Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

In Monday's Midnight Meme, I wrote about how accused Kenosha Killer Kyle Rittenhouse had been inspired by the words of overt white nationalists like President Trump and those at FOX "News" like Tucker Tiki Torch Carlson. I mentioned that, not only Mr. Tiki Torch but other Republicans were offering defense and even praise for the murders in the streets of Kenosha. Now, encouraged by the likes of Mr. Tiki Torch and others, that feverish idiocy has all too predictably grown. Anyone who can look into the Republican mind and see the racism that drives the Republican Party would have seen that it would.

Rather than call for justice for Jacob Blake or raise money for his children who watched a cop shoot their father in the back 7 times, a Christian GoFundMe-style funding site, GiveSendGo, had raised over $280,000 for the legal defense of Rittenhouse by Tuesday morning, calling him "unfairly accused of murder." By the time you read this, I expect that the amount of money raised will have passed $300,000, maybe much more. In turn, that will inspire and incentivize more of the Republican Party Taliban to pull the triggers of their own guns or maybe bring back lynchings.

It's not just FOX "News" and an ersatz "Christian" crowdfunding site, Trumpist republicans in social media are also trying to justify the murders as self-defense. They claim Rittenhouse was defending himself from a "relentless, vicious and potentially deadly mob attack." If so, it was an attack Rittenhouse eagerly drove to from out of state. Did he do so while armed to the teeth or did he borrow the AR-15 he carried once he arrived in Wisconsin? The answer to that question may matter to the court or courts in which Rittenhouse is tried as it relates to any gun charges but the murder charges? Not nearly as much. The Daily Show's Trevor Noah assumes the truth of reports that he left home with the gun, but the second and third sentences in his quote below probably have an equal pertinence when it comes to Rittenhouse's motivations.

No one drives to a city with guns because they love someone else's business so much. They do it because they are hoping to shoot someone. That's the only reason people like him join these gangs in the first place.

But the rightwing crowd is pushing the self-defense angle big time. It's Tiki Torch Tucker's #1 theme, now. Self-defense? Really? How is traveling across a state line from Antioch Illinois to Kenosha Wisconsin and killing not one but two people with an AR-15 self-defense? GiveSendGo lies and tells us Rittenhouse had just "bravely tried to defend his community" but the truth is that Rittenhouse's town, aka his community, is 22 miles from Kenosha. Whether he left home with the gun or picked one up in Wisconsin, that sounds a lot more like taking a hunting trip to me. If he picked up the gun when he arrived, he must have known who would lend it to him and someone should investigate them. Regardless of the questions, Rittenhouse appears to be just another Trump Trooper like Florida pipe bomber Cesar Sayoc whose sticker-encrusted van was what amounted to a mobile ad for FOX "News" and other Republican goonery.

Facebook is now awash with Trump supporters who are, like former San Francisco Giant baseball player Aubrey Huff, describing Rittenhouse as a "national treasure" and an American hero. An American hero for what, taking the law into his own hands?

They also point to the legal troubles of the victims as though they actually deserved to be executed in the street by vigilantes. FOX "News," the fellow Rupert Murdoch family-owned New York Post, and other NAZI-friendly propaganda outfits have been touting Rittenhouse's alleged good deeds, even with pictures of him doing things like cleaning graffiti from the walls of schools, as if that would excuse what he is accused of. Charlie Manson used to sing in churches. Should I suppose that makes him a hero, too, especially since his gang killed some "liberal Hollywood types?"

Today's Republicans exist in a self-promulgated vicious circle of brainwashed mass hysteria which no amount of intervention will ever cure. Clearly, the murders of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz in Kenosha mean nothing to the psychopathic very fine people that make up the membership of the Republican Party. An attorney for Rittenhouse named John Pierce calls Rittenhouse "a shining example of the American fighting spirit" and, apparently pushing for more murder and mayhem, also says "More American men should fulfill their duty." Pierce's framing of the story gives us a clear indication of how republicans see this horrid incident and how they want all of us to see it. An alternate reality defense of Rittenhouse, where what he is accused of is righteous, normal, permissible and encouraged is being constructed just like Trump himself constructs alternate realities about COVID-19. In short, the right wing is using the Rittenhouse case as a call to arms for a race war, thus fulfilling the dream Charlie Manson had when he sent his brainwashed goons out to kill Sharon Tate and others over 50 years ago. Creating such an alternative reality is all about creating a reality that grants permission to create more death, destruction and mayhem. Even the phrase "Law and Order" is now a code for permissiveness, incitement, and invitation, at least as it comes from the lips of Republicans.

