If that funny-talking Limey John Oliver thinks he can embarrass "Miss Mitch" McConnell, he's got another think coming

John Oliver tells us all about the "Thurmond Rule" -- and
shows us Miss Mitch calling it "this rule that doesn't exist"


"If the President has trouble doing nothing, we will be more than happy to show him how it is done."

-- Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell, as
quoted this morning by the Borowitz Report (see below)

by Ken

First, a confidential to whoever thought it was a good idea to have John Oliver's Last Week Tonight off HBO's airwaves for three months: WTF??? I assume there were Reasons. There are always Reasons, aren't there?) I just trust that somewhere among those Reasons there's some assurance that the LWT team will be on the job with only minimal interruptions between now and the election.

As probably everyone knows by now -- since by this morning I saw the lead item plastered all over the Internet (here, for example, is Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast) -- the LWT gang was back last night. And as John explains, that lead item hadn't been in preparation for three months. It was only precipitated by Saturday's of the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the subsequent declaration by Senate Majority Leader "Miss Mitch" McConnell that his cabal of crackpots and thugs will not consider any nomination for a new Supreme Court justice which comes from President Obama. And never mind that the Constitution clearly makes such a nomination not only the president's right but his responsibility.


TO CATCH YOU UP ON THE STORY --

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In a television appearance on Sunday, the leading Senate Republican warned President Obama “in no uncertain terms” against doing anything in his remaining three hundred and forty days in office.

“The President should be aware that, for all intents and purposes, his term in office is already over,” Mitch McConnell said on Fox News. “It’s not the time to start doing things when you have a mere eight thousand one hundred and sixty hours left.”

While acknowledging that the President has eleven months remaining in the White House, McConnell said that he and the President “have an honest disagreement about how long eleven months is.”

“The President believes it is almost one year,” he said. “I believe it is almost zero years. I’m not a mathematician, but I believe I am right.”

As for how Obama should spend his remaining time in office, McConnell said, “If the President has trouble doing nothing, we will be more than happy to show him how it is done.”

WELL, YOU KNOW THOSE RIGHT-WINGERS!

They don't answer to the law or the Constitution. They answer to a higher power: their megalomania and psychotic delusions.

Writing Saturday night, arguing that "we mustn't pretend that Justice Nino was anything but, you know, what he was," I may have surprised readers by being fairly accepting of Miss Mitch's declaration that his cabal will not allow consideration of an Obama Supreme Court nomination. But I was simply  accepting the reality --

that as our system has evolved, there isn't much chance of Senate consideration of a Supreme Court nomination that's made in the final year of a presidential term, even though the Constitution doesn't offer any such proscription. But it is the reality, isn't it?

I did, though, add a footnote noting that if we were to play the game I'm so fond of, If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot, we could expect Miss Mitch and his fellow cabalists to sing a wildly different tune. "Of course," I wrote,

if it was a Republican president faced with a Supreme Court vacancy in February of the fourth year of his/her term, any attempt by Democrats to interfere with his/her constitutional responsibility to name a replacement would be greeted with choruses of right-wing outrage and cries of "tyranny!"

Even as I wrote, I had a hunch that some version of this game had already been played for real. Now the Last Week Tonight team has given us the video.


DOES THE THURMOND RULE EVEN APPLY HERE?



I confess that when I wrote Saturday, I was fuzzy on the exact time frame specified in what John explains is known as the Republicans' Thurmond Rule. That's why I took pains to describe the situation of a president "faced with a Supreme Court vacancy in February of the fourth year of his/her term." The LWT segment clarifies that the actual terms of the Thurmond Rule would disallow a presidential nomination for a lifetime judgeship in the last six months of his term. (Note: I don't think we have to say "of his/her term" where Strom Thurmond is concerned. For old Strom, the idea of a "her" president was probably as inconceivable as, say, the idea of a "colored" president.)

As John Oliver points out in the segment, the last six months of the Obama administration begin on July 20. Meaning that even under the Thurmond Rule-that-isn't-a-rule, we're nowhere near the Point of No Lifetime Judicial Nominations.


SO WHAT? DOES IT MATTER AT ALL TO MISS MITCH?

Is there any reason to think that Miss Mitch cares any more about the terms of the wholly extra-constitutional Thurmond Rule than he cares about American law or the Constitution itself? He answers to no authority but the "Fuck America!" ethos of the 21st-century American Far Right, whose overriding goal is to turn the country into the toxic cesspool that is their minds.

Because, after all, Miss Mitch has done a lousy job of keeping it secret that throughout the Obama presidency his entire objective has been to obstruct and destroy. Fuck America! If he can't have his diseased vision of a fascist autocracy, then just fuck it, and Fuck All the Americans Who Don't Matter, because that's what right-wingers want to do: Fuck All the Americans Who Don't Matter. Of course for our One-Percenters, which is to say the most important group of Americans Who Matter, there's money to be made off the misery of the Americans Who Don't Matter. And for those who sense -- some rightly, some wrongly -- that they're being screwed but nevertheless embrace right-wing ideology, there's some kind of primitive satisfaction to be had in seeing those other poor souls screwed.

Otherwise, how to explain the existence, let alone the actual popular followings, of life forms like The Donald, Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz, and the world's most immoderate "moderate," Marco Rubio? What has appalled me most about the creatures who have made up the Republican presidential "fields" in this and the last couple of presidential election cycles isn't that their politics is so reactionary and stupid but that they are all such screamingly horrible, inexcusable people.

And in their various ways they have all cynically embraced, even encouraged, modern-day America's Flight from Reality, something I've been squawking about for years now. It's the triumph of reality-substitute over reality -- of, as Stephen Colbert framed it, "truthiness" over truth.


WE CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH

In that Saturday footnote in which I speculated about the application of the If the Shoe Were on the Other Foot game to Miss Mitch's declaration of policy-by-hissy-fit. So what if it were to turn out that Miss Mitch was being hypocritical?

For right-wingers nowadays, hypocrisy is considered not just "no foul" but a virtual obligation. If you aren't being hypocritical, it's assumed you aren't really trying.

After all, hypocrisy is the least of it. Reality and truth have been prime casualties of the rise of the modern Far Right. Somewhere in the formative years of the new century, under the influence of propagandists like Karl Rove and Roger Ailes, and under the unwatchful eye and imbecile grin of George W. "Chimpy the Prez" Bush, the Right formally went off the truth standard, disclaiming any obligation at all to reality or truth.

Where Chimpy's own presidency faltered, it wasn't for lack of truthfulness, after all. He was never held to account for any of the lies with which his administration's policies had been sold. But well before he left the White House, Chimpy had begun to disappear before our very eyes, and it seemed clear to me that the public wasn't looking to him for truth -- about the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan policies, for example -- but instead was insisting on its right to newer and better lies.

Instead the people got the Great Financial Meltdown of 2008. And even then they didn't connect the dots: that there's a price to be paid for government by the One Percent for the One Percent. Similarly, if there's any price to be paid for Government by Lies, the bill comes due far, far down the line, and can usually be fobbed off on some poor, unsuspecting souls.

The Right's Grand Disconnect from Reality hit home for me in the 2008 presidential campaign of Young Johnny McCranky, in which the candidate managed not just to avoid ever speaking the truth about anything but on most issues to offer a minimum of two, and usually more, mutually contradictory lies. After the election, I looked at the number of votes McCranky had nevertheless scored, and couldn't help but think there was going to be a price to pay for the GOP's official Disconnect from Reality. Even so, I couldn't have imagined the 2012 and 2016 GOP presidential "fields."

And the hard core of Democratic officialdom managed to remain only a few steps behind, making it official party philosophy that the very most that Dems had to do was be just the merest hair's breadth better than the R's.


Ain't this a kick in the pants? Compared with the nutso ravings of Miss Mitch and The Donald and Ted from Alberta and the rest, Colonel Jessup's argument sounds reasonable.


