Can you tell which clueless git comes from "The Onion," and which from Beckapalooza?

The right-wing looniness has reached the point where

it's almost impossible to tell what's satire and what's

honest-to-gosh reality. The above cartoon by the great

Pat Bagley is . . . well, kind of both at the same time.

"'I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear,' Gentries said. 'But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities.'"

-- imaginary interview subject Scott Gentries

of Salina, KS, in The Onion

by Ken

Fine catch by AlterNet's Joshua Holland. Eerie, creepy, chllling -- but fine.

In a post today, he's got a clip of "Glenn Beckapalooza attendees showing their utter cluelessness on a range of current affairs," in which "a fashionably attired gentleman says, in all seriousness, 'I learned everything I need to know about Islam on 9/11.'"

Did the Onion writer who wrote the following piece, dated Monday, catch this same fellow, or was he riffing on his own? These days satire and real life have merged so well that it's impossible to more than guess.

NEWS
Man Already Knows Everything He Needs To Know About Muslims
AUGUST 30, 2010

Gentries made a conscious decision to stop learning anything new about the Muslim faith on May 22, 2005.

SALINA, KS—Local man Scott Gentries told reporters Wednesday that his deliberately limited grasp of Islamic history and culture was still more than sufficient to shape his views of the entire Muslim world.

Gentries, 48, said he had absolutely no interest in exposing himself to further knowledge of Islamic civilization or putting his sweeping opinions into a broader context of any kind, and confirmed he was "perfectly happy" to make a handful of emotionally charged words the basis of his mistrust toward all members of the world's second-largest religion.

"I learned all that really matters about the Muslim faith on 9/11," Gentries said in reference to the terrorist attacks on the United States undertaken by 19 of Islam's approximately 1.6 billion practitioners. "What more do I need to know to stigmatize Muslims everywhere as inherently violent radicals?"

"And now they want to build a mosque at Ground Zero," continued Gentries, eliminating any distinction between the 9/11 hijackers and Muslims in general. "No, I won't examine the accuracy of that statement, but yes, I will allow myself to be outraged by it and use it as evidence of these people's universal callousness toward Americans who lost loved ones when the Twin Towers fell."

"Even though I am not one of those people," he added.

When told that the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" is actually a community center two blocks north of the site that would include, in addition to a public prayer space, a 500-seat auditorium, a restaurant, and athletic facilities, Gentries shook his head and said, "I know all I'm going to let myself know."

Gentries explained that it "didn't take long" to find out as much about the tenets of Islam as he needed to. He said he knew Muslims stoned their women for committing adultery, trained for terrorist attacks at fundamentalist madrassas, and believed in jihad, which Gentries described as the thing they used to justify killing infidels.

"All Muslims are at war with America, and I will resist any attempt to challenge that assertion with potentially illuminating facts," said Gentries, who threatened to leave the room if presented with the number of Muslims who live peacefully in the United States, serve in the country's armed forces, or were victims themselves of the 9/11 attacks. "Period."

"If you don't believe me, wait until they put your wife in a burka," Gentries continued in reference to the face-and-body-covering worn by a small minority of Muslim women and banned in the universities of Turkey, Tunisia, and Syria. "Or worse, a rape camp. That's right: For reasons I am content being totally unable to articulate, I am choosing to associate Muslims with rape camps."

Over the past decade, Gentries said he has taken pains to avoid personal interactions or media that might have the potential to compromise his point of view. He told reporters that the closest he had come to confronting a contrary standpoint was tuning in to the first few seconds of an interview with a moderate Muslim cleric before hastily turning off the television.

"I almost gave in and listened to that guy defend Islam with words I didn't want to hear," Gentries said. "But then I remembered how much easier it is to live in a world of black-and-white in which I can assign the label of 'other' to someone and use him as a vessel for all my fears and insecurities."

Added Gentries, "That really put things back into perspective."

The head on Joshua's AlterNet piece is: "On Mosque Madness, The Onion’s Satire Is Indistinguishable from Reality." In light of what I was just saying the other day about really talented people like Tom Tomorrow and Digby being able to find humor in utterly appalling reality, I want to stress that the Onion piece is satire.

#

The Progressive Future-- A Special Guest Post From Digby

-by digby

There's a lot of despair in these parts lately and it's perfectly understandable. The country is going to hell in a hand basket and the forces of corporatism and know-nothingism are dominating the political culture while the Democrats seem to be in a state of suspended animation. It's very tempting to just tune it all out and watch TV. But we can't. Not as long as there are progressive politicians like David Segal out there on the campaign trail fighting to change things every day. If don't support real progressive leaders with a track record of success, we are basically giving up.

David is running in a primary for the Democratic nomination for Patrick Kennedy's seat against two doctrinaire establishment hacks and an anti-choice zealot and he needs our help in the home stretch. (The election is September 14th.) His most formidable rival, the mayor of Providence is using his money advantage to run a deceptive ad and David needs our help to run this rebuttal to remind people who the real progressive in the race is:



I know it's hard to get excited about politics right now. But it would be foolish for us to fail to support a young, smart progressive with a proven track record in his run for congress. Unless we are prepared to simply surrender to the forces gathering around us we need to nurture future progressive leaders who understand this political environment and have ideas about how to prevail in it. David is one of those future leaders.

Here's what Howie wrote about him when Blue America endorsed him:

David Segal is one of us. He was elected to the Providence City Council in 2002 as a Green, and is now a lefty Democratic state Rep for Providence and East Providence. He has a very clear path to victory and he can win-- and if he does, he'll be among the strongest voices for progressives in the halls of the Capitol.

David's worked on the meat-and-potato issues: Jobs, the environment, housing, progressive taxes, all with success. He's successfully pushed for expanded renewable energy, more affordable housing, against predatory lending, and for foreclosure prevention measures.

But he's never shied away from the really controversial issues: He's been a vocal leader on criminal justice reform, standing up for the rights of immigrants and for gay rights, and has pushed as hard as one can from the state level against war spending. He's an ardent supporter of gay marriage, and was the sponsor of the last year's bill, which was passed over the Governor's veto, to allow gay partners to plan each other's funerals.

He's a co-sponsor of marijuana decriminalization, and just convinced the Governor-- after two years of vetoes-- to allow a bill to become law that ensures due process for people on probation.

He's sponsored the "Bring the Guard Home" legislation, and his first act on the City Council was to pass a resolution against the war in Iraq.

