No One Who Has Followed Mike DeWine's Career Can Be Surprised To Know He Was Lying About Planned Parenthood Landfills

Like me, I bet you were sickened to read that Planned Parenthood was throwing aborted fetuses into landfills and-- like me-- I bet you knew it was another right-wing lie. It was. Ohio's right-wing Attorney General, Mike DeWine, wants to run for governor in 2018 and he's already trying to position himself with the Tea Party crowd. A two-term U.S. Senator, DeWine was defeated for reelection by Sherrod Brown in 2006 after nearly a million of his voters from 2000 decided he hadn't done a good enough job to meet their votes again. Sherrod beat him by a much bigger margin than anyone had anticipated, 2,257,369 (56.2%) to 1,761,037 (43.8%), although DeWine's shocking 38% approval rating-- the worst (after Rick Santorum, who also lost his seat the same day) of any incumbent senator that year-- should have alerted people what was coming. That DeWine's campaign was caught and exposed for running false ads against Brown, helped seal his fate. By the end of the campaign, the NRSC had given up on him and withdrew financial support, although DeWine still outspent Brown $15,542,673 to $10,752,665.

Writing yesterday for the Cincinnati Enquirer, Cliff Schecter showed that the always deceitful DeWine was up to his old tricks again.

Mike DeWine’s fundamentalism, wrapped in his latest baseless, biased and ideological attack on Planned Parenthood, is just one in a string of abuses of this power by our oleaginous attorney general. But it’s by far the most strikingly political and troubling in its corruption of our legal process. DeWine-- Ohio’s top law enforcement officer, sworn to uphold justice for all-- is behaving in a manner that is simply unacceptable for an elected official in a democratic republic.

And it must stop.

Buried in DeWine’s press conference late on Dec. 11 was the finding that after the Attorney General Office’s five-month investigation “our office has found no indication that fetal tissue is being sold” by Ohio’s Planned Parenthood organizations. Let me restate this for the cheap seats and the comment section.

DeWine’s “investigation” has produced nothing. Zilch. Nada. It has found evidence of wrongdoing in much the same way Donald Trump found New Jersey-based Muslims cheering on 9/11. DeWine’s only actual product from his ode to 1690s Salem, Massachusetts, has been enough hot air to take a zeppelin to the moon.

While this is something most already knew to be true, truth is not on DeWine’s to-do list. He ensured the investigation and ensuing press conference clearing Planned Parenthood was overwhelmed by his inflammatory diatribe-- one full of misinformation about Ohio law and the methods used by Planned Parenthood’s contractors for medical materials disposal. What DeWine conveniently failed to mention during his rant was that medical facilities all over Ohio use contractors who employ the very same methods for fetal tissue. He also left out that the Ohio Department of Health has since 1975 accepted these methods as complying with Ohio law.

Meanwhile, DeWine is certainly consistent in putting his own misplaced sense of morality before the rights of Ohio citizens. He spent $1.3 million of our tax money to try to destroy the dream of a dying Cincinnati man, John Arthur, to be legally married to the person he loved in Ohio (Obergfell v. Hodges). God only knows what he spent in staff hours and travel costs to ignore his job as Ohio’s AG and hopscotch around the country attacking women’s right to birth control through insurance in the Hobby Lobby case.

Regarding DeWine’s current jihad, one might be inclined to ask, as was posed during another witch hunt in our history: At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

He never had any sense of decency. But two incredibly decent progressive women are thinking of running, Connie Pillich and Nina Turner. Ohio never elected a woman governor; it's time. (Yes, Nancy Hollister was "governor for 11 days in 1999 when George Voinovich resigned to take a Senate seat, but that doesn't count.)

The Republican Party Is Making Itself Over As The Party Of Anti-American Sedition

Many Republican Party leaders, always sensitive to their hate-fueled, paranoid base, are still clinging to their racism and bigotry. Its reflected in their policy agenda, the Ryan budget, their refusal to pass the bipartisan Senate comprehensive immigration plan (which even Boehner admits is being held back by the hate mongers in his caucus). Take this GOP thought-leader and political boss:

LIMBAUGH: You just gotta be who you are, and I think it's time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association. Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call 'em gangs. You have the Laker Gang, you have the Heat Gang, you have a Timberwolf Gang [distortions of official team names], and let 'em strap up out there, and let 'em market their CDs. Instead of selling concessions, sell CDs out there at the concession stand.

All the players get involved in this, and if a fight breaks out, hey, it's what happens! It's what happens with gangs, and if a cop gets bloodied, you know, that's a bonus for the gang member that pulls that off, and let the fans, you know, go in knowingly. They're going in to watch the Crips and the Bloods out there wherever the neighborhood is where the arena happens to be, and be who you are.

Nothing about the Donald Sterling Gang? Or the gang of heavily armed domestic terrorists and seditionists in Nevada, the Cliven Bundy Gang? His as slicking posture towards Bundy and his KKK mob won't hurt Limbaugh much. Virtually all respectable advertisers have fled his airwaves already.

[M]any national advertisers have heeded the protests of Media Matters about Rush Limbaugh. (Back in late February, we passed the two-year anniversary of Rush’s remarks about Sandra Fluke.)

And, predictably, Sterling is getting the same treatment from advertisers. But what about the idiot politicians who jumped on the racist bandwagon with Bundy? I doubt it will hurt racists like Greg Abbott in deep red states like Texas where most Republicans give racism a big thumbs up. Over the weekend, Hannity-- hardly a crusader for the NAACP-- asked Abbot about Bundy's ugly racist remarks, Abbott stood his ground and refused to apologize or even discuss the matter. Fellow Texas racists Rick Perry and Ted Cruz will be just fine as Bundy's most prominent political backers. Republican wing nut Congressman Paul Gosar actually drove up to the Bundy compound to make sure the racist Mormons in his R+20 Arizona district had no doubt where he stood. Rand Paul, smarter than the other neanderthals backed away quickly-- as did the Republican most likely to suffer politically for his Bundy support-- Nevada Senator Dean Heller. Jon Ralston has exposed Heller for his craven posturing on all this.