BONUS: A SCENE FROM THE FLIGHT FROM REALITY

The great David Sipress is currently on "Daily Cartoon" duty at The New Yorker, and today's offering seems very much appropriate to the theme of "Reality as Perceived (and Promulgated) by the Modern-Day Right."

“I had a dream last night that Planned Parenthood
did something new and horrible to a fetus! We need
to launch an immediate congressional investigation.”

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The Far Right Is Rising Again-- In The U.K.

Before Sir Oswald Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932, he had already served in Parliament between 1918 and 1931 first as a member of the Conservative Party, then as an independent and later as a member of Labour. Mosley’s fascist party, which was also blatantly anti-Semitic, had the support of the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror . Mosely was eventually rounded up and thrown in prison and his party abolished but after the war, fascist parties started up in Britain again, primarily organized around racism and anti-immigrant extremism. The National Front and the British National Party (BNP) were the two biggies until the more recent rise of UKIP. The National Front wants to deport all foreigners but the BNP where Mitt Romney and other racist Republicans picked up their “self-deportation” ideas. Neither the National Front nor the BNP ever managed to elect any of their crazy right-wing members to Parliament. Last week, though, UKIP did.

The earlier fascist parties all drew members from the far right of the Conservative Party, just as the English Defense League and UKIP have. The BNP made common cause with extremists inside the Conservative Party, clowns who called themselves the Conservative Monday Club. They all love titillating themselves by talking about their admiration for Hitler.

UKIP prefers to describe itself as “libertarian” instead of fascist and have lately made a play for a more respectable place within Britain’s right-wing. As we mentioned last month, the Conservative Party recently lost 2 right-wing nut jobs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless. Both resigned from Parliament, triggering by-elections in which each decided to run as the UKIP candidate. Carswell’s election was last week and he crushed his Conservative opponent, the first outright fascist elected to Parliament in our lifetimes. Cameron warned wayward Conservatives that “What last night demonstrates is that if you see a big Ukip vote, you will end up with Ed Miliband as Prime Minister, Ed Balls as Chancellor and Labour in power.” Miliband didn’t disagree: “The Tories,” he said, are a “party losing in their own backyard and retreating from what they used to call their own frontline. The Tories are a party that cannot win a majority at the next general election.”

Ukip's next target is Rochester and Strood, where Mr Carswell's fellow defector Mark Reckless is hoping to return to Parliament.

Mr Carswell said: 'In Rochester, as in Clacton, I believe voters will reject negative campaigns by old party machines.'

This morning Mr Farage claimed more MPs were likely to defect to Ukip within the next few months-- including Labour backbenchers.’

Former Tory chairman Lord Ashcroft tweeted that the Conservative party leadership 'must take a large part of the credit for the rise of Ukip.’

UKIP secured 60 per cent of the vote to just 25 per cent for the Conservatives-- the Tories worst drop in support in a by-election for 20 years.

‎Mr Carswell was the overwhelming favourite to retain his seat of Clacton, Essex, after triggering a by-election when he switched parties.

Turnout was 51.2 per cent with 35,386 ballot papers counted, a decrease from the 64.2 per cent turnout out at the 2010 general election.

Tory Mr Watling received 8,709 votes to finish second while Labour's Tim Young finished third with 3,957 votes.

Ukip defector Mark Reckless, who also triggered the by-election in Rochester and Strood, attended the count in Clacton's Princes Theatre.

Former Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik also made an appearance in support of independent candidate Charlotte Rose, who was campaigning for sexual freedom and finished in last place with 56 votes.

Mr Carswell previously secured the Clacton seat in 2010 with a majority of 12,068 votes over Labour's Ivan Henderson, having first being elected to Parliament in 2005 in the Harwich seat.

His victory for Ukip means that 12 political parties will be represented in the House of Commons, thought to be the biggest number since 1945 and an indication that Britain's traditional two-party system is fragmenting.

It is the first time an MP who has defected and stood under a different banner in a by-election has won since 1973, when Labour MP Dick Taverne resigned his seat and stood for 'Democratic Labour.'

The victory has piled more pressure on the Conservatives to retain the seat of Rochester and Strood, where the second defector to Mr Farage's party, Mark Reckless, will stand next month.

In an interview with the magazine Newsweek Europe, to be published today, Mr Farage makes the audacious suggestion that he is aiming for a ministerial job if Ukip wins a number of MPs in next year's election and is invited to join a coalition.

Mr Farage said: 'What I will say is this: if things go well next spring, I would like to be minister for Europe,' he said. 'I mean that quite seriously.'

'I would like to be the person who goes to Brussels and says, "We want to trade with you. We want reciprocal relationships. But this European Treaty doesn't work for us, and so we are breaking it".'

Mr Carswell said Ukip's rise was 'a profound change in British politics.'

He said the strong showing in Heywood and Middleton, a 'rock-solid Labour seat' meant 'we can take votes from the centre-left as well as from the centre-right.’

He told Sky News: 'The idea that we are somehow the Tory party in exile, that myth died this evening.

'We are a different party that stands for all Britain and all Britons, from disillusioned former Labour voters to people who have given up on politics altogether, every bit as much as for traditional Conservative voters.

'This is something new, this is something different. The real significance is that result in the north of England. We are part of something that is profoundly different in British politics.'

He said his data showed that '45 per cent of people who voted Labour in 2010 voted for me.'

Dismissing the Tory attack that a vote for Ukip helps Mr Miliband reach No 10, he said that in Heywood and Middleton 'it was the Conservative vote that kept Ed Miliband's candidate in.'

Mr Carswell, who said he still had many friends in the Tory ranks despite his defection, said: 'I've even had some nice friendly texts from people in the Cabinet-- they are friends and they are going to stay my friends.’

John Cassidy, writing for this week’s New Yorker asserts that the rise of right-wing extremism in the U.K. is part of a worldwide movement that includes the radicalization of the GOP here in the U.S. The centrist government in the U.S. is at least not rushing headlong towards the right-- wait tip Hillary is president-- but in the U.K. is has.

Wrapping themselves in the flag and excoriating what they view as a corrupt élite, these protest parties attract the support of alienated voters from across the political spectrum. By channelling economic distress and cultural alienation into resentment of foreigners, welfare beneficiaries, and government officials, they come to drive the political agenda. Meanwhile, avowedly left-wing parties, where they still exist, hardly get a look-in. And moderate progressive parties, far from being presented with an opportunity to enact an egalitarian agenda, are forced to back up and defend basic institutions of social democracy, such as progressive taxation and a universal social-safety net.

In the United States, the Obama Administration, to its credit, has offered this defense. By getting the Affordable Care Act enacted, it even managed to fill a big gap in the safety net. In Britain, by contrast, the Conservative–Liberal coalition, working under the banner of austerity, is steadily chipping away at the welfare state, cutting the level of benefits, tightening qualification requirements, and forcing students to pay more. But even that agenda isn’t tough enough for UKIP, which, in addition to bashing immigrants and Eurocrats, makes a fetish of targeting “scroungers” who subsist at the taxpayers’ expense.

…To be sure, we’re just talking about two by-elections. Come the general election, protest parties tend to fall back—UKIP may conform to that pattern. For now, though, Farage is setting the political agenda, and some of the other parties, particularly the Conservatives, are pandering to him. Cameron has already promised a referendum on Britain’s continued membership in the E.U. Last week, at the annual Conservative-party conference, he announced that, even before the referendum takes place, his government will scrap the Human Rights Act of 1998, which enshrined the principles of the European Court of Human Rights into British law. But that announcement wasn’t enough to check the progress of UKIP.

And where is the equivalent of Farage on the left? Nowhere to be found.

