Amid hubbub over the RNC trip to Israel in cahoots with American Family Association crackpots, AFA's super-crackpot Bryan Fischer is dumped

You know my sad history with non-YouTube video embedding. If the clip doesn't play, watch it onsite.

by Ken

Noah tipped me the other night to Rachel Maddow's report on weird doings growing out of the Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus's scheme to take a bunch of his people on an all-expenses paid trip to Israel -- with those expenses paid by the American Family Association, which sounds like just another right-wing propaganda outfit but, as we've had frequent occasion to note, is in fact one of the more incendiary hotbeds of American crackpottery, thanks in good part to one of the Right's more notorious crackpots, Bryan Fischer, who until Wednesday was the organization's director of issue analysis. At that point, however, he was suddenly and summarily relieved of any role as a spokesman for the AFA, though he remains a talk-show host for them.

(You'll recall that Bryan was a nominee for Noah's 2014 Crazyspeak of the Year Award -- and while he didn't cop the coveted award, but as Noah pointed out, when it comes to right-wing crazyspeak, all the nominees were winners.)

The timing is mysterious, in that Fischer hasn't said anything different from what he's been saying from time immemorial. It may just be coincidence that the separation occurred just as the RNC is having to answer questions about the Israel trip in cahoots with AFA, after Haaretz published a story about the trip, with Israelis voicing notable lack of enthusiasm for the aegis of the impending American Republican crusade to the Holy Land. (In the clip, Rachel talks to the reporter of the Haaretz story, Debra Nussbaum Cohen.)

Here is Steve Benen's MaddowBlog report.

The Rachel Maddow Show / The MaddowBlog
AFA ousts Bryan Fischer as group spokesperson

01/29/15 08:00 AM—UPDATED 01/29/15 04:30 PM

By Steve Benen

For those unfamiliar with Bryan Fischer, the religious right leader is practically a real-life caricature of an evangelical radical. Fischer, a prominent voice for the American Family Association for many years, makes ugly and ridiculous comments – about minority faiths, about gays, about Democrats, et al – on a nearly daily basis.

But going forward, Fischer will no longer make ugly and ridiculous comments in his capacity as a spokesperson for the AFA. Rachel reported on the show last night that the AFA has fired Bryan Fischer from his post:

“Fischer has been their director of issue analysis, the director of issue analysis for the American Family Association forever. He’s basically quoted everywhere for years now as the organization’s spokesman. […]

“The president of the American Family Association telling us tonight, that as of today, Bryan Fischer should no longer be described as the director of issue analysis for that group, he should not be quoted as a spokesman for the group. As of today, the American Family Association tells us that Bryan Fischer is, and I quote, ‘just a talk show host.’”

When “The Rachel Maddow Show” asked AFA President Don Wildmon what prompted Fischer’s ouster, Wildmon specifically referenced Fischer’s bizarre assertions connecting Nazis and homosexuality. Fischer, of course, originally made these remarks years ago, and has repeated related comments in the years since, but talking to us last night, Wildmon now says, “We reject that.”

As of last night, Fischer’s bio page on the AFA website has been removed.

The timing of this unexpected shakeup is probably not a coincidence: the American Family Association, despite years of right-wing extremism, is partnering with Reince Priebus and members of the Republican National Committee on a trip to Israel, which created an awkward dynamic. Why would the RNC team up with a group whose spokesperson says things like, “Counterfeit religions, alternative religions of Christianity have no right to the free exercise of religion”?

Nearly 100 RNC members are scheduled to participate in the AFA-sponsored Israel trip, which begins this weekend. It’s against this backdrop that, all of a sudden, Fischer is no longer the religious right group’s spokesperson.

Since our broadcast last night, Mediaite reported at 11:11 p.m. (ET), “For the sake of clarification, Fischer has been fired as a spokesperson and director of issues analysis, but is still a radio show host for the AFA.”

Around the same time, Fischer himself said on Twitter that his right-wing radio show will air today in its usual timeslot and on the same station.

We’ll have more on this as the story unfolds, but it seems at this point that the American Family Association has indeed fired Fischer as a spokesperson for the organization, but will keep him on as the host of an AFA-backed radio program. When AFA President Don Wildmon described Fisher as “just a talk show host,” the unstated subtext may have been “just our talk show host.”

I'VE BEEN CURIOUS TO SEE WHAT WOULD DEVELOP

And I'm not sure much will. Yes, there's an embarrassment here, but really, is the RNC (or its lustily reelected chairman, Reince Priebus) any stranger to embarrassment? If they have any brains they'll abort their Israel jaunt, or find a less toxic partner. But really, does anyone look to the RNC for smartness?

Or the AFA? So maybe, as Rachel notices in connection with "prophet" Cindy Jacbos and her embarrassing connection to GOP presidential hopeful Booby Jindal, some more Web pages will need to be disappeared. And here I have to suggest to Rachel that it doesn't matter whether they're scrubbed-clean removed, because Americans by and large just don't care about this stuff. Blow away the smoke from the smoking guns, and I'm not sure much of anything can even be said to happen.

That said, removing Bryan Fischer -- the man we see in Rachel's segment saying, "Counterfeit religions, alternative religions to Chritianity, have no First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion" -- from his AFA platform is a good thing. But even for the AFA this may be a gain. The organization hasn't suddenly become any less committed to the promulgation of ignorance and hate, but it becomes a tad less conspicuously egregious shorn of its most inflammatory mouthpiece.

