Is drug use among right-wingers perhaps even heavier than we've been imagining?

Yes, it's our old pal Rep. Steve "Nuttier Than Any Fruitcake" King (R-IA)! The Fruitcake Man opened his giant yap, so you know there must be trouble.

by Ken

The craziness is out there, and it's getting crazier. A few simple click-through's on Daily Kos's "Recommended" list brought me this daily sampling. Do I need to add that this almost random sampling could be multiplied by thousands?


THE HOUSE GOP'S NEW GO-TO GUY ON
IMMIGRATION? GOD'S REP. STEVE KING!

Daily Kos's Hunter notes ("Republican who crafted House border policy says our nation's borders were established by God") that a solid candidate for the title of Nuttiest Fruitcake in Congress, Iowa Rep. Steve King, is credited with having wrung concessions from the House Republican leadership on immigration which are credited with influencing the GOP's craziest to support the abominable bill they were rejecting because it wasn't abominable enough.

Steve King on immigration, eh? Hunter cites a RightWingWatch report that "during a conference call last month with the National Emergency Coalition, Rep. Steve King said that the U.S. needs to crack down on immigration because our nation’s borders were established by God. Disrespecting the borders, the congressman suggested, is disrespecting God’s will."

RightWingWatch

At 0:43: "I believe in the sovereign nation state. I believe that God gave us this country, He shaped it with the hands of the Founding Fathers, whom he moved around like men on a chessboard to build this nation. And we need to respect it, and revere it, and restore this country to its true destiny. That means we have to secure our borders, we have to restore the rule of law. We can't be rewarding people for breaking it. That's all pretty clear, and it's fundamentally, philosophically, and I think faithfully sound."

Even Nuttier-Than-a-Fruitcake Steve acknowledges, earlier in the clip, that he had to shop through a whole host of Bibles to find one that supports his preposterous proposition that God created all the present-day "nation-states," a proposition that I doubt he would tolerate being advanced in support of most of the world's "nation-states." His desperate Bible-shopping suggests that he has never actually read any of them, given his utter unfamiliarity with the way words "nation" and "nations" are used biblically, something that is utterly familiar to even the most casual actual reader of the Bible.

If Stevie is angling to lay the groundwork for some future insanity plea, he can count on support from most of the Founding Fathers, whose horror would by no means be confined to the nonsense about God moving them around like men on a chessboard. The time to have shut the borders tight -- locked them, and thrown away the key -- would have been when the life forms that spawned this creature slipped through.


MEANWHILE HOUSE GOP-ERS SEE RIGHT
THROUGH THE GODDAMN SOCIALIST POPE

Meanwhile Daily Kos's Scientistocrat calls attention to Molly K. Hooper's report for The Hill, "Will Speaker move bill on the pope?," which begins:

A popular piece of legislation that seeks to honor Pope Francis is stuck in Congress.

With time running out on the Capitol Hill calendar, the lawmakers who crafted the bipartisan measure are getting impatient with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).

The resolution, written by Reps. John Larson (D-Conn.) and Pete King (R-N.Y.), congratulates Francis on his March 2013 election and recognizes “his inspirational statements and actions.”

The seemingly innocuous resolution was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which hasn’t acted on it. The panel didn’t comment for this article.

The inaction and the lack of a white smoke signal from Boehner have sparked speculation that politics is at play.

Only 19 of the 221 co-sponsors are Republicans. The dearth of GOP members on the measure could be attributable to assertions that the pope is “too liberal,” according to a Republican backer of the legislation.

The source noted that Francis last year denounced “trickle-down economics.”

Some Republicans believe the pope is “sounding like [President] Obama. [The pope] talks about equality — he actually used the term ‘trickle-down economics,’ which is politically charged,” the GOP official said.

There is, of course, nothing any religious figure could say that would be considered too far right-wing to rouse the kind of anti-religious sniping apparently at play among House Republicans. As to the pope "sounding like Obama," and -- God help us -- "talking about equality," well, that could just mean that the president's and the pope's utterances have in common that neither is cripplingly insane.

