America Meets Its Darkness: A Look at HBO's Westworld

Maryann Price singing "I'm an Old Cowhand" with Dan Hicks and the Hot Licks. She knows all the songs that the cowboys know, 'bout the big corral where the dogies go, 'cause she learned them all on the radio, yippee-i-o-ki-ay. There are fake cowboy visitors in HBO's new series Westworld too, but they're not so nice.

by Gaius Publius

I'm a fan of science fiction, especially when it reflects and comments on the state of our national affairs — and our national affairs are definitely in a state. Which brings me to the new HBO series Westworld.

Westworld is derivative in some ways. It takes off from a pleasant mid-1970s film entertainment by Michael Crichton and starring Yul Brynner, also called Westworld, in which an android-populated theme park goes chaotic and androids starts killing the visitors. But this new version adds in much of the violence and dark tone from HBO's excellent, realistic Western drama Deadwood, plus a lot more brutal sexuality than the earlier film, similar to that in Game of Thrones and other recent productions.

Yes, the visitors to the original Westworld theme park could "encounter" the saloon girls at will, all of whom would be willing, and shoot up the android locals, but that part was downplayed in the film. As Rick Perlstein amply documents in Nixonland, America of the 1970s was starting to come to grips with its darker self, with the world of the My Lai massacre and police brutality, of brutal sexism and incentivized social conformity, and it dealt with that encounter by trying to turn away, by trying to re-enter the world of American myth that Ronald Reagan ultimately shepherded us to.

Just one example: The 1968 My Lai massacre was prosecuted, sort of, but what was done, there and elsewhere, was never absorbed, understood or metabolized as a wider problem within the American psyche — particularly the male American psyche, since the soldiers involved in all these massacres were indeed male. So the pushback, the effort to start the forgetting, began. As early as 1970 mainstream propagandists were working to blunt Vietnam era awarenesses and counter-cultural challenges with, for example, "folk" groups like entirely anodyne New Christy Minstrels, who were introduced at Super Bowl IV as "young Americans who demonstrate — with guitars."

Bottom line, in the 1970s the country was in the process of trying to sanitize itself, and there was an ongoing public "discussion," both explicit in public conversation and implicit in the media and public entertainment. The original Westwood was part of that effort, if unconsciously. As I said, a pleasant entertainment, and in fact a watchable film.

America Meets Its Darkness

America today is a much different place. The Reagan Revolution is over — Reagan, the agent who engineered our re-entry into American counter-factual myth — and the brutal facts of our darker nature are now coming home to stay, in the form of murderous counter-strikes from abroad and at home, and an economically induced opioid-and-suicide crisis that won't cease until our rulers cease the economic pressure that drives it.

Which they will never do. And which everyone knows they will never do, everyone at least who watched the determined effort to destroy the Sanders campaign by anyone with a stake in the status quo. Trump voters, those not driven mad by demons of race, have parallel fears.

In short, America is having dark dreams about itself, and those dreams are beginning to be represented even in mainstream entertainment, like the new Westworld.

Here's what Rolling Stone critic Rob Scheffield says about this series:

What 'Westworld' Says About America Right Now

HBO's big-budget reboot of the Seventies sci-fi movie is really about masculinity – and Rob Sheffield thinks it could not be more timely

In a better time for this country, Westworld would feel a lot more like science fiction. Instead, this HBO show is a bloody, pulpy, breast-intensive satire of the American male psychosis at its most demented. It's set in a futuristic theme park where guests pay thousands of dollars a day to live out their Wild West fantasies, which mostly involve shooting or torturing the robot "hosts" who populate the park. Saloons, whorehouses, six-shooters and Stetsons: all an excuse for the clientele to act on their most depraved urges. One of the human masterminds behind the park sums up the guests as "rich assholes who want to play cowboy." The robots bleed real-looking blood – buckets of it, in fact – but it's all fun and games as long as they don't really feel or remember anything, right? Like the replicant hunters in Blade Runner would say, they're just skin jobs.

Except what happens if these hosts develop their own consciousness – androids who dream of electric tumbleweeds?

In this Westworld, the androids who permanently inhabit the park are not the villains, but the victims of "rich assholes who want to play cowboy" — victims of wealthy visitors who see others in the world as toys for their entertainment (sound familiar?). And now those toys, previously unaware of their own low status in a world they thought was theirs, are starting to wake up.

How's that for a concept that perfectly captures the times?