"If the nation is lucky, this October will mark the beginning of the end of the tea party" (E. J. Dionne Jr.)

by Ken

I make no secret of the fact that I love Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr., not least for his seemingly unshakable decency. Even the bad people he finds it necessary to dress down come out sounding less, well, indecent in his retelling. What I sometimes worry about, though, is whether his decency may not sometimes lead him to underestimate the indecency of generally indecent people.

Which is a prelude to saying that I hope he's right in suggesting in his column today, "Shutdown: The tea party's last stand," that the Teabaggers have really outbagged themselves this time, "suffering from extreme miscalculation and a foolish misreading of its opponents' intentions," which has in turn "created a moment of enlightenment, an opening to see things that were once missed."

Oh, E.J. gets that "many Republicans saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown." And yet so afraid of the Teabaggers were they that "people who knew better followed Sen. Ted Cruz down a path of confrontation over Obamacare," a path that may have led them to disaster.

E.J. pays particular attention to "the hot-microphone incident last week when Sen. Rand Paul was caught plotting strategy with Sen. Mitch McConnell, and "Paul's words, spoken after he had finished a television interview, said more than he realized."

Young Rand told Miss M that he'd just made a big point on CNN of how "we're willing to compromise, we're willing to negotiate" -- a lie, of course, but one that the Republican polls have discovered plays well in the heartland. Pretending to be willing to compromise, it seems, gets you points for moderation among a fed-up-with-all-pols public without incurring the inconvenience of actually, you know, trying to compromise. And Young Rand drove the point home by ridiculing Democrats for not having poll-tested the "We won't negotiate" position.

"It's revealing," says E.J., "to hear a politician who is supposed to be all about principle mocking Democrats for failing to do enough poll-testing." But there is, he says, a larger and more important lesson here.

In Young Rand's telling, the new Republican line is: ""We wanted to defund it, we fought for that, but now we're willing to compromise on this." Which makes E.J. wonder, "If just days after it began, a shutdown that was about repealing Obamacare is not about repealing Obamacare, then what is it about?" And he points out that even conservatives are calling this "the Seinfeld Shutdown": "It's about absolutely nothing, at least where substance is concerned."

But to the right-wing nutjobs' surprise, the president chose to fight back -- a fight that he must win, E.J. says, "because victory is essential to re-establishing constitutional governance, a phrase that the tea party ought to understand." (Small question: What makes E.J. think the Teabaggers have any understanding of "constitutional governance"?)

Obama didn't need to "poll-test" his position because the poll that matters, the 2012 election, showed that the tea party hit its peak long ago, in the summer of 2011, when it seemed to have the president on the defensive.

The slowly building revolt among Republicans against the tea party shutdown is one sign of how quickly the hard-right's influence is fading. So is the very language they are being required to speak. Having talked incessantly about how useless and destructive government can be, House Republicans are now testifying to their reverence for what government does for veterans, health research, sick children and lovers of national parks, especially war memorials.

Appreciation for government rises when it's no longer there. By pushing their ideology to its obvious conclusion, members of the Cruz-Paul right forced everyone else to race the other way.

"Yes," E.J. acknowledges, "the tea party will still have its Washington-based groups that raise money by bashing Washington, ginning up the faithful and threatening the less ideologically pure with primary challenges."

But no Republican and no attentive citizen of any stripe will forget the mess these right-wing geniuses have left in their wake.

We now know that the tea party is primarily about postures aimed at undercutting sensible governance and premised on the delusion that Obama's election victories were meaningless. Its leaders abandon these postures as soon as their adversaries stand strong and the poll-testers report their approach is failing. This will give pause to anyone ever again tempted to follow them into a cul-de-sac.

One can surely hope.

But here's where I worry about E.J.'s fundamental decency kicking in. When he talks about "no Republican and no attentive citizen of any stripe [forgetting] the mess these right-wing geniuses have left in their wake," is he not perhaps giving them too much credit? These are people who have been trained for decades to have minimal awareness of reality and hardly any constructive memory (by which I mean memory of reality, not to be confused with the lies and delusions fed them by far-right-wing manipulators), and I continue to wonder whether any sizable number of them have even yet understood what the Teabaggers have done to them.

I'm inclined to think, rather, that when the unspeakably vile Sean Hannity and the unspeakiably vile Sen. Ted Cruz -- talk about two people who were meant for each other! -- put their empty heads together to assail President Obama for cruelty to sick children," their viewers will take it at face value, completely misunderstanding who did what. As E.J. notes, even the goony right-wingers have been forced to pay lip service to functions of government that they esteem, but it was precisely, exactly, and unmitigatedly Senator Ted's plan and mission to shut the whole damned thing down, just as his side succeeded in doing.

It's important not to forget how hard the Right has worked to demonize government, and how much it has profited from its success at doing so. Naturally, there are lots of things our government does that are worthy of ridicule and worse (hey, it's a major part of what we do here at DWT), but to pretend that this is the sum total of what government does is a perversion of reality of monumental proportions.

And if you want proof of how deeply that perversion has been buried in the American psyche, tune in most any night to Jay Leno's monologue. An utterly typical example:

It is day three of the government shutdown. Right now 33 percent of the government is doing absolutely nothing, which is not bad considering that before the shutdown 80 percent wasn't doing anything.

This isn't just a dreadful joke, it's a joke built on an explosively dangerous lie. And it's not gentle joshing, it's far-right propaganda passed off baldly as truth.

So maybe the lies and delusions and substantive emptiness of the Teabaggers have been exposed fatally. I'm just not so sure.

Meanwhile, do yourself a favor and rather than settling for my potted version, read E.J.'s column in its entirety. My original thought was just to introduce it and then run the whole thing. Then I thought I would make a few comments and run the whole thing. If you've read this far, I guess it's too late to suggest that you skip it and just read E.J.'s whole thing.


"Many Republicans," says E. J., "saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown. But they were terrified to take on a movement that is fortified by money, energy and the backing of a bloviating brigade of talk-show hosts."

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."

Whether in Israel or America, is it time to fight the Far Right's "smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements"?

Israeli "patriot" Steven Plaut had "a suggestion" for Stephen Hawking, following the great physicist's announcement that he is boycotting the upcoming Presidential Conference in Jerusalem because of Israel's treatment of the Palestinians. "I suggest," Plaut wrote, "that the people of Israel send Hawking for a free trip on the Achille Lauro!!"


"The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, 'My country, right or wrong.' In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

-- Missouri Sen. Carl Schurz, on the Senate floor, Feb. 29, 1872
(cited in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, 1989)

"It has to stop. It has to stop here and now. When self-styled pro-Israel advocates on the far-right practice incitement and repulsive bullying to further their cause, when hate speech becomes the go-to tool in their belt, it is time for people who care about Israel's future to take a stand, call them out, shut them down, fight their smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements."

-- Bradley Burston, in a Haaretz.com blogpost, "Targeting Stephen Hawking and Dustin Hoffman: Right-wing 'pro-Israel' advocacy as hate speech"

by Ken

With regard to the famous Carl Schurz "My country, right or wrong" quote, according to Respectfully Quoted "Schurz expanded on this theme in a speech delivered at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Chicago, Illinois, October 17, 1899":

I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves . . . too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."

(Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,” Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20)

"The deceptive cry of mock patriotism." You couldn't put it much better than that, especially as contrasted with "the watchword of true patriotism." And underlying that "mock patriotism" we have "false pride," "dangerous ambitions," and "selfish schemes." Already in 1899 Schurz saw the "modern" American Right full-blown, not to mention its media sponsor and overlord, Fox Noise.

"Our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: 'Our country -- when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.' "

It's a shame that we have to keep coming back to the truth and true significance of Schurz's "deceptive cry of mock patriotism." But it's essential that we continue doing so, because it appears that there will always be dishonest, dangerously ambitious, and selfishly scheming people using this mock-patriotic rhetoric to hornswoggle people they consider too stupid to know better.

