mistake you couldn't adequately describe without a lot of swearing.

But to say this is Obama's Katrina goes beyond hyperbole and exaggeration and into insult. It's an insult to our intelligence and it's an insult to an entire region of this country.

-Wisco


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Today's Award for 'Biggest GOP Jerk' Goes to Rep. John Fleming

Let's try a little fun with math; when is 33% more than 33%? At first glance, that may seem to be a dumb question -- they're obviously the same. But it's a trick question; the answer is that when the 100% totals are different, the smaller percentages, although an equal share, are not equal numbers. 33% of one dollar is obviously less than 33% of ten dollars. A one third portion of one thing is not necessarily equal to a one third portion of another.

Unfortunately, some people are having a hard time wrapping their heads around this concept. Case in point; Barack Obama is entering into a treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles by a third. This is, of course, the worst thing ever. The party that practices Reagan worship is accusing the president of giving away the store, not understanding nuclear diplomacy, and -- in one case -- of deliberately putting the nation at risk.

But here's the thing; Reagan did the same thing. Only bigger. In 1982, Ronald Reagan proposed cutting nuclear arms by one third. Since then, nuclear arms have been cut -- most notably by the START I and START II treaties. So Barack Obama's reduction -- at least compared to Reagan's proposal -- is modest. Reagan wanted to cut 100% by 33%. Now Obama wants to cut a smaller 100% -- minus Start I and Start II -- by 33%.

Which reduction is greater?





Pencils down. The answer is clearly that Ronald Reagan hated America -- and he hated it even more than Barack HUSSEIN Obama. Given the over-the-top reactions to Obama's proposal, we can only assume that this is what his critics believe. Of course, that also assumes that the criticism is honest. I don't think I'm going out on a limb if I say it's probably not.

But back to the accusation of deliberately putting the nation at risk. Was that some teabagger moron with a misspelled sign? Some talk radio blowhard like Rush Limbaugh? Some batcrap crazy TV shrieker like Glenn Beck?

No. It was Rep. John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana. In an op-ed that begins by quoting Ronald Reagan (who, remember, logic dictates must've hated America more), Fleming makes a lot of untrue and not-so intelligent statements, titling the piece "Reagan had it right on national security" and summing the whole thing up thusly:

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I work daily to ensure our men and women have the resources they need to protect this country, and I continue to be dismayed by the national security policies coming out of this White House. Simply put, President Obama is disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose. Whether he is catering to the anti-war leftists or truly doing what he thinks is best for our security, the president is leading this nation down a very dangerous path.

That emphasis is his. He wants to make it absolutely clear that he believes the President of the United States of American is putting our nation at risk on purpose.

Steve Benen comments:

Ignorance is commonplace. Belligerence is routine. Stupidity has become habitual throughout much of the [GOP] caucus. But let's not overlook the fact that Fleming spoke directly to President Obama's motives. Fleming argued that the president isn't just mistaken, but rather, is deliberately trying to make the United States less safe and more vulnerable.

In other words, Rep. John Fleming of Louisiana effectively accused the President of the United States -- the Commander in Chief during two wars -- of treason. For Fleming, Obama is choosing to betray the nation, in his words, "on purpose."

"I write a lot about the excesses of Republican rhetoric, in part because I find GOP remarks illustrative of a party gone mad, and in part because of the impact the rhetoric has on the larger political culture/discourse. Most of the time, the temptation is to mock the absurdities," Benen continues. "But once in a while, we find a case like this one, in which a sitting member of the House of Representatives -- not a Fox News personality, not a host of right-wing radio show -- suggests, in print, that the president is a traitor."

Fleming has gone far beyond hyperbole.

There are a few things you should look out for that indicate a totally illogical argument. One of those things is mind-reading. Some will notice that I got into Republican heads toward the beginning of this post, but I gave them the benefit of the doubt -- they're either lying or stupid and I base that on what they've said. There is no other explanation. But when an argument hinges on knowing what someone is thinking -- despite what they've said -- you've got a pretty good clue that you're listening to BS. I can do the same thing and excuse Fleming's op-ed; he was obviously distracted with perverse sexual fantasies that have been stirred up by all the news coverage of the Catholic Church's child molestation scandal -- like any good Republican. He really should take a cold shower before he sits down in front of his word processor and pounds out an anti-Obama screed.