My additional questions at this moment are:

1) How long before Trump begins maniacally insisting that Wisconsin's Democratic governor should preemptively pardon Rittenhouse? Trump pardoning Rittenhouse himself would require that Rittenhouse be found guilty of a federal crime or facing federal charges. What Rittenhouse is accused of does not appear at this time to violate any federal statutes but that's why we have lawyers and courts (such as they are). Trump is already openly supportive of the accused, thus sanctioning more of the same behavior. And of course he has loudly condemned the shooting of a far right counter protester in Portland, Oregon. With Republicans like Trump, it all depends on which side of the issue you are. Shoot a NAZI = bad. Shoot a BLM protester = good. Expect Trump to become more and more of a cheerleader for such mayhem as the countdown to election day progresses.

2) How many more of the Republican Taliban army will kill how many more protesters? How many will satisfy the Republican Party's bloodlust? Someone please ask Moscow Mitch, Kayleigh McEnany, Steve Scalise and the rest of Washington's good little NAZIS. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for the corporate media to do so, though.

3) How long before this devolves even further to the point where we start to see shootings like the aforementioned one in Portland? That is what any psychopath like those we saw at the Republican Con-Vention would welcome, Americans shooting Americans in a Civil War without borders of any kind. The more corpses, the merrier. Divide and conquer so you can be the biggest looters of all! All hail the billionaires in their gated mansions! Where this is going, they'll need moats, just like the good ol' days. Ask yourself, can you see the likes of Don Jr, Rudy, Jamie Dimon, Pence, the McCloskeys, or Kimberly Guilfoyle wanting it any other way?

4) Can we expect an escalation of gunfire from Trump's Troopers if he loses the election? That one is the most rhetorical of all the questions in this list. It is the Republican Party's mad goal; rubber stamped by the $enate vote not to remove Trump from office. If you want to see step one of the Republican Party platform, look no further. What we are already seeing is prelude. 5) Will there be talk of a Medal of Freedom for Kyle Rittenhouse ala career inciter Rush Limbaugh? Among the Republican Taliban twitter crowd, there already is. I've seen the memes and I've seen the tweets. You can google them for yourselves.

This strife and the coming escalation of it all stems from the attitude of President Trump and those he addressed from the White House lawn last Thursday night, He has incited them, encouraged them and emboldened them from the moment he took that tacky ride down the escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy. His madness has been the proverbial snowball down hill since then. It's not like he didn't tell the world who and what he is and, as I said, when the opportunity presented itself to remove him from office, his party said they like what he is just fine and his $enators voted for more of the same and worse to come; exponentially worse the longer he remains in office, and at this point, long after that. Category 5 storms don't just disappear as soon as they hit resistance. They slowly cut through whatever they can, leaving their path of destruction in their wake. This is the current state of governance, folks.

There is nothing technically in the way of removing President Donald J. Narcissyphilis by the end of this week. Impeachment 2, conviction and removal only the desire and the will of all those who sit in the Capitol Building; the very fine people of both parties. Any and all present and future deaths from shootings of protesters and anti-protesters alike, in the streets are more on Trump and his 53 protective wiseguy $enators than anyone else, just like all of the other Trump-caused chaos of the last 4 years. Trump ordered the arson and Moscow Mitch poured the gas. But those of us who put up with Congress being complicit and say nothing to those in government share some blame as well. Our so-called representatives, the representatives that we the people voted for continue to ignore their oath to the Constitution and abdicate their responsibilities. It's no longer just about the COVID-19. It's about the virus of fascist, racist Republicanism. No one nipped it in the bud so now it's killing this country while the donor class laughs.

Is It Fair To Blame Trump? You Bet It Is!

The drawing above, by Nancy Ohanian, is entitled Spineless-- The GOP. There's no doubt Paul Ryan was foremost in her mind when she came up with and executed the concept. Yesterday, on Face The Nation, John Dickerson asked Ryan outright if he thinks Trump's rallies sow division in the country. Ryan replied: "Sometimes, yeah... not always but sometimes." Dickerson followed up by asking him if Trump practices a kind of politics that unifies the country. "Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't," answered Ryan with a smirk on his face like a child who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. "Come on, honestly," prodded Dickerson, somewhat dismayed that Ryan had decided to portray himself as spinelessly as that. Ryan then listed ways in which Trump had unified the country-- like "tax reform," an issue Ryan cannot be unaware how most of the country understands what a scam Trump's (and his own) "tax reform" is.