My friend Leo passed on a timely blogpost on the perversions of the Israeli counterparts of our own right-wing liars and sociopaths by Haaretz's Bradley Burston. I want to pass Burston's piece on in its entirely, and because it's important to know who we're hearing from, here's his online bio:

Bradley Burston is a Haaretz columnist and Senior Editor of Haaretz.com which publishes his blog, "A Special Place in Hell."

During the first Palestinian uprising, Burston served as Gaza correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, and was the paper's military correspondent in the 1991 Gulf War.

In the mid-1990s he covered Israeli-Arab peace talks for Reuters. In 2006, he received the Eliav-Sartawi Award for Mideast Journalism, presented at the United Nations.

A native of Los Angeles, Burston moved to Israel after graduation from Berkeley. He was part of a group which established Kibbutz Gezer, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

Burston served in the IDF as a combat medic, later studying medicine in Be'er Sheva for two years before turning to journalism. He is married and has two daughters.

Now here's the post from Buston's "A Special Place in Hell" blog. (In the original you'll find abundant links, including citations for virtually everything factual.)

Targeting Stephen Hawking and Dustin Hoffman: Right-wing 'pro-Israel' advocacy as hate speech

Increasingly, the rabid far-right 'pro-Israel' camp is carrying out repulsive, hate-filled attacks on Jews whose most cherished wish is to see a stronger, more democratic Israel. It is time to take a stand.

By Bradley Burston | May 09, 2013 | 6:21 PM

Professor Steven Plaut teaches business finance and economics at the University of Haifa. He also writes articles, pamphlets and blog posts intended to defend Israel.

This is what he offered in defense of Israel this week, in response to physicist Stephen Hawking's decision to boycott next month's Presidential Conference in Jerusalem, over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians.

"I have a suggestion," Plaut wrote on Wednesday, in a reference to the wheelchair-bound noted scientist, and to a 1985 incident in which Palestinian gunmen commandeered an Italian cruise ship, murdering a disabled American Jewish passenger and throwing his body overboard:

"I suggest that the people of Israel send Hawking for a free trip on the Achille Lauro!!"

Plaut's argument, that the proper punishment for boycotting Israel should be execution, was only slightly more obscene than that of attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner of the Shurat Hadin-Israel Law Center Organization, a right-wing pro-Israel not-for-profit whose stated primary goals include "defending human rights" and conducting a "civil war" in court against global terror.

In a statement, Darshan-Leitner alluded to the fact that Hawking is almost entirely paralyzed and communicates through a speech generating device:

"His whole computer-based communication system runs on a chip designed by Israel’s Intel team. I suggest that if he truly wants to pull out of Israel he should also pull out his Intel Core i7 from his tablet.”

For years, prominent voices on the ostensibly pro-Israel far-right have been competing to see who can be the most outrageous in cruelty, the most childish in bullying, while pursuing a career in what they call Israel advocacy.

Just last week, the New York-based Jewish Press, which describes itself as "the largest independent weekly Jewish newspaper in the United States" and "a tireless advocate for the state of Israel," published a news article that used classic anti-Semitic imagery in the service of a right-wing polemic on Israel.

Taking actor Dustin Hoffman to task for accepting the Muslim Public Affairs Council's invitation to present an award to the Academy Award-nominated film "Five Broken Cameras," Jewish Press correspondent Lori Lowenthal Marcus wrote:

"Hoffman is someone whose Jewishness seems to have played very little role in his life other than as a trigger to anti-Semitic bullies, and the fact that his height, his nose, his nasal voice and his plucky, outsider roles are all stereotypically Jewish."

Later, Marcus, who also serves as president of the far-right Z Street Israel advocacy organization, concludes:

"So, in the end, Dustin Hoffman with his honking nasal voice and Semitic nose may be emulating the pattern of the mindless good-looking movie stars against whom he rose as the iconic non-handsome, non-sexy male movie star of the counter-culture years."

Increasingly, the rabid "Pro-Israel" far-right has taken on as principal targets Jews whose most cherished wish is to see Israel become a stronger, more democratic, more livable society.

Commentator and media personality Pamela Geller, whose bread and butter "pro-Israel" tack is hatred of Muslims, has branched out to target writer and editor Peter Beinart as "vomit-inducing kapo."

Geller, at times borrowing her writing style from Stormfront, has also called the Daily Beast's Beinart "the pet Jew turncoat" of Newsweek/Daily Beast Editor-In-Chief Tina Brown.

Of columnist Jeffrey Goldberg, Geller writes: "Jihad Jeff Goldberg, from one Jew to another, go to hell. Cuz it's foe shizzle you are going to rot there."

It has to stop. It has to stop here and now. When self-styled pro-Israel advocates on the far-right practice incitement and repulsive bullying to further their cause, when hate speech becomes the go-to tool in their belt, it is time for people who care about Israel's future to take a stand, call them out, shut them down, fight their smirking, obscene, proudly bigoted pronouncements.

The "pro-Israel" far right takes full advantage of -- even while scorning -- its liberal opponents' beliefs in freedom of expression and tolerance for democracy's sake. Their vile views regularly grace newspaper columns and are granted platforms by synagogues and Jewish organizations.

And it's only getting worse. It may have been anger over the realization that most Western Jews disagree with them, it may have been input from the high-IQ snots of Im Tirtzu, it may have been the sense that their beloved settlers have won a final and permanent victory in Israel, but of late, something terrible and growing is infecting far-right "pro-Israel advocacy."

It has to stop. We have to stop meekly putting up with it. Otherwise, as we've seen a number of times recently, if smartly dressed thugs of the right can disrupt a serious debate on Israel's future by booing and delegitimizing a two-state solution as being anti-Israel, the way forward is clear.

If the bigots, the fanatics, the Apartheid apologists, the velveteen fascists of the pro-Israel far-right are freely granted platforms as respected "experts" on Israel, no one who hates Israel as bigoted, fanatic, Apartheid-ruled and fascistic -- no one who wants to see Israel ostracized to death -- will ever need to say another word.

The Plauts, the Gellers, and a host of others will have already done their work for them.

One of the little things I love in this post is Burston's insistence on putting "pro-Israel" in quotation marks as applied to the "velveteen fascists" of the Israeli Right. As he says of the "something terrible and growing" that of late "is infecting 'pro-Israel advocacy":

"It has to stop. We have to stop meekly putting up with it."

#

The American Prospect's Ringside Seat asks, "Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?" -- and two intrepid op-ed writers do

The bipartisanship scam: Would you buy a leaky, vermin-infested ship from self-proclaimed bipartisans like this?

"The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government."

-- in "Call Them Out," from The Americn Prospect's Ringside Seat

by Ken

Around these parts "bipartisanship" is a dirty word, regrettably but inevitably. Regrettably, because surely there ought to be a range of issues on which sincere, reasonable people of widely diverse philosophical bent can come together to forge compromises that benefit the general welfare. Inevitably, in the here and now that's mere theory, because of the absence of sincere, reasonable people at the right and center extremes of the political spectrum.

(And yes, I do mean to target the "center extreme," because what passes as "centrism" nowadays is usually a form of corporate dictatorship almost as extreme in its way as, and usually far more corrup than, the wackadoodle out-beyond-Pluto extremism of the latter-day Right.)

The American Prospect's Ringside Seat has done a swell takeoff from the much-talked-about WaPo op-ed, "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem," by a pair of actually credible nonopartisans, Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein. The Mann-Ornstein piece begins with a shrewd take on a nutty episode that Howie chronicled here:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

In their takeoff from the Mann-Ornstein op-ed, the TAP writers manage to hit two of my favorite subjects: (1) the infotainment noozemedia's deadly practice of "evenhandedness" between two sides where one is lost in space out on the far reaches of the galaxy, and (2) the implacable obstructionism of the Republicans -- carried, as a matter of daily practice, to the extreme of not only accepting but welcoming further devastation of an already beleaguered American people as long as it furthers the power play of the extremists.

