On Which Garbage Heap Will Jim DeMint Turn Up Next?

Who remembers Jim DeMint? He was an ad guy in Greenville, South Carolina who was elected to the House in 1998 and then the Senate in 2004. He was a Tea Party guy before there was a Tea Party and was the staunchest proponent of ending Social Security and of reactionary politics in general while he served in Congress, often a pariah among establishment Republicans. Reelected to the Senate in 2010, he resigned 2 years later to become president of the Heritage Foundation, then a somewhat staid right-wing think tank. He was fired on Friday for... being the kind of asshole Jim DeMint has always been. 5 years of it was too much for Heritage and the Board of Directiors is behind a move to finally oust him.

DeMint’s short tenure was fraught with controversy as he tried to change Heritage from a research-oriented think tank that had good relations with most Republicans into a hard-edged activist organization that frequently provoked anger from GOP leaders.

According to multiple people familiar with DeMint’s time at Heritage, his confrontational political strategy was initially welcomed by the majority of the non-profit’s board members who had received negative reviews from donors large and small about how Heritage conducted itself during the term of former president George W. Bush. During those years, Feulner and his top aides cultivated close relations with the White House. But when Bush’s political popularity collapsed thanks to Hurricane Katrina and continued violence in Iraq, Feulner’s low-key, policy-centric approach was blamed by Tea Party-aligned conservatives as feckless.

DeMint was eventually promoted as a man who could save Heritage from irrelevance due to his fame among conservatives for angrily opposing Senate Republican leaders. His oft-repeated claim that he could accomplish more with 30 hardcore conservatives than with 60 moderates became a bit of a catchphrase among some activists. Although some Heritage staffers remained suspicious of his politician pedigree, he initially faced few complaints. Soon, however, his fiery style and the inexperienced staffers he brought in began to rankle some of the more scholarly Heritage employees. A number of them began heading for the exits, particularly as DeMint and a newly created lobbying sister organization, Heritage Action, eagerly joined a foolhardy GOP bid to shut down the government in 2013. Republican politicians who had long relied on the Heritage Foundation to make them smarter were incensed that the think tank was promoting stupidity.

DeMint dialed back his flinty style afterwards but his reputation was severely damaged among some employees and donors who had previously reserved judgment. The writing was on the wall for DeMint after that.

The crazy, right-wing Washington Examiner website painted a picture of hysteria at Heritage on Friday with neo-fascist snowflakes weeping and weeping and melting away to nothing-- and referring DeMint's ouster as "a putsch" with staffers "drawing battle lines on an otherwise sunny day."

"It's shameful how all this is being handled," an irate department director said. "I just can't believe Heritage brought DeMint in from the Senate, then stabbed him in the back. I guarantee they purge his people next."

So far, though, Heritage hasn't issued an official statement. Communications staffers have been warned not to speak with media. And after multiple interviews with current and former Heritage employees speaking on condition of anonymity, a prevailing narrative has emerged:

DeMint lost his job, in large part, for crossing Heritage Action CEO, Mike Needham.

Dismissing reports that DeMint was ousted for being too political, the department director argued instead that "basically this is one big Mike Needham power play." According to the source, Needham has been "trying to take over Heritage forever" and will use Feulner "as proxy to control the place."

Needham, who served as Feulner's chief of staff, did not respond to requests for comment.

While both men tend to agree on ideology, they disagree on method. A senior policy expert complained that DeMint wanted to remake Heritage in his own image, pointing to the policy services and outreach department as well as the organization's media arm, the Daily Signal (where I used to work).

"Basically he treated the place like it was his giant Senate office," the policy expert said. "That ended up being a significant departure from the vision set out by the board and Feulner."

While Needham helped bring DeMint to Heritage in 2013, their relationship began to fray during the presidential election. It reached a breaking point, two separate sources confirmed, after DeMint suggested making major changes to Heritage Action or abolishing it altogether.

"That really wasn't a smart move," the policy expert explained, "because Needham is Feulner's guy."

When the board asked DeMint to step down last weekend, the fiery conservative refused and has tried lobbying board members to keep his job. If he doesn't go quietly into the dark, the board can vote him out as soon as Tuesday when they convene in Washington, D.C.

DeMint was making over a million dollars a year and his contract was going to expire at the end of 2017. It was DeMint who got right-wing ideologue Neil Gorsuch, who Trump had never heard of, onto the Supreme Court.

There's no excuse for Jim DeMoron, and still less excuse for people who take him in any way seriously

The shame of Dan Quayle wasn't that he was so lazy or stupid, or even that he has led a life and reaped the rewards of wholly undeserved privilege. The shame is that he has the arrogance to present himself on the public stage -- and has been so successful.

"Jim DeMint is correct that there was a belligerent during the American Civil War that rejected 'big government.' He’s just wrong about which side that was."

-- Ian Millhiser, in "Head Of Top Conservative Think Tank
Makes Spectacularly Uninformed Statement About Slavery"

by Ken

You remember the famous Dan Quayle potato-potatoe incident? Whe Vice President Quayle, with the TV cameras rolling, presumed to "correct" a schoolkid's perfectly correct spelling of "potato" by adding an "e"?

What was outrageous wasn't that he had been too lazy or stupid to learn how to spell a word like potato, regrettable as that may be in the case of a man wo had been elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, three terms in the U.S. Senate, and a term as vice president of the U.S. No, what was outrageous was that a person of his ingrained ignorance had the gall to correct (and on national TV) a kid who had actually taken the trouble to learn how to spell the word.

Well, that and the fact that a wildly overpriviileged beast of such consummate ignorance, arrogance, and utter unconcern about either should have been elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, three terms in the U.S. Senate, and a term as vice president of the U.S. That's what escalates it from the level of richly deserved personal humiliation to stinging national disgrace.

In this context, I invite you to read this exchange:

GUEST: This progressive, the whole idea of being progressive is to progress away from those ideas that made this country great. What we’re trying to conserve as conservative are those things that work. They work today, they work for young people, they work for minorities and we can change this country and change its course very quickly if we just remember what works.
INTERVIEWER: What if somebody, let’s say you’re talking with a liberal person and they were to turn around and say, ‘that Founding Fathers thing worked out really well, look at that Civil War we had eighty years later.’
GUEST: Well the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution, it was like the conscience of the American people. Unfortunately there were some court decisions like Dred Scott and others that defined some people as property, but the Constitution kept calling us back to ‘all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights’ in the minds of God. But a lot of the move to free the slaves came from the people, it did not come from the federal government. It came from a growing movement among the people, particularly people of faith, that this was wrong. People like Wilberforce who persisted for years because of his faith and because of his love for people. So no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves. In fact, it was Abraham Lincoln, the very first Republican, who took this on as a cause and a lot of it was based on a love in his heart that comes from God.

The guest was Heritage Foundation boss man (and former U.S. Sen.) Jim DeMoron, once one of the most influential obstructions in the U.S. Senate process, speaking on the broadcast Vocal Point with interviewer Jerry Newcombe of Truth in Action Ministries -- as passed on by Right Wing Watch's Brian Tashman. (I should add that Brian calls attention as well to other monumental imbecilities of DeMoron's from the broadcast, and also that I was directed to his post by a ThinkProgress post by Ian Millhiser, to which we'll be returning.)

There isn't a single assertion in this loose-screw-a-thon that isn't wrong but catastrophically wrong, in almost every case turning the actual meaning upside down. As should be clear to anyone who has spent a few weeks in a high school American-history class can tell, DeMoron has not the slightest clue what's in the U.S. Constitution, which specifically allowed and provided for slavery. As every schoolchild knows, this is the single most blatant deviation from grace in the founding of our republic.