More from Scheffield:

Evan Rachel Wood, by the way, is easily the best thing about Westworld – she's the spark of raw humanity who makes it all compelling. Her Dolores is a doe-eyed rancher's daughter who exists to be either rescued or abused, depending on the whims of the paying costumer. And since it's usually abused, she lives out the same loop over and over again, a loop that ends as her blood gets wiped away and her memory gets reset. But before the technicians send her back to work on the bunny ranch, they test her with one query: "Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?" As long as she keeps saying no, she qualifies as a good little robot sexpot. Except she's unmistakably showing signs of logging memories and figuring out what's going on, which means she's showing signs of becoming disturbingly human.

And something else, something that Scheffield isn't saying, is that Wood's character is learning to lie to the technicians about what she knows — a detail that gives the series an added dramatic punch.

You'll need to be clear about the premise before you begin to watch, though; the pilot is confusing. I think the film-makers were counting on the grit and gore to keep you tuning in until the tragedy of that world becomes clear. It's not immediately obvious, for example, who's not an android and who is, and I almost stopped watching. But if you're forearmed with enough information, you won't make that mistake.

"Minds destroyed by madness"

This isn't so much a movie review as a nation review. Like Allen Ginsberg, we are watching, not just the best minds of this generation, but also the worst "destroyed by madness," trapped in a world they can neither tolerate nor change. The Sanders-side electoral rebellion has failed, for whatever reason, and the Trump-side uprising, fueled by the radical mix of forces that drove that rage, will likely be snuffed there as well.

Where do the American people go from here? Do they endure till they die in the hole they live in, dreaming of "freedom" via thirty-second offroad truck commercials? Or do they do something else? What will Evan Rachel Wood do after the third or fourth brutal rape, somewhere in midseason, when she realizes she doesn't have to execute her programming and can execute ... something else? Will her reaction be sanctioned by law, or by the keepers of the world she can't escape? The dramatic possibilities, in the series at least, are endless and exciting.

I don't expect to say the same for the larger Westworld that created the smaller one, certainly not with the word "exciting" attached.

"But I saw you and you saw me, mostly"

Let's end, however, on a cheerier note, with the scat-singing of the above-mentioned Maryann Price, performing a song I call "But I Saw You and You Saw Me, Mostly," but which Dan Hicks called "Shorty Falls in Love" or here, "Another Night."

Ignore the odd laughter and applause — it's a rehearsal for the Flip Wilson comedy show on what may be a crowded practice set.

We sped around the world
To see what we could see,
But I saw you and you saw me mostly

Eyes for each other and not for the world. Maybe there's a lesson there.

GP
 

Would Wisconsin Republicans Really Cheat To Hold Onto Power?

When Richard Nixon, a disgraced GOP icon whose tactics are revered, was planning his reelection campaign, he never hesitated to break the law, justifying it, Machiavelli-style, as for the good of the country. This morning I was reading through some of the more entertaining instances delineated in historian Rick Perlstein's opus on the era, Nixonland. Nixon went from dirty tricks to illegal subversion in both parties' primaries.

Jeb Magruder's team's chief operative, Herbert Porter, was the White House scheduling director. One of Porter's masterpieces was hiring a young aide, Roger Stone, to contribute $200 to Pete McCloskey in the name of the militant homosexual group the Gay Liberation Front and forward the receipt to William Loeb (though Stone, ashamed of any imprecations against his masculinity, chickened out and made the contribution from the Young Socialist Alliance instead).

...The president took in news of these exploits enthusiastically, ravening for more: "Haldeman's fellows have certainly got a source in the Muskie office," he would gloat. "I'm sending you down a copy of a memo they stole."

And even back in the early 1970s stealing was a crime, although Nixon was never charged or indicted-- part of the reason why politicians 40 years later still think they can get away with criminal acts regarding election campaigns. Few people, other than historians, are even aware that Nixon's perverted Justice Department persuaded segregationist icon George Wallace to run as a Democrat rather than as an independent, where he would be able to siphon off Southern racists from Nixon's victory plans. How did he persuade him? Wallace's brother Gerald was under investigation for tax fraud. It was pretty much an open and shut case that should have landed him in prison. Instead, the case was mysteriously dropped in return for Wallace's filing to run as a Democrat. Not that that was enough for Nixon. His Attorney General/campaign manager, John Mitchell, funneled $10,000 to the American Nazi Party to help get members of Wallace's old American Independent Party to switch their registrations to Democrats. Today, Nixon and Magruder and Mitchell would be very proud of Scott Walker, their disciple in Wisconsin. After the Democrats started petition drives to recall half a dozen GOP state senators, the Wisconsin Republicans use Koch contributions to hire out-of-state gunslingers to come in and "get" signatures on petitions recalling Democratic state senators.

A formal challenge to be filed later today against Republican recall petitions asks the Government Accountability Board to disqualify thousands of invalid signatures, and reject recall elections against three Democratic state senators, because widespread and systemic election fraud has tainted the entire GOP operation.
 