Take it away, Ringside Seat!

CALL THEM OUT

The elder statesmen of nonpartisan political analysis, Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann, took to The Washington Post op-ed pages over the weekend to lay down a challenge for every political reporter: Quit this evenhandedness malarkey and start calling out Republicans as the extremists wrecking American government. It's a message that tickled our hearts at The Prospect; we've tried to hammer the point home over the past few years as the GOP becomes increasingly dominated by its loony fringe, a sect of anarchists dressed in politicians’ clothing who have no interest in serving as governing partners but would rather watch the whole institution (save the Pentagon) burn to the ground. But the mainstream media has hesitated to point out the unprecedented abuse of the filibuster, anonymous holds on appointments, and general hostage-taking in Congress that Ornstein and Mann highlight.

Unfortunately, their message didn't inspire journalists to recalibrate their framing overnight. Today Roll Call published a piece trumpeting a revival of bipartisan lawmaking in the Senate. "Don’t call it a comeback, or even a detente, but a strange thing is happening in the Senate: Democrats and Republicans are working together to pass legislation," the article opened. The evidence? A transportation bill, the Violence Against Women Act, and postal reform. Left unsaid is why Senate Republicans have the freedom to occasionally cooperate with their Democratic colleagues. They no longer need to oppose every single initiative favored by the president; they can shift that responsibility to the reliably intransigent Republican House majority.

If Senate Republicans had any true interest in crossing the aisles, they would have cooperated during the first two years of President Obama's administration, when they didn't have the safety net of a House populated by rightwing ideologues. Instead, just three voted for the stimulus, another three for financial reform, and not one for health care reform. Even during this current burst of newfound friendship, the Senate GOPers are as resistant as ever when it comes to the confirming Obama's appointees, the one area where they can't fall back on the obstructionist House. The truth is, Republicans on both sides of Congress are still operating from their plan from day one, as articulated by Representative Kevin McCarthy: "We've gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign." Let's hope a few reporters will listen to Ornstein and Mann and begin to take note.

I should perhaps add that "the Republicans" aren't "the problem" in the sense that they're the only problem. We can all cite voluminous chapter and verse of issues and initiatives where gutless and/or corrupt Dems have happily provided the margin of disaster. It seems to me, nevertheless, that Ringside Seat's banner question remains absolutely fair:

"Will the MSM ever call Republicans out on their extremism?"

#

Congress not working? "Centrist" former VA Rep. Tom Davis has the "solution"

"Centrists," you see, aren't necessarily "moderates" -- ah!

by Ken

I wish I could be more rational about this astonishingly stupid op-ed served up in the Washington Post by former VA Rep. Tom Davis, "Voters can help cure poisonous partisanship." But the closer I looked, the more apoplectic it made me.

As a congressman from northern Virginia, Davis was by reputation a "centrist," and he clings to the label -- but explains that the "centrist" label has nothing to do with ideology.

By "centrists," I do not necessarily mean "moderates" but refer instead to members who are willing to work across the aisle to find common ground with partisan opponents to achieve tangible results. There are indeed still members of Congress who recognize that the perfect should not be the enemy of the good and that some incremental change can be preferable to no change.

And so, while he acknowledges that "the Republican Party has certainly become more conservative," this turns out to be of no consequence. First, you see because it's offset by the liberalization of the Democratic Party, which exists nowhere except in the itty-bitty brain of Tom D. How is it that the Democratic Party has become "more liberal" at the very time that its officeholding ranks have been reduced to a handful of actual liberals? And then, nothing seems to be the fault of conservatives, except in a plague-on-both-your-houses way, while these imaginary hordes of liberals seem to be screwing up everything.

Now if you wanted to say that the mainstreram of the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that conservative Democrats appear, relatively speaking, somewhat liberal, that's at least a defensible position. I would still argue it, but even if we accepted it, it makes nonsense of Tom D's basic argument.

He even anticipates the argument that no compromise is possible withi people whose brains are too defective to admit of any possibility of compromise, by telling us that in the good old days you didn't have to have compromise! --

because there were Republicans who held views to the left of some Democrats, and vice versa. Compromise wasn’t always needed because it’s not compromise if the position is already something you support. In today’s political environment, however, compromise is a prerequisite to accomplishing anything -- one need look no further than the votes to avoid the U.S. credit default last summer, to avoid a government shutdown or to prevent taxes from being raised on working families.

Man, does this guy even listen to what's coming out of his piehole?

Tom D can prove that the problem isn't the radicalization of the Republican Party. How? Well, you see, when Arlen Specter switched parties,

[his] decision was as much about political survival as about his beliefs. In his announcement, Specter conceded that he was unlikely to win a Republican primary and said that he was “unwilling” to have his “29-year record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate.”

Yet more mainstream media reports focused on what Specter’s exit supposedly said about the GOP than on his electoral calculation. Journalists ate up Specter’s argument and likened centrist Republicans to dinosaurs -- politically extinct relics.

Nobody's going to catch me sticking up for the likes of Arlen Specter, but does Tommy D know anything, and I mean anything at all, about Arlen's reelection battle? How is it humanly possible for even the slimiest, stupidest, most dishonest bilge-dispenser to skip over what made it unlikely that he could win the Republican nomination for reelection? Do you have any inkling about that, Tommy Buttwipe? Don't you think that matters even a little? Does the name Pat Toomey (now Sen. Pat Toomey) mean any7thing to you? And which mainstream media didn't report this? Is our Tommy locked up in a basement somewhere with no access to actual information?

But you see, just as Arlen Specter's defection proves that there's nothing wrong with the Republican, so does Olympia Snowe's retirement -- because, you see, she didn't leave the party!

Note that Snowe did not say she was leaving the Republican Party because it has become too extreme. Nor did she say she was being forced out. She is not leaving the GOP; she’s leaving the Senate. And poisonous partisanship is a bipartisan problem.

"Gone are the days of conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans," we're told. "Now the most liberal Republican in the Senate is more conservative than the most conservative Democrat." Sorry, Tommy, there are plenty of conservative Dems in the Senate -- just not if your standard of measurement for conservatism is, say, Saxby Chambliss or Jim Inhofe -- or Pat Toomey.

So the Democrats, those flaming extremist liberals, are pretty much useless. However, there is still, Tommy D is here to tell us, "a critical voting block" of "centrist Republicans" in the House. They just, um, don't ever vote "centrist." Hmm.

Well, Tommy D can explain that too. "The pressures faced by centrists in both parties are the result of several macro factors: campaign finance laws, balkanized media, and "the ideological sorting of the parties." There are actually some moderately interesting points made here, concerning pressures felt by GOP congressmen who may not be absolutely as extreme as their party's currently regnant most extreme elements (of which there's nary a mention).

This also explains, by the way, how it's become so difficult to do business in Congress. Okay. "The solution," says our Tom, "begins with voters sending to Washington more pragmatic, results-oriented members who are willing to compromise to get things done."

No, I think the solution, if there is one, has to start with understanding the problem.


ON A LIGHTER AND NOT ENTIRELY UNRELATED NOTE,
AL KAMEN TELLS OF TWO TRAVELING CONGRESSMEN

From his "In the Loop" in the Washington Post:

Legroom for Cantor

Speaking of airplanes, two easily recognizable House members found themselves on a Delta flight Monday from Atlanta to Washington: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and civil rights icon John Lewis (D-Ga.).

Lewis, as he most always does, settled into a seat in coach class for the relatively short flight — an hour and 45 minutes — up from his district to Washington. Cantor, however, was sitting up front in business class.