But, most importantly, he's an organizer at heart, who is committed to joining the Progressive Caucus-- and making it function better. Here's an excerpt from an interview with David:

"[I]n Rhode Island I've tried to develop alternative structures for legislators to lean on when the leadership makes such threats. I am the lead organizer for our progressive caucus. I founded a political action committee to support members of our progressive caucus so that if funding from sources dries up at leadership's request because something was done to offend them, that we would have at least some, some degree of money to fall back on to help fund our campaigns nonetheless. We funded ten, twelve races relatively modestly in the last cycle and hopefully we'll be able to do something in the forthcoming cycle."

That's the kind of inside political organizing we desperately need in the US Congress. If you can help with a few dollars today the campaign can keep its ads on the air and compete. If he wins the primary, there's almost no doubt that he will win the seat. It could be one of the few progressive victories in this midterm election.

Are Wisconsin Voters Seriously Considering Electing A Senator Who Brags About Shipping More Of Their Jobs To China?

I had an odd dinner with some friends the other day. One of the guests was in China and participated via a skype connection. A large laptop was at her place and she was a pretty full participant, yacking away with us-- eating grapes, though, while I ate wonderful raw vegan food and the others ate pig heart pate. Anyway, she seems to spend something like half the year in China, which is where she was born. She works there doing quality control for American companies who have off-shored their manufacturing there because slavery is illegal in the U.S. and the damn workers insist on making a living wage. Well come back to that in a moment but her problem is low wages and a wrecked American manufacturing base; it's quality. And Chinese manufacturers haven't quite wrapped their minds around that concept yet.

Someone passed me a... I don't know, a smooth, round metal widget. It has something to do with motorcycles and there are supposed to be 12 ball bearings inside it. But the Chinese manufacturers save a few pennies on each one by only putting in 11. Somehow that causes accidents and fatalities. My friend in China told me that virtually everything there being manufactured for Americans is being done as shoddily as can be gotten away with. And this is the Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate, Ron Johnson's idea of a business utopia-- which, presumably means The Law of the Jungle, caveat emptor and, most important, oodles and oodles of government subsidies and plenty of corruption for greasy operators like... well Ron Johnson, of course.

On Monday Johnson told Wisconsin Radio Network that "The level of uncertainty, the climate for business investment is far more certain in communist China then it is in the U.S. here." Does that mean he likes the central planning, the institutionalized corruption, and the massive government subsidies and a stimulus program that made Obama's look like the half-assed job it was? Who knew uber-capitalist Ron Johnson was a Communist? But a Communist who believes in cheap labor-- and workers who can't afford to buy anything. His Democratic opponent, Russ Feingold, has been a steadfast fighter against the unfair trade policies-- embodied in legislation like NAFTA and CAFTA-- that shipped America's manufacturing base out of the Midwest and off to low-wage/anti-regulation economies (like China). It's left America with systemic underemployment and with weakened labor unions and with workers who can't afford to buy much. Feingold voted against these catastrophic policies, of course. Johnson is singing their praises.

"The fact of the matter is NAFTA and CAFTA have actually been successful for our economy,” he crowed to a Wisconsin radio audience on July 26. I guess they are successful-- if you own factories in China or Mexico. For Wisconsin workers... not so much. “Yeah. I think history has proven if you really take a look at economic statistics, free trade works," he repeated at a luncheon for fatcats the same day. Fatcats agree. "In a free market capitalist system there’s always winners and losers," he asserted. "It's creative destruction. That just happens. It's unfortunate. But let’s face it, if it weren't for that we'd still have buggy whip companies."

The month before, Mr. Creative Destruction told the audience of Here and Now on Wisconsin Public Television that “When you give, when you continue to uh, extend unemployment benefits, people really don’t have the incentive to go take other jobs, you know, they’ll just wait the system out until their benefits run out. Then they’ll go out and take, probably not as high paying jobs as they like to take, but that’s really how you have get back to work, I mean, you have to… you have to take the work that’s available at the wage rates that’s available.”

Takeaway: Ron Johnson, like any with the CEO mindset are just wild about doing business with tyrannical governments, like China's, as long as they can make some quick profits and don't have to worry about annoying things like workers, health safety, human dignity... all that stuff that the conservatives have always fought against here in America and are still unreconciled to. Remember, we have weekends because workers fought to get them. Conservatives called them Communists and predicted the end of the world.

There is, however, a much brighter future than the dystopian/Randian one being offered up by Ron Johnson, Paul Ryan and John Boehner. The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) is a non-partisan, non-profit partnership forged to strengthen manufacturing in the U.S. AAM brings together a select group of America's leading manufacturers and the United Steelworkers. A report they released yesterday found that the Obama Administration's decision to provide import relief on certain consumer tires from China has succeeded in restoring production, market share, and employment to the U.S. tire sector.

"Enforcing trade laws works," said AAM Executive Director Scott Paul. "The Obama Administration was absolutely right to provide three years of relief to American workers, firms, and their communities that suffered injury from a flood of Chinese tires."

In the period under investigation (2004-2008), imports had increased 215 percent by volume (from 14.57 million tires to 45.98 million tires) and nearly 300 percent by value (from $453 million to $1.788 billion).  Simultaneously domestic capacity declined from 226.8 million tires to 186.4 million tires while production declined from 218.4 million tires to 160.3 million tires.

This is the policies being pushed by Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, most Republicans and Blue Dogs and corporate shills like Ron Johnson. The International Trade Commission agreed that there had been such a rapid increase in imports that it caused market disruption for domestic producers. President Obama subsequently imposed three years of relief with tariffs of 35 percent the first year, 30 percent the second year, and 25 percent in the third year.

The study Obama's Bold Economic Move on Chinese Tire Imports Is Paying Off found that production by U.S. producers has subsequently increased significantly. Looking at the first six months after imposition of relief (October 2009-March 2010) vs. the same six months in 2008-09, domestic production increased roughly 15%, or  more than 10 million tires (based on Rubber Manufacturing Association data). Data also shows domestic consumption is up.

"What we're seeing is extremely good news for U.S. tire producers and their workers at an incredibly difficult time," said Paul.  "We know that Goodyear Tire, for example, has seen sharp increases in domestic sales volume. We commend the President for successfully fighting for American manufacturing. The last thing the Administration should do is heed the calls of the outsourcing lobby and Beijing government to end the relief and cause further manufacturing job loss."


