Three fun facts about Jan Brewer

1. This week she declared a "Child Health Day" -- after cutting child health programs in Arizona.

2. Rumors are floating around Arizona that Brewer is very sick. She looks terrible in photos, she slurs her words and blanks out, like a drunk would do, and she had that mini-stroke moment in the debate, where she couldn't read the notes that were in front of her. Whatever the specifics, it's clear something ain't right up there. 

Actually, the lies she's told about her father and goings-on in the Arizona desert could also be brain disease-related, although I ain't no physician, so please don't accept any advice from me on medical issues. My point is she lies and lies and lies, and there may be a medical explanation for it. That's all I'm sayin'.

3. She's got a cheatin' heart. Put another way, Arizona Democrats have filed a serious complaint that, even if she wins in November, will follow her into this office she so little understands. True to Arizona form, her defenders are aghast and circling the wagons. We already know of her ties to the private prison industry that stands to benefit from a crackdown on immigration.

Bonus fact: She's probably still gonna win the election. Double-bonus fact: This just means we'll be able to enjoy the meltdown later, when it will do more damage.

                                        

Just How Dishonest & Stupid Is Charles Krauthammer?

This blast from last February at Media Matters for America, courtesy of Jamison Foser, sums it up nicely and bears re-posting as we look ahead to Krauthammer's fascist-sympathizing rhetoric between now and the mid-term elections.

Charles Krauthammer says environmentalism is "the new socialism," compares Barack Obama's 2008 campaign to China's Cultural Revolution, accuses Obama of thinking of himself "in messianic terms" and of using "Orwellian language that you expect" from Hugo Chavez and calls Chavez Obama's "new pal" and invokes the Nazis in writing about Obama's stem cell policies. He referred to Khamenei as Iran's "Supreme Leader," attacked Barack Obama for doing the same thing a few days later, then just a few days after that, again referred to Khamenei as the "Supreme Leader." Principled!

Krauthammer has called possible torture investigations "banana republic politics" and made false claims to support his case against investigations. That's unsurprising, given that Krauthammer goes back and forth on whether waterboarding is torture -- but is unwavering in his support for it. And like any good Washington Post columnist, he didn't like the Plame investigation, or feel bound by the facts when discussing it -- and even wrote that Bush should pre-emptively pardon Libby. And Krauthammer has falsely defended the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. He even praised Dick Cheney for doing the "manly thing" in withholding information about his shooting of a hunting companion.

Foser roasts a few of the other Little-Streichers in the piece too.  It's well worth a lookback.

TSOL at the Key club

More from the unsung craftsmen of American punk. Nobody did the slower, cutting, methodically killing punk better than them.

Suburbia - TSOL

TSOL was an underrated, influential, daring band at a critical time in punk rock. They sacrificed commercial fame and, intentionally or not, kept the west coast American punk tradition alive during the otherwise dilluted 1980s. Glad I ran across this melodic song that anticipates some of the better emo-esque and "pop" punk of the 90s.

RACIST RUSSELL DROPPED BY NEW YORK GOP: VOWS TO CONTINUE CAMPAIGN

Some scumbags are even too toxic for Republicans. After several blogs and news sources (including The Underview) spread the word on Westchester County, NY Republican candidate Jim Russell's racist essay in the hate journal Occidental Quarterly, the Westchester County Republicans "pulled the plug" on their embarassing candidate.

"We're going to pull the plug on him immediately," said Westchester GOP Chairman Doug Colety, who is also a county election commissioner. He said he wanted to remove Russell from the ballot altogether but wasn't sure that would be possible. Russell also has the Conservative line, and party representatives did not return calls Tuesday.
"We were unaware of any of this," Colety said, referring to the essay.

Like any good bucket of human feces, Russell vows to continue his campaign undaunted.

Reached by phone, Russell said his "research paper" was being misrepresented ... He said he plans to continue his campaign, with a 12:30 p.m. appearance today at the White Plains office of the state Department of Labor.

Russell's campaign manager may be an even bigger piece of garbage than Russell himself:

Russell's campaign manager, Frank Morgenthaler, acknowledged the article but would not comment on it. Like Russell, he sought to put the focus back on Lowey and the candidate's platform on job loss, health care and failed border security.

"We're in a situation now where our country is on the brink of death almost," Morgenthaler said. "That's a heck of a lot more important than any articles or any spin that the incumbents want to put on it. Obviously the incumbent cannot defend her poor record."

Hey Morgenthaler: Nice to know you're loyal. As your next show of devotion, please sterilize yourself in order to clean up the gene pool.

"White people's brains are thiiiiis big..."

The Face of the Contemporary GOP

I would have thought he was a fictional character; a satire.  But Jim Russell is very real: He's a GOP candidate for the U.S. House, he's got staunch supporters (read some of the comments underneath the article), and he possesses systemically sophisticated views against Jews, interracial marriage and dating, and the "de-Europeanization" of Europe.  