"The overwhelming evidence clearly shows a pervasive pattern of election fraud committed by the shady out-of-state organization hired by Republicans to collect recall petitions," said Senate Democratic Leader Mark Miller. "Thousands of Wisconsin citizens fell victim to lies and misinformation spread by the circulators, and the papers submitted by this operation contain a river of omissions and wrong information."

Miller continued: "We believe that when the facts are reviewed, the GAB will throw out thousands of flawed signatures because they were fraudulent or defective. The vast depth of this misconduct calls into question the legitimacy of every signature collected by these circulators, and shows that the GOP effort failed to gather the valid signatures needed for recall elections."
 
The formal challenge, to be filed on behalf of the Democratic senators this afternoon, shows that the number of invalid signatures gathered through systemic election fraud would reduce the total collected against each of the three Democratic state senators well below the threshold required to trigger a recall election. Miller and Democratic Party of Wisconsin counsel Jeremy Levinson will hold a media availability today at 4:15 PM to discuss the challenge.

The challenge of GOP recall petitions features scores of claims from Wisconsin citizens who were victimized by the wholesale election fraud of the disreputable out-of-state firm hired by Wisconsin Republicans to collect signatures. Kennedy Enterprises received nearly $100,000 from the Republican Party of Wisconsin to circulate recall petitions. Kennedy owns a tarnished reputation based on past offenses in Colorado.

The Democratic challenge shows that Kennedy Enterprises has continued these fraudulent practices while working for Wisconsin Republicans.
 
Some of the cases and examples of election fraud outlined in the formal recall challenge of GOP petitions to be filed this afternoon include:

• Senate District 12:  Of the 534 people contacted who had signed the petition, 9.2% indicated they were misled into signing the petition or asserted they had never signed.

• Senate District 22: Of the 225 people contacted who had signed the petition, 6.6% indicated they were misled into signing the petition or asserted they had never signed.

• Senate District 30: Of the 372 people contacted who had signed the petition, 8.6% indicated they were misled into signing the petition or asserted they had never signed.

• Affidavit of a World War II veteran from Green Bay who was misled into signing a recall petition. Upon learning he had been duped, veteran called the sheriff to get his name removed.  When confronted, the circulator claims he will remove the name, but a later review of the petitions reveals the veteran's name was never crossed off.

• Many affidavits attesting that Circulator Sherri Ferrell - who gathered nearly 3,000 signatures in two districts-- gathered signatures on Indian reservations claiming petitions were to support "schools," "Democrats," and "tribal rights."

• Affidavit of voter in Senate District 22 attesting that circulator John Prijic claimed the petitions were for work to be done on a local park.

• Affidavit of voter in Senate District 30 attesting that circulator Annette Lord claimed the petitions were to recall Republican Senator Cowles.

• Affidavit of voter in Senate District 30 attesting that circulator Richard Madrill claimed the petitions were to recall Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

• William Pocan’s forged name appears on line 10, page 362 of circulator Kevin Pursell’s petition. As his widow Corinne Pocan’s affidavit attests, William Pocan has been deceased 20 years, although his name remains in the phone book. Pursell circulated numerous pages.

• Claims by many Wisconsin citizens who were misled by out-of-state circulators who claimed they could sign on behalf of other people.

• Numerous examples of fake addresses and signatures appearing on GOP recall petitions, as well as sloppily gathered signatures also missing critical information.
 
"Dozens of affidavits and thousands of pages of evidence clearly show that the entire Republican recall petition process has been tainted by rampant election fraud on an unprecedented level in Wisconsin history," said Miller. "Unable to gather signatures through traditional grassroots organizing and genuine support, the Republican Party of Wisconsin turned to a shady organization to collect signatures. The outcome was a tarnished process, and if every invalid and suspicious signature is thrown out, as they should be, it’s clear that the people of Wisconsin have not called for these recall elections."

Republicans Today Are Actually Even More Heinous Than The Nixonians Were 40 Years Ago

It's certainly clear the Republican's agenda was never about jobs after all. If anything, their programs are meant to destroy middle class jobs, make the rich richer and the poor poorer and put a nail in the coffin of the middle class. It's almost funny, though, how obsessed they are with destroying the hopelessly conflicted and thoroughly ineffectual supposed defenders of working families. But that's the real conservative action agenda. They think by destroying the hollowed out wreck of the Democratic Party, already so beholden to corporate interests as to be nearly useless to working people, they'll leave millions and millions of Americans without a voice.

