Streams Of Consciousness

Since my John Wayne random quote went over so well last night, I found another one-- from the same 1971 Playboy interview-- for tonight. Looks like African-Americans weren't the only ethnic group the right-wing icon had some antipathy for. Even off camera he didn't cotton to Native Americans much-- or at least didn't seem to be able to walk a mile in their shoes:

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this country away from the Indians. There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

Which circle of hell is that again? The fourth is for avarice. Of course, the seventh (for violence), eighth (for fraud) and ninth (for treachery) are far worse places to spend eternity, according to Dante... but what does he know?

Miss McConnell, Caught In A Deadly Obama/DeMint Pincer, Raises His White Boxers On A Stick And Surrenders On Earmarks

Jerry Lewis (R-CA) must be flipping out but it looks like earmarks will be going the way of the dodo bird. McConnell, a major earmarker from way back, could no longer take the intense pressure from both Obama and DeMint, DeMint backed by whatever power the teabaggers are reckoned to have.

In a floor speech, McConnell said: "There is simply no doubt that the abuse of this practice has caused Americans to view it as a symbol of the waste and out-of-control spending that every Republican in Washington is determined to fight.

"And unless people like me show the American people that we’re willing to follow through on small or even symbolic things, we risk losing them on our broader efforts to cut spending and rein in government," McConnell said. 

McConnell has been a staunch defender of earmarks, arguing that banning them simply cedes spending authority to the executive branch.

He acknowledged in a floor speech Monday that he was “not wild” about the ban, but said the “only way” to turn the corner on spending would be to make “difficult decisions.”

McConnell refused to apologize for his own earmarks. "Make no mistake, I know the good that has come from the projects I have helped support throughout my state," he said. 

“I’m not wild about turning over more spending authority to the executive branch," McConnell added. 

The Senate GOP conference is expected to hold a vote Tuesday on DeMint's voluntary ban.

Maybe This Is A Big Deal For The Kids

Today the Wall Street Journal reported that Steve Jobs is nearing the end of his long and winding pursuit of the Beatles catalog. Apple is about to announce that iTunes will finally be selling Beatles music.

Even as recorded-music sales have plummeted, the Beatles have remained one of the most reliable franchises in the business. In 2009, 39 years after breaking up, they sold the third-highest number of albums of any act in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, with 3.3 million copies sold.

In the past decade, the Beatles sold the second-highest number of albums of any artist (trailing Eminem by 2 million units), and the second-highest number of albums since SoundScan launched in 1991 (Garth Brooks has sold more), according to SoundScan.

The only significant holdouts left not selling through iTunes are Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Radiohead, and Tool.

I Found A Mistake In Markos' New Book

I'm loving American Taliban and I ration a few pages a day so I can stretch it out. And today I found a mistake. Markos was expanding on the assertion that "The American Taliban's longstanding attitude is that women who wear revealing clothes or unmarried women who have sex deserve the consequences of sexual assault, rape, sexually transmitted diseases, AIDS, etc." That's all perfectly true and well reflected in the attitude towards women in both Afghanistan and Alabama. But then Markos let his guard down for a moment to make a point:

Unlike Muslim extremists who want to stone or give public lashings to women who sexually misbehave, our American fundamentalists simply want to let them die.

This is partially true of the American Taliban-- but not for the hardest of the hard core. Take newly elected Florida psychopath Daniel Webster. This fringe maniac is a devout follower of cult fanatic Bill Gothard whose crackpot "religion" specifically does call for stoning-- and stoning to death-- women who misbehave. Let me throw in some B.E. Wilson:

As I've detailed in a recent Alternet story, Daniel Webster's intimate, over three decade long involvement with evangelist Bill Gothard appears similar to a classic guru-disciple or mentor-pupil relationship and has included speaking multiple times at Gothard's conferences, traveling with Gothard to Korea in 1996, using Bill Gothard's material to homeschool his six children, making an instructional video for Gothard's Institute For Basic Life Principles, and, when Webster became speaker of the Florida legislature in 1996, hiring four of Gothard's IBLP employees as high-level Florida State House staffers.