One thing we can know about Rep. John Fleming, Republican of Louisiana, is that -- either because of ignorance, intent, or a combination of the two -- he's a horse's ass. Whenever I come across a story like this, I'm tempted to say that his district is getting the representation they deserve; if this is the sort of idiot they elect, then this is the sort of idiot they deserve. But Fleming wasn't elected unanimously and his idiocy, dishonesty, and reactionary reflex don't only affect his district. He's our problem too and, frankly, no one deserves this moron.

-Wisco


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Conservatives Practicing Soviet-Style Revisionism

When the USSR was still up and kicking, teachers were required to edit history books. They'd cut out or paste over pages, replacing them with content sent them by the Communist Party. Figures who had fallen out of favor with the party were airbrushed out of photos and any mention of them was pasted over with a new history -- as far as anyone was concerned, those people never existed. As a result, Soviet students grew up in a world without any real past or, at least, a past nearly as unknowable as the future. If Comrade X was a big figure in Soviet history one year, the next he might no longer exist.

The reason for this was what the right would call "politically correctness" run amuck. The party's ideology dictated that the party was flawless. Removing people from history wasn't seen as an act of censorship, but as retroactively correcting mistakes. By revising history, the party believed they were able to control it. And the populace became used to ever-changing truths and, for the most part, accepted the party's shifting versions of reality.

This Soviet style airbrushing of history is happening now in the US. Specifically, Texas. And the first figure to fall out of favor with the party and be airbrushed out of history is one of the founding fathers. Liveblogging a Texas Board of Education meeting the Texas Freedom Network reported that Thomas Jefferson has become the Texas version of Leon Trotsky.

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

[...]

9:51 – Dunbar’s amendment striking Jefferson passed with the votes of the board’s far-right members and board member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller of Dallas.

Jefferson is no longer in favor by the party. Having written about a "wall of separation between church and state," the third President of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence is no longer "politically correct" among the wingnut crowd who insist that the founders wanted to set up a theocracy. So he's out, replaced with such non-founders as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, and Sir William Blackstone. Also out, references to democracy.

This revisionist history isn't limited to Texas. It's being practiced in the talking points of the Republican Party. "During a Christmas Eve appearance on Fox News, I pointed out that most mainstream economists believe the government must boost the economy with deficit spending," wrote columnist David Sirota in January of last year. "That's when conservative pundit Monica Crowley said we should instead limit such spending because President Franklin Roosevelt's 'massive government intervention actually prolonged the Great Depression.' Fox News anchor Gregg Jarrett eagerly concurred, saying 'historians pretty much agree on that.'"

Sirota did what few people would -- he checked. Not only do historians "pretty much agree" on the exact opposite of what Crowley and Jarret were saying, but so do the vast majority of economists. But history didn't serve their argument well, so they broke out the airbrush and history was "corrected." This became a common Republican talking point during the debate over the stimulus package -- that Obama's spending would fail, just as FDR's supposedly had.

McClatchy's Steven Thomma has a great piece on the right's attempts to edit history to their liking and I suggest you read it. In he looks for historical revisionism among the Republican elite and finds plenty. Among them; Sen. Joe McCarthy was a hero, the Jamestown colony failed because of its socialism (in reality, it was a company town founded by the stock-issuing Virginia Company of London and didn't actually fail), that Alexander Hamilton wasn't in favor of a strong central government, and that Theodore Roosevelt hated the rich.

Of course, this is all provably BS, which goes a long way toward explaining the actions of the Texas Board of Education. Texas is the nation's largest purchaser of textbooks, meaning that Texas standards influence other state's textbooks as well. Like Soviet students, the students of Texas and many other states will learn the history that the party approved, not the history that actually happened.

You may know too much for the party's good, but the airbrush can make sure your children don't.

-Wisco


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The United States of God

My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures, have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.
-Abraham Lincoln, to Judge JS Wakefield, after Willie Lincoln's death in 1862.

It's unfortunate for the religious right that history exists. They'd have you believe that every President of the United State spent all of their time thinking about God -- what God wanted from them, what God wanted from the country, what they could do that would please God, etc. George Washington, for example, shuffled around his office on his knees, hand clenched in constant prayer, fulfilling his duty as elected lead shaman of a new democratic republic. Every president thereafter followed Washington's lead.

But the hole in this rewritten history is that there have been four presidents -- at least -- who weren't Christian. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft were all Unitarian. Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Andrew Johnson didn't belong to any church at all. Turns out a lot of heathens have been elected lead shaman.