He's not a fringe candidate, not a fake-GOPer, not a rogue.  He has been endorsed by the New York Republican Party and the New York Conservative Party.  If you donate to GOP causes, you've likely donated to him. 

And now the poop's about to hit the fan on the GOP's colossal failure to vet this scumbag.  The initial credit seems to belong to Maggie Haberman at Politico, who dug up Russell's Streicheresque essay at the hate journal Occidental Quarterly.  The story has been picked up by Salon, and a few other sites as well.

Incipient fascism.  That's what we're seeing here. And this is one of the few times the link is so explicit.

Archie Shepp - Song For Mozambique

Truly amazing.

There's opinion, and there's opinion

A new CBS poll finds that a majority of Americans, of all self-described and institutionally categorized mainstream political identities, want higher taxes on the wealthy.  It is now incumbent upon the mainstream media to teach us why this poll means nothing.  The general principle to remember: Polls with progressive conclusions don't matter; polls showing increasing preference towards Republicans (who two years ago were consigned to the dustbin of history, and who really are on that trajectory*, despite their recent ill-gotten gains) do matter, because the media has to teach us a few lessons between now and the November bloodbath.

Remember, though, the CBS poll on taxes means nothing.  It means nothing precisely because, not in spite of, its indication of public support for more egalitarian tax and fiscal policy (as Daily Kos reminded readers when discussing tax cuts, remember the 60-70% of the public, including a majority of Republicans, who wanted a public health care plan). It cannot be allowed to mean anything because the public doesn't get to really discuss economic issues.  There is very little left left in the mainstream media, but a whole lot of left left in the streets, in community activist networks, and in the alternative media.  The mainstream media uses its own agenda-setting as evidence of the nonpopulation of egalitarian activism in legitimate politics.  This allows Barack Obama a free pass to do things like derisively kick Single Payer off the table, so that the "pragmatists" in the center-right Democratic party and their media defenders can rise to his defense when the GOP calls him a commie anyway. (Most polls that bothered to ask the question prior to Obamacare, by the way, showed majority support for Single Payer Health Care.)

A majority support cap and trade. A majority support tough financial reforms, regardless of talk about how such regulations kill the free market (they're anemic compared to the damage unregulated markets can do, and they DON'T kill "free markets" whatever those are).  The entire process of health care reform legislation consistently traveled against the public tide--but not the direction the mainstream media created, practically out of whole cloth.    

Instead, it's the ideological minority that matters to the mainstream media, evidenced by their over-coverage, and uncritical narrative-spinning, concerning the corporate-created Tea Partiers.*  The result of this filtering and appealing to the lowest common denominator as a matter of both form and content is an electorate that hates the Democrats and favors the policies normally associated with them.

-  -  -  -  -

*On the Tea Parties: Even Chris Matthews is entitled to be right about something once or twice a year:

They want to tear the country apart if it will relieve them of the duty of living in modern America, which I truly believe, despite all their anger, continues its march towards making this a more progressive land. That's something they just can't stand.

Believers and Terrorists

Executed right-wing terrorist Tim McVey is often brought up as a counterpoint to the 9/11 hijackers, particularly in response to irrational conflation of those hijackers with "all of Islam."  While the comparison is imperfect, the right has frequently responded with posts claiming McVeigh was an atheist.  But the real argument should not be that McVeigh was a "Christian."  That term is too subjective to provide clarity.  What is objective truth is McVeigh's affiliation with the Christian Identity movement.  Like most terrorists, McVeigh played religion rather than practicing it.  Neither he nor the 9/11 hijackers likely possessed the intelligence to think through that distinction, but religious terrorists are classified as such because they deploy religion, not because they practice it. 

One needn't be a "Christian" to be a "Christian Terrorist." The majority of American Muslims did not and do not see the 9/11 hijackers as legitimate Muslims. It's certainly not clear he was an atheist. When interviewed by Time, McVeigh claimed that although he had "lost touch" with Catholicism, he still "maintain(ed)" its "core beliefs." He told Time " I do believe in a God..." and declined further religious discussion. He wrote a letter to the Guardian claiming to be an agnostic, but accepted Last Rites before his execution. More important is what influenced McVeigh: The Christian Identity movement and its eschatological catechism, The Turner Diaries.

McVeigh self-identified with Christian extremism. Whether one is a full-on professed member of a religion is not as important as whether they are willing to (a) model their behavior along the ideological lines of that religion and (b) exploit others' religious beliefs to their own ends. McVeigh made several calls to the Elohim City enclave in the weeks prior to bombing the Murrah Building. McVeigh had also signed up for membership in the Ku Klux Klan, an organization that specifically requires that its members "conduct themselves with Christian character."

All of which is simply to say: McVeigh was to Christianity as the 9/11 hijackers were to Islam.

Angle tries to sound educamacated and fails

Assuming Sharron Angle could even find Chile on a map, she got her history and contemporary policy analysis wrong on the question of social security privatization there (to say nothing of her lauding the policy of a mass murderer, but who's counting anymore?).