And of course, unfortunately for him, DeMoron has heard a few catch phrases from the Declaration of Independence, but since he has never read it or had any instruction in U.S. history, he has not a shot at understanding those undigested bits. For the same reasons, knows nothing whatsoever about either the life or politcal thinking of Abraham Lincoln. His notion that he and Abraham Lincoln have anything whatsoever of a political nature in common just because they're both Republicans demonstrates that he knows as little about the life or work of Lincoln, or about the history of the Republican Party, than he knows about, well, anything else in the universe, with the sole exception of how to succeed a savage promoter of criminally insane ideologies that can only be believed by the mentally defective.

And yet here is this demented, savage beast displaying the unmitigated gall to insist on replacing actual history with his psychotic lies and delusions. Why isn't such a loathsome specimen of antihumanity not booed and spat at anytime he foists his demented carcass on an apparently unsuspecting public.

Now, if you'd like to see DeMoron's moronicisms more politely and rationally (not to mention elegantly) dismantled, in addition to looking at Brian Tashman's Right Wing Watch post, we can look at how my cherished legal eagle Ian Millhiser did it in the aforementioned ThinkProgress post, "Head of Top Conservative Think Tank Makes Spectacularly Uninformed Statement About Slavery." (I might note that the URL for Ian's piece contains the slug "jim-demint-may-have-just-made-the-most-uninformed-statement-anyone-has-ever-made-about-slavery" Yes!)

It’s difficult to know where to begin a list of the errors this brief passage. The phrase “all men are created equal and we have inalienable rights” does not appear in the Constitution, although a very similar phrase does appear in the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, the Constitution, at least as it stood before the Civil War, had very different things to say about the subject of human equality. It provided, for example, that “[n]o person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” The original Constitution also contained explicit language prohibiting Congress from banning the importation of new slaves until 1808.

Nevertheless, DeMint is technically correct that “the reason that the slaves were eventually freed was the Constitution.” That’s because the Thirteenth Amendment provides that “[n]either slavery nor involuntary servitude. . . shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The Thirteenth Amendment did not, however, simply come into being because Abraham Lincoln had a “love in his heart that comes from God.” Rather, it happened because Lincoln led the nation in a massive big government program known as the “Civil War“.
During this war, the United States raised an army of over two million service members who clashed with a Confederate army of about half that size. Moreover, the war effort increased federal spending nearly 25 times. As the leader of a centralized government in Washington, DC, Lincoln also issued a document known as the “Emancipation Proclamation,” which ordered slaves in the Confederate states freed.

Notably, while the Thirteenth Amendment ended the legal practice of human chattel slavery, state laws such as the Black Codes and the Jim Crow laws were enacted in the South to maintain the inferior status of former slaves and their descendants. These laws were eventually eradicated by big government as well, primarily through legislation such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

It’s also worth noting that the Confederate system of government differed from the Union’s system in that it placed far less power in a strong central government. While the United States Constitution, permits the federal government to “lay and collect taxes . . . and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States,” for example, the Confederate Constitution excluded the power to “provide for the general welfare.” Thus, the United States Constitution permits major national spending programs such as Medicare or Social Security, while these programs would have been unconstitutional in the Confederacy. Similarly, the Confederate Constitution includes a rigid limit on national infrastructure spending — forbidding its congress from “appropriat[ing] money for any internal improvement intended to facilitate commerce” — a limit that does not appear in the United States Constitution.

So Jim DeMint is correct that there was a belligerent during the American Civil War that rejected “big government.” He’s just wrong about which side that was.

[Note: There are lots of links onsite.]

I don't know that anyone thinks of the Heritage Foundation as anything but a propaganda mill since DeMoron took over there, a comedown from its former status as an embarrassing fount of right-wing political hackery. Hey, there's an important gap between embarrassment and disgrace.

In case you haven't reminded yourself recently, this is what the party of Lincoln has come to.

#

The Idiocracy Files (Redux), Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

[We continue our encore presentation of Noah's Idiocracy series. And don't forget Noah's new "Need a last-minute Christmas gift suggestion?," "50 Years Ago Today: The Beatles," and "A Tale of Two Popes -- the one in the Vatican and the one in North Carolina."]

"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And, frankly, they own the place."

-- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), May 2009

by Noah

On June 13 of this year, almost exactly three years after the above quote from one of the few of the more honest men in Washington, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee gave us more of what Congress does best: a classic dog-and-pony show, a farce meant for public consumption, to be cut down, shined up and packaged for the nightly news by Washington's media accomplices.

The special guest star attraction this time was Jamie Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of J. P. Morgan-Chase, a creature who is so warped that he can actually say, even on national TV, that he has no idea why he is so unpopular with the American public, and say it with a straight face. Gee, all he (and his bankster cohorts) did was bring the world economy to the brink of total collapse, ruin lives that are of no consequence to him, make a profit on such actions, and then hold up the taxpayers for even more of their hard-earned money. What a swell guy!

So it' was about time that this dark lord of the financial world got called on the carpet by the people in Washington who look out for us, right? You know, the people we elect to represent us? Yeah, well, somewhere between your voting booth and the Capitol building, the $enate's mission changed. Fancy that!

Hence the farce back in June when Dimon Jamie arrived for his stern, harsh, and even brutal questioning by our senators, brutal enough to remind one of the Spanish Inquisition -- or, well, perhaps something milder. Let's take a look at some of the harsh inquisitors and some highlight quotes that will show what a nasty day Dimon had. These guys didn't just remind me of Idiocracy. A famous Monty Python sketch also came to mind.



AND NOW, THE BRUTAL, INHUMAN $ENATE INQUISITORS!

1. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

"You're obviously renowned -- rightly so, I think -- as one of the best CEOs in the country. . . . You missed this. It's a blip on the radar screen."

A blip! Four billion dollars lost in speculative derivative trading is a blip? That's right, the score was up to $4 billion as of the "hearing." Originally Dimon told the country that his company's loss was $2 billion. Now it looks like it may be as high as $7 billion. Pocket change. Either the guy is a pathological liar or he is grossly incompetent. Makes me wonder if his great-grandfather was the captain of the Titanic.

2. Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)

"One of the tensions we face here is that we wanna be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we wanna be sure also that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions . . . and again, what should the function of the regulators be."

Unbelievable! Crap-boy is asking Dimon what the function of the regulators should be. If this assclown had a farm, he'd be asking the foxes what their role in guarding the chicken coop should be.

3. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Now this guy is well-known for being a world-class asswipe. Let's see what this genius from South Carolina, now moved on to run the Heritage Society, had to say.

"I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on, uh, what you think we need to do."

Gee, I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks! Why, it wouldn't shock me if he just came out and said, "I think we need to do nothing. Does nothing work for you?" After all, four years have now passed since the crash and "nothing" is what Washington has done, simply because, as Senator Durbin said, the $enate is owned by the banks. They got off even easier than BP.

No lesson will be learned. Expect a bigger crash eventually, and expect these bribe-taking cretins to say publicly that they just didn't see it comin' and who could have possibly predicted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It'll be like Condoleezza Rice saying that no one could have imagined terrorists flying planes into the WTC.

4. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

What does the renowned racist from Alabamy say?

"Would you feel better in a closed hearing?"

I can imagine what that would be like: laughs, drinks, K Street-provided lap dancers, and envelopes of cash for all. Who wants another round?