We wondered about the trip and that minor indulgence and e-mailed Cantor’s office Wednesday afternoon but got no reply. They’ve been a tad busy these days with his small-business tax cut bill working its way to passage on the House floor.

We’ll let you know soon as we find out.

What, Al? You really expect Eric Cantor to fly coach? It is to laugh.

#

"Republicans are not anti-science entirely," says Tina Dupuy, "they're anti . . . sometimes"

In this cartoon by Brian Farrington, which accompanies Tina Dupuy's column on cagle.com, I especially admire the speaker, who could be the poster boy for modern-day American Crap Christianity.

"Republican politicians embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to how we all got here. But their reading gets suddenly metaphorical when it comes to the parts in the Bible about helping the poor."

-- Tina Dupuy, in the column "Republicans Are Not
Anti-Science – They’re Just Pro-Politics"

by Ken

I think of Daryl Cagle's cagle.com as in invaluable political-cartoon repository, but The Cagle Post indeed proclaims its mission as "Cartoons & Commentary," and I was charmed to encounter there a neat column by Crooks & Liars managing editor Tina Dupuy, "Republicans Are Not Anti-Science – They’re Just Pro-Politics."

Despite a global scientific consensus on evolution, Republican politicians embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible when it comes to how we all got here. But their reading gets suddenly metaphorical when it comes to the parts in the Bible about helping the poor.

Citing the Bible as an authority, the current incarnation of Grand Old Partiers tell Americans modern science doesn’t have enough evidence to prove things like evolution or global warming. But further tax cuts for the super rich? Bible is pretty clear about it being easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven. And the Republicans are pretty clear on ignoring that part.

"Republicans are not anti-science entirely," Tina ventures, "they’re anti . . . sometimes."

How anti-science can you be with an iPhone in your pocket? It does take some specialization. A bit of partisan specialization. Like having seven out of eight GOP candidates proudly deny evolution as just a theory while debating in the hanger of Reagan’s Air Force One; never questioning aerodynamics or gravity -- which are also, technically, just theories. Texas Governor Rick Perry proudly proclaims his belief in vaccinations to thwart cervical cancer -- a very science-y stance [Or then again . . . ; don't disregard all that Big Pharma cash Governor Rick cultivates -- Ed.] -- but not in laws to thwart climate change. . . .

Republicans are for technology. They don’t want to actually live in the 18th century; they just want to idealize it. Those tri-corner hats were bought on the Internet. They boast proudly of having a bigger/better presence on Twitter and Facebook than Democrats. This is the party that sees endless uses for Predator drones and embraces all innovations with military applications. How exactly do you drug test welfare recipients without science? You don’t! How does one “drill, baby, drill,” frack or remove the tops of mountains without employing someone who knows their way around the periodic table? You don’t.

Actually, there's an often-observed distinction: that right-wingers hate science but love engineering, which is essentially the scientific work product once the scientists have finished with it, so that the knowledge appears to have come straight from God. Dare we call it "post-science"? (Please, I don't mean to disparage engineers, since the good ones do honor to their calling and are essential to our society. But engineering and engineers can alarmingly easily be misused.)

Tina suggests that the very competition-based "free market" that right-wingers worship operates according to the very principle of natural selection that their archvillain Charles Darwin proposed underlies evolution. I'm not so sure this is a direct contradiction, since Darwin after all didn't invent the idea of competition, but in any case if she thinks she can deflate right-wing blowhards with charges of hypocrisy, well, it's been tried. Right-wingers seem really not to care.

Oh, poor Rick Perry took flak for his drug-money-induced championing of forced vaccination of adolescent girls, just as he did for suggesting that the children of undocumented immigrants might safely be allowed some citizenly privileges, but that's not because he was being hypocritical, it's because he was, well, blaspheming. Doesn't the Bible say that all immigrants should be stoned to death, or at least sent back where they came from? (And we'll go out in the fields and our own produce, and we'll clean our own toilets, and perform our own hand labor for degradingly sub-market prices, etc. etc., thank you very much. Yeah, right!) It figures that Governor Perry, who you figure is as ignorant, dishonest, and plumb crazy as anybody in American politics, would find his standing threatened for not being ignorant, dishonest, and plumb crazy enough. Welcome to the 21st-century American political scape.

I don't want to quibble too much, though. The basic point about the two-facedness of American right-wing Christians is on the money.

As much as the GOP has a reputation for pandering to churchgoers, their platform contradicts biblical teachings. Jesus was not a banker or a CEO. He was labor. He was skilled labor at that (think AFL-CIO). But Republicans claim a monopoly on Christianity and use it (as we saw with Perry’s Texas prayer rally) as a prop. It’s part of the stagecraft for their political image. But just like science, when the Bible has something in it they don’t like, they just deny it and move on.

And ay number of people who've actually read the Bible have compiled lists of biblical requirements and prohibitions the Crap Christians "just deny and move on," but nobody's done it better than President Josiah Bartlett (Martin Sheen) and the West Wing writers in this gorgeous scene to which a reader happily recalled my attention awhile back.



Especially I don't want to quibble with Tina because she's nailed the Crap Christians on the central point: their disregard -- I would say contempt, or even outright hatred -- for everything Jesus stood for. The loathing of right-wing American Christians for the teachings of Jesus is so extreme and intense (they detest the guy with every fiber of their beings) as to qualify as pathological, even as they invoke his name at every turn and, as Tina points out, gleefully wave those Bibles they don't bother to read except via the Bible for Crackpots-type glosses.

My question for the Crap Christians -- going beyond the obvious "Why do you hate Jesus so?" (it is obvious, isn't it?) -- would be why they don't instead choose a teacher-role model-figurehead more in keeping with their actual views, which are so at odds with Jesus's. Darth Vader, maybe?


FURTHER THOUGHT: MAKING JESUS ACCEPTABLE
FOR THE RIGHT-WING CHRISTIAN "MIND"

I suppose if right-wingers really don't want to adopt a more suitable mascot for their beliefs, the next-best solution is to transform Jesus into, well, a bit more their kinda guy. I think it was in last year's 12 Days of Christmas Scorn (one of these days I'll dig out the precise link) that Noah reported on the effort now under way to "retranslate" the Bible to turn Jesus into a more macho kind of guy, someone who didn't turn no sissy cheek but instead really knew how to do unto others. It's sort of like having the mountain come to Mohammed -- oops, sorry!

#

Can we break the Right's chokehold on the targets of teabaggery?

by Ken

An issue that comes up regularly in the Culture Wars, and therefore is once again being heard in the era of the Teabag Resurgence, is the agonized resentment of honest working folk against "liberal elites." Inescapably we are told that when we describe as "stupid" the dumber-than-cretinous imbecilities these gullible souls swallow from their propaganda overlords and regurgitate, we simply reinforce their image of us as "liberal elitists," and therefore it's no wonder that these sainted folk have become politically beyond our reach.

I don't deny at all that there is an enormous problem here, that these people indeed regard us as liberal elites. (It's no help that "Ivy League" often gets tossed into the conversational garbage dump.) But I get kind of, um, twisted with rage that it's all our fault, that we who've been attempting to salvage some shards of truth amidst the socioeconomic wreckage are the villains of this drama, while all those who are actively engaged in the enslavement of that segment of our population in ignorance, not to mention those who have embraced the lies and manipulations, are judged saintly innocents. (I also resent like heck the assumption that only these saintly "working" folk work for a living, that only they struggle to make ends meet. But that's a side issue.)

The result is that the right-wing demagogues who treat these sainted innocents with such vicious contempt, all in the interest of their own aggrandizement, and especially the real elites, the Big Money right-wingers who take such cruel advantage of people they regard as barely human -- including the real elites of the Ivy League -- get off scot-free.