#

Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy, Part 8

• Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets)
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan
• Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association


You Can't Make This Stuff Up Dept.: On FOX "News" for March 3, "America's Mayor" makes known his preference for Vladimir Putin over President Obama: "Putin makes a decision, and he executes it, quickly. . . . That's what you call a leader." (See Presidential Dream Ticket #2.)

Crackpot Utopia: A dream world as envisioned by republicans; a manifestation or expression of the deranged, warped alternate universe inhabited by republicans, at least in their minds. See also: Bachmannism, Boehneresque.

by Noah

1. Things To Come: Forward Into The Past!

In the last installment of "Crackpot Utopia," I went on about how the 2016 Republican Primary Freak Show has already begun in 2014 with the absolute nuttery of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a man who is so highly thought of in republican minds that he is considered presidential material and was once even given the honor of presenting the annual on-air rebuttal to President Obama's State of the Union speech.

Did you think that the last presidential election cycle's republican primary season was the biggest freak show you'd ever seen? Well, it seems that this event gets freakier every time, as many of the old faces, and some new ones, start jockeying for position.

Since it's already begun, I've decided to take the leap and take a guess at what the Crackpot Party and their media allies will be touting as their Ideal Republican Presidential Tickets and Slogans!

Are the following really all that far-fetched? Are they ravings of a fantasist, perhaps? Well, to understand crazy, it helps to adopt a bit of crazy and try to put your mind in the crackpot mode, so . . . always remember that to the republican mind, what you are about to read is completely rational and logical. These people are thought quite normal and are perfectly acceptable candidates for Leader of the Free World -- if and when you look through republican eyes. In fact, to republicans these Dream Tickets are the inevitable wonderful result of the entire 6000 years of human history.

Presidential Dream Ticket #1: Palin-Zimmerman
"Straight-Shootin' Common-Sense Solutions"


Begone, Joe the Plumber (already designated Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5)! Now Sarah will team up with an even more appropriate "Country First"-er, George Zimmerman.

Sarah and George -- perhaps America's two biggest attention whores on one ticket! Secession meets "stand your ground." Nice conflict, eh? First campaign stop will be Jefferson Davis State Park in Kentucky. Last campaign stop will be the loony bin, if they don't kill each other first, although once they get an endorsement from O.J. Simpson, their campaign will be toast.

Presidential Dream Ticket #2: Vladimir Putin-Vlad the Impaler
"Bare-Chested Men of Action!"


Meet the man behind Dracula: Vlad the Impaler.

Think about it: Who better represents republican feelings toward gays and poor people? So many repugs, especially those on FOX, adore Putin; Rudy Juliandrews is on record as wishing he was our leader instead of President Obama. Yeah, I know that neither of the fine republican icons on Dream Ticket #2 was born in the U.S.A., but republicans will use their belief that President Obama wasn't either as a twisted precedent. The problem with Vlad the Impaler being dead for centuries? It's the thought that counts.

Presidential Dream Ticket #3: Cheney-Cheney
"Have a Heart? No, Really, Have a Heart?"


Smile, Dick 'n' Liz! Oh, you are smiling?

It's Dick and Liz! No, not Burton and Taylor. Something else entirely, and much, much crazier.

Presidential Dream Ticket #4: Bush-Bush
"Had Enough?"


Where's Marvin? L-to-r: Neil Bush, George W. Bush, "Poppy" George H.W. Bush, and John Ellis Bush (aka Jeb)

Jeb and either Marvin or Neil, the brothers behind the scenes. Could Jeb win Florida if all those crackers found out his real name isn't Jeb? More importantly, do countries and empires commit suicide? Yes, they do. Such things have been going on at least since ancient Egypt, the Romans, and a myriad of European monarchies. If America were to elect another son of America's biggest crime family, then history will have repeated itself yet again. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Be forewarned.

Presidential Dream Ticket #5: Santorum-Mr. Rogers
"It's a Good Day in the Neighborhood!"

Rick and… does Mr. Rogers even have a first name? [Yes, it's Fred. -- Ed.] Can you tell them apart? I have to be honest. I can't. The only thing is that I've never heard Mr. Rogers talk about banning contraception. Imagine them in matching sweater vests replete with those nifty Seal of the Office of… badges. Can you say "Good morning Mr. President"?

Presidential Dream Ticket #6: Kelly-Hannity
"Santa's white; Jesus is white; anyone that matters is white"

Why not two of FOX's leading white supremacists, Megyn 'n' Sean? Is that a winning slogan or what? Such a ticket is the dream of the old, white "Get off my lawn" set. Expect former L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling to contribute big racist bucks to this one!

Probably Hannity won't like playing second fiddle to one of them female critters. But Republicans generally will be able to forgive the fact that Megyn Kelly is of the female persuasion and enjoy fantasizing of her baking nice warm cookies in the big white house. The party has proven that they will occasionally accept nonwhite males as long as they are even more out-to-lunch than the usual insane republican. Her "I'm a victim" card-playing is also just the kind of thing that tugs at the strings of their blackened hearts.

This ticket is also the logical end game of years of FOX insanity. For Hannity, with his audience dying off and his ratings spiraling down to earth like an old biplane with a dead engine, there's likely to be a job hunt coming soon. If he doesn't get the VP gig, he'll be left with a choice of cutting ribbons at Chinese auto factories or forming a cruise line called KKK Kruises and burning crosses on the high seas for the rest of his deranged, hate-filled days.

Presidential Dream Ticket #7: Hannity-Bundy
"Let Me Tell You About the Negro!"