Meanwhile, while we're rooting out crazed socialists who "talk about equality," it's about time we did something about whatever socialist wacko said, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

By the way, I wanted to quote the portion of the pope's 50,000-word paper in which he makes reference to "trickle-down," because it's actually quite interesting, but I ran into a Scribd "Removal Notice": "The document Pope Francis's Nov. 24, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium has been automatically removed by BookID, Scribd’s copyright protection system." Hmm, is Scribd trying to "protect" the pope from himself?

Here, though, is the portion quoted in November by the Washington Post's Zachary A. Goldfarb and Michelle Boorstein:

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”

Wow, talk about radical!


PLUS THIS JUST IN FROM UTAH: NO TALK ABOUT
HOMOPHONES AMONG THESE GOD-FEARING FOLK!

Not if you're in Utah, you don't.

Daily Kos's Richard Lyon ("Homophobic Paranoia in Utah") flags a piece by the Salt Lake Tribune's Paul Rolly, "Blogger fired from language school over 'homophonia'," which begins:

Homophones, as any English grammarian can tell you, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings — such as be and bee, through and threw, which and witch, their and there.

This concept is taught early on to foreign students learning English because it can be confusing to someone whose native language does not have that feature.

But when the social-media specialist for a private Provo-based English language learning center wrote a blog explaining homophones, he was let go for creating the perception that the school promoted a gay agenda.

Tim Torkildson says after he wrote the blog on the website of his employer, Nomen Global Language Center, his boss and Nomen owner Clarke Woodger, called him into his office and told him he was fired.

As Torkildson tells it, Woodger said he could not trust him and that the blog about homophones was the last straw.

"Now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality," Woodger complained, according to Torkildson, who posted the exchange on his Facebook page.

Torkildson says he was careful to write a straightforward explanation of homophones. He knew the "homo" part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational.

Nomen has removed that blog from its website, but a similar explanation of homophones was posted there in 2011 with apparently no controversy.

Woodger says his reaction to Torkildson’s blog has nothing to do with homosexuality but that Torkildson had caused him concern because he would "go off on tangents" in his blogs that would be confusing and sometimes could be considered offensive.

Nomen is Utah’s largest private English as a Second Language school and caters mostly to foreign students seeking admission to U.S. colleges and universities. Woodger says his school has taught 6,500 students from 58 countries during the past 15 years. Most of them, he says, are at basic levels of English and are not ready for the more complicated concepts such as homophones.

Um, yeah, that's really an advanced concept, homophones -- like "to," "two," and "too." Why would students learning English as a second language want to worry their heads about stuff like this? When they figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, then maybe we can talk.

You say this man Woodger runs a "language center"? That's a joke, right?

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Mao: The Tall Stalk Gets Cut Down-- But Not In America... The Sad Saga Of The Estate Tax

2 out of 1,000 estates are paying estate taxes this year. But even those taxes expire December 31. Obama would like to replace the current legislation with a slightly fairer tax-- but so slightly that it's almost not worth mentioning. Obama's proposal would tax 3 estates out of 1,000. The Republicans, of course, want to abolish the estate tax altogether. I thought Chris Hayes put the estate tax into context very well in his book, Twilight of the Elites. The topic he's discussing is why it's so tough to move America more forthrightly towards genuine equality and how people who benefit most from extreme inequality have outsize power-- as a result of that inequality-- that they use to protect the status quo and hold egalitarian incursions at bay.

...[W]ith the exception of England, every other industrialized democracy has higher levels of income equality than the United States. Data from the OECD shows once consistent, general principle: the higher the taxes in a given country, the less inequality. This makes obvious and intuitive sense. Taxation is the primary method for redistribution, and as a general rule, the more taxation, the more redistribution; the more redistribution, the more equality. The United States collects a far smaller share of the national income in taxes than nearly every other industrialized democracy, and in recent years that rate has been dropping. Total tax revenue as percentage of GDP in the United States is at 24.8 percent, down from 29.5 percent in 2000. You can compare that to Denmark, which has the highest level of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (48.2 percent) and the most equality out of any OECD country.