UPDATE: Sly In The Morning

One of Wisconsin's most popular radio hosts spoke with Russ Feingold this morning on WTDY (1670 AM) in Madison about Johnson's affinity with Communist China's system. Sly points out that 52,000 Wisconsin jobs were lost because of the U.S. giving Most Favored Nation Status to China, something Feingold, presciently, voted against and Johnson supports with great enthusiasm. Sly went into how China cheats and disregards WTO rules, something Johnson apparently admires, cheating being a positive in the Randian dystopia he inhabits.

Only The Republicans Can Save The Democrats In November

God must love Harry Reid

Conventional wisdom in DC points to a landslide victory for the Republicans in November due, primarily, to apathy from Democrats and disappointment in Obama's Administration and the fractured Democrats inability to deliver anything worthwhile for their base. But even the dispensers of Beltway convention wisdom can't claim there are any positive vibes anywhere outside the Deep South and a few dark backwaters like Utah and Idaho for the Republicans.

Yesterday a low-ranking member of the Obama team, Jason Furman, seemed to send a signal to progressives that Obama may yet stand up for some of the basic values that inspired them to vote for him and help the Democrats take back both houses of Congress. Two things that will not fly for progressives are more tax breaks for the rich and buckling under to idiotic deficit hysteria and opening the door to dismembering Social Security. The fury progressives would have towards Obama were he to get behind either of those notions would be incalculable even for someone as calculating as Rahm Emanuel. The good-sounding news for anyone who still trusts the Administration even a little bit:

Temporarily extending tax cuts for the rich opens the door to permanent tax cuts and that is something the United States cannot afford, an economic advisor to President Barack Obama said on Tuesday.

Jason Furman, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, said a proposed short-term extension for the rich that some economists have advocated would put the country on a slippery slope it would be tough to pull back from.

"There is a concern that (if) you extend those tax cuts for even a year, and that is a way to get a foot in the door ... and make them permanent," he told an event in Washington on the impact of tax policy on families.

Republicans want to extend the lower rates for all income classes.

Some economists and conservative Democrats point to the economy's lackluster recovery to argue for extending the cuts for the wealthy on a temporary basis, such as one year.

The lower tax rates, enacted in 2001 and 2003, will expire at year-end unless Congress acts to extend them.

Obama and fellow Democrats support renewing the lower rates for the bulk of Americans, about 97 percent, but letting them rise for individuals making above $200,000 and couples making more than $250,000.

The Obama administration has forcefully argued in recent weeks that the country can simply not afford the $700 billion 10-year price tag for extending the historically low rates of the richer classes.

I guess Obama could hammer the point home that he's still concerned about the 95% of Americans who aren't the super-wealthy by firing women-hating, seniors-hating, veterans-hating Alan Simpson this afternoon and disbanding that ill-conceived deficit commission filled with anti-Social Security pygmies. But that's not going to happen and if I had to bet that Obama throws Furman under the bus first, I'd take that one.

All the Democrats can count on, basically, is that the Republicans are as bad as they are. Menendez is certainly the worst DSCC Chair in memory. But Cornyn is even worse than that. Over at the DCCC Van Hollen's a disgrace-- and Sessions makes him look like Einstein. Tim Kaine is putrid; Michael Steele... may be a Democratic plant. And then there are the individual candidates. Sharron Angle. Rand Paul. Ron Johnson. Joe Miller. Any-of-the-three in New Hampshire. Rob Portman had a hand in every decision that has turned Ohio into a devastated zone-- and now he wants to be elected senator. Spectacularly failed business exec Carly Fiorina running on... what else-- her record as a business exec. Derivatives trader Pat Toomey. Marco Rubio and his woman beating sidekick David M. Rivera. Ken Buck. Mike Lee (all but guaranteed a Senate seat). All there are gubernatorial candidates every bit as insane, especially in Maine, Colorado Wisconsin and Minnesota.

And then there's the disarray. Extremists Jim DeMint wants to take over the Senate Republicans and Mike Pence wants to take over the House Republicans. The bitterness between the relatively mainstream conservatives and the neo-fascists is so palpable that they're not even endorsing each other after the primaries!

AZ-SEN: Sen. John McCain soundly trumped former Rep. J.D. Hayworth in the August 24 primary. Afterward, McCain never received a congratulatory phone call and Hayworth, who has not endorsed McCain, never received an invitation to a GOP unity event.

WA-SEN: Sarah Palin-endorsed Tea Partier Clint Didier was trounced by establishment candidate Dino Rossi on August 17. Didier has since withheld his endorsement until certain policy demands are met; Rossi isn’t budging. Didier’s spokeswoman responded, “So is Dino saying, ‘F*** you’ to those people [who supported Didier]? ‘F*** you,’ I don’t need your votes?”

MO-SEN: On August 3, Rep. Roy Blunt secured the GOP nomination over Tea Party candidate Chuck Purgason. Four weeks later, Purgason still has not officially endorsed Blunt.

FL-GOV: Rick Scott defeated Bill McCollum on August 24 in one of the most bitter primaries of the year. McCollum has since refused to endorse Scott, saying instead that “I still have serious questions…about issues with his character, his integrity, his honesty.”

CA-GOV: The bad blood didn’t end after Meg Whitman trounced Steve Poizner on June 8. Whitman continued to attack Poizner on the radio, leading the latter to declare that Whitman “apparently hasn’t gotten the memo that the primary is over” because she is “still misrepresenting my track record.”

NV-GOV: Brian Sandoval toppled Gov. Jim Gibbons on June 8. Sandoval spokesman Mary Sarah confirmed to ThinkProgress that Gibbons has not endorsed Sandoval following the primary.

IA-GOV: Bob Vander Plaats lost a contentious campaign to former Gov. Terry Branstad on June 8. Then, after Vander Plaat’s supporters fell just short of usurping the lieutenant governor slot against Branstad’s wishes, Vander Plaat himself said that he will not endorse Branstad for governor.

SC-GOV: After Nikki Haley secured the GOP nomination on June 22, one of her primary opponents, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, pointedly refused to show up for a unity rally.

NY-23: After Doug Hoffman drove RNC-endorsed Dede Scozzafava out of the 2009 special election because she wasn’t sufficiently conservative. Scozzafava proceeded not only to withhold an endorsement from Hoffman, but went even further and threw her support instead to Democrat Bill Owens.