Stephen Colbert sings "The Ballad of Cliven Bundy": "His land belongs to you and me. That's what he told Sean Hannity." (The video segment is below.)

Not to pick on Hannity too much, but actually I don't think that's possible. I have to say I'd rather see large birds picking at him in the hot sun of Death Valley instead of me, but why wait for that?

This already-paired ticket is a natural and may appeal to more Republicans than the team of Sean and Megyn, for many reasons, not the least of which is that Megyn Kelly is a, well, you know, as I said, one o' dem woman critters. Not to worry, in the republican house there are many racists. That Hannity and Bundy share a mutual love for the ages that even surpasses Cranky McCain and Lindsey Graham will help with party fanatics, but, even more than that, pairing a barely closeted white supremacist with the "Let me tell you about the Negro" guy should be downright inspiring to rebubbacans everywhere!



Presidential Dream Ticket #8: McConnell-Graham
"Let's Dress Up, America!"

Yeah, Ol' Cranky McCain will be the jealous, fuming odd man out in this triangle as Mitch walks down the aisle with Lindsey, but he'll always have the memories of those wonderful nights of Palin's pillow talk about secession and her bomb-making secessionist buddy Joe Miller.

Presidential Dream Ticket #9: Cruz-Perry
"Texas Squared!"

None other than the brilliant Glenn Beck regards Ted Cruz as the next Ronald Reagan. You can't get a better endorsement than that! Sure, most republicans would rather just dig up the real Reagan and reanimate him. After all, zombies are hot these days. As to putting Perry on the ticket? Well, if you're a repug, why not? Republicans like David Carney, top adviser to then-candidate (now-Texas Gov.-elect Greg Abbott) thought Abbott's opponent, Harvard-educated lawyer Wendy Davis, was "too stupid to be Governor." So they must think Perry is a genius who was elected and reelected to the position.

Presidential Dream Ticket #10: Robertson-Robertson
"Who's on Top?" (this one is interchangeable)

The only question: Would Duck Dynasty's Phil, who says among other things that AIDS was sent from God as a punishment, and also believes the old republican chestnut about being gay being the slippery slope to bestiality, be the top, or would geezer Reverend Pat be? (Republicans sure seem to spend a lot of time thinking about sex with animals, don't they?)

Does it matter which Robertson tops this ticket? Either way it's "A Dynasty of Robertsons." This ticket is a match made in republican heaven and normal people's hell. Republicans consider both men to be godly and nonjudgmental men. Newtie once said of Phil Robertson:

He talks very specifically about not being judgmental toward anybody. . . . There's sections there [in his sermon] where he sounds like Pope Francis.

Duck Boy is not judgmental? Well, Newtie's cheese fell off the cracker long ago. Seeing certifiables like Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorum get more love from republican primary voters probably pushed him off the final precipice. Not judgmental? Yeah, coulda fooled me. Here's Duck Boy preaching from the pulpit of the dark heart:



Sounds and looks more like bin Laden to me. Maybe I should just do a bait-and-switch on Duck Boy and make him run with Pat from Saturday Night Live instead of Pat Robertson. The confusion and consternation about his new running mate would make him explode.

And last, but certainly not least:

Presidential Dream Ticket #11: Rand Paul-Darrell Issa
"Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi to the End of Time!"

If this ticket wins, one day President Rand Paul will mysteriously disappear. It could happen in one of two ways. Either the presidential limo will be stolen with him in it, driven to New Jersey and pressed into one of those shiny metal cubes, or the White House will be burned to the ground, under very suspicious circumstances. Ladys and Gents, meet President Issa.


2. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan, who has his own "Let me tell you about the Negro" moment:

We have got this talespin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.

Oh yeah, there's a culture problem all right. It's the culture of being a republican and the innate racism that goes with that. Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan adheres to that old "lazy, shiftless Negro" meme. They even use it on President Obama whenever he takes a vacation. How many days a year do you and your lazy-ass, do-nothing congressional colleagues work, Paulie? Congress worked a grand total of 135 days in 2014, with no productivity to show for it. Of course, work to people like Ryan consists of badgering people for handouts of free campaign cash. They do panhandling on a galactic scale for "a living." Who the hell are you to talk, a-hole?


3. Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association

The bottom line is that if Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2016, she will not only be our first female president, she could be our first lesbian president.

Well, yeah, I guess since all the other presidents have been men the chances of any of those particular presidents having been lesbians is way down. So, if a woman does get elected, the chances do increase somewhat.

Glenn Beck went even further with this notion of a lesbian in the Oval Office.


Sez Glenn: "Hillary Clinton will be having sex with a woman on the desk in the White House if it becomes popular."

Republicans sure get all riled up about this sex stuff. It's some sort of republican OCD thing.


TOMORROW IN PART 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: The FOX Benghazi Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza

NOAH'S 2014 IN REVIEW --
Crackpot Utopia: The Year in Republican Crazy

Part 1: Princess Liz Cheney tries for the Smoothie of the Year Award; "Miss Beck regrets" -- Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 1: Glenn Beck; and the Crackpot Party reacts to President Obama’s State of the Union speech [12/19/2014]
Part 2: Republicans wonder why normal people call them racists; Sean Hannity wants to self-deport; and the First Annual Mr. Burns Award, to ABC "shark" Kevin O'Leary [12/20/2014]
Part 3: Using fear, loathing, and paranoia to sell stuff; Arizona legalizes crack!; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 3: Bill O’Reilly [12/21/2014]
Part 4: A celebration of Michele Bachmann: Pray away the crazy?; What "War on Women"?; and the "Obama angle" on Malaysian Flight 370 [12/22/2014]
Part 5: The GOP and the kiss heard 'round the world; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 5: Joe the Plumber [12/23/2014]
Part 6: A word about South Carolina; Pat Robertson and his magic asteroid; and I'll have a pack of Twizzlers and an IUD to go, please [12/24/2014]
Part 7: And so it begins: The running of the buffoons; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 7, George Will has no idea what rape is; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 8, Rick Wiles calls for a coup [12/29/2014]
Part 8: Things to come: Forward into the past! (11 Presidential Dream Tickets); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 9: Former republican VP nominee Paul "Crazy Eyes" Ryan; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 10: Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association [12/30/2014]
Part 9: Pompous Blowhard of the Year Award: Bill O’Reilly; FOX "News" announces new spinoff: the "FOX Benghazi™" Shopping Channel!; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 11: DiGiorno Pizza [12/31/2014]
Part 10: Newsmax -- Beyond Drudgery; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominees Nos. 12 and 13: Michele Bachmann, Kimberly Guilfoyle [1/1/2015]
Part 11: GOP and FOX whip up the hate over a POW exchange; and Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 14: Iowa asylum escapee Rep. Steve King [1/3/2015]
Part 12: Arizona Republican protests busload of YMCA campers; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee(s) No. 15: the Impeachment Variations (group nomination); Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 16: NM Rep. Steve Pearce [1/4/2015]
Part 13 (and last): TV for Dummies: Sarah Palin launches her own channel; Crazyspeak of the Year nominee No. 17: Arizona schools superintendent John Huppenthal (rhymes with Neanderthal); and the final Crazyspeak of the Year nominee -- and also the winner! [1/5/2015]

NOAH'S 2013 IN REVIEW --
A Prayer to the Janitor of Lunacy

For listings and links, see Part 1 of this year's series.

#

Conservatives Have Never Wanted Poor People To Have The Right To Vote-- And They Still Don't

Yesterday we looked at the pitiless attitude of Republicans towards the non-rich. Conservatives have always been quite militant in trying to make sure the non-rich were excluded from voting. Conservatives tried from the founding of the Republic right up to the current day, with Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips telling right-wing radio listeners that the founders of the country originally put "certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote... One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owner." And it's not just a lunatic fringe hate-monger like Phillips. It's also lunatic fringe hate-mongers inside Congress, like Paul Broun (R-GA) and Mike Lee (R-UT).

And like we said, this tendency didn't just start with the Tea Party and the GOP. Many Americans were horrified Monday when the Beijing-appointed leader of Hong Kong, Leung Chun-ying it was unacceptable to allow his successors to be chosen in open elections, in part because doing so would risk giving poorer residents a dominant voice in politics. His blunt remarks reflect a widely held view among the Hong Kong elite that the general public cannot be trusted to govern the city well. Do you think its any different from the view American conservatives hold?

When the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, only white male Protestant property owners over the age of 21 were allowed to vote. Only 6% of the population were allowed to vote when George Washington ran for president. When progressives tried expanding the right to vote, conservatives insisted it was an issue for the states not the federal government. The last state to remove property ownership as a voting requirement for white males was North Carolina (in 1856). All through the 1800s, conservatives cracked down on attempts to allow freed slaves, indigenous people, women, native born Americans of Chinese ancestry to vote. American Indians weren't granted citizenship and voting rights until 1919-- and even then it was only to Indians who had served in the military. The next year (1920) the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote passed.

And the current Supreme Court isn't the first to be harboring a pack of far-right racists misfits in fancy robes. In the 1920s the Supreme Court specifically excluded Americans whose ancestors had come from Japan and India from voting! It wasn't until 1952 that the McCarran-Walter Act gave all Americans of Asian ancestry the right to vote. Conservative-controlled states continue to put up road blocks to allowing anyone who is not white and well off the chance to vote. They use methods from unconstitutional poll taxes and difficult to get ID requirements to just restricting voting hours to times when working people can't get off work and putting fewer voting machines in poor urban neighborhoods.

Wednesday, writing for The Atlantic, Peter Beinart asked the question that has divided progressives and conservatives forever: Should the poor be allowed to vote?. He went right to Romney's 47% dichotomy, vilifying almost half the citizens of our country as victims who "believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing."

In distinguishing between Americans whose economic independence permits them to make reasoned political choices and those who because of their poverty cannot, Romney was channeling a hoary American tradition. In 1776, John Adams argued that men (let alone women) “who are wholly destitute of Property” were “too dependent upon other Men to have a Will of their own.” In 1800, only three states allowed property-less white men to vote. For most of the 20th century, southern states imposed “poll taxes” that effectively barred not only African Americans from voting but some poor whites as well.

Beinart wrote that "In 2012, Florida House candidate Ted Yoho remarked, 'I’ve had some radical ideas about voting and it’s probably not a good time to tell them, but you used to have to be a property owner to vote.' Anti-democracy fanatic Steve King (R-IA) said pretty much the same thing in 2011. Beinart says they're outside the mainstream of Republican thought. But they're not; they may be outside the mainstream of what most Republican politicians are willing to talk about... at least in public. "But," he wrote, "they support policies that do just that. When GOP legislatures make it harder to vote-- either by restricting early voting, limiting the hours that polls remain open, requiring voter identification or disenfranchising ex-felons-- the press usually focuses on the disproportionate impact on racial minorities and Democrats. But the most profound impact may be on the poor... Obviously, the United States is not Hong Kong."

Glad to hear it.