The people-power standoff in Wisconsin, however, which isn't being led-- or even especially condoned-- by the Beltway Democrats and in which the weakest link are the Madison Democratic Establishment, should be showing the GOP that working people will find a way of expressing themselves with or without the wimp, pathetic Democratic Party. But the Republicans have long exerted all the energy they could towards destroying their career rivals. Yesterday Adam Serwer wrote in the Washington Post about the efforts of Republican legislators to restrict voting rights wherever they can. It's just like the old days-- 300 years ago (and ever since)-- when conservatives didn't want anyone to be able to vote but wealthy old white males. They never changed much.

This is happening all over the country. Newly empowered Republican legislatures have been imposing onerous voter ID laws in at least 32 states, even though in-person voter fraud is virtually nonexistent [other than among conservatives themselves]. Texas went as far as exempting concealed carry permit holders and people born before 1931 from its voter ID law, a transparent admission that such laws can needlessly disenfranchise voters and that the intent of the law was to disenfranchise likely Democratic constituencies. New Hampshire Republicans are trying to ban many college students from voting because they "vote as liberal." These days, the most important battles over access to the ballot box don't happen on election day, and they don't involve dramatic examples of flagrant voter intimidation. They happen in state legislatures, around the basic rules for how to show up and vote on election day.

They want to defund the Democrats by destroying unions, a big source of campaign financing for Democrats, often even for anti-worker Democrats like pro-corporate/anti-family Blue Dogs. In fact, almost everything the GOP has done in the House since coming to power there is to undermine the Democratic Party, President Obama and traditional Democratic constituencies. This morning I recalled a passage in Rick Perlstein's wonderful Nixonland which makes us back a few years to the same tricks the GOP is still up to today. Pat Buchanan had just been offered a new leadership post-- head of the Plumbers-- which he had passed on and Nixon had just nominated not just a raving right-wing fanatic to the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, but a raving right-wing fanatic who was willing to use all his energy to harass and intimidate minority voters at the polls to keep them from voting. (No wonder he went on to be Chief Justice-- the worst since Roger Taney... until the current corporate and partisan hack, John Roberts (Rehnquist's perfect replacement). "Conservatives," Buchanan was whining in an internal White House memo, "are the niggers of the Nixon administration."

[He] was downright lustful in strategizing for the 1972 election. He had been refining his ideas on the subject since March, when he wrote, proposing a "Muskie Watch," that the campaign goal should be to "focus on those issues that divide the Democrats, not those that unite Republicans." That, he said in July, must be their "guiding political principle."

He knew the Old Man's heart. Nixon had been working that angle since 1948.

Buchanan filed his masterpiece on the subject in October. "Top level consideration should be given to ways and means to promote, assist, and fund a Fourth Party candidacy of the Left Democrats and/or the Black Democrats," he wrote. "There is nothing that can so advance the president's chances for reelection-- not a trip to China, not four and a half percent unemployment." Though they should also hedge their bets, and "continue to champion the causes of the blacks within the Democratic Party"-- promoting the message that "the Power Elite within the Party is denying them effective participation." Keep a flow of letters full of damaging information on Democrats to journalists; fake a poll showing Humphrey ahead (he was third); keep the president out of everything-- "the President and the Presidency" were "quintessential political assets"-- cut welfare, even though the president had already increased food stamps and food assistance by 500 percent-- it "would force a division within the Democratic Party."

Remember this oldie but goodie from Rachel Maddow last year?

Dixiecrats Threaten Democratic Chance To Win Back The House In 2012

Even a casual reader of this blog should know that one of our favorite books of the last several years has been Nixonland by progressive historian Rick Perlstein. The Blue Dog caucus was formed until two decades after the Nixon tragedy played itself out on the national stage. But even back then the problem of right-wing Democrats polluting the brand of the party of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt was very much something that had to be contended with. Even after Nixon's successful "Southern Strategy" helped cleanse the Democratic Party of many overt racists and corporate shills-- like Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm, Rick Perry, and Richard Shelby, all of whom hopped the fence to join the GOP-- a conservative residue of southern Democrats has remained behind to continue distorting the Democratic Party's traditional family-oriented agenda. Today in the House that residue is known as the Blue Dog caucus and I was struck by Perlstein's description of what attracted Nixon to that type of Southern Democrat, former Texas Democratic Governor John Connally who he made Secretary of the Treasury in 1971 and who officially switched to the GOP two years later.

One of the things that delighted Nixon was that Connally had no fixed ideology. In fact, he boasted that he had no fixed convictions about anything: 'I can play it round or I can play it flat, just tell me how to play it' was one of his nostrums-- paraphrasing the apocryphal applicant for a job as a rural science teacher, asked about his convictions about the shape of the earth."