SC-04: On June 22, Tea Party challenger Trey Gowdy defeated Rep. Bob Inglis 71 percent to 29 percent. Price Atkinson, a spokesman for Inglis, confirmed to ThinkProgress that Inglis has not endorsed Gowdy following the primary.

WA-03: Establishment candidate Jaime Herrera topped Tea Party candidate David Castillo on August 17. Afterward, Castillo would not endorse Herrera in the general election.

PA-04: On May 18, Tea Partier Keith Rothfus beat out GOP favorite Mary Beth Buchanan. ThinkProgress called Rothfus’s campaign, where a press contact who declined to give her name confirmed that Buchanan has not given an official endorsement.

IN-04: Todd Rokita defeated Brandt Hershman on May 4. Since then, Zach Zagar from the Rokita campaign confirmed to ThinkProgress that they “haven’t had any contact with Mr. Hershman’s campaign since the primary.”

KS-04: Mike Pompeo emerged out of a crowded field on August 3 but embittered himself with his primary rivals in the process. None of his three GOP opponents have endorsed his campaign.

FL-08: Daniel Webster emerged from a crowded GOP field on August 24. However, one of his top primary opponents, Kurt Kelly, was conspicuously absent at last night’s unity rally.

And aside from the national headline kooks like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle and Ken Buck, there are literally dozens of less well-known House candidates who are every bit as whacked-out, deep in the heart of Crackpotland. Even leaving Ben Quayle/Brock Landers aside, it's beyond belief how many Republican candidates are one step ahead of the law, usually in cases involving refusal to pay their taxes or some kind of financial chicanery highlighting severe hypocrisy-- like Rick Crawford in Arkansas, who said during the campaign that "If businesses in America spent money the way the federal government does, they would be in bankruptcy. If people ran their personal finances the way Congress does, they would be in jail. When is this reckless spending going to stop? It will stop when we unite to send citizen legislators to Congress who will not cave to the Washington-loving professional politicians.” He ought to know-- since he did skip out on his debts and file for bankruptcy. Serial tax scofflaw Allen West is a freeloading bum who just doesn't like paying taxes. No one does, but most of us do it anyway. He doesn't. And for all his malarkey about how poor people should show some "individual responsibility," he has an $11,000 IRS lien out against him, as well as liens from American Express and his homeowners association. At least he's in the right party in the right state! But, it could be worse-- he could be serial domestic violence abuser David M. Rivera, also of Florida, who we've discussed at great length. I don't want to give the impression that Rivera is the only candidate the GOP managed to run this year who likes beating up women. According to the Des Moines Register, Brad Zaun is almost as bad as Rivera, although he never actually beat the crap out of a woman the way Rivera did.

Republican congressional candidate Brad Zaun had to be told by West Des Moines police in 2001 to stay away from a former girlfriend who had accused him of harassing her, a police report shows.

The woman called police in the early morning hours in April 2001 to complain that a former boyfriend, identified as Zaun, had gone to her home and had pounded on her windows.

"Brad yelled from outside calling her slut and other names," the police report states.

No charges were filed.

Zaun, who is challenging Democratic incumbent Leonard Boswell in Iowa's 3rd District, acknowledged in an interview Wednesday that the incident took place when he was Urbandale's mayor.

Zaun's also a Republican who hates paying his taxes-- and has been in and out of trouble with the IRS for years for nonpayment. But Zaun isn't in the same class as one of the GOP's big criminals of the year, Jim Renacci (OH-16) one of the worst of the Republican tax cheats.

Renacci has built a fortune from business interests that include nursing homes, real estate investments, auto and motorcycle dealerships, a bar and grill, an arena football team and a minor-league baseball team.

The tax department assessed Renacci about $1.4 million in back taxes, interest and penalties for misreporting his income in 2000. Renacci and his wife, Tina, filed a state tax return for that year that claimed they had a loss of $247,336, but an audit found they actually made $13,730,440. The couple filed a tax appeal when the state dinged them for $954,650 in back taxes, $146,938 in interest and $293,876 in penalties.

At issue was Renacci’s trust income from an "S" corporation that had not been subject to state taxes for several years before Ohio’s tax commissioner issued an "information release" in January 2000 that changed the state’s policy and directed taxpayers to add such trust income to their federal adjusted gross income. "S" corporations permit income to be taxed at an individual rate for federal tax purposes and avoid double taxation on corporate income.

The tax department followed up with another information release in 2002 warning that it was launching audits and would impose fraud penalties on taxpayers who did not file amended returns reflecting the trust income and pay the taxes due.

and that's just the tip of the iceberg and doesn't even take into account career criminal incumbents like Jerry Lewis, Ken Calvert and Gary Miller, three notorious California real estate swindlers. Easy for me to see? I'm just a liberal? Watch what Fox News had to say about one of the most corrupt men ever to stalk the halls of Congress, Ken Calvert:




UPDATE: Alan Grayson vs The Notorious Koch Brothers

Most Members get onto the ultra desirable House Financial Services Committee so they can load up on legalistic bribes from Wall Street. Almost every member of that committee should be thrown into prison for taking money from the very firms they are charged with protecting the public from. That's bipartisan. Alan Grayson is one of the only exceptions on either side of the aisle. And Wall Street hates him with a passion; they can't buy him. And his straightforward, clear solutions to protect the public from selfish predators and sociopaths drive them insane. Probably the worst of the Wall Street predators, the Koch Brothers want to take out one of the only tribunes ordinary working families have in Congress: Alan Grayson. They think they can buy themselves a seat in Orlando for a weak, easily corrupted shill, Daniel Webster. This is a note, in part, Congressman Grayson sent me this morning.

A couple of weeks ago, we suggested that Republican Dan Webster isn't the real opponent in this campaign. He hasn't been on the ballot in a quarter of a century. Dan Webster couldn't beat a pair of fives with a full house.

I said that someone else would be the real opponent. Now we know who that is.

His name is David Koch. He has $17 billion. And he is spending $250,000 of that in attack ads against me this week.

David Koch is the owner of the second largest private company in America. He made his money the old-fashioned way: he inherited it. Incredibly, his father got rich helping to industrialize and arm the Soviet Union.

Koch lives in New York. He often attends the theater. As far as we know, he has never been to Orlando. But he wants to choose who represents Orlando in Congress. And it isn't Alan Grayson.