Trump's only partisan goal is unifying the right for his own benefit. Anything trans-partisan or in the national interest is beyond his ken. Yesterday, after the Trump-inspired #MAGAbomber sent a pipe bomb to Democratic activist-- and billionaire-- Tom Steyer, Trump painted another target on his back, ridiculing him as a "stumbling lunatic" and calling him crazy and "Wacky Tom Steyer."

If Ryan can't give a straight answer to a simple question, Adam Serwer certainly can. He doesn't beat around the bush in connecting Trump and his rotten regime directly to right-wing terrorism. He pointed to bullying tweets about the "Caravan," they hoped to use to scare morons into going to the polls. Señor Trumpanzee: "The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!" and "We have today informed the countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that if they allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States, with the intention of entering our country illegally, all payments made to them will STOP (END)!," He forced Pence to do likewise.

"The apparent impetus for this outrage," wrote Serwer, "was a segment on Fox News that morning, which detailed a migrant caravan thousands of miles away in Honduras. That caravan began sometime in mid-October, made up of refugees fleeing violence in their home country. Over the next few weeks, Trump would do his best to turn the caravan into a national emergency. Trump falsely told his supporters that there were 'criminals and unknown middle easterners' in the caravan, a claim that had no basis in fact, which was meant to imply that terrorists were hiding in the caravan-- one falsehood placed upon another. Defense Secretary James Mattis ordered more troops to the border. A Fox News host took it upon herself to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen whether there was 'any scenario under which if people force their way across the border they could be shot at,' to which Nielsen responded, 'we do not have any intention right now to shoot at people.'" A real liberal!

The Department of Homeland Security’s Twitter account “confirmed” that within the caravan there were people who are “gang members or have significant criminal histories,” without offering evidence of any such ties. Trump sought to blame the opposition party for the caravan’s existence. “Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted on October 22. “Remember the Midterms! So unfair to those who come in legally.”

In the right-wing fever swamps, where the president’s every word is worshipped, commenters began amplifying Trump’s exhortations with new details. Representative Matt Gaetz wondered if George Soros-- the wealthy Jewish philanthropist whom Trump and several members of the U.S. Senate blamed for the protests against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and who was recently targeted with a bomb-- was behind the migrant caravan. NRATV, the propaganda organ of the National Rifle Association, linked two Republican obsessions, voter fraud and immigration. Chuck Holton told NRATV’s viewers that Soros was sending the caravan to the United States so the migrants could vote: “It’s telling that a bevy of left-wing groups are partnering with a Hungarian-born billionaire and the Venezuelan government to try to influence the 2018 midterms by sending Honduran migrants north in the thousands.” On CNN, the conservative commentator Matt Schlapp asked pointedly, “Who's paying for the caravan? Alisyn, who's paying for the caravan?,” before later answering his own question: “Because of the liberal judges and other people that intercede, including George Soros, we have too much chaos at our southern border.” On Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, a guest said “these individuals are not immigrants. These are people that are invading our country,” as another guest asserted they were seeking “the destruction of American society and culture.”

In the meantime, much of the mainstream press abetted Trump’s effort to make the midterm election a referendum on the caravan. Popular news podcasts devoted entire episodes to the caravan. It remained on the front pages of major media websites. It was an overwhelming topic of conversation on cable news, where Trumpists freely spread disinformation about the threat the migrants posed, while news anchors displayed exasperation over their false claims, only to invite them back on the next day’s newscast to do it all over again.

In reality, the caravan was thousands of miles and weeks away from the U.S. border, shrinking in size, and unlikely to reach the U.S. before the election. If the migrants reach the U.S., they have the right under U.S. law to apply for asylum at a port of entry. If their claims are not accepted, they will be turned away. There is no national emergency, there is no ominous threat. There is only a group of desperate people looking for a better life, who have a right to request asylum in the United States, and have no right to stay if their claims are rejected. Trump is reportedly aware that his claims about the caravan are false. An administration official told the Daily Beast simply, “it doesn’t matter if it’s 100 percent accurate… this is the play.” The "play" was to demonize vulnerable people with falsehoods in order to frighten Trump's base to the polls.