That someone bothered to write these sort of facts down represents a problem for right wing revisionists who claim the US is -- and always was -- a "Christian nation." But what has been written can be erased, truths are only problematic so long as they're known. The ongoing effort to transform a secular government based on law and reason into a big church based on reverence for Jesus is a big project. Every unfortunate fact must be hidden -- preferably by painting over them with new "facts."

And here we come to Virginia Rep. Randy Forbes. Not surprisingly, Forbes is a Republican and a loyal and reliable foot soldier for the religious right. History offends Forbes' Christian sensibilities, so history must be changed. Forbes has a plan to do just that.





The history so offensive to Forbes and other Christian right crusaders comes in the form of a new visitors' center for the US Capitol. Tourists waiting for Capitol tours no longer have to wait outside, but can now wait in the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), which is a 580,000-square-foot, three story structure filled with exhibits and the inevitable gift shop. For the most Jesus-addled Republicans, the exhibits are insufficiently Christian.

Sane people see it for what it is, insane people see it as literally evil and an insult to a Christian heritage they've pretty much made up.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU):

...During the dedication, congressional leaders hailed the CVC as something that should make Americans proud.

“As both members and visitors enjoy the educational benefits of the Capitol Visitor Center,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), “we will be inspired to explore new paths and to write new chapters in our nation’s great history. With that reverence for our history and dedication to progress, may this Temple of Democracy continue to be a place where people of diverse background and opinion can find common ground for the common good.”

But there is one segment of the population that is anything but proud of the Capitol Visitor Center: The Religious Right has spent the last few months complaining about the new structure, issuing salvo after salvo against it. The CVC, according to these groups, is a “godless pit” and a shrine to secular liberalism. They’d like to rework it -- and add a heaping helping of “Christian nation” propaganda.

Especially ridiculous in his complaints was S. Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint. He complained that the CVC exhibits "are left-leaning and in some cases distort our true history. Exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society’s problems."

Yeah, that's terrible. What's basically a museum about government focuses on -- *gasp* -- government. What a bunch of liberal BS. A museum about government should teach that Jesus runs everything. Because, if there's one perfect place to rewrite history, it's in a museum dedicated to historical education.

"The ruckus over the Capitol Visitor Center is yet another manufactured controversy courtesy of the religious right," said Americans United's Barry Lynn. "These groups want to enlist Congress and use the Center to promote their fallacious and discredited ‘Christian nation’ view."

So Forbes introduced H. Con. Res. 34, a bill subtitled, "Calling upon the Capitol Preservation Commission and the Office of the Architect of the Capitol to place the Lincoln-Obama Bible on permanent display upon the Lincoln table at the Capitol Visitor Center for the benefit of all its visitors to fully understand and appreciate America's history and Godly heritage." You see the problem already.

Law professor Howard Freidman boils the bill down to it's most unconstitutional and inaccurate basics:

Whereas the Holy Bible is God's Word;

Whereas each President, after taking the oath of office, has repeated President Washington’s petition prayer seeking divine help by saying, "So help me God";...

Whereas in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, he referred to God 14 times, to verses in the Holy Bible 4 times, and invoked prayer 3 times in 701 words; ...

Resolved ... That Congress calls upon the Capitol Preservation Commission ... to place the Lincoln-Obama Bible on permanent display ... at the Capitol Visitor Center for the benefit of all its visitors to fully understand and appreciate America's history and Godly heritage.

That's right, we're to use unchurched doubter Abraham Lincoln's Bible to declare, in US law, that "the Holy Bible is God's Word." At the same time, visitors can "fully understand and appreciate America's history and Godly heritage."

"It’s offensive to see Forbes attempting to use Lincoln as a vehicle to promote 'Christian nation' claptrap," writes AU's Rob Boston. "He’s merely trying to exploit one of our greatest leaders by laboring to portray him as some type of antebellum Jerry Falwell. In fact, the religious views of our 16th president have been hotly debated by scholars for years."

Of course, the bill is doomed on so many levels. It has no chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled House. If passed, it would almost certainly be vetoed. If it miraculously survived the veto pen, it would be struck down by even our currently right-leaning Supreme Court.

Maybe Republicans like Forbes and DeMint are setting themselves up to lose, so they can go running to the nutjobs with "proof" that our "Christian nation" is under attack by godless heathens, Muslim terrorists, and -- I don't know -- the Masons, maybe. Lot's of money to be raised that way.