Connally, the consummate wheeler-dealer and suck up to plutocratic interests, had a long history of ethics violations and a career of skirting the law to enrich himself and his cronies. He eventually ran for the Republican presidential nomination (1980), sucked up more Big Business and lobbyist money than any other candidate but was beaten by the unstoppable Charlie Brown Ronald Reagan. Connally spent $11-- an unthinkably huge sum in those days-- and won exactly one delegate.

For Southern Democrats-- most recently Alabama reactionary Parker Griffith-- Blue Dogism, who once called themselves Boll Weevils, is a transitionary state between being a right-wing Democrat and a full-on Republican. Of the three founders of the caucus-- Texan Pete Geren and Louisianans Billy Tauzin and Jimmy Hayes-- Geren went to work for Bush as a turn-coat Democrat and Tauzin and Hayes switched parties outright.

Southern Blue Dogs generally do not pay DCCC dues and suck up the bulk of DCCC campaign contributions, while voting, when it comes to tough, contested issues, with the Republicans most of the time. Most of them-- Travis Childers (MS), Gene Tayor (MS), Lincoln Davis (TN), Marion Berry (AR), Bart Gordon (TN), Frank Kratovil (MD), Glenn Nye (VA), Charlie Melancon (LA), John Tanner (TN), Jim Marshall (GA), Allen Boyd (FL), and Bobby Bright (AL)-- retired or were defeated last November.

The only ones left are a motley and confused group who have voted overwhelmingly with Boehner. Below is a list of current Dixiecrats along with their latest ProgressivePunch scores:

John Barrow (GA- 26.19)
Sanford Bishop (GA- 50.0)
Dan Boren (OK- 14.29)
Ben Chandler (KY- 33.33)
Jim Cooper (TN- 50.0)
Henry Cuellar (TX- 26.19)
Mike McIntyre (NC- 32.50)
Mike Ross (AR- 19.05)
David Scott (GA- 50.0)
Heath Shuler (NC- 45.24)

35 Republicans have voted less frequently in lockstep with John Boehner than Dan Boren has. "No one really thinks of him as a Democrat," one high-ranking congressional staffer told me. "None of these Blue Dogs... the ones who Boehner can depend on day in and day out, is what you could really call a Democrat. It's all a silly, dysfunctional fiction that sacrifices party integrity for some kind of self destructive myth about a Big Tent that's just killing us. Steve Israel [conservative ex-Blue Dog who is now head of the DCCC] will only make it worse... We should be able to win back the House in 2012 just based on Republican overreach, but we won't. These guys didn't learn a thing last November."

Blue America, which helped retire the worst of the aisle crossers last year, Bobby Bright, hopes to find at least another couple to pick off in this cycle, hopefully in primaries. We are also working to make sure progressive challengers to Republicans don't get pushed out of their races by Israel and Shuler. If you would like to lend a hand, please do so at the BadDogs page.

Fascism, Israel And American Jews-- But Just the Non-Einstein Types

Hard to say which Lieberman is the eviler twin

There are a lot of bad players in the stalled Israeli-Palestinian normalization talks but no one-- no, not even the kook in Iran-- is as culpable and reprehensible as Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of the neo-fascist Yisrael Beiteinu Party (which represents deranged and bigoted right-wing Soviet immigrants like Lieberman himself). The tiny splinter party-- which didn't find the Likud right-wing and crackpot enough-- has 15 seats (out of 120) in the Knesset. Lieberman has a checkered past, having been convicted of assaulting a 12 year old boy, involvement in stealing classified materials and a myriad of ongoing investigations and indictments based on a life of corruption one should always expect from any right-wing politician. One of his scams, in fact, was the mirror image of the scandal that helped end the freakshow career of sleazy Pennsylvania Republican, and former congressman, Curt Weldon. Like Weldon, Lieberman can't resist a bribe... ever. He claims the police have it in for him and swears up and down he's never taken any bribes. The decision of whether to indict him on the latest batch of charges-- corruption, bribery, breach of trust, fraud, money laundering, witness harassment, and obstruction of justice-- will come in late February.

Not all Jews are Albert Einstein. In fact, even if Jews make up a disproportionately large number of Nobel Prize laureates, there's no reason to believe that there aren't as many utterly stupid Jews as there are any other ethnic or religious group. There have always, for example, been Jews who have supported-- usually because of personal avarice and greed-- right-wing political parties regardless of the fact that the right-wing has been systematically exterminating Jews since the days of the Babylonian Captivity, the first Purim, the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the guy in Germany who, according to the idiotic Godwin, you're not supposed to ever mention, etc. Not all Jews have been as politically savvy as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who once remarked that "The Jews are a nervous people. Nineteen centuries of Christian love have taken a toll." Some voted for Hitler and some voted for Stalin-- two tragic mistakes. And some support Republicans in the U.S. today. Come to think of it... that's what got me writing about Avigdor Lieberman today. He certainly has far more supporters among a certain subset of American Jews (not the Einsteins or Disraelis of the current generation) than he has in Israel.