* * * * * 

Crapo and Corker? Ya just can't make these names up. They're like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. It gets better. Crapo's No. 1 "campaign contributor"? J. P. Morgan-Chase. Corker's No. 1? Goldman-Sachs. Not to worry, his No. 2 is Morgan.

To be fair, and I always want to be fair, I've only called attention to the four worst of the grand inquisitors. After the committee was through wasting our time, Dimon even thanked $enator Corker for such easy questions, right out in the open; no shame, plenty of arrogance. Makes me wonder what kind of handouts were given out after the show. Were there any briefcases left behind in the Senate that day?

Of course, if it was up to me, the majority of the $enate would all be fitted for orange jump suits, or better yet salted up and dragged through glass after going before a judge, if you could find a judge that hadn't also been paid off by the same "campaign contributors."  Ask yourself who has damaged this country more, Al Qaeda or the Wall Street criminal element and their Washington enablers? Who is even responsible for more deaths? I have no doubt that if Jerry Sandusky gave $enators the same kind of money as the banksters, they'd treat him the same.

Money buys a lot of ass-kissing in Washington. Sure, we already knew that. It's just that Washington business is getting done in a much more brazen manner these days, as evidenced by the June 2012 inquistition of Jamie Dimon. Ever wonder what the janitors use to clean the slimy ooze from the Capitol floor and furniture every night?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that no matter how good you are, how competent people are, you never, ever get complacent in risk. Challenge everything. . . .

Yeah, Dimon. You are so good. What a great guy! Not. Great smirk too. Try arrogant creep, for starters. Yeesh. We've already seen how money can buy infinite heaps of arrogance by observing the likes of Romney. How many more of these arrogant, insensitive crap-spewers do we have to put up with before the combined rage and indignation of the world just says enough and heaves these a-holes into the shark-infested waters off their Cayman Islands? I'd like to see if the sharks would even touch them.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who actually tried to grill Dimon and even reminded him that "this is not your hearing" when Dimon arrogantly tried to talk over his questions, made an attempt to do the people's business, but, as we know, the majority of the Democrats aren't much better.

Our corporatist President Obama, in a May interview on The View, called Dimon "one of the smartest bankers we've got" and called Morgan "one of the best-managed banks there is." Obama went on to say that even smart people make mistakes. True enough, but ideally they don't lie about the size of the mistake every time a microphone is placed in front of their face, oath or not. Besides, no one ever said bad guys weren't smart sometimes.

Now there's talk that Dimon might be the clown that replaces Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. More of that fox-guarding-the-chickens stuff. Ain't Washington grand?

Lots of people say the problem with Washington can only be solved if we somehow get the money out of politics. Of course, there isn't much chance of that happening when the people that make the laws are the same ones that take the cash. If any progress is to be made before the 2014 elections in increasing the awareness of just how low Washington has sunk, there is a lot of work to be done.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: More Idiocracy Moments for 2012
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

#

DeMint Is Ready To Go To War-- Against Conservative Republicans

It was bad enough for the GOP's Know Nothing base of bigots and racists when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions' filibuster of comprehensive immigration reform was shut down Tuesday with an overwhelming bipartisan 82-15 vote. But if the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the GOP didn't get the message clear enough, the Senate was back 2 hours later to vote on the motion to proceed with the debate and that one passed 84-15. It was sad and lonely to be a racist in the Senate on Tuesday. Ted Cruz was so frustrated that he almost cried. He admitted that the immigration reform bill would pass the Senate and prayed aloud that the crazy Republicans from gerrymandered Southern districts would somehow kill it in the House. The 15 proud racists:

• John Barrasso (R-WY)
• John Boozman (R-AR)
• Thad Cochran (R-MS)
• Mike Crapo (R-ID)
• Ted Cruz (R-TX)
• Mike Enzi (R-WY)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Mark Kirk (R-IL)
• Mike Lee (R-UT)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)
• Pat Roberts (R-KS)
• Tim Scott (R-SC)
• Jefferson B Sessions III (R-AL)
• Richard Shelby (R-AL)
• David Vitter (R-LA)

DeMint is no longer in the Senate. He resigned to become a lobbyist for right-wing causes. But he still has his extremist PAC, the Senate Conservative Fund, and the twerp who runs it for him, Matt Hoskins, fired a shot over the bows of Miss McConnell, John Cornyn and the other 26 Republicans who voted to move forward. He singled out the half dozen running for reelection in 2014 for a special threat: Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Thad Cochran (R-MS), Susan Collins (R-ME), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Miss McConnell (R-KY). Sounds like they'd be willing to contribute to primary challenges. Here's the letter they sent out to their donors:

Fellow Conservatives:

The bill will make the problem of illegal immigration worse, but that didn't stop 28 Republicans from voting to advance it. They either support amnesty or mistakenly believe they can work with Barack Obama and Harry Reid to fix it.

Here's the current list of "Amnesty Republicans" who need to hear from us. If this bill passes, they will be largely responsible because of their votes yesterday. They had a chance to stop it when 60 votes were required, but they chose not to. (The six highlighted senators are up for re-election in 2014.)

Alexander (R-TN), Ayotte (R-NH), Blunt (R-MO), Burr (R-NC), Chambliss (R-GA), Chiesa (R-NJ), Coats (R-IN), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Corker (R-TN), Cornyn (R-TX), Fischer (R-NE), Flake (R-AZ), Graham (R-SC), Hatch (R-UT), Heller (R-NV), Hoeven (R-ND), Isakson (R-GA), Johanns (R-NE), Johnson (R-WI), McConnell (R-KY), Moran (R-KS), Paul (R-KY), Portman (R-OH), Rubio (R-FL), Thune (R-SD), Toomey (R-PA), Wicker (R-MS)

Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY)-- the Republican Leader-- not only supported the bill, he also pressured his Republican colleagues to join him. This isn't surprising given that he supported the 1986 amnesty and likes GOP cover when he casts liberal votes.

As you may recall, Senator McConnell also voted for the Wall Street bailout, to raise the debt limit by $2.4 trillion, to raise taxes on 80% of American families, and to fund the implementation of Obamacare. Each time, he selfishly asked his colleagues to join him even though it could cost them their elections.

This debate is a test of his leadership and so far he's failing it.

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is also working behind closed doors to pass this bill. Senator Cornyn is peddling an amendment that is designed to give Republicans cover to support the final bill. He says the amendment will increase border security, but in truth it won't change the underlying bill that guarantees amnesty and only promises border security.

If this bill passes, Senators McConnell and Cornyn will bear the most responsibility. Even if they vote against the final bill, they are working the hardest to persuade their colleagues to walk over this policy cliff.

Please contact the senators who voted for amnesty yesterday and urge them to stop this bill before it's too late.

Call Senator McConnell at (202) 224-2541 and Senator Cornyn at (202) 224-2934.

Thank you for your support. We'll keep fighting.

Yesterday, the right-wing propaganda web site, Daily Caller, warned the fringe base that McConnell is getting ready to surrender. Meanwhile, as you know, DeMint runs the Heritage Foundation, a fascist institution at the heart of the Republican Party. In his great new book, The Machine, Lee Fang strips the operation bare of it's lofty pretensions.