Or maybe they're just as crazy as they seem to be. Maybe, despite all evidence to the contrary, they believe their own BS. Maybe they believe that history, as it's always been written, has always been wrong. That the US really was meant to be a big church, but got sidetracked on day one.

Whichever it is, the people they're representing are being rendered stupid by their actions. Propaganda by people like Forbes and DeMint is encouraging people to be ignorant.

I suppose that's the point. Only the most ignorant voters would elect people like these.

-Wisco


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The Tyranny of a Short-Term Majority

A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."

That reasoned argument against what de Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority" is a total crock. A bunch of hooey. Liberal claptrap from a French intellectual with no real understanding of democracy. Never mind that James Madison agreed in the Federalist Papers, warning of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" -- Madison was just some loonie leftist. The majority is all-powerful. If you can get enough people to agree with you, you can do anything you want to anybody. There are no such thing as rights, only privileges that can be voted away at any time. Get enough people together and you can even take someone's First Amendment rights away -- if people don't like what you're saying, they can use the power of democracy to shut you the hell up.

So sayeth that great American patriot Kenneth Starr. Best known for an unsuccessful witch hunt against then-President Bill Clinton, Starr is the dean of Pepperdine law school -- which makes you wonder what kind of education Pepperdine law students get for their money.

At issue was California's Prop. 8 -- a ban of same sex marriage. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage. Prop. 8, which passed as a referendum, would remove that right and retroactively undo the marriages that have occurred since the court's ruling.

But, since the court ruled that marriage was a right, not a privilege, Prop. 8 became a classic example of the "tyranny of the majority" -- with a simple majority vote, Californians took a right away from a minority group. The ballot measure is now in California's Supreme Court, where Ken Starr -- representing Prop. 8 supporters -- argued yesterday that there's really no such thing as "rights." At least, not if you're in the minority.

"Swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence if one is weak, enjoy all one's rights if powerful: that's my doctrine," wrote the Marquis de Sade. Starr apparently agrees.

Raw Story:

The people "have the raw power to define rights," he told the court while arguing in favor of invalidating over 18,000 marriages.

"The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process," said Starr. "The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle."

Chief Justice Ronald George posed a hypothetical: what if the majority demanded the right to free speech be revoked?

"After much banter back and forth, Starr says they do," reported Advocate.com. The Los Angeles Times reported similarly on Starr's alarming response.

So, if the majority votes that you should shut up, by God you'd better shut the hell up. In Starr's world, rights are a legal fiction. The founders basically argued that the person and the person's rights were one thing, inseparable -- "unalienable" as the Declaration of Independence put it. But Ken argues that your rights are granted to you by majority rule and can be taken from you at any time, presumably for any -- or no -- reason. As I've already pointed out, those aren't rights, those are privileges. Starr argues that people in California -- and Americans in general -- don't actually have rights.

What the right is really worried about here is the "normalization of homosexuality." When you get right down to it, same sex marriage is harmless -- it can't possibly have any effect on your life if your not in that marriage. If you're outside that family, what that family consists of can't possible harm you. There is no rational reason to oppose marriage equality.

However, "rational" is a bad description of the religious right. They're so panicked at the idea that same sex couples would be considered just people and not monsters that they're willing to give away all the guarantees they have to any rights at all. By Starr's argument, people could literally vote to bar Christians from holding office. But hey, that's better than having to look at two male or two female dolls on top of a wedding cake.

But the "normalization of homosexuality" is pretty much a done deal. Regardless of how people feel about marriage equality, the idea that homosexuality is some sort of national problem is losing ground rapidly. The religious right isn't just losing that fight, they've lost it. Same sex marriage isn't a question of "if," but "when."

A Harris Interactive poll taken after the 2008 elections found that "Three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Only about two in 10 (22%) say gay and lesbian couples should have no legal recognition." The numbers for legal marriage alone, as opposed to civil unions, was evenly split between pro and con.

This "normalization" train has left the station.

But the most desperate battles are often fought at the end of the war. That's when the craziest tactics will be tried. The religious right would burn the village in order to save it, by giving away any guarantee they have to any rights in exchange for a victory in a losing battle against marriage equality.

If Ken Starr really wants to argue on behalf of the tyranny of the majority, he might keep in mind that public opinion is moving away from him. It won't be long before he's in the minority, subject to the whims of the mob rule he advocated.

Unfortunately, when that happens, I don't expect him or any of his allies to shut up and "swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence," as the weak and rightless should.

Maybe we can all take a vote and make them shut up.

-Wisco