Republican Party Spokesmodel Claims The First Amendment Protects Christians Only

I finally stopped following the demented Twitter ravings of GOP Hate Talk Radio host Bryan Fischer and… my life is more relaxed and productive without all that satanic hatred and bigotry spewing out of him. One thing about Fischer, though… whatever extremist, anti-social nonsense he's spouting now, will become official Republican Party doctrine in a relatively short time. Today's trash-talk is tomorrow's party platform-- first in Texas and then in even normal states' Republican Parties. Friday he was reminding he followers that the far right position is that the First Amendment was written only for Christians. This Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Three of the biggest states of the original 13-- New York, Virginia and Massachusetts-- refused to ratify the Constitution without an enforceable Bill of Rights. James Madison wrote 20, which eventually became the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.In 1947, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black write for the majority that "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another ... in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State' ... That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

More recently (1994), Justice David Souter, writing for the majority, asserted that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion." The idea that the First Amendment was somehow meant to apply only to Christians is bizarre and unsupported by history or common sense-- and just garbage floating around on the outer fringes of the far right-- so you can count on it being part of the GOP mainstream in about a year. "I have contended for years," raves Fischer, "that the First Amendment, as given by the Founders, provides religious liberty protections for Christianity only. Most attorney types, befuddled by years of untethered Supreme Court activism, think it covers any and all religions you can name." He contends that the word "religion" was meant by the Founders as being a synonym for "Christianity." He is, as usual, dead wrong. During the Revolution, there were even member of Congress who wanted to ban the use of English and adopt Hebrew as the American language! By 1776 there were 2,000 Jews in the colonies and while a third of the Christians, basically, the conservatives, fought for the British side, virtually 100% of the Jews fought with the rebels and were key in helping to finance the Revolution as well. President George Washington remembered the Jewish contribution when the first synagogue opened in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790: "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

And in terms of the far right's bête noire, Muslims, the Founding Fathers certainly included them as well.

At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day.

That he owned a Qur’an reveals Jefferson’s interest in the Islamic religion, but it does not explain his support for the rights of Muslims. Jefferson first read about Muslim “civil rights” in the work of one of his intellectual heroes: the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke. Locke had advocated the toleration of Muslims-- and Jews-- following in the footsteps of a few others in Europe who had considered the matter for more than a century before him. Jefferson’s ideas about Muslim rights must be understood within this older context, a complex set of transatlantic ideas that would continue to evolve most markedly from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Amid the interdenominational Christian violence in Europe, some Christians, beginning in the sixteenth century, chose Muslims as the test case for the demarcation of the theoretical boundaries of their toleration for all believers. Because of these European precedents, Muslims also became a part of American debates about religion and the limits of citizenship. As they set about creating a new government in the United States, the American Founders, Protestants all, frequently referred to the adherents of Islam as they contemplated the proper scope of religious freedom and individual rights among the nation’s present and potential inhabitants. The founding generation debated whether the United States should be exclusively Protestant or a religiously plural polity. And if the latter, whether political equality-- the full rights of citizenship, including access to the highest office-- should extend to non-Protestants. The mention, then, of Muslims as potential citizens of the United States forced the Protestant majority to imagine the parameters of their new society beyond toleration. It obliged them to interrogate the nature of religious freedom: the issue of a “religious test” in the Constitution, like the ones that would exist at the state level into the nineteenth century; the question of “an establishment of religion,” potentially of Protestant Christianity; and the meaning and extent of a separation of religion from government.

…In 1783, the year of the nation’s official independence from Great Britain, George Washington wrote to recent Irish Catholic immigrants in New York City. The American Catholic minority of roughly twenty-five thousand then had few legal protections in any state and, because of their faith, no right to hold political office in New York. Washington insisted that “the bosom of America” was “open to receive . . . the oppressed and the persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.” He would also write similar missives to Jewish communities, whose total population numbered only about two thousand at this time.

One year later, in 1784, Washington theoretically enfolded Muslims into his private world at Mount Vernon. In a letter to a friend seeking a carpenter and bricklayer to help at his Virginia home, he explained that the workers’ beliefs—or lack thereof-- mattered not at all: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews or Christian of an[y] Sect, or they may be Atheists.” Clearly, Muslims were part of Washington’s understanding of religious pluralism-- at least in theory. But he would not have actually expected any Muslim applicants.

Another Republican mainstay is Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and he's right there with Bryant, of course:

Republicans Want To Replace Democracy With Plutocracy-- It's Their Only Shared Core Value

I think my health has actually improved since Satanic religionist right extremist Bryan Fischer blocked me from his deranged, anti-American twitter feed. (Maybe ignoring Steve Stockman's equally psychotic feed would be like discovering the fountain of youth.) I still hear what kind of idiocy is brewing on Fischer's fringe of the Republican Party by following People for the American Way's awesome Right Wing Watch and I recommend you do as well. Last week they were the first to report on the move on the extreme of the GOP to take a giant step backwards into the 18th century by disenfranchising non-property owners. Predictably, Fischer is leading the way. Crazy, distorted video from Fischer:



Beltway reporters should ask some of the high-ranking Republicans who appear on Fischer's hate-talk radio show if they agree with his plan to disenfranchise renters. I'd suggest starting with Georgia Senate candidate, Congressman Jack Kingston, "moderate" Republican Rep. Chris Smith (NJ), and lunatic fringe Beltway rabble rousers like Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Alan Nunnelee (R-MS), Raul Labrador (R-ID), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and, of course the Heritage Foundation's Jim DeMint, who's been on a tear about how the U.S. isn't #1 on the so-called Economic Freedom Index, a measure of how much unrestrained power the very wealthy have in exploiting less privileged people and polluting the world for their own profit.