The Heritage Foundation, founded in 1973 to lead the “New Right” revolution against liberalism, became the cornerstone of the conservative movement during the eighties when it structured many of President Reagan’s policies and appointments. Heritage expanded through the years, but continued the core goal of assisting congressional Republicans and Republican administrations. A People for the American Way report noted that Heritage officials declared that much of the second President Bush’s domestic policies were “straight out of the Heritage play book.” And indeed they were, from Bush’s faith-based initiatives to endless orders to deregulate business. Top conservative talkers like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity have long referred to Heritage as the source for their research. The idea factory model of Heritage is streamlined by a Heritage website called Policy Expert, which allows hundreds of conservative scholars to be dispatched for media appearances, conferences, or to town hall meetings hosted by Republican lawmakers, where they can provide academic cover for Republican policies. Additionally, Heritage’s “Candidates Briefing Book” is widely used among almost all Republican candidates for Congress, providing them talking points and statistics to campaign on. Heritage also maintains one of the largest job banks for the conservative movement, with full-time staffers organizing employment conferences for right-wing operatives at every stage of their careers. By supplying policy ideas, hosting an endless array of conservative experts to testify on behalf of legislation, as well as other services, Heritage has become what many correctly call the “most influential conservative think tank.”

Much of Heritage’s decisive influence, however, must be measured by its primary-- if underrecognized-- role in coordinating the conservative movement and thereby setting the strategy for advancing cohesive right-wing ideals. Heritage sets the agenda for state-level conservative think tanks through the State Policy Network umbrella group, and its affiliated “Resource Bank” conference, while also providing assistance for right-wing think tanks internationally through its partnership with the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. During the Obama presidency, Heritage took an even more aggressive stance, pulling together the key elements of the conservative coalition to fight progressives at every opportunity.

Starting in 2006, Heritage began holding a weekly meeting called the Blogger Briefing in its offices to allow conservative voices from the blogosphere to meet top Republican strategists and politicians and hash out framing advice. In early 2012, the American Legislative Exchange Council faced a growing corporate boycott over its role in crafting the “Stand Your Ground” law that permitted a boy in Florida to be shot by a vigilante neighborhood patrolman. The public relations strategy to combat the criticism was crafted at the Heritage Bloggers Briefing. Attendees were asked to help design a “Stand with ALEC” social media campaign.

Flaunting their disregard for their status as a nonpartisan tax-exempt nonprofit, Heritage hosted officers from Republican campaign committees at blogger meetings where the Republican campaign officers suggested strategies for defeating Democrats or promoting Republicans. However, most of the Blogger Briefings are policy related, and have ranged from how to defeat health reform to how to extend the Bush tax cuts. Heritage’s Robert Bluey, the director for its Center for Media and Public Policy, worked to build a rapid response network of right-wing bloggers and journalists not just through the Blogger Briefing, but also through private listservs and collaborations with other online conservative news outlets. Townhall.com, an online portal to conservative opinion and radio-show hosts, was initially created by Heritage, but was later bought by Salem Communications. During the Obama presidency, Heritage spawned a new social networking website called Heritage for America. Organized under the 501c(4) tax code, which permits issuebased political advocacy, Heritage for America sought to connect grassroots activists with against Democrats.

To guide the movement, Heritage provides the practical service of connecting conservative scholars and strategists with active donors around the country. There are regional committee groups for Heritage in Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, New York City, Omaha, and several other cities. A typical regional committee event would bring a conservative celebrity such as karl Rove or radio host Herman Cain for a short speech, and afterward a cocktail party would provide a chance for donors to mingle with local Republican staffers and local conservative activists. For higher-level donors, there are “President’s Club” conferences, such as the President’s Club meeting in the cavernous Reagan International Trade Center in Washington, D.C., on May 4, 2009. More of a pep rally than an ideas conference, the President’s Club conference was essentially a day of speeches from right-wing Republicans on how the party would triumph over progressive reforms promised by Obama. At dinner, Rush Limbaugh regaled the crowd with a reprise of his radio routine, then began boasting about his $400 million contract with the radio conglomerate Clear Channel. “I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposedly a recession,” he said, grinning. He continued, “Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate!” The crowd of donors erupted in laughter. At the front-row dinner table, Thomas Saunders, a wealthy Wall Street investor and a top donor to Heritage and many other right-wing causes, was seated between Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

The Idiocracy Files, Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

"And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And, frankly, they own the place."

-- Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), May 2009

by Noah

On June 13 of this year, almost exactly three years after the above quote from one of the few of the more honest men in Washington, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee gave us more of what Congress does best: a classic dog-and-pony show, a farce meant for public consumption, to be cut down, shined up and packaged for the nightly news by Washington's media accomplices.

The special guest star attraction this time was Jamie Dimon, chairman, president, and CEO of J. P. Morgan-Chase, a creature who is so warped that he can actually say, even on national TV, that he has no idea why he is so unpopular with the American public, and say it with a straight face. Gee, all he (and his bankster cohorts) did was bring the world economy to the brink of total collapse, ruin lives that are of no consequence to him, make a profit on such actions, and then hold up the taxpayers for even more of their hard-earned money. What a swell guy!

So it' was about time that this dark lord of the financial world got called on the carpet by the people in Washington who look out for us, right? You know, the people we elect to represent us? Yeah, well, somewhere between your voting booth and the Capitol building, the $enate's mission changed. Fancy that!

Hence the farce back in June when Dimon Jamie arrived for his stern, harsh, and even brutal questioning by our senators, brutal enough to remind one of the Spanish Inquisition -- or, well, perhaps something milder. Let's take a look at some of the harsh inquisitors and some highlight quotes that will show what a nasty day Dimon had. These guys didn't just remind me of Idiocracy. A famous Monty Python sketch also came to mind.



AND NOW, THE BRUTAL, INHUMAN $ENATE INQUISITORS!

1. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN)

"You're obviously renowned -- rightly so, I think -- as one of the best CEOs in the country. . . . You missed this. It's a blip on the radar screen."

A blip! Four billion dollars lost in speculative derivative trading is a blip? That's right, the score was up to $4 billion as of the "hearing." Originally Dimon told the country that his company's loss was $2 billion. Now it looks like it may be as high as $7 billion. Pocket change. Either the guy is a pathological liar or he is grossly incompetent. Makes me wonder if his great-grandfather was the captain of the Titanic.

2. Sen. Michael Crapo (R-ID)

"One of the tensions we face here is that we wanna be sure that we are adequately regulating our financial institutions, but we wanna be sure also that we basically don't have the regulators running our private sector institutions . . . and again, what should the function of the regulators be."

Unbelievable! Crap-boy is asking Dimon what the function of the regulators should be. If this assclown had a farm, he'd be asking the foxes what their role in guarding the chicken coop should be.

3. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)

Now this guy is well-known for being a world-class asswipe. Let's see what this genius from South Carolina, now moved on to run the Heritage Society, had to say.

"I would like to come away from the hearing today with some ideas on, uh, what you think we need to do."

Gee, I wonder what Jamie Dimon thinks! Why, it wouldn't shock me if he just came out and said, "I think we need to do nothing. Does nothing work for you?" After all, four years have now passed since the crash and "nothing" is what Washington has done, simply because, as Senator Durbin said, the $enate is owned by the banks. They got off even easier than BP.

No lesson will be learned. Expect a bigger crash eventually, and expect these bribe-taking cretins to say publicly that they just didn't see it comin' and who could have possibly predicted, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah? It'll be like Condoleezza Rice saying that no one could have imagined terrorists flying planes into the WTC.

4. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL)

What does the renowned racist from Alabamy say?

"Would you feel better in a closed hearing?"

I can imagine what that would be like: laughs, drinks, K Street-provided lap dancers, and envelopes of cash for all. Who wants another round?

* * * * * 

Crapo and Corker? Ya just can't make these names up. They're like something out of a Charles Dickens novel. It gets better. Crapo's No. 1 "campaign contributor"? J. P. Morgan-Chase. Corker's No. 1? Goldman-Sachs. Not to worry, his No. 2 is Morgan.