Nevertheless, some took the claims of the president and his allies seriously. On Saturday morning, Shabbat morning, a gunman walked into  the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and killed 11 people. The massacre capped off a week of terrorism, in which one man mailed bombs to nearly a dozen Trump critics, and another killed two black people in a grocery store after failing to force his way into a black church.

Prior to committing the Tree of Life massacre, the shooter, who blamed Jews for the caravan of “invaders” and who raged about it on social media, made it clear that he was furious at HIAS, founded as the Hebew Immigrant Aid Society, a Jewish group that helps resettle refugees in the United States. He shared posts on Gab, a social-media site popular with the alt-right, expressing alarm at the sight of “massive human caravans of young men from Honduras and El Salvador invading America thru our unsecured southern border.” And then he wrote, “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”

The people killed on Saturday were killed for trying to make the world a better place, as their faith exhorts them to do. The history of the Jewish people is one of displacement, statelessness, and persecution. What groups like HIAS do in helping refugees, they do with the knowledge that comes from a history of being the targets of demagogues who persecute minorities in pursuit of power.

Ordinarily, a politician cannot be held responsible for the actions of a deranged follower. But ordinarily, politicians don’t praise supporters who have mercilessly beaten a Latino man, as “very passionate.” Ordinarily, they don’t offer to pay supporters’ legal bills if they assault protesters on the other side. They don’t praise acts of violence against the media. They don’t defend Nazi rioters as “fine people.” They don’t justify sending bombs to their critics by blaming the media for airing criticism. Ordinarily, there is no historic surge in anti-Semitism, much of it targeted at Jewish critics, coinciding with a politician’s rise. And ordinarily, presidents do not blatantly exploit their authority in an effort to terrify white Americans into voting for their party. For the past few decades, most American politicians, Republican and Democrat alike, have taken care not to urge their supporters to take matters into their own hands. Trump did everything he could to fan the flames, and nothing to restrain those who might take him at his word.

Many of Trump’s defenders argue that his rhetoric is mere shtick. That his attacks, however cruel, aren’t taken 100 percent seriously by his supporters. But to make this argument is to concede that following Trump’s statements to their logical conclusion could lead to violence against his targets, and it is only because most do not take it that way, that the political violence committed on Trump’s behalf is as limited as it currently is.

The Tree of Life shooter criticized Trump for not being racist or anti-Semitic enough. But with respect to the caravan, the shooter merely followed the logic of the president and his allies: He was willing to do whatever was necessary to prevent an “invasion” of Latinos planned by perfidious Jews, a treasonous attempt to seek “the destruction of American society and culture.”

The apparent spark for the worst anti-Semitic massacre in American history was a racist hoax inflamed by a U.S. president seeking to help his party win a midterm election. There is no political gesture, no public statement, and no alteration in rhetoric or behavior that will change this fact. The shooter might have found a different reason to act on a different day. But he chose to act on Saturday, and he apparently chose to act in response to a political fiction that the president himself chose to spread, and that his followers chose to amplify.

As for those who aided the president in his propaganda campaign, who enabled him to prey on racist fears to fabricate a national emergency, those who said to themselves, “This is the play”? Every single one of them bears some responsibility for what followed. Their condemnations of antisemitism are meaningless. Their thoughts and prayers are worthless. Their condolences are irrelevant. They can never undo what they have done, and what they have done will never be forgotten.

The Wreck That Is Sarah Palin-- And Her Secessionist Followers

Alaska has a small state legislature, the smallest bicameral legislature in the U.S., in fact-- 40 House members and 20 Senate members. The Republicans have a majority in the House and the Senate is evenly split. But just as the state's ex-governor was getting ready for another hilarious and raucous episode of Palin Livin', the bicameral legislature did a very bipartisan thing: they overrode Palin's veto of $28 million in federal stimulus money for energy cost relief. To over turn a veto in Alaska, you need 75% of the two chambers, almost an impossibility, especially when the governor's own party has a majority. But they did it, 45-14.

Supporters argued Palin badly overstated the "strings" attached to taking the money, and that frigid Alaska could use the assistance.

"Instead of being the last state in the union to take this money we should have been the first," said Bethel Democratic Sen. Lyman Hoffman. "We live in the coldest state in the union and we should be setting the standard in efficiencies and how energy is being used throughout this state."