Imagine hearing these words come out of the mouth of Sen. Dean Heller, who has called Cliven Bundy’s supporters “patriots” and who did not utter a critical word about the famous rancher until he began declaiming about the history of the “Negro” in America:

“Let me first say that I do not support those who do not comply with the law. Mr. Bundy has not paid grazing fees in over 20 years, and that is unacceptable, particularly considering the number of ranchers in Nevada who hold permits and pay fees to graze on public lands. Furthermore, this case has been reviewed by a federal judge and a decision was made to remove the cattle.”

You know who that sounds like: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  And if there is one person Dean Heller doesn’t want to sound like on Bundyville, it’s Harry Reid. But that’s what he believes, even though he has been too craven or politically opportunistic to say it.

How do I know?

Because I have obtained talking points and a legal analysis Heller had prepared for the KSNV program, “What’s Your Point,” both of which indicated that Bundy is a lawbreaker and has no firm legal ground beneath him. “Bundy has produced no valid law or specific facts raising a genuine issue of fact regarding federal ownership or management of public lands in Nevada, or that his cattle have not trespassed on the New Trespass Lands,” a summary of the case against Bundy prepared for Heller says.

I wonder why Heller did not say that. Or has not said it.

Instead the senator said on the program 10 days ago that Bundy’s defenders were not “domestic terrorists” as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called them but “patriots.” Reid, who was sitting next to him, argued with Heller’s label, saying, ‘If they’re patriots, we’re in big trouble.”

It’s unclear if Heller’s “patriots” remark was premeditated-- there’s no mention of it in the talking points, which are dated April 17, the day before the program. But Reid made the “domestic terrorists” comment less than 24 hours before the two sat down together for the interview, possibly after the talking points were prepared. (It was an inane comment either way.).

Despite the plan outlined in the talking points to start with a criticism of Bundy and his lawbreaking, Heller instead offered a tribute to the "patriots" and then assailed the BLM for its putative overreach, even as his documents pointed out that the armed “militia types” were the “most dangerous aspect of the standoff.”

…The documents unmask Heller as someone willing to ignore facts and research his own aides have given him to genuflect to the worst elements of his party. That he and his fellow travelers such as Sean Hannity and Alex Jones have received their swift just desserts as Bundy’s ignorant racism pours out with his every utterance only makes his “patriots” comment more egregious. Heller was willing to enable Bundy and his band of “patriots” without regard to the consequences, even though he clearly knew before he appeared on the program that Bundy and his followers were in the wrong.

…If you want to know where Heller stands on other issues-- or where his staff says he should stand-- the document is worth reading-- and comparing to what he has said and will say on these issues.

After the What’s Your Point interview, which ended at 1 PM on that Friday, Heller’s aides scurried to whisk him out of the studio and away from prying journalists. “I have to get him to the airport in 11 minutes,” his aide Jack Finn said.

In their haste to ensure Heller did not make any more unscripted comments, someone left behind the packet with the talking points and the legal analysis. One other piece of paper was in there, too:

A Southwest Airlines boarding pass, showing his flight didn’t leave for another two hours.

And not all domestic terrorists are lurking in rural Nevada. Cliff Schecter just braved the NRA Convention in Indianapolis, a den of anti-American sedition and treason potential far more serious than what's going on at Cliven Bundy's compound. His report-- Preparing for War in Indianapolis: Inside the NRA Plot to Terrify America-- would probably horrify most normal Americans.

Through the entrance to the hall were rows, probably a dozen of them or more, each filled with one booth after another of salesmen hawking their wares, going on for as far as the eye could see. The NRA had a banner outside the convention center describing it as “9 Acres of Guns & Gear,” and for once it wasn’t exaggerating.

As I entered the room, directly in front of me were T-shirts for sale with assault weapons on them, bearing the likenesses of former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, President Obama and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Two coastal Jews and an African-American from Chicago-- what’s known in Alex Jones land as “The Trifecta.” As I moved past the T-shirts, two guys walking past me looked back, and one chuckled. “Bloomberg,” he said, and shook his head.

Military-style weaponry of every kind occupied almost every inch of the terrain to my left and right as I began the long trek down each aisle. Not your father’s hunting rifle, for the most part—although there were a few of those here and there-- but the kind of arms you use to start a war. Fifty-caliber rifles, which can take down small aircraft. Assault rifles-- rebranded “sporting rifles,” in case your sport might be decimating a small village under a minute. High-capacity magazines of the variety used in so many recent massacres at malls, schools, and universities.

…[The NRA] has embraced this new mission to militarize the streets of America with zeal, scaring the bejesus out of its most faithful adherents with ghost stories about preparing for the breakdown of civilization, to destroy any faith they might have in our democracy or our first responders. You’re all alone, in their telling. Just you and the one thing that’s always faithful: your gun.

…The NRA’s executive vice president of the and foaming mouthpiece, Wayne LaPierre, made this crystal clear during his stump speech at the convention. Here is a sliver of what Good Time Charlie had to say to the assembled:

“We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all,” he said.

LaPierre, of course, is never held responsible for this rhetoric, even though it is not too much of a stretch to say that its repetition in all of the NRA’s magazines, radio show, emails, newsletter, speeches, on Fox News, and on right-wing talk radio and beyond clearly contributes to the killing everyday American citizens and members of law enforcement.

Nor do members of Congress with close NRA ties who scare the populace and encourage sedition face any consequences. That includes board member Rep. Don Young (R-AK), who took the stage with radical militia leader Schaeffer Cox in 2011 and signed a declaration in direct contravention to the oath he swore to the United States government, of which he is a member. It read:

“Let it be known that should our government seek to further tax, restrict or register firearms…thus impairing our ability to exercise the God-given right to self-defense that precedes all human legislation and is superior to it, that the duty of us good and faithful people will not be to obey them but to alter or abolish them.”