This morning, Paul Krugman wrote a column, The Myth Of The Deserving Rich, that works very nicely to dispel the Fischer/DeMint/GOP narrative for plutocracy.

Many influential people have a hard time thinking straight about inequality. Partly, of course, this is because of Upton Sinclair’s dictum: it’s hard for a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Part of it is because even acknowledging that inequality is a real problem implicitly opens the door to taking progressive policies seriously.

But there’s also a factor that, while not entirely independent of the other two, is somewhat distinct; I think of it as the urge to sociologize.

I’ve written about that urge in the context of poverty: many pundits and politicians clearly want to believe that poverty is all about dysfunctional families and all that, a view that’s at least 30 years out of date, overtaken by the raw fact of stagnant or declining wages for the bottom third of workers.

There is also a counterpart on the upside of the income distribution: an obvious desire to believe that rising incomes at the top are kind of the obverse of the alleged social problems at the bottom. According to this view, the affluent are affluent because they have done the right things: they’ve gotten college educations, they’ve gotten and stayed married, avoiding illegitimate births, they have a good work ethic, etc.. And implied in all this is that wealth is the reward for virtue, which makes it hard to argue for redistribution.

The trouble with this picture is that it might work for people with incomes of $200,000 or $300,000 a year; it doesn’t work for the one percent, or the 0.1 percent. Yet the bulk of the rise in top income shares is in fact at the very top. Here’s the CBO:

What’s a sociologizer to do? Well, what you see, over and over, is that they find ways to avoid talking about the one percent. They talk about the top quintile, or at most the top 5 percent; this lets them discuss rising incomes at the top as if we were talking about two married lawyers or doctors, not the CEOs and private equity managers who are actually driving the numbers. And this in turn lets them keep the focus on comfortable topics like family structure, and away from uncomfortable topics like runaway finance and the corruption of our politics by great wealth.

This is, by the way, why the Occupy slogan about the one percent is so brilliant. I would actually argue that the number should be even smaller. But one percent is an easy to remember number, and small enough to make it clear that we’re not talking about the upper middle class.

And that’s good. The myth of the deserving rich is, in its own way, as destructive as the myth of the undeserving poor.

Now watch this Bill Moyers show:

Quote Of The Day: Bryan Fischer

Bryan J Fischer, Republican Party psychopath, on Twitter just now: "Last night was Ted Cruz's Mount Carmel moment: Elijah standing alone against all the prophets of Baal."

UPDATE: Ted Cruz Changes His Mind-- Votes To Back Obamacare

The Senate just voted on shutting down the filibuster and both crackpots, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee voted "aye," which Cruz had just defined as a vote to support Obamacare. Republicans are out of their minds.

Who Does Satan's Work In Washington?

Neo-fascist extremist and deranged "pastor," Bryan Fischer wasn't trying his hand at stand-up comedy this week with his demon hunter routine (above). Fischer is an annoying crackpot but Satan has higher-placed surrogates to do his work Inside the Beltway. In his brilliant book, The Machine, investigative journalist Lee Fang introduces us to the Koch Empire's chief political operative, Tim Phillips, one of the sleaziest and most destructive lobbyists in the history of K Street. If you don't believe in Satan, how do you explain Phillips?

As one of the most prolific creators of front groups in the Obama era, Phillips stands out among other Republican operatives. From his work orchestrating the anti-Obama Tea Parties to his sophisticated lobbying campaign to dismantle regional cap-and-trade programs in the united States, he has an outstanding track record of success.

Beginning his career as a Virginia-based political consultant, Phillips got his first big break managing the campaign of Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA). After serving as Goodlatte’s chief of staff for four years, Phillips joined former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed in 1997 to create a lobbying and campaign consulting operation called Century Strategies. The firm promised to launch "grassroots lobbying drives” and explained its strategy as “it matters less who has the best arguments and more who gets heard-- and by whom.”

Through Century Strategies and other similar companies, much of Phillips’s work has focused on exploiting traditional Christian values to advance one of two objectives. The first has been to shield his industry clients from laws against pollution, sexual exploitation, gambling, and corporate censorship. The second objective has been to deploy racial and ethnic slurs against a number of politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. Both efforts have met with considerable success, and neither has resulted in any serious repercussions for Tim Phillips or any of his companies.

Making its start with a recommendation from Karl Rove, Century Strategies signed one of its first major corporate clients-- Enron. Phillips and Reed were paid $380,000 to mobilize “religious leaders and pro-family groups” to push energy deregulation in Congress and on the state level, a policy shift that helped to lead to the energy crisis and recession of 2001. The Washington Post reported that the pair informed Enron that they had leveraged their relationships with members of Congress and “placed” articles in prominent papers like the New York Times.

In 1998, Phillips turned his attention to exploited women and children. The now-disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff hired Phillips’s firm to pressure members of Congress to vote against legislation that would have made the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands subject to federal wage and worker safety laws. A federal report found that “Chinese women [working in the Marianas] were subject to forced abortions and that women and children were subject to forced prostitution in the local sex-tourism industry.” Part of Phillip’s role at Century Strategies was to manage the firm’s direct mail subsidiary, Millennium Marketing.