To be fair, and I always want to be fair, I've only called attention to the four worst of the grand inquisitors. After the committee was through wasting our time, Dimon even thanked $enator Corker for such easy questions, right out in the open; no shame, plenty of arrogance. Makes me wonder what kind of handouts were given out after the show. Were there any briefcases left behind in the Senate that day?

Of course, if it was up to me, the majority of the $enate would all be fitted for orange jump suits, or better yet salted up and dragged through glass after going before a judge, if you could find a judge that hadn't also been paid off by the same "campaign contributors."  Ask yourself who has damaged this country more, Al Qaeda or the Wall Street criminal element and their Washington enablers? Who is even responsible for more deaths? I have no doubt that if Jerry Sandusky gave $enators the same kind of money as the banksters, they'd treat him the same.

Money buys a lot of ass-kissing in Washington. Sure, we already knew that. It's just that Washington business is getting done in a much more brazen manner these days, as evidenced by the June 2012 inquistition of Jamie Dimon. Ever wonder what the janitors use to clean the slimy ooze from the Capitol floor and furniture every night?

JAMIE DIMON: I think that no matter how good you are, how competent people are, you never, ever get complacent in risk. Challenge everything. . . .

Yeah, Dimon. You are so good. What a great guy! Not. Great smirk too. Try arrogant creep, for starters. Yeesh. We've already seen how money can buy infinite heaps of arrogance by observing the likes of Romney. How many more of these arrogant, insensitive crap-spewers do we have to put up with before the combined rage and indignation of the world just says enough and heaves these a-holes into the shark-infested waters off their Cayman Islands? I'd like to see if the sharks would even touch them.

To his credit, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), who actually tried to grill Dimon and even reminded him that "this is not your hearing" when Dimon arrogantly tried to talk over his questions, made an attempt to do the people's business, but, as we know, the majority of the Democrats aren't much better.

Our corporatist President Obama, in a May interview on The View, called Dimon "one of the smartest bankers we've got" and called Morgan "one of the best-managed banks there is." Obama went on to say that even smart people make mistakes. True enough, but ideally they don't lie about the size of the mistake every time a microphone is placed in front of their face, oath or not. Besides, no one ever said bad guys weren't smart sometimes.

Now there's talk that Dimon might be the clown that replaces Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary. More of that fox-guarding-the-chickens stuff. Ain't Washington grand?

Lots of people say the problem with Washington can only be solved if we somehow get the money out of politics. Of course, there isn't much chance of that happening when the people that make the laws are the same ones that take the cash. If any progress is to be made before the 2014 elections in increasing the awareness of just how low Washington has sunk, there is a lot of work to be done.

THE IDIOCRACY FILES

The world of Mike Judge's 2006 film Idiocracy, projected for 500 years into the future, arrives 494 years early!

"As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent, but as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution doesn't necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

-- The Narrator, Idiocracy

Part 1: 2012: The Year That Idiocracy Moments Broke the Scale
Part 2: Beware the Girl Scouts, Sheldon Adelson, and more
Part 3: Republicans Seek to Create a New Country. It's Called Crackpotopia!!!
Part 4: Special Arkansas Edition
Part 5: The U.S. $enate Meets with Its Landlord

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Forget Jim DeMented, and Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. I came THIS CLOSE to running into Katie Holmes at the Carnegie Deli!

UPDATE: For a picture of the $24.95 Carnegie
Deli Reuben (the pastrami version), see below

Inquiring minds want to know: Did Katie
eat that turkey Reuben all by herself?

by Ken

I know we should be talking about world-changing stuff, like SC Sen. Jim DeMented's decision to move his Senior Crazyman's Caucus of One from the Senate to the Heritage Foundation, presumably to eliminate any possible confusion about the quality of thinking coming out of a "think" tank that was once known as merely right of center. (This must also come as a relief to SC's other senator, "Loopy Lindsey" Graham, who seems to be living in terror these days of being primaried from the Far Right in 2014, and can hope that some of the crackpot energy may instead be diverted to the special election for the seat that by then will be occupied by whatever troll Gov. Nikki Haley appoints on an interim basis. Does anyone seriously disagree, by the way, with Greg Sargent's view that "Jim DeMint will be at least as damaging outside the Senate as he was inside it"?)

Or we might talk about the spectacle just observed of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay "lunching with disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff at a back table in Sushi Taro near Dupont Circle" (as reported today by the Washington Post's "In the Loop" maestro Al Kamen).

But I have something more personal to talk about -- the week's really big lunch story. It's one of those eerie, life-altering coincidences that grabs you by the neck and reminds you just what a small world we live in. It's this report of no less a personage than Katie Holmes being seen walking into New York's Carnegie Hall and buying a sandwich"! Now, now, try to get hold of yourself. I know this by itself is pretty astounding news, and you're probably already screaming, "No way!" "Way," my friends!

Katie Holmes Grabs Lunch at Carnegie Deli

December 5, 2012 4:33pm | By Trevor Kapp, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MIDTOWN — Katie Holmes strode into the famed Carnegie Deli in high heels Wednesday afternoon to order a New York City classic: a turkey Reuben on rye.

The former "Dawson’s Creek" star, who separated from husband Tom Cruise in June, came with a man who appeared to work with her and a security guard, and paid for the $24.95 sandwich by credit card.

“She was wearing the highest high heels I’ve ever seen — like 5 to 7 inches,” said Carnegie Deli Manager Jose Robles, 52. “She had on dark pants and a light sweater.”

Robles said the security guard made sure no pictures were taken of the brunette as she waited inside the Seventh Avenue deli for about five minutes.

He said he gave Holmes the deli’s number and told her to call in advance next time to pre-order her sandwich to avoid the wait.

“She said ‘Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I’ll give you a call next time before I come here,’” Robles said.

No, the eerie coincidence is that this extraordinary event, Katie Holmes buying a turkey Reuben, happened a mere eight days and, oh, about 18 hours (I don't know the exact time of Katie's sortie) after I myself seriously considered stopping in the Carnegie Deli to take out a corned beef on rye -- not lean, as fatty as possible -- and a kasha knish. I know that people do order other things at the Carnegie, and I always think this must be because they don't have faith that the corned beef will be not-lean enough, and will consequently have the mouth feel and taste of construction material, possibly necessitating the purchase and consumption of an extra Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray. Hey, I've been there. You put in your order, and all you can do from there is hope. Well, I suppose you could pray, on the theory that perhaps God staffs a desk that deals with deli issues as well as the one that handles sporting events.

To be absolutely clear, when I occasionally -- very occasionally these years -- allow my Carnegie Deli walk-bys to turn into walk-ins, I don't indulge in the Cel-Ray, not even a first one. I mean, a person has to have some discipline in life, to draw some lines. I don't know if you know the size of a Carnegie Deli sandwich (roughly a football), or of that knish (also pretty big). A person has to have some discipline.

There was a time in my life when I spent a lot more time in that part of Midtown -- say, in the lower-mid 50s between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. And so I might often be trudging west and then north toward in the general direction of the Columbus Circle subway station, to head home. And it was amazing how often that trudge took me directly past the corner of Seventh Avenue and 55th Street. If it happened to be kind of late at night, as it frequently was during a time when I was doing frequent after-work-hours free-lance work at a location in the above-delineated zone, and if it was really late, even though I was being paid by the hour and should have been happy, I was usually miserable enough to feel that I deserved that corned-beef sandwich and kasha knish -- though not, as noted, the Cel-Ray (especially after Dr. Brown's discontinued the Diet Cel-Ray, a dark day in the beverage world, let me tell you).