For many years, David Koch was a member of the Libertarian Party. He serves on the board of directors of the right-wing Cato Institute. He is a reclusive billionaire whose political dirty tricks are exposed in the current issue of the New Yorker Magazine.

The title of that New Yorker article is "Covert Operations: The billionaire brothers who are waging war against Obama."

Why does David Koch support Dan Webster? Because Koch wants to cut Social Security. And so does Dan Webster.

David Koch is waging war on President Obama and on us. Will you help to launch our counterattack?

What it comes down to is this: who is going to choose our leaders? Us, or a crackpot billionaire like David Koch?

Please help Blue America get Grayson's back. There's only one like him in Congress.

Why Wouldn't A Normal Person Just Hang Up If Rasmussen Calls?

This evening the Republican Party's polling firm, Rasmussen, called a friend of mine and, well... polled him. I just figured I'd mention that they sure do skewer their questions to create the narrative Grover Norquist, Karl Rove and their friends are requesting. I mean if you wonder what makes people as astoundingly stupid as the ones-- Jabba the Hutt included-- in the video Digby put up today (and which I embedded up top), it might have something to do with a national dialogue predicated on these kinds of confections:

(1) Will taxes go up under President Obama?
(2) Will government spending go up under President Obama?
(3) Are you more likely to support a candidate who opposes all tax increases, or one who promises to increase taxes only on the rich?
(4) Do tax cuts help the economy?
(5) Do government spending cuts help the economy?
(6) Who do you trust more, our political leaders or the American people?
(7) Has the federal government become a special interest group?
(8) Do Big Business and the government work together in ways that hurt consumers?

Sunday Classics update: You can now hear the whole of Sviatoslav Richter's Liszt "Hungarian Fantasia"

Maybe we ought to start paying the people who do the technical work here at DWT better -- you know, a little closer to minimum wage -- especially the lunks in the Quality Control Dept. How the hell did those clowns let performance of the Liszt Hungarian Fantasia by Sviatoslav Richter and Kiril Kondrashin go out in this week's Sunday Classics piece ("The piano-and-orchestra Liszt -- the orator meets the poet") with only the first two of its three CD tracks included, thereby omitting the final 3:28 of the piece and making nonsense of my reference to the dropped notes as well as the "hurricane force" of the final section, "when all hell breaks loose"?

I tell you, those people are lucky we're not right-wingers, or they would have to be hoping their papers are all in order when the INS inspectors show up.

It's now been corrected in the original post. And here's the complete performance. -- Ken

LISZT: Hungarian Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra

Sviatoslav Richter, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, Kiril Kondrashin, cond. Live performance, 1961

#

Can 2010 electoral disaster be averted? Drew Westen and Mike Lux weigh in

"What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out."

-- Drew Westen, in a new AlterNet post, 

"What Created the Populist Explosion and How 

Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November"

by Ken

I don't know if you're as sick and tired (already!) of thumb-sucking speculation about the 2010 elections, but it's hard to stay away from it, given the stakes. Even a month or two ago it was still possible to believe that, yes, the Democrats might suffer losses in both houses of Congress, but those losses would be concentrated among members who are more part of the problem than the solution to congressional fecklessness and inaction. It was even possible to imagine that the smaller Democratic majorities might actually be more responsive to the real needs of the American people.

Now that's still a possible outcome, but I don't think anyone's advancing it with a lot of confidence these days. The combination of the reality-defying filth the Republicans and the Right generally have been pumping into the public arena going back to the 2008 elections plus the Bush economic meltdown (and the Obama hand-wave at the resulting mess) plus the massive amounts of right-wing megabucks being poured into every form of politicking in anticipation of the election plus the absence of any counter-argument by those foundering Democrats has put everything up for grabs.

Our pal Mike Lux has a swell piece over at OpenLeft, "Weirdest political cycle ever?, in which he stakes out this position: "This has been a pretty weird political cycle, and I'm starting to wonder whether it is the strangest ever. . . . The weirdness I am referring to is this odd sense I have that both parties are trying so hard to lose."

Documenting the weirdnes, Mike -- after highlighting the more conspicuously self-destructive crazinesses on the part of the official major parties these last two years -- points out:

As a result of all this silliness, both parties' approval ratings are in the toilet. This is a pretty unusual dynamic. In 1994, Republicans' popularity was going up as Dems were going down, and in both 2006 and 2008, Dems' numbers were going up while Bush and Republicans' numbers in general were tanking. Today, two months out from the big election, voters are ticked off at both parties, and that's before the fall attack ad season.

"What's a Democrat to do," he asks, " in this weird and awful political environment?" Allowing that every race is individual, he offers four overall prescriptions, for which you should really read the explanations in his post:

1. Get out every last Democratic base voter you can.
2. Show independence from Obama, but not in a way that undermines the Democratic brand and turns off base voters.
3. Show your anger at the special interests, but also have a substitute plan for improving things.
4. Be specific in going after waste in government.

And he sums up the situation thusly:

In spite of the Republican extremists being nominated, this is going to be an incredibly tough year to be a Democrat on the ballot. We are going to lose a lot of seats in both houses of Congress and downballot as well. But if Democrats turn out their base voters, take on the big banks and insurers and oil companies, and show they are focused on fighting for the middle class, they can hold their losses to a minimum.

Meanwhile, in-a-class-by-himself communications specialist and political strategist Drew Westen has delivered a major essay, "What Created the Populist Explosion and How Democrats Can Avoid the Shrapnel in November," and like all of his major essays, it's must reading. I always hate to paraphrase Drew, because communications is what he does, and it tends to turn out that the way he makes a point and establishes an argument is the way the point should be made and the argument established. But I do want to give you a sense of the scope of the piece.

Drew lays out his premise:

To say that the American people are angry is an understatement. The political brain of Americans today reflects a volatile mixture of fear and fury, and when you mix those together, you get an explosion. The only question at this point is how to mitigate the damage when the bomb detonates in November.

The bad news is that it's too late for Democrats to do what would have been both good policy and good politics (and what the House actually did do), namely to pass a major jobs bill when it was clear that the private sector couldn't keep Americans employed. . . .

He arguest that the public mood "can be characterized by a single phrase -- populist anger -- and it cuts across partisan lines," and after looking at the right and left vantage points, he does his re-creation of the how-we-got-here drama part in a discussion headed "How to Create a Populist Explosion: A Tragedy in Two Acts."