Anti-U.S. radicals and secessionists, basically the last of Palin's political support, came flooding in from Wasilla and the rest of the meth belt to demand her veto stand "with signs like 'Fed $=Tyranny' and 'Override=You're fired.' Others urging legislators to override the veto mixed in with their own signs like 'Efficiency Makes Cents.' There was arguing between the two camps and legislators had to walk a gantlet through the protesters to get into the Egan Center, where the special session was being held.

Palin's political exile-- headquartered on her Facebook page-- bleated out a message yesterday warning of the dire consequences of... Alaska being part of the United States of America.

"As governor, I did my utmost to warn our legislators that accepting stimulus funds will further tie Alaska to the federal government and chip away at Alaska's right to chart its own course. Enforcing the federal building code requirements, which Governor Parnell and future governors will be forced to adopt in order to accept these energy funds, will eventually cost the state more than it receives. There are clear ropes attached."

Now that that's done, Palin can get back to lying about President Obama and fomenting trouble among the lunatic fringe that takes her seriously with talk about death panels (not the real ones that do exist, the made up ones she dreams about) and euthanasia and competing with Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage for who can do the most damage to America.

Roger Simon skewers what he calls the GOP's "rabid" responders -- i.e. Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck. On Palin's death panel claim, Simon writes, "In olden times, Palin might have made this claim at a speech or during a news conference where reporters might have asked questions like: 'What proof do you have?' or 'Aren’t you just trying to scare people?' But Palin does not risk that. She takes no questions. She has done her duty as a rabid responder. She has rung the tocsin, sounded the alarm, lit the signal fire. Truth? Accuracy? Responsibility? Not her territory… Glenn Beck is a rabid responder on race… Rush Limbaugh is a rabid responder on Nazis and swastikas. He knows a lot about swastikas. He sees them everywhere."

This could all end very tragically for this country. It's almost as though we're on the verge of another Ft Sumter. As Jeff Cook pointed out at The Gawker today, there are plenty of reasons to be very worried. "There are always people who want to kill the president. Generally speaking, they are politically marginalized, insane, and/or too incompetent to come close to achieving their ends. But in the past six months, people who would be inclined to do violence to our political leaders have been affirmatively embraced by the Republican Party and its messaging operation. It's as if there had been a 24-hour cable news channel in 1981 devoted to coverage of Jodie Foster, and what it would take for someone to get her attention."

CNN Advocates Killing Howard Dean-- They Should Lose Their Broadcast License

CNN anchor Lou Dobbs has apparently gone insane. Or was he drunk yesterday when he called for the death of Howard Dean (below) or when he distorted what Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer said about disruptive teabaggers keeping citizens from having discussions with their elected representatives? Dobbs is a divisive ratings whore, willing to lie and slander anyone with his self righteous Know Nothing rants to drive his sinking ratings up. CNN should be ashamed. They should also lose their broadcast license for inciting violence, assassination and murder.



This morning I watched the Senate's resident dingbat, Missouri Democrat (ugghhh) Claire McCaskill at a town hall meeting demonizing something she apparently doesn't understand, single payer health insurance, after some Dobbs or Limbaugh or Beck-fueled constituent got up and started raving about the slippery slope to socialism. Imagine if Missouri had a senator who could explain what the health insurance racket is and how single payer health care reform could benefit them and their families instead of using Insurance Industry talking points straight from the GOP playbook. But then, of course, Ms, McCaskill-- only in office for a couple years-- has already scooped up $352,900 from the Medical-Industrial Complex and another $71,339 from Big Insurance... plenty of reasons to not try too hard to understand what single payer actually is. She sounds a lot like a Republican, even like an imbecile like Peter King (R-NY) who calls reform "radical" and validates Insurance Industry anti-health care memes. King assures his listeners he wants "some" reform while the Insurance CEOs and their lobbyists and astro-turf outfits are acknowledging that their goal is "no reform at all."

It's funny that the corporate media-- more, except in Fox's case, for ratings than for an ideological agenda-- is propping up the Republican jihad against health care reform, spreading partisan fear and smear and inciting people to violence.