Recently a friend of mine, a self-styled (minor) Mossad agent based in Florida, told me how his parents and "all their friends," lifelong Democrats, had re-registered as Republicans and are looking forward to voting against Obama. Instinctually I figured his parents are just middle class Jews who aren't fans of "schvartzas" but he persuaded me that some of their best friends (and favorite servants)... etc. Then I remembered that his sister was in a terrible accident-- and is now in a vegetative state-- and that the family had come into tens of millions of dollars in settlements. Settlements they'd rather not pay taxes on. That may have something-- even a great deal-- to do with it but it's a different kind of settlements-- the ones in Israel, he claims-- that are motivating them.

Perhaps you read Robert Naiman's post on Obama, the UN and Israel yesterday. If not, it's worth going over. It's the kind of stuff that has driven some non-Einsten types American Jews-- especially ones with $10 million settlements-- crazy.

A key resolution on the Israel-Palestine conflict is now before the UN Security Council. Largely echoing stated US policy, the resolution embraces negotiations, endorses the creation of a Palestinian state, and demands an immediate halt to Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But even though the resolution echoes US policy, President Obama is under pressure to veto the UN resolution from forces in Washington who want to protect the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Can President Obama say no to this pressure? Yes, he can! Urge him to do so.

I keep forgetting to tell my Mossad friend in Florida to tell his parents that Lieberman is behind a new version of the Law of Return, making it applicable exclusively to born Jews, and Orthodox converts as well as their offspring rather than converts to mainline sects of Judaism (not to mention from other religions). Remind you of any Republican proposal going around these days?

I almost forgot... I was just re-reading Rick Pearlstein's riveting Nixonland and I chanced upon this passage regarding the difficulty Nixon was having in getting the CIA to break laws for him regarding harassing domestic political opponents:

Hearing of his lack of control of any lever of government always sent Richard Nixon into flights of rage. He started ranting about the IRS.

"We have the power but are we using it? To investigate contributors to Hubert Humphrey, contributors to Muskie, the Jews, you know, that are stealing everybody... He trailed off.

...The next week the president took it up with Haldeman: "Bob, please get me the names of the Jews, you know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats... Could we please investigate some of these cocksuckers?"

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the way Nixon was dealing with his violent anti-Semitism was by importing thousands and thousands of Eastern European Nazi war criminals into states like New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to give the Republicans a political advantage over Jewish-backed Democrats.

Boehner Makes The Final Argument For Corporations And Teabaggers... But Who Will Make One For Ordinary Americans?

Boehner gave the Republican weekly radio address this morning-- his party's final argument of the election season. He was back in Ohio, getting ready to campaign with the GOP's pet Nazi candidate, Rich Iott, in Lucas County. Iott, who called the SS unit he emulates "freedom fighters" defines "freedom" exactly the same way all rightists-- whether Nazis or Republicans-- do: the "freedom" of the rich and powerful to exploit the vulnerable and to exploit society. Iott's second biggest campaign contributor, after himself, is none other than... John Boehner.

Boehner's speech this morning was a polished up but tired compendium of the same twisted and dishonest arguments claiming Obama, rather than the very policies Boehner has been pushing for two decades, is the cause of the country's economic situation. “In the final days of the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to ‘change this country and change the world.’ Well I don’t know about the world, but here at home, Americans haven’t experienced the change President Obama promised," he smirked. “One in ten of our fellow citizens is out of work. Our national debt has grown by $3 trillion. Trust in government has fallen to an all-time low."

That last sentence is a boast of the only accomplishment the GOP has achieved since the 2008 election. Even Boehner, though, has to admit the economy went south when Bush was in the White House. He claims, though, that Obama's policies made it worse.

The other day I was recalling a passage in Rick Perlstein's exhaustive and insightful Nixonland about the run-up to the 1970 midterm election.

Nixon was certain the Republicans would rock the midterms. He and Agnew weren't just campaigning against liberal Republicans, they were on a jihad against Democrats, and were horrified when their efforts largely backfired. They did manage to unseat moderate New York Republican Charles Goodell and replace him with one-term extremist James Buckley (who ran on the Conservative Party line, a kind of teabagger ahead of his time; Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan routed him in the next election). But Ralph Smith, the far right Illinois Republican they were so determined to keep in office, lost to Adlai Stevenson III and the far right Republican tap dancer in California, Georgia Murphy, was slaughtered by John Tunney. Nixon's handpicked wingnut candidates in Florida and New Jersey didn't even come close, and George H.W. Bush lost his second consecutive Senate race in Texas.