Act I: The GOP Sets the Country on a Course of Economic Destruction and the President Calls for Truth and Reconciliation without the Truth Part

Act II: An Anemic Economy Meets an Anemic Health Care Plan

I think you'll get the general idea, but I assure you, you'll want to revisit this sorry story in Drew's retelling. In particular, I think you'll be fascinated by this point in Act I: "The White House refuses to tell the American people three stories they desperately need to hear."

The first is why the economy has gone into the ditch, and who did it. The president is steadfast in his position that we should "look forward, not backward," even as the GOP is blocking his every initiative to clean up its mess. As conservative attacks on him and Democrats increase, he refuses to indict the Republicans in Congress or President Bush for having destroyed our economy and putting one in eight Americans out of work and one in five either behind on their mortgage or in the process of having their homes foreclosed by the same bankers who gambled them away.

[And then Drew explains why it should have been so important for the president "to tell the American people who was responsible for their misery -- and to repeat it again and again."]

The second story the American people needed to hear from the president was why deficit spending is essential when the economy is spiraling downward. It's not a hard story to tell, even in a sound bite. But one of the best educators to occupy the Oval Office in decades chose not to educate -- he actually did it once, with prodding, but never repeated what was a superb explanation --- nor did he remind voters every time his opponents attacked him for deficit spending that they had left him with a 1.2 trillion dollar deficit on the day he walked into office because of their unpaid-for tax cuts to millionaires and unpaid-for war on Iraq . . .

The third story the president needed to offer was an alternative narrative on government. The president and his party were about to offer effective government as a solution to multiple problems after 30 years of solid branding by conservatives since Ronald Reagan about how government is the problem. But the narrative never came.

Again, I'm giving you barely even a skeleton of the case Drew is making. And the same is true of the succeeding section, "Where Do We Go From Here?"

First he reminds us of where we were in January 2009, when "no one could have predicted that Democrats would be in this predicament today."

We had just seen -- and the American public knew we had just seen -- the most disastrous performance by a president and party in living history, and the American people had elected a tremendously charismatic young president with enormous Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. They had given the president and Congress a strong mandate for whatever kind of change was necessary to get us out of economic free-fall and to put Americans back to work.

But there were red flags already by the end of Obama's first week in office that led me to offer the following advice to the new administration: Tell the story of how we got in this mess or you'll own it. Tell a coherent story about deficit spending. Re-brand government because there's only one story out there now (Reagan's), and it's not one that supports a progressive agenda. Never let attacks go unanswered, because doing so only emboldens your opposition and leads the public to believe that you have no answers to them. And if you throw a bipartisan party and no one comes, don't throw another one. All of what followed has been as predictable as it has been unfortunate.

"The question today," Drew writes, "is whether Democrats can channel the populist anger we are seeing around the country this late in the game. The answer is that we'd better try." And he insists, based on message-testing he's done recently, that

there is little question that if Democrats and progressives from center to left simply say what they believe in ways that are evocative, values-driven, and speak to people's worries and anger, many stand a good chance of surviving November, particularly when their opponents have nothing to say other than warmed-over rhetoric about cutting taxes to millionaires and multinationals and fiscal restraint except where it cuts into profits of their campaign contributors.

He's just as insistent, though, that "actions speak louder than words, and Americans want to see action," and it isn't too late for Democrats to go on the offensive against obstructionist Republicans on a whole series of issues, on each of which "a strong populist message trounces anything the other side can say."

But Democrats need to play offense. They need to take up-or-down votes on bill after bill, including those they expect the other side to block, knowing that every one of those votes has the leverage of a campaign ad behind it. They need to change the narrative from what sounds to the average American like a whiny and impotent one -- "the Republicans won't let us do it" -- to a narrative of strength in numbers shared with their constituents. And they need to make every election a choice between two well-articulated approaches to governance -- and to offer their articulation of both sides' positions and values.

Which, he says, leads to a final point:

What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

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Do You Believe In Monsters? Allow Will Bunch To Re-Introduce You To Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA)

Yesterday Will Bunch's new book, The Backlash: Right-wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama, was published. We'll call it "The Backlash" from now on and, as you can see, we put it right between Over the Cliff by John Amato and Dave Neiwert and American Taliban by Markos Moulitsas, this summer's 3 must-read political books. You might know Will as a HuffPo blogger or for his work at Media Matters, Attytood or at the Philadelphia Daily News or because of his provocative first book, Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future. Will immediately caught my attention by publishing an excerpt at Salon yesterday, The Right-wing Congressman Made For The Obama Age. "Paul Broun," he started, "is the perfect embodiment of the right-wing backlash that has greeted Barack Obama's presidency." In early August Russell Edwards, the Democrat running for the seat Broun is occupying, did a guest post here at DWT explaining why Broun is "one of the most dangerous politicians in the nation."

Will has given me permission to use some excerpt from his new book but before you start reading it, take a look at this speech Paul Broun gave at a John Birch Society gala. This is the Republican Party of Paul Broun and his cronies in Congress:

Two months after the John Birch speech, Broun joined his Georgia congressional colleague Gingrey in attending a closed-door conference supported by some of the more extreme elements of this so-called “grassroots movement.” The National Liberty Unity Summit in Washington was co-sponsored by several groups that have been cited as right-wing extremist groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That would include the Oath Keepers, who were quite active in organizing and promoting the December 2009 event, which sought to organize the disparate “Patriot” groups that were either created or were gaining strength in the first year of Obama’s presidency.

A photo from the event shows a smiling Broun posing with a key organizer, Georgia conservative activist Nighta Davis and with Maryland pastor David Whitney, a leading activist in the Constitution Party and a senior instructor for the Institute on the Constitution. The Constitution Party-- which the Southern Poverty Law Center has branded “the most extreme right-wing political party in the United States,” citing its 2004 platform that called for undoing every amendment since 1913 (that includes woman voting and the income tax) and extreme views on immigration and abortion-- was also a major co-sponsor of the conference attended by Broun. One of the featured speakers was the leader of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a group founded by Glenn Beck’s favorite extremist author Cleon Skousen in 1971 as-- in the words of Salon’s Alexander Zaitchik-- “a research organization devoted to the study of the super-conspiracy directed by the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds.” 