Over the last thirty years or so we've seen rising inequality in pre-tax income, which means that before the government even starts its taxing, spending, and redistribution, there has been a profound and accelerating gap between high income earners and everyone else. The rich are earning more, which the non-rich's earnings stagnate or decline. But these pre-tax earnings are run through the redistributive mechanisms of the state. And during the same time that pre-tax inequality has been growing, our tax system has grown less redistributive, further amplifying inequality rather than mitigating it.

This shouldn't be all too surprising, since we've seen inequality is autocatalytic. Those at the top can use their relative power to alter and manipulate existing institutions so as to further consolidate their gains and press their advantage. We've seen this in our own society, so much so that even the most "low-hanging fruit" of meritocratic policy has been abandoned.

Take the estate tax. The estate tax is designed to only affect those with vast fortunes, estates of more than $5 million. And it's logic is clear: We don't want an aristocracy of birth-- that's the very system our founders repudiated when they created a republic. Conservative Winston Churchill argued that an estate tax provided "a certain corrective against the development of a race of idle rich," and it was out of an ideological commitment to a kind of protomeritocratic vision of equality of opportunity that robber baron Andrew Carnegie, opponent of income and property taxes, argued for a steep and confiscatory tax on inheritance:

As a rule, a self-made millionaire is not an extravagant man himself... But as far as sons and children, they are not so constituted. They have never known what it was to figure means to the end, to live frugal lives, or to do any useful work... And I say these men, when the time comes that they must die... I say the community fails in its duty, and our legislators fail in their duty, if they do not exact a tremendous share.

And yet, over the past decade, this fundamental and basic means of gently enforcing some modicum of a level playing field has been gutted. In 2002, the rate for estates of more than $1 million was 50 percent, but it was diminished each year, until it was entirely phased out in 2009. It has since been restored (extended in December 2010 only for two years, for now), but at the historically rock-bottom rate of 35 percent, with a $10 million exemption for married couples. The New York Times said House Democrats opposed the deal brokered by Obama and congressional Republicans in the lame-duck congressional session of 2010 because it "would cost 68 billion, help only the richest of the rich-- an estimated 6,600 households-- and do nothing to stimulate the economy while adding to the national debt."

So, here we are, two years later, at another lame-duck session and with the same Barack Obama working with the same congressional Republicans on the estate tax again. A post-election poll for Americans for Tax Fairness found that by a margin of 58 to 32%, people support “increase[ing] the the estate tax, also called the inheritance tax, on estates of more than seven million dollars for a couple.” Obama is, as usual, aiming very low and asking for way too little. Even as much of a corporate shill as former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, currently cochairman of Goldman Sachs, thinks Obama should step up his proposal. “A substantial estate tax," explained this week, "can provide revenues at a time when our federal government badly needs additional revenues."

Rubin was one of the signatories on a letter sent on Tuesday to every member of Congress urging them to expand the tax. The letter and call were organized by Responsible Wealth, a project of the nonprofit group United for a Fair Economy.

  The group said it was working with a senator's office to formally adopt the proposal and was in discussions to arrange a White House meeting with some of the letter's 36 signatories. Those signed on include investors Warren Buffett and George Soros, who rank among the top 15 richest people in the nation.

Though the fate of upper-income tax cuts has made headlines in recent weeks, changes to dozens of other provisions, including the estate tax, also make up the fiscal cliff, a $500 billion combination of tax hikes and spending cuts that go into effect at the beginning of 2013.

Tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush reduced the estate tax between 2002 and 2009 and eliminated it in 2010. It was reinstated in 2011 at a top taxable rate of 35 percent, exempting the first $5 million of assets-- levels more favorable to the wealthy than in 2009. The exemption level will be lowered in 2013 to $1 million, ensnaring more people in the estate tax’s net, with the top taxable rate rising to 55 percent.