Primary Season Ends For Another Cycle

Christine O'Donnell must be missing student loans payments or mortgage payments again. She's threatening the Republican Party that she may run for the U.S. Senate again. Her successful primary challenge to popular mainstream Rep. Mike Castle in 2010 in universally thought to be the reason the GOP doesn't hold the Delaware Senate seat occupied by Chris Coons now. “I think I owe that to my supporters, to at least consider a run,” O’Donnell said in an interview last week. “People sacrificed. Not only came out of their comfort zone-- sacrificed to work hard in order to win the primary. And I think that I owe it to them to give it every consideration.” (She has also said she is available for a paying gig in a Romney Administration if he wins the November election.)

If Democrats are cheering, mainstream Republicans must be rolling their eyes at the thought. Primaries by right-wing extremists like O'Donnell have hurt the GOP in general elections, not so much in deep red states where the brain-dead citizens would vote for a lump of shit labeled "Republican"-- think Utah or Texas-- but in normal states. This primary cycle, for example, saw 15 congressional incumbents defeated-- 8 Republicans and 7 Democrats, although, to be fair, one of the Republicans, Bob Turner, was gerrymandered out of his district and then lost the GOP Senate primary.

All but 2 of the Democratic losses were incumbent vs incumbent matches-- Jason Altmire lost to Mark Critz in western Pennsylvania. Both are extremely reactionary right-wing Democrats who commonly vote with the GOP. In New Jersey moderate Steve Rothman lost to more progressive Bill Pascrell. In Ohio, quirky economic progressive/social conservative Marcy Kaptur beat progressive icon Dennis Kucinich, in a district that was drawn to predict those results. In Michigan under-funded progressive Hansen Clarke was beaten by ConservaDem Gary Peters and St. Louis political fixture Russ Carnahan, a moderate, was beaten by the more progressive William Lacy Clay in a 63% to 34% landslide. In the two districts where there were actual non-incumbent challengers, corrupt Blue Dog Tim Holden was beaten by a more progressive Matt Cartwright, 57-43%, a stunning and rare upset. A few weeks later a similar primary battle in El Paso resulted in longtime Establishment Democrat Silvestre Reyes going down to defeat at the hands of popular young reformer, Beto O'Rourke, 50.5 to 44.4%. (Beto, pictured on the right, will be the Blue America live guest at Crooks and Liars tomorrow at 11am (PT, noon El Paso time.)

In Republicanville, there were 3 incumbent vs incumbent races. Florida Establishment shill John Mica swamped teabagger Sandy Adams, widely considered the stupidest Member of Congress (yes, dumber that Gohmert). He swamped her financially, spending $1,214,486 to her $451,281, and beat her 60-40%. The Republican Machine wiped out an annoying teabagger without much effort. In Illinois, the GOP Machine got behind freshman zombie Adam Kinzinger and helped him beat Don Manzullo, 56-44%, even though the redrawn 16th CD included 44% of Manzullo's constituents and 31% of Kinzinger's. Kinzinger spent $1,548,515 on the primary and Manzullo spent $1,257,113 but outside groups orchestrated, possibly illegally, by Eric Cantor and Aaron Schock (widely rumored to have a gay crush on Kinzinger) spent a great deal of money to defeat Manzullo. The third incumbent vs incumbent race pitted Dan Quayle's lunkhead son, Ben, a leadership lackey, against David Schweikert. Ben Quayle was never popular in the Arizona district and was remembered for having been an on-line pornographer (DirtyScottsdale.com/Brock Landers) before narrowly winning a wild primary against 10 other Republicans (outspending all his rivals combined). This year Schweikert spent $1,289,381 and Quayle spent $1,537,407. An Adelson-funded superPAC, Friends of the Majority, spent another $1,120,000 in negative ads against Schweikert. But Arizona voters were tired-- after just one term-- of being embarrassed by the clownish Quayle and he went down 53-47%.

Far more interesting were the 4 races where non-incumbents beat incumbents. The headliner, of course, was far right extremist Richard Mourdock beating Indiana GOP icon Richard Lugar with a stunning 60% of the vote. Lugar was viewed (disapprovingly) as a mainstream conservative when the GOP primary voters wanted someone more like... Christine O'Donnell. Mourdock spent $3,162,191 on the primary and Lugar spent $8,301,994. But outside spending, mostly from extremist groups, was tilted in Mourdock's favor. Club For Growth spent $947,991 in negative ads against Lugar and $517,810 in favor of Mourdock. The Koch brothers' FreedomWorks spent $341,503 against Lugar and another $330,129 in favor of Mourdock. Similarly the NRA spent over a quarter million dollars tearing down Lugar and approximately $638,000 bolstering Mourdock.

In the Tulsa, OK-area and Jacksonville, FL-area House races, unknown challengers came from nowhere to beat, respectively, John Sullivan and Cliff Stearns. Jim Bridenstine beat Sullivan, an extremist and drug addict, 54-46%. Sullivan spent $1,113,091 on the primary and Bridenstine spent $293,890. The PACs from opthamologists and anesthesiologists, who had felt dissed by Sullivan, spent around $100,000 against him and seem to have made the difference in the race. And in the case of the never-popular Mean Jean Schmidt, it was podiatrists who did her in. In fact, a podiatrist, Brad Wenstrup, beat her 49-43%, in a district east of Cincinnati. Wenstrup sent $357,260 and Mean Jean spent $657,489. The good government group, Campaign for Primary Accountability, spent $132,022 against Schmidt. (It's worth noting that they also spent $240,000 against Reyes, $130,875 against Hoden and $224,529 (some of it funneled by Cantor and Schock) against Manzullo.

Primary season is over and it's time to get serious about November. Normally this would be a time when we could safely say that there isn't a single congressional race anywhere in America where the GOP nominated someone better than the Democrats. That may not be the case this year. We're still investigating, but Republican rebel and libertarian may well turn out to be a less odious choice for voters than anti-Choice fanatic Steve Pestka in the Grand Rapids/Battle Creek area of south-central Michigan. We'll get back to you on that one.

Sure, Young Johnny McCranky has made himself an object of ridicule, but don't kid yourself, he's still "The Real McCain"

Oh no, do we really have to talk about

Young Johnny again? Alas, 'fraid so!

"It is depressing to watch Sen. John McCain transform himself from the refreshingly independent voice he once was to the snarling partisan he has become."