Others on the agenda included Walter Reddy of the Committees of Safety-- who produced a 1996 documentary calling the Oklahoma City bombing “an inside job”-- as well as Houston Tea Party activist Dale Robertson, later dogged by controversy when a picture surfaced of him bringing a sign comparing Congress to the (misspelled) N-word to a 2009 rally, and the Oath Keepers’ David Gillie.
 
These were the extreme fringes that echoed off the hillsides of Knob Creek and had animated the Oath Keepers and their paranoid fantasies about urban concentration camps and practice drills for the “Obama gun confiscation” and that rallied to the support of “Sheriff Joe” with their crude signs. Now these far-right groups that had always been way out there on the edge weren’t just growing in size since Obama’s inauguration but here were two members of the United States Congress bestowing a brand of legitimacy that was almost priceless. In return, Broun appeared as a leader, albeit not as the representative of the 10th Congressional District in Northeast Georgia but of an amorphous place that you could call Oath Keeper Nation. The risk going forward was that Tea Party anger within the gerrymandered far-right districts of Red America might lead in 2010 and beyond to a much larger political wing of Paul Brouns, and America’s paranoia-fueled political gridlock will only get worse.  

Organizers of the right-wing summit understood and appreciated the gift that Broun bestowed upon them. “He is a statesman,” Nighta Davis, who planned the event and lives within his 10th Congressional District in Georgia. He recalls Broun spending time with the summit’s 2nd Amendment Committee, which included the abovementioned Walter Reddy as well as Larry Pratt, the executive director of the Gun Owners of America, a group frequently described as “the NRA on steroids”; Pratt himself has been called “a gun rights absolutist” by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which also criticized him for playing footsie, in essence, with militia groups during the 1990s. It’s not known what Broun and Pratt discussed but five months later Broun will be the only one of the 435 members of the House to address a much debated 2nd Amendment March on Washington that was spearheaded by Pratt.      

“We had a nice talk, about how the 2nd Amendment is not really functioning the way the Founders intended it to,” recalls the militia enthusiast Reddy of his meeting with Broun, when contacted by phone. Apparently, Reddy didn’t get a chance to tell the congressman about his documentary purporting to expose the U.S. government’s involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, but he did lobby for his current pet cause of establishing true state militias that would be independent from the National Guard or any federal authority.

If you don't think Paul Broun is a real danger to this country and to our way of life, you probably slept through history class. Russell Edwards has a game plan to send him into early retirement-- something every one of us should consider contributing to.

Arguably, no member of Congress has ridden anger and paranoia against Barack Obama from the back bench of the Capitol to the front of the headlines louder than Paul Broun Jr. Practically no one outside the winding tin-roof-rusted highways east of Athens had even heard of Broun, until the days that immediately followed the election of that first African-American commander-in-chief. In early November 2008, Broun -- who’d only been in office for about 18 months -- told a reporter for the Associated Press that he was worried that President-elect Obama had the potential to put America on the path to a dictatorship in the style of Marxist Russia or Nazi Germany.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base ..." Those are nine words that a congressman should never say to a journalist, but now Broun was rolling. He insisted he was alarmed by a suggestion that then-candidate Obama had uttered that summer for a national service corps, and that he was worried that such a corps could be used to take away guns from citizens. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany," he said. "I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential of going down that road." The comments created a minor, brief firestorm with all the usual hallmarks -- liberal blog outrage, and Broun’s statement that he apologized "to anyone who has taken offense at that," quickly followed by his insistence that his apology wasn’t really an apology. In fact, Broun had achieved maybe the greatest accomplishment of his congressional career, which was shifting the so-called Overton window-- a political theory on how extreme statements can shift the boundaries of what become acceptable speech (adopted by Glenn Beck as the title of his 2010 novel)-- on what could be openly said about the new president.

Meanwhile, some people around the country-- joined by some voters in Broun’s own 10th District-- were starting to ask, just who is this guy, anyway? There was a time when Paul Broun Jr. asked the same question of himself. It happened in 1986, when the 40-year-old baby boomer was into booze and into his fourth marriage already-- and having problems with both. Broun was at an NFL football game and drinking heavily when he noticed the fan who was a quasi-celebrity back during the Reagan years, the guy with the crazy rainbow-haired wig who stood in the end zone seats with the sign, "John 3:16." Broun said in a speech on the floor of Congress after his election to Congress two decades later that he was captivated by this "gentleman with this big type hair wig on." A few weeks later, after another fight with his new wife, he took out a Bible, read the verse, and decided to dedicate his life to Christ. (Ironically, it was the exact same year and at the same age that George W. Bush quit drinking as well.) Broun now considers his odyssey to the corridors of power the result of Jesus’ calling. He fails to add the kicker to the story, that the wig-wearing fan, a fellow named Rollen Stewart, is currently serving three life sentences for kidnapping.

...A family doctor who treated Jimmy Carter’s relatives in South Georgia for a number of years, Broun declared bankruptcy in the early 1980s. A federal judge ruled-- according to news accounts in Athens-- that Broun "falsified financial documents in an effort to obtain a loan and misrepresented his assets and debts during bankruptcy proceedings" and ordered him to pay nearly $70,000 to an Americus bank. According to a bankruptcy complaint, the young family doctor "has a reputation of having an extravagant lifestyle evidenced by the acquisition of a number of expensive rare hunting books, expensive rare ceramic items related to hunting, safari to Africa, expensive gun collection and the acquisition of the very best in everything purchased." He had to pay more than $61,000 in back taxes to the IRS, and one of his ex-wives even took him to court for alimony and child support. There was a time when that kind of résumé would have sunk a would-be politician, but the 21st century has proven to be remarkably kind to past sinners who adopt the language of 12-step recovery-- just ask Glenn Beck how that works-- and even awards bonus points when Christianity is involved.

Broun joined the Baptist Church, sobered up, but failed dismally in his early efforts in GOP politics, losing two congressional primaries and receiving a dismal 3 percent in a 1996 bid for the U.S. Senate. Still, Broun entered a 10-candidate special election when that district’s longtime Republican congressman, Charlie Norwood, died of cancer in 2007. He gained the runoff with a surprising second-place finish, but was universally predicted to face crushing defeat by the Republicans’ handpicked candidate, a state senator named Jim Whitehead. In fact, Whitehead-- from Augusta at the other end of the district-- was so cocky that he didn’t campaign in Athens for the runoff, even after it was dredged up that he’d once joked he’d like to see all of the University of Georgia bombed, except for the football team. Broun won a stunning narrow upset thanks to 90 percent of the vote from Athens. The most liberal city in Georgia had just unwittingly elected the most conservative congressman in America. Conservative-watching journalist David Weigel, then with Reason magazine, called Broun "the accidental congressman."