One time I had to think of a possible lunch site for an out-of-town friend with whom I was attending a matinee performance at the NY City Center, and clearly my reflexes were dulled, because it took whole minutes for me to realize that City Center is just down the block on 55th Street from -- you guessed it -- the Carnegie Deli! She turned out to be not quite prepared for that particular spectacle (for one thing, she had no idea of the portion size of the victuals she ordered), and wasn't feeling well on top of that, but it wsn't a total loss. We had hugely entertaining newbie out-of-town diners on either side of us at the table, and best of all, our waitress happened to be the very one who was featured most prominently in a Food Network special on the Carnegie. She gave us a show to remember.

Last week, as it happened, for three consecutive nights I found myself at the transit-challenged corner of Fifth Avenue and 54th Street -- for a three-recital series of the complete Beethoven violin sonatas. The only practical route I could come up with, short of walking all the way to Columbus Circle, was a three-train-er: the E one stop to Seventh Avenue, then the D or B one stop to 59th Street (Columbus Circle), and finally the A all the way uptown. But as anyone knows who has ever tried a three-train subway trip, once you've had the experience of waiting 10 minutes for each train, you swear never to do it again. As it happens, on Tuesday night I did try it, and it worked fine, and I pushed my luck again on Wednesday, and again it worked fine.

But on Monday, ah Monday, I hadn't been so courageous. I set out on the long march toward Columbus Circle, and as I headed west on 54th Street from Fifth Avenue to Sixth, some distant voice in my brain sounded a Midtown Geographic Alert. At Sixth Avenue, the traffic lights were such that I walked up a block before heading west again on 55th Street, and somewhere between Sixth and Seventh Avenues I came to full awareness of exactly where I was. And then there it was, up ahead!

It was touch and go there for a while. There were the voices inside my head screaming "corned beef" ("not lean -- as fatty as possible") and "kasha knish" ("but potato is OK if you don't have"). And there were less prominent, less listened-to voices saying, "What are you, nuts?" What tipped the balance, in the end, wasn't any sense of rectitude. It was more in the nature of a sense memory. From that geographic point (i.e, the takeout counter at the Carnegie) I'm still probably 45 minutes from home, first walking to the subway, then waiting for the train and riding uptown, then walking from the subway. My concern wasn't so much that the food was cold. After all, if I'm feeling that food-temp-fussy, I do have a microwave, and I know that they used the damned microwave too! No, the problem is more that during that travel time, the food in the bag will be constantly announcing its presence not just via voices of its own but via aromas. And a person can't really be unwrapping a Carnegie Deli-size corned-beef sandwich or kasha knish on the A train for on-site devourment, can a person? (I'm not going to sign any affidavit that says I've never done it. I mean, who's to say that a person might not, say, unwrap one side of the knish wrapping with a view toward maybe just nibbling. Speaking purely hypothetically. Because in the real world the person might find that it doesn't work all that well.)

And so, in the end, I walked on by. And a mere eight days and however-many-hours later, Katie rode those magnificent high heels right on in and orderer her turkey Reuben! What are the odds?

Of course anyone who has frequented the Carnegie Deli knows that the kind of managerial fawning Katie got is not what your average customer expects. What your average customer expects is: (a) to wait patiently to be allowed to give your order (especially if you're eating in, at one of those times when there's a monster line for seating at the communal tables), (b) to get your food, and the whole time (c) to get a vaudeville-worthy show from your server. That's the deal. But apparently not if you're Katie Holmes. (I was also caught short by that credit-card payment for Katie's turkey Reuben. My recollection was that they don't take credit cards, but I could be wrong, or they could have changed that. I certainly don't mean to suggest that this too was an extraordinary service provided to a famous person.)


UPDATE: ABOUT THE $24.95 REUBEN . . .

Our friend me comments wonderingly on the price tag of that turkey Reuben. Pictured here is the pastrami Reuben, not the turkey (you'll note that it also comes in corned beef), but I think the photo gives us the general idea.

The price, you'll note, is the same for the corned beef, pastrami, and turkey Reubens -- and $24.95 is in fact the price for a number of the Carnegie Deli specialty sandwiches. My modest just-plain-corned beef (see above) is a mere $16.95. (The online-posted menu is here.)

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Lord Boustany Faces Off Against A Louisiana Teabagger

In the contest next month for Louisiana's third congressional district, Democrat Ron Richard isn't really a factor. The race pits two Republican incumbents, Jeff Landry, a teabagger who currently represents the old 3rd CD and His Lordship Charles Boustany, currently the representative of the 7th CD (which will cease to exist with this election). Until 2010-- and the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse-- the 3rd was a conservative Democratic bastion in the southernmost part of the state. (In 2008. the GOP didn't even bother to field a candidate against Blue Dog Charlie Melancon but he made a quixotic run for Senate in 2010 and had his head handed to him by sex freak and whoremonger David Vitter.) Landry beat the Democratic aspirant 63.8- 36.2%. The new 3rd moves significantly west into what is now Boustany's fiefdom. The heart of the district used to be Houma and Thibodaux and Morgan City was the western part. Now The district starts at Morgan City-- Houma and Thibodaux are part of the 6th-- and the district goes up to Lafayette and Lake Charles and all the way to the Texas border. It looks a lot more like Lord Boustany country than Landry territory.

Charles William Boustany, Jr., age 56, is a pompous little shit from Lafayette who's been in the House since 2005, when he became the first Republican to ever win the seat. He's best known for spending $18,250 to buy a title of British nobility, which is why everyone calls him Lord Boustany (even though that was a fraud and he never got the $18,250 knighthood) but he's also known as the doctor with the most medical malpractice suits against him in the history of Congress. Boustany is a cloddish laughing stock but his opponent, Landry is no rocket scientist either and he was one of the first idiots to sign up for membership in Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus. He's also a member of Congress' most prominent internal Hate Group, the very extremist Republican Study Committee. Boehner and the rest of the GOP House Establishment would like to see Boustany beat him. Boustany is considered less of an embarrassment. Jim DeMint, of course, is backing Landry and last night I noticed something that gave me some cheer:

There are around 80 members of the Progressive Caucus, most of whom-- though not all (some are leadership shills-- will oppose the Grand Bargain Obama and Boehner are cooking up for the Lame Duck Session. That's certainly not enough to stop it. So people are counting on teabaggers and far right extremists to help derail it. Most likely the real action will be in the Senate. (Imagine Bernie Sanders and DeMint filibustering the monstrosity together!) What DeMint was pointing us to in his Landry tweet was a story in the Times-Picayune about Landry and His Lordship fighting over the Grand Bargain. His Lordship is, of course, for it.

Two Louisiana Republican congressmen fighting each other for re-election disagree on whether Congress should return after the November election to deal with expiring tax breaks, farm aid and looming budget cuts. Rep. Jeff Landry, of New Iberia, said the decisions are too large to make in a rushed, "lame duck" session and should be rolled into the new year when a new Congress takes office. "Why would we want to try to bundle these major policy decisions, that basically we've been having a debate about for decades, into a lame duck session with people that aren't going to be accountable to the people because they won't be returning?" Landry said.

But Rep. Charles Boustany, of Lafayette, said if Congress doesn't address some issues before year's end, the nation's economy could spiral into deep recession, echoing a concern repeated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers across the country.

"To say you can punt this into the next year, when every economist is giving us dire predictions of $400 million in taxes hitting this economy and throwing us into recession, is irresponsible," Boustany said.