The Responsible Wealth letter proposes setting the exemption at $2 million per individual, indexed to inflation, with a rate beginning at 45 percent “and rising on the largest fortunes.” President Obama has proposed returning to 2009 levels-- a flat rate of 45 percent, exempting the first $3.5 million of assets-- which would raise an estimated $276 billion between 2011 and 2020, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Joining the entire Republican caucus in opposing estate taxes are John Tester (MT) and the 4 Democrats who always serve the interests of the wealthy over and above the interests of working families: Mary Landrieu (LA), Max Baucus (MT), Mark Pryor (AR), and Claire McCaskill (MO).

In Memoriam: Martin Luther King

I was up just before 4 today. The first tweet I saw was from John Boehner pointing to a pro forma statement he issued to commemorate Martin Luther King Day, for him another excuse for the House not being in session or working towards the ideals Martin Luther King is revered for. "Today," wrote Boehner's ghostwriter, "we unite in prayer and service to honor the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr, and reaffirm our commitment to the American Dream he sought to perfect. For all his great works and honors, Rev. King said he wished to be remembered simply as someone who 'tried to give his life serving others.' Service was Rev. King’s mission, and his message: he urged us to honor and serve one another, and to let the search for common ground lead us closer to liberty and justice for all. Anyone can serve, he said, 'you only need a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.' This lesson of humility endures, as does our profound respect for Rev. King's life and legacy. On behalf of the whole House, I encourage all Americans to pause and pay tribute to this true servant leader."

Personally, I was more impressed by this tweet from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN):


And no one put it better than progressive congressional candidate Brianne Murphy, running for the Democratic nomination to take on teabagger Ann Marie Buerkle in a Syracuse-based upstate New York district. Unlike Boehner, she understands what the battle for equality is all about and how tragically unfulfilled Dr. King's dream still is, thanks in great part to craven right-wing politicians like Boehner.

Over the last 44 years since the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., incredible strides have been made toward attaining his vision of an equal and just society. Perhaps the most apparent evidence of racial equality is the election of the first African-American president. While undoubtedly Barack Obama’s election serves as real progress that could only be dreamed of during King’s lifetime, we must not rely on one such accomplishment at the expense of continued progress toward equality. Although we have eradicated many of the race-based barriers to opportunity, barriers to access based on socioeconomic status-- which disproportionately impact minority families-- still exist. With all that remains to be done, the success of the few cannot justify ignoring the struggle of the many.

King envisioned "a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few." Sadly, this has become a dream deferred. Reaching certain milestones in racial equality has let our leaders off the hook and shifted the national dialogue away from the importance of equality of opportunity and outcome to debating the very relevance of equality. Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney last week said that a national dialogue around income equality is based on a politics of "envy," crying “class warfare” in defense of Wall Street, at the expense of Main Street. Those comments underscore the erosion of "equality" as a national priority.

"Harder for Americans to rise from lower rungs," published Jan. 4 in the New York Times, reported that not only have income inequities become more pronounced over the last four decades within the United States, achieving the American dream of upward mobility has become increasing difficult and unlikely. Roughly 62 percent of Americans raised in the top-fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, and 65 percent born in the bottom fifth remain in the bottom two-fifths.

In order to address the issue of poverty, we must put equality back on the national agenda. We need leaders at every level who understand that for a family choosing between heat and groceries, it is neither envy that motivates, nor a pervasive lack of work ethic that stymies. We need leaders and legislators who understand that the primary consequence of poverty is not simply the hardship imposed by a lack of material possessions; rather, it is the cyclical nature of poverty and its pervasive influence on one’s future of having grown up without equality of opportunity. They must understand the socioeconomic barriers of access to achieving the American dream, and commit to eradicating them.