And the problem of the unreachability of all those people who embrace being lied to and enslaved goes on. It's considered unseemly to point out that the people who talk most, and most sensibly, about their plight are the very "liberal elitists" who are the villains here, assumed by our apparent intellectual and ideological betters to be unaware that these folks have "legitimate grievances."

The arrogance of this seems to me rivaled only by its delusion, whether it comes from demagogues on the Right or our friends on the Left.

All of which is why I'm presenting at full length this Truthout piece by Mike Elk, which seems to me a more nuanced than usual version of this case, which might begin to make it possible for us to at least think together about this problem, which is looking to become a centrally unhelpful reality of the near-term political future, together.

This brief bio of the author appears on Truthout.com: "Mike Elk works for the Campaign for America's Future. Previously, he worked as a union organizer for the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, and as a staffer on the Obama-Biden campaign."

My Grandmother Takes a Stand for Gay Marriage in Church Despite Being a Glenn Beck Follower

Thursday 10 December 2009
by: Mike Elk, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

I was shocked when I heard that my conservative Grandma had stormed out of church after her pastor denounced "being gay as the worst sin." My 81-year-old grandmother, who has two gay grandchildren, wasn't taking any of that shit, and made my mother, my aunt, uncle and cousins leave the church after having attended it for nearly ten years.

Doing such a thing in a small town in western Pennsylvania, which fits Barack Obama's definition of a "bitter town" almost perfectly, is unheard of. It was an absolute scandal throughout the small town where she lives.

However, what was even more shocking was that when, at Thanksgiving dinner, I asked my grandmother which book she was reading, she responded, "Glenn Beck's 'Common Sense.'" Fortunately, my mouth was full of mashed potatoes so I had a few moments to gather myself before responding politely, "Oh, yes, that Glenn Beck, he's a passionate fellow." My aunt, responding genuinely, replied, "Oh, yes, Glenn Beck he really makes you think about things in ways that nobody else ever does. I watch Glenn Beck's show everyday."

My uncle Billy, a Vietnam veteran who's been laid off seven times, looking to start a fight, piped up, "Michael, do you like Glenn Beck?" The whole table turned to me, and for the first time in my life I was glad I suffered from a stutter. Fortunately, my grandmother mercifully invoked the "politics and religion at the dinner table" rule before my stammer came to a standstill.

There are at least eight million daily followers of Glenn Beck in America, and a good chunk of them are people like my grandmother and my uncle Billy - well-intentioned people that care about their country, their families and their communities, otherwise they wouldn't watch a show about politics. However, to label all these Glenn Beck followers as unreachable, bigoted racists is an extraordinary dangerous and misleading move for the progressive movement, which aims to include all people.

My grandmother's own vocal protest for gay rights in her church disproved that Glenn Beck followers tend to vote Republican merely because of gods, gays and guns. Sure, this wins over a large portion of them, but it doesn't explain how the Republican Party is able to win over people like my grandmother, who were once hardcore Democrats and never fell prey to such hate-baiting tactics in the past.

My grandmother is a registered Democrat, the widow of a union leader and local Democratic leader, whom my mother claimed must have rolled over in his grave when he heard my grandmother voted for a Republican. My uncle Billy comes from the same place; growing up, he told me that we needed to abolish both parties and form a worker's party, due to his deep distrust of both major parties.

The right has been winning over working-class whites by fostering hate since Richard Nixon. They are good at targeting groups. However, there has always been an equal number of white working-class people who never fail prey to such fear-mongering tactics. They voted for plenty of the most elite sounding northeastern liberals like Michael Dukakis because they knew Republicans were on the side of big corporations - the true elitists. However, this has all changed dramatically in the last 20 years because Republicans are actively targeting those working-class people using a different appeal.

The county where my grandmother is from -Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania - in 1988 voted for card-carrying ACLU member Michael Dukakis by an 11 point margin of victory, yet voted for McCain in 2008 by a 17 point margin. What happened in between, you might ask?

Tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs disappeared, and Westmoreland County was turned into a degraded version of its former self. Democrats on the national level did nothing in response to challenge the corporate ideology that wiped out their community and their way of life.

Glenn Beck followers tend to primarily be these inhabitants of the "bitter towns" who lost faith in government. As my colleague Sara Robinson points out, why would working-class people trust a government that is "so clearly rigged to suck money straight out of their pockets into the tax-free offshore bank accounts of the wealthy - who, of course, turn right around and use that money to buy off our government"?

The fight then becomes over who controls government, and cable TV news presents them with faces that fight the Ivy League liberal-elite stereotypes. Glenn Beck and his followers attack liberals as being out-of-touch Ivy League elitists, neglecting to mention that most prominent conservatives are also Ivy Leaguers.

We respond by calling the other side "stupid" in cable news sound byte clips, and they respond back at us by calling us "elitists"; this quickly devolves into an endless series of glorified name calling.

As Matt Taibbi notes in his must-read piece "Sarah Palin - WWE Star," about the soap operatization of politics via cable news:

What we call "politics" has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments, and the really cool thing about it, if you're a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day's news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant ...

And while some of us are old enough to remember that once upon a time these arguments always had at least some sort of ideological flavor to them, i.e. the throwdowns were at least rooted in some sort of real political issue (war, taxes, immigration, etc.) we've now got a whole generation that is accustomed to screaming at cultural enemies as an end in itself, for the sheer dismal fun of it.

This is the dilemma that relying on impersonal communications leaves us in. Cable news and other forms of electronic communication tend to win ratings using name calling and conflict. The blogosphere has done incredible things in educating the base, educating a young net savvy generation, funding political causes and holding cable news personalities like Lou Dobbs accountable. However, it hasn't changed the fundamental dynamic of cultural resentment between social and economic classes that cable news breeds. In some way, the Internet fuels it even more - just Google Sarah Palin and you'll see what I'm talking about. Cable news breeds a cultural resentment that creates a sense of distrust between college-educated liberals and potential allies in the working-class communities. In order to restore trust in government, we must restore trust in the people that are supposed to run government - ourselves.

In his famous book "Bowling Alone," Robert Putnam shows that trust among people disappears when members of different socio-economic classes don't interact and get to know each other through social organizations. He aptly names his book "Bowling Alone," based on the statistics that more Americans are bowling than at any time, but in fewer and fewer bowling leagues. What we need to do to rebuild trust among classes is to bring people into organizations where they can realize through interaction their shared interests.

Currently, there is only one place in America where illegal immigrants and Glenn Beck followers sit down together on a regular basis and fight for their collective self interests - the halls of organized labor. Unions unite people behind shared self-interest and a common social purpose: making their jobs better - something we all desire. Through working together, they gain trust of one another and are less likely to be victims of conservative scare tactics.

The statistics don't lie. Obama won by 23 points among white, noncollege graduates who belong to a union, even as he lost by 18 points among all white, noncollege voters.

Working-class whites aren't just more likely to vote for progressives when organized labor is strong, so are people of color, women and young people. As the landslide loss of corporate, anti-workers' rights Democrat Creigh Deeds in Virginia shows, working whites will vote for Republicans for cultural reasons when a Democrat fails to stand up for them. However, people of color, women and young people don't have a cultural punching bag in "liberal elites," so when Democrats disappoint, they simply don't vote.


Thus, keeping people from joining unions and thereby upsetting the conservative ruling class that thrives on cultural resentment is the number one goal of conservatives. The biggest barrier for making strong unions is the fact that 30,000 workers are fired from their job every year for trying to join a union. In the United States, an employer has to post a piece of paper saying they fired a worker for trying to a join. As my father, a union organizer, always said, "If the penalty for robbing a bank was you had to post a piece of paper saying you robbed a bank, we'd all be bank robbers!"

Killing the Employee Free Choice Act is the number one priority of the Chamber of Commerce for this reason. It's more urgent for them to squash than climate change and health care reform put together. They know that increased unionization threatens their whole balance of power.