The Associated Press: Angle on private Social Security: Chile's done it:

Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Sharron Angle says the nation's Social Security system needs to be privatized, and she says it was done before in Chile. Angle referred to the South American country on Thursday in North Las Vegas while explaining previous statements that the United States should phase out its current system. However, the pension system established in 1981 by right-wing Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is no longer a fully private system. Chile's system was revamped in 2008 to expand public pensions for groups left out of its system, including low-income seniors.

drivel covered with whipped cream

Reading Ross Douthat's passive-aggressive lamentation on the Proposition 8 decision, I find no reason to modify my longstanding opinion of Douthat's skills as a columnist, his intellectual capacity, or the pedagogical value of reading his work.  He's a shallow, pretentious, intellectually inferior culture-warrior who somehow bamboozled his way into having a regular column in the New York Times.  If I were personally against same-sex marriage, I'd beg him to switch sides on the issue.

Because they have to...

Those opposed to repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell are lying and fudging data in order to make it appear that 70 + percent of the public doesn't favor repeal. 

Thanks to my friend Alex for bringing this to my attention.

And...no. (GOP regains generic congressional edge)

After a short-lived lead change, the GOP has regained the generic congressional poll lead they've had for several weeks. Charlie Cook got caught with his pants down on this, and he's probably not the only columnist who didn't catch the quick change.

Obama's approval rating is 45%--Clinton's was 46% on the eve of the disasterous 1994 midterms. Historically, according to this WSJ blog I just read (how's that for a citation), generic congressional poll differences have done a good job pr...edicting midterms, the more difference nationally, the more seats won/lost. Worse for the Democrats, as the election draws nearer, Gallup will switch from polling registered voters to likely voters, which is expected to bump GOP numbers up even higher. Finally, just for gee-whiz sake, the reason all this is true is that older white voters make up a higher percentage of midterm voters than their percentage in general elections. That may comfort Democrats considerably in 20 years but makes things pretty dismal now.  And in 20 years, there will be a genuine major party to the left of the Democrats anyway. 

On the other hand, if the GOP does win control of both houses in November, I wouldn't be surprised if Obama's approval ratings shot up through the roof by March or April.

Independence Day Post Mortem

Bill Van Auken, celebrating July 4th, in his article "A government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich."

The Democratic House and Senate leadership have blamed Republican obstinacy for the defeat of these meager relief measures. The reality, however, is that both big business parties accept the doctrine of deficit reduction and agree that social spending—including the pittance offered to the unemployed—must be curtailed to that end. As for the Obama White House, it declined to make an issue of millions of workers being left destitute.

No such obstacle stood in the way of paying for imperialist war, however, with the Congressional Democratic leadership determined to approve the $33 billion supplemental package—roughly the same amount that was withheld from the unemployed and the state governments—before July 4.

nutjobs and mother-of-all-nutjobs

"Rand Paul has been widely cast as a libertarian but there’s considerable evidence tying him to another tendency – theocratic Christian nationalism, and specifically Christian Reconstructionism." B.E. Wilson

If you have friends in Kentucky who are undecided on this, or are voting for Rand Paul because he's a "conservative like them" they at least deserve to know what they're voting for.  Several weeks ago I suggested that Alex Jones' love of Rand Paul speaks volumes about both gentlemen. It's hard to read the following interview fragment and not break out laughing, and perhaps you can even keep up the laughter as you contemplate that Paul is in a dead heat against his Democratic opponent Jack Conway, that this guy could end up making federal policy as part of an emerging Republican majority.

Alex Jones: Rand, I want to ask you about John P. Holdern, the science czar. Generally the social planners admit they want socialized medicine; they want carbon taxes, he says, to carry out eugenics. And even the forced drugging of the water to sterilize us. That sounds like Nazi Germany. What would you do in the Senate about this?

Rand Paul: Well if I were there we would get to expose it before he's gotten a hearing—during his hearing; that's what these hearings are for, to expose this before he gets approved.

Another Paul appearance on Jones' show found the candidate giving tacit support to all manner of nutbaggery, including this gem:

During a rant about the Fed, Jones claimed "we know that the Federal Reserve was clearly implicated in the kidnapping of a congressman's baby" and commended Paul for his "courage" in taking on the Fed. Paul replied, "I appreciate that," and he told Jones that he could not mount his Senate run "without you." 

Rather than being an aberration of conservatism, it's important to understand that the fantasy-world and intrigue of conspiracy theorists serves to supercharge a conservative worldview that would otherwise have been weakened by history, economic realities and political evolution. Rand, along with Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, and others are part of a new GOP power-base of theological-paranoid-fantasy-mongering conservative metaphysicians. Alex Jones, while paying lip service to "libertarianism" (a philosophy that finally emerges as whatever its practitioners want it to mean) is the movement's willing extremist lunatic--more of a Streicher than a Goebbels--expanding the space of extremism in order to make the far right GOP seem reasonable by comparison.

Whether you're working to defeat Rand Paul electorally, or working as part of a larger movement to defeat the conditions responsible for the present reemergence of the far right loon brigade, you're doing good work. Keep it up.