This past autumn we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Syracuse University football star Ernie Davis becoming the first African-American to win the coveted Heisman Trophy. Davis’ achievement set into motion a series of events that would fundamentally change higher education in America, providing access to many who would not have had such an opportunity. As a graduate of Fowler High School and someone who cares deeply about equality of opportunity, I believe King’s message means as much today as it did 44 years ago.

Today, I will honor King’s legacy by serving my community alongside Helen Hudson, the first African-American woman to serve as councilor-at-large on the Syracuse Common Council. As Central New Yorkers, I urge each of us to take a moment to remember our deep tradition and leadership in the area of civil rights. Let us hear and answer the call serve our communities; let us work to revitalize the American dream.

As we recommit ourselves to achieving King’s dream of racial, social and economic equality for all Americans, I am optimistic that we will make unimaginable progress toward achieving that goal over the next four decades. In the words of King, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up."

Electing dedicated progressive fighters like Murphy will go a long way towards making King's dream a reality. Mushy centrists like Dan Maddei, her primary opponent, are no answer to racists and elitists like Buerkle. And the answers won't come from the top-- not anytime soon, at least. As Sahil Kapur wrote this morning at TPM:

One crystallizing theme of President Barack Obama's re-election campaign is his pledge to stem the tide of income inequality. But although hardly any would disagree that he'd be better on the issue than the Republican candidates, experts say it'll take quite a bit more action than he's suggested to really reverse the trend. Some of them even caution that part of the phenomenon is beyond the realm of public policy.

To scale back the problem, Obama wants to raise taxes on high earners to Clinton-era levels, uphold the estate tax, implement health care reform to bolster low-income uninsured people, and implement Wall Street reform so as to limit excessive risk-taking in the financial sector.

But it's far from clear whether these policies, even if fully implemented, will bring about a reversal of the three-decade trend. For instance, even though low- and middle-income Americans improved their standing during the Clinton administration, the gap between the rich and poor continued to grow.

Better than Romney? Of course. Good enough? Nope, not by a longshot.

Romney's press release, like Boehner's was an exercise in hypocrisy:

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is an occasion to reflect on the legacy of an outstanding American. Dr. King not only believed in the fundamental truth that we are all made in God's image, he fought for that truth in a campaign that brought our country closer to fulfilling its historic promise of liberty and justice for all. The United States has made enormous strides toward racial equality in the decades since Dr. King's death, but we must never rest until all people are judged, in his immortal words, not "by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Why do I call it hypocrisy? Romney spent part of today-- Martin Luther King Day-- campaigning with anti-immigrant radical Kris Kobach, the racist Kansas Secretary of State who wrote the Arizona anti-Latino legislation.

TEN OTHER THINGS MARTIN LUTHER KING SAID

Confidential to Wingnuttians: We realize you haven't heard the news, but REAL Americans believe that "all men are created equal"

[Click to enlarge]

by Ken

I'm still pretty steamed about a lot that happened in the course of the presidential campaign, but I suppose today isn't the day to dwell on it. Let's enjoy it a little.

Okay, so maybe we'll dwell just a little. And blame Tom Toles for bringing it up.

I didn't think I could be much more offended than I was by the McCranky campaign's invention of a distinction between "real Americans" and presumably some other, "unreal" kind, including the stupefying lie that only its presumed "real Americans" work for a living. How stupid and dishonest can you be? (Well, apparently, if you're the Princess Sarah, there's no cap on either category. You were born to have contempt for actual knowledge and to lie your fool head off.) But then there was that McCrankyite wingnut who proclaimed that equality isn't an American value, that it's more a French thing, whereas we go in for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

These people pretend to be the "real" Americans, and they don't even know our single most stirring and as well as most defining declaration, the Declaration of Independence? Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are of course "among" the rights (not the rights but among the "unalienable rights" with which we are endowed by our Creator in consequence of the "self-evident" truth "that all men are created equal."

There is no more inherently American value, and any wingnut doodyhead who doesn't know it might want to consider shutting the fuck up about what it means to be an American.

I'm just saying. (Okay, I've got that off my chest.)

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