It is time that we realize that the Employee Free Choice Act is this important. The Employee Free Choice Act is not just a union issue. Without a revitalized labor movement, we get bogged down in the cultural wars of TV, and any progressive change we make is unsustainable. We need to create organs of social dialogue.

Is it really necessary to point out how much fuel the Obama brain trust is dumping on this fire?

#

The shootings at Fort Hood have of course galvanized the Shithead Right to their vilest spewing of lies and hatred

by Ken

We know that sometimes crisis brings out the best in Americans. Sometimes. Other times it brings out the worst, including to listen to the vilest, worst informed, most bigoted dregs of humanity. And since there has never been a group in the history of the human race as criminally insane and sociopathic as the American Shithead Right, enemies to the death of every form of intelligence and decency, it's not hard to guess which way the wind will blow after a tragic incident like yesterday shootings at Fort Hood.

Since all these devil worshippers know is ignorance and hatred -- or should I say ignorance and hatred and how to make a buck off them? -- the immediate concern is the upsurge of loudmouth (and possibly worse than "mouth") bigotry against Muslim Americans. This is a form of intolerance that is supposed to violate everything that America is about. But of course the merchants of hate, in their desperation to turn the country into a reflection of the shit their souls are made of, don't care what America is about. They look in the mirror and, rightly, see nothing but worthlessness and hatred, but then are seized with the necessity to project their own worthlessness and hatred onto innocent victims.

Remember the first reactions to the Oklahoma City bombing, when the shithead fake-patriots had already launched their anti-Muslim jihad by the time the truth came out, and the degree to which the phony patriots lost interest once it was established that it was a deliberate act of terrorism by the crackpot self-anointed True Patriots of the Far Right, the spiritual forebears of the Teabaggers' Conspiracy.

Spencer Ackerman did a terrific piece on the subject today for the Washington Independent:

Possible GOP Candidate: Ft. Hood Shootings Prove ‘The Enemy Is Infiltrating Our Military’

By SPENCER ACKERMAN 11/6/09 1:40 PM

The Hill reports that Allen West, a former Army lieutenant colonel promoted by the National Republican Congressional Committee as one of its “young guns,” has come to some conclusions about the meaning of Maj. Hasan’s murders at Ft. Hood:

“This enemy preys on downtrodden soldiers and teaches them extremism will lift them up,” West said in a statement. “Our soldiers are being brainwashed.”

The release added that West claims “the horrible tragedy at Fort Hood is proof the enemy is infiltrating our military.”

This is further out there than even Fox host Brian Kilmeade’s slanders on Muslim U.S. soldiers. We don’t know what Hasan’s motivations actually were, let alone that he’s a symptom of “the enemy” “infiltrating” the military. Hasan, it’s worth remembering, joined the Army in 1995, even before Osama bin Laden had declared war on America.

But this is perhaps typical of West’s reasoning, as he was disciplined in the Army in Iraq for actually firing his weapon near a detainee’s head during an interrogation, which is typically a crime. CNN:

In testimony at an Article 32 hearing -- the military’s version of a grand jury or preliminary hearing -- West said the policeman, Yahya Jhrodi Hamoody, was not cooperating with interrogators, so he watched four of his soldiers from the 220th Field Artillery Battalion beat the detainee on the head and body.

West said he also threatened to kill Hamoody. Military prosecutors say West followed up on that threat by taking the suspect outside, put him on the ground near a weapons clearing barrel and fired his 9 mm pistol into the barrel.

To make a point no one should have to make: earlier this year, a deranged Army sergeant named John Russell opened fire near a combat stress clinic -- sound familiar? -- at Baghdad’s Camp Liberty and killed five of his fellow soldiers. No one speculated about any religious motivations. No one suggested he was part of an enemy “infiltration,” or suggested that U.S. troops have been “brainwashed.” Everyone understood that Russell was a deranged lunatic, not an advance scout for a conspiracy to subvert the military internally. It’s funny how double standards work.

Actually, no. It’s disgusting.

Exactly right, Spencer, it's disgusting. And it's likely to be even worse, as any American of "questionable" skin color, who might be suspected of being somehow connected to the Middle East, is targeted for persecution by the know-nothings. It's worth trying to remember just how quintessentially un-American this is.


UPDATE: THE LIES KEEP
COMING, FAST AND FURIOUS

It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to keep track of the psychotic lies pouring out of the Right-Wing Shithead Noise Machine, and Media Matters, bless their souls, is on the job.

The latest? A Lou "Don't Hate Me Just 'Cause I'm Nuttier Than a Pecan Pie" Dobbs shithead lie: Dems using Ft. Hood shooting as "cover" to pass health reform in House.

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"Dollar for dollar, Maine is the cheapest way to deliver a stinging defeat to the Wingnuts this year"

"It's easy to silo issues and to view the Maine campaign solely as an LGBT campaign. But, it's more than that. It is about generating momentum for the progressive movement."

-- Jesse Connolly ("a straight ally who believes strongly in equality for all"), campaign manager for "NO on 1/Project Maine Equality," blogging Friday on OpenLeft

by Ken

The quote at the top of this post comes from our friend Lane Hudson, who's referring of course  to the upcoming referendum in which the forces of darkness are pouring shitloads of money into Maine to try to persuade voters to repeal the law passed by the state legislature legalizing same-sex marriage. (I understand that Lane is going to be guest-posting about it here this weekend.)

It's getting down to the wire, and there's a lot of nervousness now. As "NO on 1/Project Maine Equality" campaign manager Jesse Connolly points out in the OpenLeft blogpost quoted above, "The same cast of characters is running the same campaign in Maine that succeeded in California."

The loons and thugs of the Far, Far Right, as you've no doubt noticed, seem to have forgotten their ancient mantra about keeping government off people's backs. On their issues they want government all over people's backs. I have to guess it's the rigidity hatefulness and misery of their own parched existences that make it so desperately important to them to do everything in their power to force their notions of proper conduct on people who think frankly that they're full of it.

As we've pointed out frequently here, one exceedingly terrible thing about this referendum movement is that it's legitimizing the idea of putting people's basic rights to a vote. A true democracy has to be irreducibly committed to respecting and protecting the rights of its minorities, and unfortunately putting those rights to a vote tends to have the opposite effect. For all sorts of unfortunate reasons, too many people are all too willing to strip away other people's rights.

Anyone who reads DWT probably doesn't need to be told that the Far, Far Right right now feels that it's fighting for its life, and will do anything it can to continue bullying other people into being told how to live their lives. To allow them to defeat us in Maine would be a nightmare for the personal rights of all Americans. Whereas a victory in Maine, as Jesse Connolly notes above, would provide a much-needed morale boost as well as a momentum-builder for pushback against the rampaging bigots and theocrats, as Jesse Connolly,

That's a pretty stark contrast. Then factor in Lane's brilliant formulation:

"Dollar for dollar, Maine is the cheapest way to deliver a stinging defeat to the Wingnuts this year."

If you want to help, you can contribute much-needed dollars to the "NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality" on our ActBlue page. You can get more information and look for other ways to pitch in -- there's a Volunteer Vacation Program, and I've been hearing that out-of-staters are eligible for phone-bank service -- in Jesse Connolly's OpenLeft post and on the NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality website.


A NOTE FOR NEW YORKERS (AND BOSTONITES TOO)

There's a local fund-raising event coming up, on Thursday, October 1, with "special guests" including Reps. Barney Frank and Jerry Nadler and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.

(Perhaps I should have said "for rich New Yorkers." I actually checked out the prices this afternoon and discovered that the $250 tickets are sold out, but you can still buy in for $500 or $1000. If you're feeling more generous than that, you could also be a "sponsor" or a chair" Gulp.)

There's also a Boston event, on Tuersday, October 6.

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