-- start of a Newark Star-Ledger editorial yesterday

by Ken

Let me be the last to comment on the latest antics of Young Johnny McCranky. Young Johnny, you'll recall, announced after the passage of the health care bill that we wouldn't have congressional Republicans to kick around anymore on account of they're gonna cease providing all the cooperation those indomitable bipartisans have contributed to the legislative process in this session.

Now you just stop laughing out there! I'm sure when we check the videotapes we're going to find you've already bust a gut laughing over this. No more Republican cooperation, eh? Okay, that is pretty hilarious, I admit, no matter how often you hear it. If Republicans had extended any less cooperation in this session of Congress . . . um . . . any less cooperation . . . sorry, I just don't have a punch line for that one. "Republicans" and "cooperation" in the same sentence just seems so bizarre.

It's going to be hard to persuade you that this is, nevertheless, serious business. Not so much Young Johnny himself. Oh no, there's nothing serious about the Crankyman -- unless you count the fact that he occupies a seat in the U.S. Senate, and is pressing his Arizonan constituents to send him back for another six years. Still, when you look at the growing collection of jugheads and clowns who share the distinction of occupying space in the U.S. Senate, it hardly seems that special -- unless you count the deadly serious role this carnival of freaks is supposed to play in our governmental process.

Howie has been keeping an eye on Young Johnny's latest self-reinvention, as a Teabagger-friendly obstructionist, as he fights for his life against a Senate primary challenge from the right. (Late word is that tomorrow none other than Princess Sarah will be in Arizona campaigning for him.) The point to remember is that the Crankyman's periodic metamorphoses are as phony, and go about as deep, as the lovely Cindy's makeup. As our friend Cliff Schecter documented all too well in his zealously researched book The Real McCain, Young Johnny's political career, which seems so puzzlingly all-over-the-place ideologically, becomes as predictable as clockwork once you focus on the one overriding consideration: What's good for me personally?

Once upon a time, it suited Young Johnny's purposes to present himself as a Man of Principle, the war hero who stood up to all that torture and maintained his fearless integrity against ideologues of Left and Right. I don't entirely rule out the possibility that on some level he believed it himself. But as Cliff demonstrated so thoroughly, the image had nothing to do with reality.

Even the "war hero" record is a lot more equivocal than our Johnny represents. And he was always the cynically opportunistic wheeler-dealer who traded in his first wife, when she no longer served either his personal pleasures or his political ambitions, for the lovely Cindy and her family's beer-distribution fortune, which he parlayed into a political career -- one that was then perennially riddled with corruption as he struggled to make himself a Man of Means independent of his wife's family's.

One of the scandals of the 2008 presidential campaign was the general failure of the Infotainment News Media to acknowledge what "everyone knew" (everyone on the inside, that is) about Young Johnny's unprincipled past, especially when he was campaigning with a minimum of two positions on every issue of public interest. Now that he's once again let the protective sheet slip off his sleazy, grubby self, Cliff is remembering ruefully how dismissive the Infotainment Newsers were of The Real McCain, without regard to the care that went into its research. Until Young Johnny's campaign had virtually self-destructed, when some of those mainstreamers finally began peeling off their erstwhile hero, it wasn't considered proper in Village precincts to question his character.

I raise these matters now for two reasons that go beyond the immediate case of Young Johnny to fundamental questions of how we govern ourselves in our increasingly imperfect democracy:

(1) This is the man who ran the nation's first all-lies all-the-time presidential campaign. The Bush campaigns had at least been somewhat discreet about its lies. Presumably under the tutelage of Karl Rove, the campaigners mastered the art of telling different groups what they wanted to hear. Remember "compassionate conservatism," to which not even lip service was paid once they seized control of the White Hosue? Rove understood that all that mattered was the electorate's emotion of the moment, that as long as they were careful with their campaign promises, nothing they said in the campaign would in any way limit what they could do once in power. (Remember the scornful dismissal of "nation-building," never heard from again?)

But after eight years of Bush regime lies, and the discovery that there was never a price to pay for them, whereas opponents could almost always be eviscerated for attempting to speak the truth, and the regime's total rejection of any obligation to reality, the various sets of McCranky campaign strategists seemed to agree that truth and reality were only for suckers, and as they got away with it, the lies became ever more encompassing and egregious -- and it became ever so much easier once Barack Obama was the sole opponent, with his campaign's steadfast refusal to make an issue of the fraudulence of right-wing rhetoric and governance.

What scared the dickens out of me was that, after a campaign in which Young Johnny made no rational case whatsoever for his candidacy, he still got 47 percent of the vote. As I've said frequently, I didn't see how that could possibly be good news for the country's future governability. I'm not saying I anticipated the rise of the Teabaggers, but I knew that nothing good was likely to come of so many voters having severed their ties to truth and reality.

(2) Sorry, Newark Star-Ledger editorial board, but if you were to read The Real McCain (which unlike all those right-wing propaganda tracts put out by the publishing presses of the Right-Wing Noise Machine, like Regnery, was actually based on verifiably factual research), you would know that "refreshingly independent voice he once was" existed only in your imagination. It was just a persona he used when it was convenient, and one he played masterfully with an awful lot of journalists who should have known better, should have known they were being played. The bogus "maverick" persona didn't (a) temper the extreme conservatism of McCranky's actual voting record or (b) change all the financial shenanigans he was engaging in all those years both inside and outside the Senate.

But the Infotainment Newsers have been so thoroughly coopted that even now they don't acknowledge what was available for them to know about Young Johnny in 2008. Now that "The Real McCain" has reemerged, the sad truth for our friend Cliff is that the only thing that offends the Village media more than challenging their orthodoxies is challenging their orthodoxies and being proved right.