The issue served as one flashpoint Tuesday evening at a candidate forum in Crowley, with Boustany and Landry sharply at odds over the congressional session and its implications on the U.S. economy.

Lawmakers are expected to return to Washington on Nov. 13 for a list of items considered must-do by many, including a deal to avert what is called the "fiscal cliff": the combination of expiring George W. Bush-era tax cuts and $110 billion in automatic spending cuts that begin Jan. 2.

...Landry, a freshman lawmaker and tea party favorite, used the disagreement with Boustany to continue framing his opponent as a Washington Republican insider. He described lame duck sessions as "a special interest buffet" that cram too many issues into a handful of bills and then involve scare tactics to get support from members of Congress.

"They force people to compromise their principles," Landry said in an interview Wednesday. "This is the Washington establishment trying to convince the American people that they have to swallow bad medicine."

Boustany, who is seeking a fifth term, used the disagreement to continue framing his opponent as a reckless obstructionist. He said members of Congress are responsible for working on outstanding issues through the end of the year, even if they aren't elected to new terms.

"We have an obligation to serve out that term and to do everything we possibly can for America," Boustany said after Tuesday night's forum. "To do otherwise, I believe is a violation of the oath of office."

Landry dismissed the economic concerns cited by Boustany.

Recall up above how the Times-Picayune writer effortlessly slipped in the phrase "considered must-do by many?" Who, exactly, are the "many" being referred to? Month after month Digby has been exposing the plutocrats behind the conservative consensus that rules the roost Inside the Beltway.

Don't you just love the fact that a 25 million dollar campaign financed by millionaire CEOs is telling average people to go to Townhalls and hold up signs? I guess they just don't have any access to power to make their case...

No, they're brainwashing the citizens, trying to persuade them to sell-out their on interests on behalf of these greedhead plutocrats. But you knew that.

Back in July I started writing about this latest scheme. Before it was called "Fix the Debt" it was called something else: The Moment of Truth Project (and before that something else again.) Bowles and Simpson and their allies have been working this relentlessly

By the way, the teabagger has raised $1,353,691 (as of his last FEC filing, July 28). Lord Boustany was up to $2,838,057 by September 30. Lord has $1,268,158 cash on hand and the teabag-boy has $952,067. Although far right groups like Citizens United are trying to save Landry, Cantor and Boehner have directed corporate PACs to spend big on his Lordship... and they have. Aside from direct contributions (below), FreedomWorks has spent $291,967 bolstering Landry. The American Hospital Association PAC did an independent expenditure for Boustany to the tune of $192,755. They want that Grand Bargain bad.

Lotta Ugly Behind The Bitter Republican Party Civil War

Ohio's 8th congressional district has been sending John Boehner to Congress for two decades. But he isn't well-liked in the district and the district isn't even Republican by registration. In fact, there are about the same number of registered Democrats and Republicans. The district is mostly Independent, albeit independents who have been voting for Boehner. However, unlike previous years, Boehner has a real opponent now, Justin Coussoule, with an alternative vision to Boehner's outsourcing and off-shoring trade policies-- he was a force behind NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO/GATT and is still pushing for job-killing trade agreements with half a dozen low wage countries-- and to Boehner's vision of bank bailouts on the one had and stiffing middle class families on the other. (Yes, Boehner engineered the victory for Bush's no-strings-attached Wall Street TARP bailout in 2008.)

Interestingly, Boehner's Ohio media allies can only make one rationale for re-electing him again-- he might wind up as Speaker (as though that might be beneficial for Ohio voters, instead of the disaster his term in office has already proven!). But will the lazy, hard-drinking golfer wind up as Speaker if the Republican manage to win in November? Republican House members prefer to not discuss it openly but there's a lot of chatter about kicking the corrupt Boehner out of the leadership (again) and inserting a more ideologically extreme candidate more in line with the teabaggers. Mike Pence is the obvious choice.

Even AOL managed to sniff this one out, although they focused on the impending battle between right-wing fanatic Jim DeMint and corrupt conservative Mitch McConnell in the Senate where a 10 seat pickup would "include a crop of true limited-government conservatives like Rand Paul of Kentucky, who has suggested eliminating the Departments of Education and Energy; Mike Lee from Utah, who advocates revisiting the 14th and 17th Amendments to the Constitution that deal with citizenship and states' rights; Alaska's Joe Miller, who told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that he believes unemployment benefits are unconstitutional; and Marco Rubio of Florida, who has consistently campaigned on repealing the recently passed health care law."

The result of the new blood, say senators, staffers and congressional scholars, would be a Republican caucus that is far more conservative than it is today, leading an assault on the Obama administration's agenda on the outside, while it faces a potential civil war within.

Without even gaveling into session, Senate-watchers say Day One of a Republican-led Senate would mean the legislative death of anything left on the wish lists of special-interest groups aligned with Democrats, such as the Employee Free Choice Act (the union-backed item known as "card check"); climate change legislation with a cap-and-trade mechanism; comprehensive immigration reform; and Don't Ask Don't Tell, if the Senate fails to pass it this year.

Also in danger would be portions of the health care reform bill passed into law in 2010, which Republicans have repeatedly promised to "repeal and replace," and possibly the most treasured-- but increasingly controversial-- form of legislating: the congressional earmark.

Yesterday's Washington Post put the prospect of a Republican win in even starker terms in a piece by Steven Pearlstein and he started with the House.

Over in the House, Minority Leader John Boehner is pushing the idea that two years of record budget deficits have badly hurt job creation and economic growth. I don't know where Boehner learned his economics, but the last time I checked the textbooks they still said that deficit spending by the government actually increases employment and economic activity. To believe otherwise is to believe that hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and stimulus spending somehow disappeared from the economy without a trace.

Indeed, anyone who argues, as Boehner does, that it would be economic folly to raise taxes during a recession is a card-carrying Keynesian. In the world outside of the Republican cloakroom, it doesn't matter whether it's the government or a household spending that extra dollar - each generates at least an extra dollar of economic activity somewhere in the world. To the extent that the stimulus money has been spent or invested here in the United States, it is axiomatic that it has generated or protected jobs.

Boehner's delusion finds company on the other side of the Capitol, where Senate Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and Jon Kyl claim popular support for their whacky theory that tax cuts, in and of themselves, don't add to budget deficits.

"There is no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminish revenue," McConnell declared, speaking for himself and "virtually all" of his Republican colleagues. The Republicans must be unaware of the warehouses full of reports by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued over the past decade that are chock full of just that sort of evidence. Or perhaps they're holding out for more definitive evidence, like a voice from a burning bush.

Then there's the man of the hour, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who has been busy trying to drive the last remaining moderates from the Republican temple. Writing recently on The Post's op-ed page, DeMint said the country has finally awakened to the fact that President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have tried to "push the United States to the left of Europe." Clearly this is not someone who has spent much time in France.

But there's good news, writes a triumphant DeMint. "Americans quickly realized that if this country was going to survive, they needed to elect people who would respect, not ignore, the limits of government prescribed by the Constitution." In DeMint's political fantasy, there are millions of Americans out there ready to take up arms to limit the reach of the Commerce Clause and protect the sanctity of the 10th Amendment.

Let's not forget that rising star of the conservative movement, Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who took to the airwaves to declare that "before Obama, 100 percent of the private economy was private," but now 51 percent of the American economy is under the ownership or control of the federal government." Eat your heart out, Vladimir Putin!

And how do you think the beleaguered private sector has responded to this unwarranted and unconstitutional government takeover of the economy? Profits are booming, and publicly traded share prices are up 70 percent!