Democrats targeted by Nixon for smears and dirty tricks won reelection in almost every state where Agnew set foot, from Wisconsin-- where the Nixon candidate only managed 28% against William Proxmire-- to Nevada, Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Utah. Mitt Romney's mother Lenore was Nixon's big hope in Michigan, but the voters there were smart enough to send her away with less than a third of the vote and reelect Phil Hart. Hubert Humphrey won back his Senate seat in Minnesota, and so did Ted Kennedy (MA), Edmund Muskie (ME), Mike Mansfield (MT), Joseph Montoya (NM) and Gale McGee (WY), all equated with terrorists by Nixon hatchetmen.

The House, which Nixon never understood and never cared about anyway, went even worse for the GOP. They showed a net loss of a dozen seats, and many of the kooks Agnew backed as challengers to Democratic incumbents-- like John Bircher Phyllis Schlafly-- were badly defeated.

How did Democrats turn the Nixon-Agnew onslaught around? Reagan and the two Bushes hadn't yet stacked the Supreme Court with a gaggle of dangerous corporate hacks like Alito, Scalia, Roberts and Thomas, and the Fairness Doctrine was still in place. When Nixon bought airtime for a 30-minute speech on all the networks the night before election, the FEC made him split the time with the Democrats (who had to pay their share). Nixon's speech was chopped down from 30 minutes to 15 and made no sense; it looked and sounded horrible. The Democrats recruited a relaxed and sane-sounding Sen. Edmund Muskie (ME) to make their case. It cost the GOP their victory.

Calmly, he said the charge Democrats appeased thugs as "a lie, and the American people know it is a lie-- a lie about the party "which led us out of depression and victory over international barbarism; the party of John Kennedy, who was slain in the service of the country he inspired; the party of Lyndon Johnson, who withstood the fury of countless demonstrations in order to pursue a course he believed in; the party of Robert Kennedy, murdered on the eve of his greatest triumph. How dare they tell us that this party is less devoted or less courageous in maintaining American principles and values than they are themselves?"

His voice rose slightly; some passion was called for.

Occasionally the camera closed in on his chiseled face. The word Lincolnesque appeared in the press reports. His tone turned rueful: "This attack is not simply the overzealousness of a few local leaders. It has been led, inspired, and guided from the highest offices in the land...

"Let me try to bring some clarity to this deliberate confusion," he said. Democrats wanted security against lawlessness, too, but Democrats also thought you deserved economic security. The Republicans? "They oppose your interests" and "really believe that if they can make you afraid enough or angry enough, you can be tricked into voting against yourself. It is all part of the same contempt, and tomorrow you can show them the mistake they have made." The debate wasn't between left or right, but between "the politics of fear and the politics of trust. One says: you are encircled by monstrous dangers. Give us power over your freedom so we may protect you. The other says: the world is a baffling and hazardous place, but it can be shaped to the will of men... In voting for the Democratic Party tomorrow, you cast your vote for trust, not just in leaders of policies, but trusting your fellow citizens, in the ancient tradition of this home for freedom and, most of all, for trust in yourself."

...The New York Times found a typical blue-collar swing voter to quote in Akron, Teamster Mike Mangione. He said the National Guardsmen were "one hundred percent right in Kent State." But his wife was taking a job for the first time because he had lost his overtime and they wanted to keep three kids in Catholic school. He was voting Democratic. "This summer only ten out of forty guys were working because of the slowdown in the construction industry."

My question is almost too obvious to ask; I just wish the answer was as well. Who do the Democrats have today who can make the closing argument the way Muskie did? In other words, someone with an air of authenticity who can rally the base and appeal to independents? Republicans and their corporate allies have been working since November, 2008-- well, really way before-- to undermine President Obama and cast aspersions on his character. (It's like 1800 all over again.) And other effective Democrats, like Pelosi, for example, have been vilified to the point where their messages, regardless of content, fall on deaf ears. The right has always been very good at that. In 1970 Muskie won his own reelection bid while his national appearance helped win the cycle for the Democrats and deal a severe political blow to Nixon. Looking at the Democratic senators up for reelection this year doesn't exactly inspire confidence that too many could close the case for the party-- or even themselves. Blanche Lincoln anyone? There's one powerful exception, though: Russ Feingold, the conscience of the Senate. The DNC should buy the airtime and put him on the air nationally. It could help save his own seat and make the case effectively for the whole party, much the way Muskie did in 1970. Or maybe this will work:

Tonight's Random Thoughts... And Our Nightly Contest

Remember when people, generally smitten rather than thoughtful ones, were ordaining Obama a transformative leader? Should dangerous Wall Street shill and empty suit Paul Ryan ever become President of the United States, Obama will have been transformative in the same way Franz von Papen was. Or Kurt von Schleicher, the German Chancellor (and monarchist-- i.e., handmaiden to the elites) between von Papen and Hitler. Von Schleicher sought to thwart Hitler's rise to power, first by putting together a bizarre coalition around a concept of a "non-parliamentary, authoritarian but participatory regime," embracing everything from labor unions to "moderate" Nazis. He failed and, less than 2 months after taking office, was replaced by the elites who felt Hitler had matured and could be trusted-- in much the same way Sunday's Cincinnati Enquirer described their imaginary Mean Jean Schmidt in an endorsement. They fired von Schleicher and put in Hitler, certain they could control him, on June 30, 1933. Hitler had von Scheicher murdered 5 months later when it looked like he was trying to bring back the Hohenzollern monarchy to save Germany from the Nazi scourge. Too late! Be warned I'm writing more about Nazis and completely thumbing my nose at Goldwin's Law in the morning.

Now some more Nixonland; this time a little reflection on war. Our military men and women are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and no one seems quite sure why... or how to make it stop. Back when Nixon was president, it was the GIs in Southeast Asia who were working the hardest and most effectively to end the Vietnam War. Just as I was leaving for Afghanistan in the spring of 1969, Life Magazine started reporting on GI protests and "the terror it struck in the brass."

On March 20, alongside Route 9 by the Laos border, a captain ordered two platoons to wade into heavy enemy fire. They refused to budge: why fight for these cowards who refused to fight for themselves? A lieutenant colonel pleaded, then ordered; fifty-three still refused. They also refused to give their names. No disciplinary action was taken. The brass feared that the mutiny would spread brigade-wide.

The American army was collapsing in the field. "I just work hard at surviving so I can go home and protest the killing," explained one GI. ... In Vietnam soldiers wrote semi-seditious slogans on their helmet headliners ("The unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary, for the ungrateful...) and, caught in infractions, responded, "What are you going to do about it, send me to 'Nam?"

Reporters were noticing that that soldiers were lamenting "which of them would be the last to die for a war that even the president seemed to admit was a mistake?" Seem familiar?

Mike Pence is certainly the most far right member of the House Republican leadership-- and the most independent, kind a conservative loose cannon. His office called and woke me up a few weeks ago when I exposed him as the surreptitious source of the leak about Boehner's affair with printing industry lobbyist, Lisbeth Lyons, for whom Boehner tanked his own district's once burgeoning paper industry which he helped outsource to China. Many people in Washington think he has been considering challenging Boehner for the Speakership if the GOP manages the seize the majority next Tuesday. Earlier today, though, a less than dependable and certainly less than competent Politico reporter, Ben Smith, claimed that Pence may leave the GOP leadership to prepare for a bid for higher office.

Pence, a former hate talk radio announcer, is an ideologue and purity-queen and he probably doesn't want to be constrained by acting like a semi-adult if leadership needs to act that way from time to time. He joined Boehner, Cantor, Ryan, Sessions and the rest of the House leadership in voting in favor of Chinese currency manipulation, product dumping and job outsourcing although most of the GOP caucus ran from that position and voted with the Democrats. On the other hand, when Boehner, Cantor and Ryan were pimping Bush's 2008 no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout (TARP), Pence drew the line and refused to go along. 91 Republicans voted for the bailout in the House, many feeling strong-armed by Boehner, but Pence was one of the 108 Republicans (and 63 Democrats) who voted NO. Right now his story is that he feels like he can't commit to a two-year term in the leadership, although I've never heard of anyone using that excuse before.

Pence also believes that he can be a more effective conservative voice if he is free of the responsibilities that he would have in leadership of a House Republican majority... Pence was the winner of the presidential straw poll at last month’s Values Voter Summit, showing that he’s attracted a lot of buzz within the social conservative movement.

Last night's contest was for a rare autographed Patti Smith print and our winner, picked at random, was... Hilary in Baltimore, Maryland. Tonight's contest is for a box of 20 new CDs including new releases by Linkin Park, Neil Young, The Offspring, Eric Clapton + Steve Winwood, the Doobie Brothers, Green Day, Andy Bell (formerly of Erasure), The Corrs and others. So how to win the box? Well, just the way we did it last night, except tonight for the Blue America ad for Justin Coussoule. The ad is below. You can contribute to keeping it on the air on this ActBlue page.