Which is a lesson we have learned before, no doubt many times over. But once again I call attention to that remarkable Bill Moyers Journal broadcast, "Buying the War," which looked back at the performance of news-gatherers and pundits during the Bush regime's run-up to the invasion of Iraq, which -- contrary to the bogus version Karl Rove is apparently peddling in his new tell-all-lies book -- was clearly certain once the regimistas realized they could use 9/11 as cover for the military adventure their various factions were already salivating over. Here is a sample:

What Bill and his reporting team found was that with depressing consistency the journalistic whores who had uncritically toed the official regime line, and been wrong every step of the way, were rewarded, while the truly intrepid reporters who somehow managed to see what "nobody could have foreseen" were punished, and may never be forgiven in polite circles for having been right. As I pointed out when I last wrote about this, in November, "a DVD of "Buying the War" is still available, and two and a half years later seems every bit as pertinent." (At the moment the PBS website lists it as back-ordered, "but leaves warehouse in 2-4 weeks.")

A thought for the day: Wouldn't it be nice if those rewards and punishments were reversed?

#

With all due allowance for our concerns about Obama and his campaign, the grim reality is that we mustn't allow McCranky to be elected

Last night -- let's not kid ourselves, they're not the same.

by Ken

Howie and I were chatting last night, and he told me about the experience of watching Senators Obama and McCranky at the Saddleback Church do. As he's still without a usable home computer, he suddenly has time for all sorts of normally neglected activities.

ASIDE ON HOWIE'S COMPUTERLESSNESS

Now I realize that what I described in a comment as hot-shot corporate techs consulting on Howie's case were in fact merely the tech-support drones from his cable company, which is already mystified as to why he can't get CNN, alone among the channels in his cable package. (He recently upgraded to one of those triple packages with cable, computer, and phone service.) Since CNN is one of only three channels he watches, and he'd already seen the History Channel's Chinese-emperor extravaganza several times, that left him, shall we say, open to other options.

He also reminded me of an anecdote he'd already told me about a memorable experience he once had with a deacon of Saddleback. (I remembered the anecdote pretty vividly, just not the Saddleback connection.) He planned to use that anecdote to lead off the hypothetical post he couldn't write based on watching last night's festivities. However, I think I better leave that story to him to tell!

Let me say at once that I was not watching the Saddleback festivities. Sooner than that I would -- in fact did -- watch a little of the Jets-Redskins preseason football game. My goodness, watching preseason football games! Has it come to that? Actually, I kept noticing recently that there were preseason games on TV, but none of them involved teams I care about, which is to say the New York teams, of course. It so happened that I was online last night and stumbled across news that the Jets' newly acquired QB, Grampa Bret Favre, had hurled a TD pass on the team's opening drive. [Oops, turns out it was the Jets' second drive.] Realizing that this had happened perhaps only minutes before, I searched out the game on the TV, and found it apparently still in the first quarter. But Gramps's night, it seemed, was already over.

However, I digress. What struck Howie about the presidential contenders' Saddleback appearances was (a) the difference in their respective modes of presentation and (b) the difference in the audience response.

With regard to (a), Obama genuinely tried to engage on serious issues, thoughtfully and substantively. McCranky, meanwhile, bloviated with prescripted, pandering imbecilities. (At one point, I was told, he even announced, "I'm pandering.") With respect to (b), the audience greeted Obama respectfully, but went batshit crazy over Young Johnny's disgraceful brain-rotted imbecilities.

Which is, come to think of it, and even allowing for the giant disappointment many of us feel about the progress of the center-hugging, mush-mouthed Obama campaign, the inescapable difference between the candidates. Don't get me wrong. The disappointment many of us feel with regard to both the Obama campaign and Obama as candidate is important, and I don't mean to minimize it. I myself have been contemplating for several weeks now writing an agonized post of heart unhappiness. Yet I think it's maybe more important right now to step back and reregister this crucial, unchanging difference between the candidates.

The more I see and hear of McCranky, the more horrified I am.

Anyone who's looked into his past knows that he was never the mythical maverick of legend. He's always been way more conservative than his admirers realized, and all his post-Vietnam life he's had a shockingly sleazy record in financial matters.

His involvement in the Keating Five scandal turns out not to have been incidental or aberrant. It was, rather, utterly typical behavior for a man perpetually on the make for a quick buck, not least in the whole sordid episode of dumping his first wife in favor of the lovely Cindy the beer heiress. We mustn't forget that unlike the four Democratic senators who got caught in the Keating muck, McCranky actually had a personal relationship with muckmaster Charles Keating.

Even the most laudable undertaking of McCranky's political career, his passionate involvement in campaign finance reform, looks in retrospect suspiciously like a desperate attempt to put the scandal behind him. His more recent approach to campaign finance has made a mockery of the whole spirit of the McCain-Feingold reforms, limited as they were.

CONFIDENTIAL TO SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD

Depressingly, Russ Feingold seems not to have noticed his old crusade mate's metamorphosis, or for that matter his lifelong sleaze streak, and continues to speak of him as if he were the mythical Maverick McCain.

Confidential to Russ: Hey, Russ, shut the fuck up, why dontcha?

(Come to think of it, you have to wonder how much contact Russ has had recently with his old comrade. It's not as if they're likely to have crossed paths in the Senate, where Young Johnny has hardly shown his face in the last year.)

And the worst of it with Young Johnny, even worse in my mind than the question of how much of his faculties he may have lost to age, is that when you look really closely at the McCranky record, as our pal Cliff Schecter did in his still-indispensable book The Real McCain, it's hard to find anything Young Johnny really believes in as a matter of principle beyond his own ambition.

One of these days I'm sure I'll be upset enough with Obama and his campaign to write that agonized cri du coeur I've got percolating. But it's not going to change the grim reality that, after eight years of Cheney-Bush atrocities, we really and truly have no choice in this election. Not only is there no hope of a McCranky administration seriously addressing the wreckage left behind by the Bush regime. There is a frightening possibility that a President McCranky could actually do worse.

And the horrifying reality, at least from my vantage point, is that, for all that the McCranky campaign appears to be a cross between a stumbling shambles and a train wreck, it seems to be working. Pretty much the way it worked last night at Saddleback.

Go, Barack!

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New York alert: Cliff Schecter of "The Real McCain" joins Laughing Liberally tonight to vivisect (one hopes) Young Johnny McCranky

Who is John McCain?
What are his politics?
And what was his boyhood in the 16th century really like?