For Obama, however, there is no pleasing Wall Street or the business community, no matter how many banks and insurance companies and car companies are rescued from the consequences of their lousy business judgments.

Who Will Win The GOP Civil War-- Teabaggers Or Plutocrats?

Are teabaggers looking to bring back ole Cal Coolidge too?

South Carolina's radical right icon, Jim DeMint, very conspicuously declined to endorse John McCain for re-election to the U.S. Senate, just as he first declined to support mainstream conservative Charlie Crist and then helped fuel the extremist and teabagger momentum for fringe outsider Marco Rubio. J.D. Hayworth supporters are elated. It was one thing for even a fanatic firebrand like DeMint to oppose a Republican governor who had been recruited and endorsed by the NRSC, but quite something else to refuse to support a fellow sitting Republican, a longtime colleague and the party's most recent standard-bearer.

DeMint is counting on McCain losing his seat. This weekend he told the GOP's ideologues at their annual CPAC convention in DC, “I’d rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who believe in the principles of freedom than 60 who don’t believe in anything. I believe in holding incumbent Republican senators accountable.” The right wing base ate it up.

Right wing parties essentially exist for one reason and only one reason: to work toward maintaining the status quo. Other than counterrevolutionary change (i.e., abolishing freedom and liberty, limiting voter participation and franchise, dismantling popular social programs like Social Security, Medicare, public education, progressive taxation), right wing parties simply oppose change. Last year Mike Lux's brilliant book The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be laid out the dichotomy between forward-thinking progressives and reactionary conservatives in the context of American history.

From the very beginning, the same third of Americans who today are frightened, diehard-anti-change conservatives were opposed to the colonies breaking free from England. Assholes like Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, Jim DeMint, John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Miss McConnell, McCain, the two kook senators from Oklahoma, the Bushes, the Palins, the Cheneys... the whole rotten lot would have fled either to Canada or back to England, or would have fought against the revolutionaries. The conservatives opposed the Declaration of Independence and later opposed every attempt to broaden the franchise beyond wealthy, white male property owners.

Conservatives opposed every single attempt at progress in the history of our country, from the abolition of slavery to the granting of women the right to vote, and from regulations to protect consumers from poisoned meat and workers from dangerous factories to ending child labor, monopolies, and to reining in the overwhelming power of the monied classes over the rest of society. Republicans, the overtly conservative party, are still fighting the same battles today-- and always, as we have seen in Wall Street puppet Paul Ryan's roadmap to abolish Social Security and Medicare, hoping to turn back the clock so that the accumulated generational wealth of the very few will override all other social concerns.

But how is this kind of a platform going to work in a democracy? Sure, subverting the working-family party-- in our case, the Democrats-- has been very helpful, and indeed the Democrats as a political party are next to useless. And control of the mass media and weakening of the education system (including emphasis on memorization and a de-emphasis on critical thinking) have also helped the right. But even then, it would be hard to run their ridiculously reactionary program as a serious choice in democratic elections. So they've teamed up, over and over, with the forces of bigotry, xenophobia, jingoism and every kind of divisive hate under the sun.

It's worked for them, and the newest variety is the Tea Party cult. Today Jacob Heilbrunn wondered aloud in an L.A Times op-ed if the teabaggers would sink or save the conservatives, although I think he really meant to ask if it would sink or save the Republicans. The conservatives within the Democratic Party are doing quite well, thank you. (Hate Talk radio host Mark Levin says Glenn Beck is starting his own mini-Civil Way within the Civil War with his dangerous nihilistic tendencies.)

Heilbrunn focuses on the freshly minted "Mount Vernon statement," in which a small handful of reactionary and cynical powerbrokers-- he mentions Ed Meese III, Edwin Feulner Jr. and Alfred Regnery-- aims to, well (surprise, surprise!), turn back that old clock again.

[T]he establishment right is shivering-- not so much because of the unusually frosty Washington winter but because of the potential threat posed to the GOP by the insurgent "tea party" movement. As a result, conservatives are going into overdrive to attempt to co-opt it.

The Mount Vernon statement, as the Washington Post first reported, is the product of the Conservative Action Project, which is headed by Meese and emerged from the secretive conservative power-broker organization known as the Council for National Policy. The project's website explains that "just as FDR's soak-the-rich policies did not work in the 1930s to end the Great Depression, similar policies by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats will not work today in restoring to us a vibrant economy." It also features photos of Calvin Coolidge and his Treasury secretary, Andrew W. Mellon, who was an early exponent of supply-side economics, arguing that cutting taxes on the wealthy could directly lead to higher government revenues.

The Mount Vernon statement thus aims to relegate the free-spending George W. Bush era and President Obama to the sidelines and to reinvent the conservative movement in its original small-government image.

At the same time, it tries to paper over the differences between social conservatives, libertarian conservatives and neoconservatives by reminding "economic conservatives that morality is essential to limited government, social conservatives that unlimited government is a threat to moral self-government, and national security conservatives that energetic but responsible government is the key to America's safety and leadership role in the world." In papering over those differences, however, it lacks the fire and energy of the original Sharon statement.

While the stuffy, elitist David Brooks-type conservatives look down their noses at the unruly, racist mobs of teabaggers-- the way the German aristocracy looked down on the fascist movement of the late '20s and early '30s-- many less picky plutocrats, like German industrialists during Weimar, are happy to make common cause with the teabaggers and assorted other right-wing populists.

Cynical GOP operatives and propagandists Ramesh Ponnuru and Kate O'Beirne have nothing but contempt for Republicans like Brooks. Says Heilbrunn, Ponnuru and O'Beirne, writing in the Feb. 22 National Review, "liken taking the tea partyers onboard to the debates that surrounded allying the GOP with the Christian right during the 1970s. They define the problem out of existence: Some of the tea partyers may be 'rough around the edges' but 'are not unpopular and their views are not extreme.'" They feel that the teabaggers' energy and passions can be harnessed in the service of the wealthy and powerful interests that finance the Right. Heilbrunn again:

The job of the GOP is to form coalitions with the tea partyers, they say, or go out of business. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele has been playing footsie with the tea partyers, discussing the November election with about 30 of their leaders Tuesday.

Whether the GOP can permanently harness the energies of the tea party, however, is another matter. The insurgent party may well drive the GOP so far to the right that it proves something of an albatross in November. It's also hard to see how the GOP could deliver on the tea party's demand for cutting federal entitlement programs, which is political suicide. Indeed, Republicans might well prove as ineffectual as Democrats in attacking the deficit, which they compiled in the first place during the Bush presidency.

No doubt third parties such as the Know-Nothings have historically enjoyed a short life span in America. Historian Richard Hofstadter famously observed, "Third parties are like bees: Once they have stung, they die." But the tea party may wield a very potent stinger. Its fortunes likely will be bolstered by the towering federal budget deficits that the administration is accruing.

According to conservative firebrand Patrick Buchanan: "Tea partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again."

As conservative veterans urge the GOP to reclaim the small-government mantle, then, the question hovering over them is whether they will successfully harness the volatile insurgency led by the tea party, or will they themselves be swept aside as part of regime change? It would be no small irony if they were displaced by the very kind of insurrectionist spirit they embodied 50 years ago in Connecticut.

Keep in mind, when Bush took office, Clinton left a $128 billion surplus. By the time Bush left, not only had he squandered the entire surplus, the annual deficit he left Obama was over $1 trillion. During the time the GOP held power in Congress in the Bush era, the number of earmarks tripled to 12,852 from 4,126. The GOP talks a good game, but it's all about getting into power, self-serving power.