Voters soon found out just how conservative Broun really was. He was one of only four member in Congress to vote against a $20 million program to help kids in drug-infested neighborhoods and even joined just two other colleagues on opposing money for a registry for Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS. Asked about that by Weigel, Broun whipped out his pocket Constitution and insisted there was nowhere that it was written that the federal government could do these things. "I’d say most of the things this Congress does, we don’t actually have the authority to do," the freshman insisted.

There was one thing, however, that the born-again congressman did think the government had the authority to do-- ban the sale of Playboy and other racy magazines on U.S. military bases. Broun’s Military Honor and Decency Act-- which an aide boosted by touting the congressman’s medical qualifications as an "addictionologist"-- was the only piece of legislation that he authored in that first term. What’s more, it turned out that Broun’s aversion to government spending applied to legislation but not to taxpayer dollars that could help him out politically. In 2008, during his tough reelection battle, Broun spent so much on taxpayer-funded mail to his constituents that his office nearly ran out of money to pay staff and maintain district offices.

Last night I got in touch with Russell Edwards. He had read the excerpt as well. He told me "Will's report uncovered important details, but the story goes on. Last Spring, Broun, Jr. received a one-man bailout after running GA's McIntosh Commercial Bank into the ground. The FDIC was forced to intervene to protect depositors, finding McIntosh to be the weakest bank in GA, with an estimated $246 million dollars in bad loans on the books." One more time: Russell Edwards; better safe than sorry. The damage Broun can do goes way beyond the borders of his Georgia congressional district.

First DWT Post On Aaron Schock Not Mentioning He's A Hypocritical Closet Case

Flashy dresser with lavender shirt and chartreuse belt

Seems that Congressman Aaron Shock is not only a flashy dresser, he’s a flashy traveler as well. He dashes throughout central Illinois in a sleek, silver… get ready for this… helicopter! Making an entrance for the Winchester, Illinois (population 1,650) homecoming parade on August 21, Schock’s chopper sat down in a field just behind a school just yards away from the beginning of the parade route, about a half an hour after it should have started. And, he’s used this preferred mode of transportation more than once. He also reportedly landed at the Bow Lake Golf Course in rural
Barry just before a fundraiser earlier this year. Must be nice.

According to the blog post on his opponent’s, Deirdre Hirner, website, he told her that flying by copter was a cheaper way to travel then driving. On what planet?

How much does it cost to charter a helicopter? Who pays for a flight to and from a parade or a golf outing? Does he fly high at taxpayer expense? And must the expenditure be disclosed?

You know, a couple of months ago, Aaron Shock voted against the DISCLOSE Act (HR 5175), which would have strengthened campaign finance disclosure requirements. He voted against requiring big corporations-- that spend money of their own accord to influence campaigns-- to report those expenditures. He voted against placing restrictions on the use of funds donated to a corporate body when the donor doesn’t want his or her identity disclosed. The names of common, everyday people who give candidates money in support of their campaigns are reported. These contributors give money of their own accord; there are restrictions on the use of their contributions. Does Congressman Schock think that private corporations and independent givers are entitled to carte blanche influence over public elections?

What else might Congressman Schock think? Perhaps we will find out if we are privy to what goes on at the events at the Right Nation Training Conference in Chicago, on September 18th, geared to “take our country back.” Perhaps when he stands on the stage with Glen Beck, Andrew Breitbart, and Tea Party Leader Herman Cain we will be able to decipher what motivates the congressman’s thinking. Stay tuned.

Virginia Foxx and The "W" Word... Plus Darrell Issa... And Nigeria

Help send her back to North Carolina permanently by clicking on her nose

Look at that picture. Think about the outrageous, harmful behavior and extreme positions. I think I've been extraordinarily disciplined in not using the "w" word to describe her. I admit, it always comes to mind. But there is really a sordid and disgraceful history when it comes to accusing women of being the "w" word. The case can be made against Virginia Foxx without resorting to it. And I think Blue America and our allies at the Americans For America PAC did just that with our newest TV ad. We want to get it up on cable channels from Forsyth County to Watauga County and we need your help to do that. Even a $5 or $10 contribution will help make sure we don't have to leave out Mt. Airy or Clemmons, Kernersville, Statesville or even Ashe County. You can contribute by poking her picture in the eye above-- or, less gruesomely, by clicking on this Blue America link. Look at the ad and decide for yourself. Billy Kennedy would make as good a Member of Congress as Virginia Foxx has been an atrocious one. She was voted by our readers the worst of the worst. If you think the ad will help end her miserable career, dig deep and help us get it on TV. Unlike other PACs every cent goes up on the air. We're all volunteers and no one takes any salaries, percentages, commissions and we hire no consultants and take no money for "expenses." Donate $10 and that's an ad in Stokes or Iredell County on CNN or MSNBC.



Now back to the "w" word. It was in my mind not because of Foxx's unfortunate demeanor but because of a column Paul Krugman write for the NY Times a few days ago, It's Witch-Hunt Season. Krugman wasn't talking about Virginia Foxx though. He was, without ever mentioning his name, talking about Darrell Issa, who, unfortunately, hasn't drawn a credible Democratic challenger the way Foxx has.

The last time a Democrat sat in the White House, he faced a nonstop witch hunt by his political opponents. Prominent figures on the right accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of everything from drug smuggling to murder. And once Republicans took control of Congress, they subjected the Clinton administration to unrelenting harassment-- at one point taking 140 hours of sworn testimony over accusations that the White House had misused its Christmas card list.

Now it’s happening again-- except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”

To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.

So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?

Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals-- even very moderate liberals-- legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.

By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in the New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton... And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.

Darrell Issa has been bragging about turning Congress into a full-time witch hunt if the GOP takes back the House and he replaces Henry Waxman as the Chair of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Issa? The crook whose background includes serial car theft and weapons charges? Yeah, the guy with the yellowish teeth in the photo on the right. Witch hunts are bad, one of the most vile traits of organized human behavior-- and the concept transcends backwards Republican congressmen from northern San Diego County. In fact, the mentality in Issa-land isn't unlike the mindset in Akwa Ibom.