-- questions to be tackled
tonight at Laughing Liberally's
John McCain Comedy Jaunt

Incredibly, we keep hearing that people "trust" Young Johnny, that they think of him as a man of "principle" and "convictions."

I'm guessing fewer people think that way than was once the case, and that's in no small part thanks to the tireless researching and crusading of our pal Cliff Schecter, principal author of The Real McCain -- and now a political blogger at Firedoglake. (This morning Cliff brings us breathless news that McCranky "is aware of the Internet"! Makes you wonder how he found out.) So I want to make sure New Yorkers know that he's scheduled to join Laughing Liberally's John McCain Comedy Jaunt tonight, along with Paul Waldman, coauthor with David Brock of Free Ride: John McCain and the Media, and a slew of comics gathered to try to answer questions like those above.

It's true that word of McCranky's sleazy ethics and cynically opportunistic ideological flip-floppery (though there seems little doubt that he's a true-red reactionary) hasn't reached elite pundits like D.C. Village elders David Broder and Richard Cohen, but jeez, do you really want to be farther out of the informational loop than those bozos?

The John McCain Comedy Jaunt is tonight at 9pm at the Tank, 279 Church St., between Franklin and White Sts., below Canal, and I certainly plan to be there, armed with my copy of The Real McCain for Cliff to sign. (Hmm, I should probably pick up a copy of Free Ride.) It's listed as "FREE / $10 Suggested Admission." Make it $100 -- or $1000 -- and it sounds like a pricing policy the "straight-talking" McCranky could get behind.

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When Sen. "Intertubes Ted" Stevens talks, you bet we listen -- 'cause there are bound to be yuks. Seriously now, folks, you can't make this stuff up

Our pal Cliff Schecter, best known nowadays as the single-minded McCranky Wrecking Crew who gave us The Real McCain and continues to hound the Crankyman, has lobbed a grenade at another GOP senior statesman, one of DWT's favorite still-unindicted Republicrooks, on his Cliff Schecter's Campaign Blog over at Firedoglake:

Sen. Ted Stevens Thinks Only Lawyers Can Be Legislators
By: Cliff Schecter

From KTUU.com:

"In today's economy and today's world, when you're dealing with legislation and you're dealing a job that is 7-24 and you have to answer questions yourself at times without advice from people, lawyers on your staff, you ought to be a lawyer to start with," Stevens said.

First, I think you meant 24-7 Sen. Stevens, but I know you're not up on the lingo floating around the series of tubes, so we'll let that one go.

Now, just an observation. I don't think that being a lawyer helped you figure out how to prevent the FBI from raiding your house. It doesn't seem to have done wonders for David Vitter or Larry Craig either.

I think you're giving the study of the law a bit too much credit, in my ever-so-humble opinion.

The way Senator "7-24" is going, it looks like his legal skills may be sufficient to land his entire family in the slammer. We're not complaining, just saying.

I feel a little bad about ridiculing Senator Ted. If you go back far enough in Alaskan history, you find the young Ted Stevens as a committed environmentalist. Power does truly terrible things to all too many people, and the man who clings now to his Senate seat -- at least stripped of the authoritarian power he wielded as a committee chairman while the Republicans controlled the Senate -- is a pathetic caricature of his former self.

It will be a kindness all around when Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich kicks the sad old geezer's butt out of the Senate in November.

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One handy way to keep up on the outpouring of high-quality progressive-themed books is with FDL's weekly Book Salon (coming up today at 5pm ET)

No, that's not Arianna Huffington. It's Tracey Ullman as Arianna, whom she's been lampooning rather mercilessly on her current Showtime series, Tracey Ullman's State of the Union. The real Arianna is the guest on today's Firedoglake Book Salon, on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe. That's today at 5pm ET, 2pm PT.

"Politicians, always reading the cultural winds, make their life's work convincing 50 percent plus one of their constituency that they understand their fears and hopes, can honor and redeem them, can make them safe and lead them toward their dreams. Studying the process by which a notably successful politician achieves that task, again and again, across changing cultural conditions, is a deep way into an understanding of those fears and dreams--and especially, how those fears and dreams change.
--from the preface to Rick Perlstein's Nixonland (Scribner)

As you see, I got my copy of Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, and also of Cliff Schecter's The Real McCain. Again, not that I'm plugging Amazon, but two days from placing order to receiving books--with hefty discounts and "free super saver shipping"--isn't bad!

At the time I made mention of the remarkable flowering we've seen in recent years of important, exciting books written from an unabashedly progressive standpoint--many of them coming from writers who have established their bona fides in the progressive blogosphere. This is roughly parallel to the outpouring of hard-core right-wing propaganda tomes over the last several decades--with the obvious "but"s. Hardly any of the right-wing propagandists had any interest in truth, knowledge, enlightenment, or understanding, just hammering their ideological psychoses and rallying the faithful to their clarion cry of ignorance and hatred. It was the vanguard of a movement built on storm-trooper-enforced knee-jerk ideology.

And of course the right-wing ideologues had access to a cadre of free-spending-zillionaire sugar daddies, to pay them to write and to publish their damned books. These days the right-wing propagandists, not surprisingly given that their world view is built on delusions and lies, that the progressive movement is funded entirely by George Soros. I don't doubt that Mr. Soros is contributing generously to progressive projects of his choosing, but virtually none of the specific ones the wingnuts go batshit over have any connection to him.

No, in the book world we've experienced a growing willingness of mainstream publishers to go out on a limb--as they seem to see it--with credentialed non-right-wing writers and the emergence of hardy independent publishers committed to the quest for truth--as in the case of Jeffrey Feldman's Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right Poisons American Democracy, just published by Ig Publishing.

As I mentioned, my schedule, or perhaps just the state of my brain, makes book-reading an elusive goal, making it hard for me to keep up on the literally dozens of titles I've hoped to get to over the last few years. One resource I meant to mention is Firedoglake's weekly Bo0k Salon, where the author participates in a live online chat with a moderator carefully matched to the book.

If you read this in time and have nothing else to do, coming up today (as noted above) is Arianna Huffington. If you can't or couldn't catch the live chat, of course, it's all still accessible in the Book Salon archive, along with all the other titles that have been covered.