Accordingly, Phillips sent out mailers claiming Chinese workers “are exposed to the teachings of Jesus Christ” while on the islands, and many “are converted to the Christian faith and return to China with Bibles in hand.” The mailers then encouraged the recipients to contact lawmakers and ask them to oppose the Marianas labor reform legislation. Of course, none of the pamphlets revealed that Tan Holdings of Hong Kong, a sweatshop empire, sponsored the campaign.

The Marianas stealth lobbying effort was not the only time Phillips worked with Abramoff to manipulate Christian activists. Reed and Phillips conspired to generate conservative Christian outrage toward gambling in Indian casinos in a cynical plot to encourage those same tribes to hire Abramoff to lobby on their behalf. In some cases, Phillips’s antigambling crusade would simply be part of an effort to kill off competition to Abramoff’s clients. And while Phillips and Reed pretended to be motivated by antigambling Christian values, the pair received money from the gambling industry. One of Abramoff’s gambling clients, an Internet company called eLottery, laundered its payments through a set of fronts. To conceal payments, eLottery would give donations to Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, another rent-a-front group, which would then be passed along to Phillips’s Faith and Family Alliance, before eventually going to Century Strategies.

Whether he is attacking Net Neutrality (what Phillips calls a “government takeover of the Internet”) or the Clean Air Act (“Churches would need an EPA permit”), Phillips furthers the corporate interest by combining right-wing resentment with folksy promises of “freedom.” Almost every charge he flings is false: EPA carbon regulations would be aimed at coal plants, not churches, and Net Neutrality guarantees a free and open Internet without traffic controls. Although he refuses to divulge who, other than Koch, funds his organization, Phillips has long practiced the art of funneling corporate money and fooling the public with campaigns ostensibly based on religious or cultural motivations.

Though Phillips and Reed are best known in the campaign consulting world for engineering the dual victories of Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and Republican Gov. Sonnie Perdue in Georgia (by associating images of Osama bin Laden with the incumbent Democratic senator), the pair can also be credited with the most below-the-belt tactics ever seen in modern Republican primaries. The duo reportedly “spearheaded” the telemarketing and direct mail efforts for George Bush against John McCain in the 2000 primaries. It is widely believed that Century Strategies executed the mass mailers and robo-calls that accused McCain of fathering an illegitimate child with a black woman, using the image of McCain’s adopted daughter from Bangladesh.

Phillips has managed to escape most of the controversy that eventually embroiled his partners Reed and Abramoff, and has gone on to represent a wide range of clients and causes. While remaining behind the scenes himself, he has orchestrated exuberant, gimmick-filled campaigns across the country. He contracted an actual hot air balloon to press his case that climate change is just “hot air,” a hoax. Phillips’s campaigns are national and multifaceted. He runs multiple “tours” crisscrossing the country and in crucial congressional districts where he is trying to place pressure on a particular member of Congress. His “Save My Ballot Tour” paid Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, the unlicensed plumber and would-be small business owner from the McCain campaign, to tour the country attacking the Employee Free Choice Act, a key labor reform. His “Regulation Reality Tour”-- an outfit featuring inflatable moon bounces for children, as well as free food and drinks-- went to states like Arkansas and Nebraska to convince people to call their senators to support an amendment to gut the Clean Air Act and remove its ability to regulate carbon pollution.

...The effect in 2010 was so successful that Phillips expanded it in 2012, hiring over one hundred organizers for the election. Since taking over Americans for Prosperity’s operations, Phillips has played a key role in helping to mastermind the rise of the Tea Parties and has also taken on some of the largest progressive agenda items and won. Phillips’s organization is credited with pressuring Republicans firmly into the climate science denier camp following the 2008 election. One of his groups, No Climate Tax, issued a pledge, signed by nearly five hundred Republican candidates, to oppose efforts to tax and regulate carbon emissions. From climate change–related ads, Tea Parties organized around opposition to climate legislation, to aggressive media outreach, Phillips commanded an integrated public relations campaign that severely undercut reform efforts. In a meeting with conservative bloggers, Phillips explained that he worked to influence climate policy by increasing skepticism around climate science: “If we win the science argument, it’s game, set, match.” Koch Industries, cited as a major polluter responsible for burning over 100 million tons of carbon a year by one estimate, clearly benefited from the failure of climate negotiations.

And Satan salivated... a lot.

Marco Rubio, El Presidente? Not Anytime Soon... Not In The U.S.A.

I suspect Marco Rubio is starting to realize he has a tiger by the tail-- and I doubt he has the depth of character to hold on much longer. The far right has really turned against him. Neo-fascist religionist kook Bryan Fischer starts nearly all his days tweeting endless incantations against the hapless Rubio and his attempt to work on a comprehensive immigration reform program.

Over the weekend I noticed that an anti-immigrant right-wing "Democrat," Mickey Kaus-- yeah, yeah, I know... not an actual Democrat-- one of those creatures who makes a living on the right by playing a Democrat while spouting a reactionary or bigoted agenda, picked up on Fischer's anti-Rubio crusade at the Daily Caller.

Rubio: Illegals will pay fines or be deported! Ambassador of Amnesty Marco Rubio argues on Powerline-- or rather, “Marco Rubio” argues, since the words are  attributed only to his “office”-- that critics overstate the number of new immigrants who would be added by his legalization bill:

There are approximately 11 million illegals currently in the US, and many of them won’t be eligible for legalization (because they haven’t been here long enough, don’t pass background checks, can’t afford the fines, etc.) and will have to be deported.