It is this broader context that makes CNN's decision to lend its good name to the birther conspiracy so egregious and so dangerous. With the blessing of the network, Lou Dobbs has given the smear an unparalleled level of credibility by reporting it as an ongoing and unresolved story. His coverage is part of a career spent advancing prejudicial, anti-immigrant, and conspiratorial right-wing canards. He has also portrayed Obama as a "socialist" and compared him to fascist dictators. Again, this from a "journalist" with a prime time show on CNN, the self-described "most trusted name in news," a network that has publicly advocated its political neutrality and commitment to serious, fact-based reporting.

There isn't a single progressive issue that isn't in danger of being overwhelmed by this right-wing campaign and its central narrative. Health care reform is a socialist takeover. Restructuring bankrupt companies is a ruse designed to give the government direct control over the economy. Obama's speech in Cairo was part of a "Muslim apology tour" that shows how eager he is to blame America first and how unwilling he is to defend it (he is, after all, a false Christian, important to those who irrationally fear Islam). In the absence of any new legislation involving gun ownership, Democrats are still supposedly committed to overturning the Second Amendment which will further support tyranny. New environmental regulations and green energy promotion represent an encroachment upon personal liberty, an excuse for more federal power and higher federal taxes, all based on the myth of global warming. No matter what progressive issue you pick, conservatives are working to turn it into nothing less than sedition, carried out by an illegal president who is actually a traitor. The conservative media is their megaphone, with the mainstream media all-too often following suit.

The future success of every progressive initiative will be impacted by what information the American people receive. We must respond forcefully, swiftly, and collectively to counteract the distorting and dangerous impact of the right-wing noise machine whenever and wherever it appears. And we must demand integrity from mainstream news organizations. If there is any doubt about what progressives are up against, consider the fact that last week, Dobbs officially abandoned his self-appointed "Mr. Independent" label. "What do you think you're doing Barack Obama?" he said on his radio show, accusing the president of promoting "mindless, churlish, un-American nonsense." He continued: "I'm moving from being an independent, sir, to being absolutely opposed to any policy you could conceive of." Yet just days earlier, he had told Don Imus that CNN president Jon Klein and "all of the folks at CNN are just terrifically supportive."

If we can't even prevent CNN from functioning as a right-wing propaganda organ, then we have no hope of ever getting a fair hearing on any issue.

Conservative goals and tactics will not change on their own. The Right will keep doing what works. Whenever the increasingly prevalent right-wing cry of "I want my country back!" is heard, progressives must understand what is behind the words, and realize that unless they act, we will lose the greatest opportunity in a generation to redefine the American political landscape.

So while Eric Cantor's and Mitt Romney's Republican Party rebranding effort of a few months ago has flamed out entirely, the Republicans have learned they don't actually have to do anything remotely proactive-- just throw bricks at whatever the president wants to accomplish and count on the deranged penny-media nuts to blow it up into national outrage. Every single CNN employee should feel ashamed of what their company is doing to America. And, as Paul Krugman noted Sunday, explaining that the GOP doesn't have to do anything but obstruct and demonize: "We do know, however, what Republicans in opposition have been saying-- and it boils down to demanding that the government stop standing in the way of a possible depression."

Charles Pierce put it all into perspective in his brilliant book, Idiot America:

This long, slow march from the debacle of the Goldwater campaign of 1964 through the triumph of Ronald Reagan and, ultimately, the consolidation of power under George W. Bush from 2000 to 2008 depended in everything on how tightly the movement fasted itself to popular irrationality from economics to fringe religion. The movement swallowed whole the quack doctrine of supply-side economics, adopting it with almost comically ferocious zeal... [And i]n June 2007, a Gallup poll found that 68 percent of the Republicans surveyed said that they did not believe in evolution at all. And this was the ascendant political power at the time.

Movement conservatism was so successful that it drove its own media, particularly talk radio, and conservative media fed back the enthusiasm into the movement, energizing it further. The movement's gift for confrontation was ideally suited to media in which controversy drove ratings, which then drove the controversy, and so forth. The more traditional media joined in, attracted, as they always are, by power and success. The more the movement succeeded politically, the tighter it was bound to the extremes that helped power it.

Here's Obama in New Hampshire today. CNN and MSNBC carried it live. Fox, never wanting facts to get in the way of their reporting, didn't. I especially liked this line in the beginning: "I don't think government bureaucrats should be meddling [with your health care decisions] but I also don't think insurance company bureaucrats should be meddling." The audience seemed to appreciate that too.