In addition, if you have books you especially want to commend to DWT readers' attention, you can either throw them in a comment (or comments), or drop me an e-mail at KenFromDWT@aol.com.

Happy reading!

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From the bookshelf: If you've been waiting to order your copy of "Nixonland," now's the time to get cracking--plus some other book notes

One thing that should be obvious by now is that the final descent into right-wing darkness marked by the Age of Bush has also stimulated and focused a wave of progressive writers like gangbusters. Howie is the DWT book guy, and he keeps you apprised of the books he's devoured. Me, in my 9-to-5 grind I mostly dream of finding the time and concentration for so grand a project as, you know, reading a book.

Now word comes from our friend Rick Perlstein that for-real retail copies of his long-awaited Nixonland : The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America actually exist and are being shipped to buyers. ("I can't really believe it myself," Rick writes. "I signed the contract for the thing in November of 2001, first started thinking seriously about it in 1998, and wanted to write just this book since I was sixteen years old.")

If you haven't heard about Nixonland, what you need to know is that Rick Perlstein has always been a close observer of the right side of the great left-right political split that erupted in the '60s. His 2001 book Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus looked at how the seeming conservative debacle of the 1964 presidential election in fact laid the groundwork for the ascension of the new Right. In Nixonland, I gather, he's carried that chronicle (watch out, it's 896 pages and weighs a whopping 2.4 pounds) forward to the years 1965-72 and the emergence of the conservative movement as a political force, with emphasis on how those culture wars looked from the other side.


WHY NOT TOSS THE REAL McCAIN IN YOUR SHOPPING CART?

If your book source of choice happens to be Amazon, you'll notice that the hefty discount offered on Nixonland, which brings the price down from $37.50 to $24.75, also drops you below the magic $25 mark for free shipping. If you're as cheap as I am, this is a problem.

Now we've probably all got so many books on our reading list that the solution is obvious: piggyback one of the others onto your order. I'd been meaning for weeks now to get hold of Cliff Schecter's The Real McCain, the book I'm hoping will provide both a framework and a lot of raw material for penetrating the fake halo of that double-talking phony McCranky and keeping his sorry ass out of the White House.

Probably you already know that The Real McCain was conceived and substantially written--by Cliff and another of our favorite writers, the patrician Bob Geiger--before the embarrassing collapse of the McCranky campaign, which seemed to drag the book down the drain with it. Until, with the GOP presidential field looking like some sort of circus freak show, the McCranky campaign was reborn, and The Real McCain was back in business.

By tossing The Real McCain in my shopping cart, thereby getting free shipping on both books, I added only about six bucks to the total I was about to pay for just Nixonland.


AND ONE LAST BOOK NOTE: PERVERSION OF LANGUAGE

I don't want to leave the subject of important new books without a quick mention of Jeffrey Feldman's latest, Outright Barbarous: How the Violent Language of the Right is Poisoning American Democracy, due out May 1 from enterprising progressive publisher Ig Publishing.

You probably know Jeffrey from his Frameshop blog, in which case you know that he is a careful student of language. I've been tinkering with a set of advance galleys of Outright Barbarous, with a view to bracketing it with one of the most remarkable books I know (as much for its genesis as for its actual content), Victor Klemperer's LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii (The Language of the Third Reich): A Philologist's Notebook, the study of the Nazi perversion of language which Klemperer (a first cousin of the great conductor Otto Klemperer) extracted after World War II from the remarkable diaries he kept secretly all through the reign of National Socialism. (As it happens the book I'm trying to get through now is the final volume of the Klemperer diaries, from 1945 throuh his death in 1959. It's a tough subway read.)

All smart politicians know that language is important. Smart totalitarians, however, understand that control of language is crucial. Manipulation of the language was a key factor in the rise of the American Far Right. One of these days we need to talk about this a little.

JOHN W. McCAIN-- YES, EVEN WORSE THAN GEORGE W. BUSH

One of the impressions I walked away with after a briefing at the DNC where polling data was shared with journalists and bloggers was that most Americans have vague impressions about McCain but that the "maverick" and "moderate" hype hasn't sunk in, regardless of how heavily pushed it has been by his allies in the Inside-the-Beltway media. Sycophants like Broder and Tweety can swoon over him all they like, but most Americans are still wondering who he is. An extensive page one story in today's Washington Post, one that was apparently kept away from Broder, goes a long way towards helping at least their readers to understand who the real John McCain is.

The Post writer, Michael Leahy, could have saved himself a lot of time and effort by reprinting Cliff Schecter's brilliant new book, The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him-- and Why Independents Shouldn't, but fortunately he used enough of Schecter's research and ideas to make the piece worthwhile. He starts with a well-documented scene of an angry and obviously deranged McCain attacking Iowa Republican Senator Charles Grassley at a Senate committee meeting. This particular time it only amounted to the much disliked McCain-- disliked by his Senate colleagues (except pathetic bottom feeders like Lieberman and Miss Lindsey)-- cursing, pushing and shoving, ever the high school spoiled bully. Later Leahy gets to Schecter's revelation about how McCain and fellow Arizona wingnut, Rick Renzi, actually got into a punch out (although, here too McCain's lobbyists swear up and down that it was just pushing and shoving and that no punches were thrown; witnesses say otherwise).

Since the beginning of McCain's public life, the many witnesses to his temper have had strikingly different reactions to it. Some depict McCain, now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, as an erratic hothead incapable of staying cool in the face of what he views as either disloyalty to him or irrational opposition to his ideas... Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him... "I've witnessed a lot of his temper and outbursts. For me, some of this stuff is relevant. It raises questions about stability... It's more than just temper. It's this need of his to show you that he's above you-- a sneering, condescending attitude. It's hurt his relationships in Congress... I've seen it up-close."

And, then of course, there are the Lieber-men and others hoping to benefit from a McCain presidency, the ones who will say anything to cover up for him no matter how dangerous his instability and vindictiveness could be for America. Of course when is the last time anyone with a bit of credibility claimed that Lieberman gave a crap about America (or for Connecticut; Lieberman is all about Lieberman... and the Likud Party).