Really? We’re going to deport a significant chunk of the 11 million–and not just because they’ve arrived since 2011 (the cutoff), but because they don’t scratch together enough money (initially, $1,000)  for fines?  Would Sen. Schumer and Cecilia Munoz go along with this characterization of the legislation? Answer: no. It’s not going to happen. Rubio-- and his “office”-- are cementing his new national reputation as a dissembler...

P.S.: Even if Rubio really intended to deport “many’ of the 11M, that wouldn’t work. Why? Because the individuals who know they would be deported-- e.g. they came here too recently, they have criminal records or they don’t want to pay the fine-- will simply not come forward. They-- the “many”-- will just stay in the shadows where they are now. That means the bill will not come close to achieving its alleged purpose, which is to bring all current illegals out into the open.

P.P.S.: And how are these mass deportations going to help Republicans woo Latino voters?

What’s the alternative? Don’t pretend you’re suddenly going to deport millions of people. Move to stop the flow of new illegals. When that’s accomplished-- e.g. through E-verify, a fence, and a visa-checking system-- and when those enforcement mechanisms have survived court challenges, then try to bring illegals out of the shadows. At that point, some years down the road, with the future illegal flow cut off (and “chain migration” curtailed), you can afford to be honest about how mean you are willing to be. Some people will still have to be deported, but not for failing to pay a fine or for losing their job and slipping below 125% of the poverty line (as allegedly would happen under Rubio’s plan).

There's a lot of dirt on Rubio from the days he and ex-Congressman David Rivera were roommates in a Tallahassee party house, where mobsters, cocaine, women and millions of illegal dollars made it the center of Florida's corrupt go-go scene while Rubio was the House Speaker and Rivera was his henchman. With Know Nothings and the neo-fascist wing of the GOP destroying Rubio with the activist Republican base now, Democrats will be able to hold onto that material for elections beyond 2016. And I say, if they want Cruz... give them Cruz!

The Libertarians Vs The Religionist Fringe

Yesterday we took a little look at the battle raging inside the GOP through the prism of their own Autopsy Report and a little analysis of why the right-wing Austerity agenda is destroying the British Conservative Party even as Paul Ryan and John Boehner redouble their efforts to push an almost identical agenda on the American people. But as the new GOP impalement unfolds, we totally left out one other dynamic-- the one raging between the noisy, modernist libertarian wing of the party and the angry, hate-fueled religionist wing.

This week, E.J. Dionne pointed out that Rand Paul and his backers within the GOP "are quite right in seeing the rise of American power in the world as closely linked to the rise of the New Deal/Great Society state at home. But this means that those who want the United States to play a strong role in global affairs need to ask themselves if their attitudes toward government’s role inside our country, which are similar to Paul’s, are consistent with their vision of American influence abroad. After World War II, there was a rough consensus in America, confirmed during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency in the 1950s, in favor of an energetic national government. We emerged from the war as a global power that had learned lessons from the Great Depression. Government action could lessen the likelihood of another disastrous economic downturn and build a more just and prosperous society at home by investing in our people and our future."

But on the fringes of the right-- think, for example, the Koch family's John Birch Society-- this national consensus was never accepted. Listen to the John Birch congressman from Georgia today, Paul Broun, or to the congressman from Koch Industries, Mike Pompeo, and you'll see that it still isn't. The rejectionist wing of the GOP is still fighting for dominance and Dionne points out that the Libertarians-- like the Birchers-- reject the whole thing. Paul told the CPAC audience last week that “As government grows, liberty becomes marginalized." So it is with some sense of irony that a fissure as wide as the Grand Canyon has opened up between the Libertarians and another group of extreme rejectionists, the religionist charlatans and their brain-dead, zombie like followers, in reality the biggest part of the electoral base of the Republican Party. Religious right spokesman, Bryan Fischer, is no fan of the Libertarians, even if he loves their anti-government agenda.

Pundits such as the atheist George Will have been celebrating what they see as a kind of resurgent libertarianism at last weekend’s CPAC, and virtually slobbering all over themselves, giddy with excitement that this represents the salvation of the Republican Party. It doesn’t.

Libertarianism has one sole redeeming political virtue and one only: it takes all those pesky moral issues like gay marriage, illegitimacy and drugs right off the table. Vote for me, cuz I’m for whatever floats your boat. It’s easy to see how this could appeal to some immature, inexperienced, narcissistic twenty-somethings, but it’s not an adult view of public life and will destroy any country which embraces it.

The Founders were decidedly not libertarians on moral and social issues. They were, as a matter of fact, libertarians on economic issues (low taxes, less regulation), and so should we be today. The view of the Founders was simple: economically libertarian, socially conservative. The tug right now is to pull the conservative movement out of its proper groove, championing moral restraint, hard work, marriage and family, into an anything-goes orbit which will send it flying off into deep space and oblivion.

We already have a party that is morally libertarian. If you want to see where moral libertarianism takes you, look at cities that have been run by Democrats for decades. They are places where nobody will ever hassle you about morally improper choices. If social libertarian ism worked, these cities should be paradise on earth. Anybody want to move to Detroit?

A mature approach to a nation’s politics is simple and straightforward, and it is the approach that energized and informed the Founders. It is this. Society is centered in the family. The ideal is for a man to reserve his sexual energies exclusively for marriage, and channel his sexual energies into that relationship, conceiving children with his wife out of their mutual love and commitment, bringing them into the world, and raising them to be responsible adults.

...Social libertarianism is ultimately a juvenile, even childish point of view. We need adults in the room, and that’s supposed to be the Republican Party. Time  to grow up, guys.

But... but... but... Rience's Autopsy report says the party is sinking because the voters identify them as a bunch of rich old white men.