That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges. He recalls in his writings how, as a toddler, he sometimes held his breath and fainted during moments of fury. As the son of a naval officer who was on his way to becoming a four-star admiral, McCain found himself frequently uprooted and enrolled in new schools, where, as an underappreciated outsider, he developed "a little bit of a chip on my shoulder," as he recalled this month.

During a campaign stop at Episcopal High School in Alexandria, the most famous graduate of the Class of 1954 opened a window on what swirled inside him during his school years. "I was always the new kid and was accustomed to proving myself quickly at each new school as someone not to be challenged lightly," he told students.

"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone who I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life."

He defied authority, ridiculed other students, sometimes fought. The nicknames hung on him at Episcopal mocked his hair-trigger feistiness: "Punk" and "McNasty." Hoping to emulate his father and grandfather, also an admiral, he went on to the Naval Academy, where his pattern of unruliness and defiance continued, landing him near the bottom of his class. "I acted like a jerk," McCain wrote of the period before he righted himself to become a naval aviator, a Vietnam POW and eventually a career politician.

The trajectory of his temper, studied ever more intently as his White House ambitions took shape, includes incidents from his years in the House and in the Senate, leading up to the early days of his current presidential campaign. In 2007, during a heated closed-door discussion with Senate colleagues about the contentious immigration issue, he angrily shouted a profanity at a fellow Republican, John Cornyn of Texas, an incident that quickly found its way into headlines.

The ugly truth that no one in the media wants to get into, though, is what this temper and anger and feeling of being unfettered by the rules that govern the rest of us has led to one catastrophe after another in McCain's life, including half a dozen "accidents" involving plane crashes, one of which killed over 100 American sailors and destroyed tens of millions of dollars in planes. There is always, always, always an excuse, no matter how many times he would screw up-- and he was never to blame, even if the only constant in every single instance was... John McCain, the guy who didn't follow any rules. McCain: "In all candor, as an adult I've been known to forget occasionally the discretion expected of a person of my many years and station when I believe I've been accorded a lack of respect I did not deserve." Always the self-righteous asshole.

The Inside-the-Beltway media has always excused McCain's outrageous behavior and, in fact, tried to help him turn it to his own advantage, painting him as a kind of "Im-Angry-As-Hell-And-I'm-Not-Gonna- Take-It-Anymore kind of guy. Leahy is right on cue: "McCain has built much of his appeal, especially with independents, as the fiery maverick willing to defy both parties. His tempestuousness has girded him in high-stakes confrontations, especially against Republican conservatives who regard his occasionally moderate stances as proof that he has sold them out." And no one ever mentions, even when they report the facts, as Leahy does today, that McCain's howling angry and bully-boy attitude is very frequently directed towards women. He's the Senate's worst misogynist, especially if he senses he can frighten a woman into backing down.

Anyone who wants to see if it's possible for a worse president than George Bush-- with a possibility for even worse outcomes, ought to seriously consider voting for his political heir, John McCain. Everyone else... well, start by watching this new ad from our friends at the DNC:

SHOULD McCAIN'S VIOLENT TEMPER DISQUALIFY HIM FROM THE PRESIDENCY?

In general I'd say yes. But some of the specifics are less than convincing. So what if he routinely humiliates women as a matter of normal operating procedure? Some women love being humiliated. You know that whole flap about calling his wife Cindy a "trollop and a cunt" for pointing out his thinning hair in front of some newspaper reporters? Maybe she deserved that and maybe she should be happy he didn't slug her. After all, he does slug people. I mean when he really flies off the handle, like when someone points out his age-- which he's apparently even more sensitive about than his baldness. But here, too, I'm not all that concerned. I mean... so he and Rick Renzi slapped each other a few times. So? Rick Renzi is a pompous dick and he certainly deserves to be beaten up. McCain should have punched him around every day.

In fact the only part of this story I don't understand, is why McCain and Renzi got so close. I mean as Renzi distinguished himself as one of the half dozen most corrupt members of Congress, McCain actually became closer and closer with him and eventually-- on the eve of his indictment-- made him co-chair of the McCain presidential campaign. What I know I can count on, however, is Cliff Schecter explaining the bizarre nature of the Republican candidate for president. He's been doing it online and now he's doing it in his hot new book, The Real McCain, which I just pre-ordered. After all, I want to understand a man who flies off the handle-- he said he had had a stressful day-- and calls his wife a "cunt" in front of a roomful (or busful) of people and expects to be elected president of the United States. As for having a punch-out with Congressman Renzi... well, that's easier to understand, even if it isn't the kind of behavior we expect from a U.S. Senator, let alone a president.

Can our side learn to do TV? If you know anybody at YK, make sure they know that Cliff Schecter's "Going On TV" panel tomorrow is at 9:15am

No, I'm not at the Yearly Kos "do," but this panel is something all progressives should care about. Amid all my inbox clutter regarding YK, one item that grabbed my attention was Brave New Films' announcement that among its people's YK activities is this Friday-morning panel, "Going On TV," led by BNF's blogmeister, our pal--a pal of all progressives--Cliff Schecter.

For years the right-wing noise machine has been pouring megabucks into grooming prospective media proteges to spread the RWNM gospel of ignorance, greed, and hate. Not only are our people at a hopeless disadvantage going up against the pampered right-wing media smoothies, they're hopelessly overmatched by the theoretically "neutral" referees of the mainstream media.

There's a desperate need to begin closing this media-preparedness gap, and I don't need to see a syllabus to guess that Cliff, who's gathered his share of right-wing scalps when the MSM have allowed him into TV combat, has some good ideas to get our team pointed in the right direction, no longer allowing the RWNM and its media allies to control the on-air agenda. One hopes that there will be BNF cameras on hand to record material for a first go at a "TV for Progressives" how-to video.

Meanwhile, alas, it appears that the main YK schedule has the time wrong. The word from Cliff is:

"The new fold-out schedule they are handing out has it right with the 9:15 time (room 10C)."

If you or anyone you know is at YK, please take note.