As I describe in my Alternet story, Alan Grayson's GOP Opponent Directly Tied to Christian Group That Wants Permanent Subordination of Women, according to the Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute, before the institute's founder, father of Christian Reconstructionism R.J. Rushdoony, died, Rushdoony nearly struck a deal with Gothard that would have allowed him to distribute Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law book, a template for implementing Biblical law in government.

Rushdoony was a virulently racist Holocaust denier who believed in Geocentrism, the proposition that the Sun, and all the heavens, rotate around the Earth, which is the center of creation.

Although the deal fell through because the two men held clashing positions about divorce (Gothard wanted to ban it altogether) they otherwise were in agreement including, apparently, on R.J. Rushdoony's vision of instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for murder, adultery, homosexuality, idolatry, apostasy, and witchcraft.  
 
Asked about his 1996 trip to Korea with Bill Gothard, Daniel Webster told the Florida Gainesville Sun, for an August 5th, 1996 story, "I respect (Gothard) as much as anybody. I wouldn't have gone [with Gothard to Korea] but he wanted me there."

Interviewed for a February 16, 1997 story from the Florida newspaper the St. Petersburg Times, Webster stated, on Gothard, "I enjoy the advice he's given. I think it's been a major part of my life. I'm not ashamed of that. What he has said I believe to be the truth."

You see why the new congressman from Orlando is called "Taliban Dan?"

And Ole Steny...


He wasn't just the go-to-guy for the Blue Dogs, particularly the Blue Dogs who voted more frequently with the Republicans than with their own party. Now we find out, courtesy of another member of the Wall Street fraternity, that Steny is the Republicans' favorite Democrat too-- and not just because he and Boehner would rather be golfing. "Steny," says Ryan, "talks to us." Yeah, I bet he does.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the incoming chairman of the House Budget Committee, suggested Republicans get along best with Hoyer, the second-ranking House Democrat who will stay in the No. 2 position in the next Congress.

"I get along pretty well with Steny. He's the only one we really talk to," Ryan said Monday morning on CNBC. "I don't know Nancy Pelosi. I had a 30-second conversation with her about six years ago, and that's about it."

...The Maryland Democrat is seen as an emissary to centrist Democrats in the House. And the incoming Republican majority, Ryan suggested, might see Hoyer as a better option for outreach compared to Pelosi, who will stay on as Democratic leader.

Streams Of Consciousness

I like to sit in the steamroom for 10 minutes. So I used to sit shvitzing and counting to 60 ten times... or counting to 120 five times. Sometimes it felt very zen. Other times it felt like I was killing brain cells. So I got a big wall clock out of storage and hung it in the bathroom. Now I can sit shvitzing while I think of tweets... or watch the second hand go around the clock... or avert my eyes from the second hand until I count to 30.

Heath Shuler (D-The Family) To Challenge Pelosi

It's almost cosmic that on the same day Rahm officially declares he's running for mayor of Chicago, his Frankenstein creation, Heath Shuler (Blue Dog-NC), threatens Nancy Pelosi that if she doesn't step aside for a conservative, he'll run against her as Democratic leader. Since Shuler-- a bigoted religious fanatic and member of The Family (yes, he once roomed with DeMint in their C Street cult frat house)-- isn't especially respected or admired by most of his Democratic colleagues, this little tantrum isn't really about him expecting to be elected Minority Leader.

When Shuler appeared on State of the Union this morning he was playing for the hometown audience, especially in Clay, Cherokee, Rutherford and Henderson counties, where he lost-- and really badly in Henderson, the second biggest county in the district-- out to dry cleaner Jeff Miller. In 2008 Shuler was reelected with 62%; this year he only managed 54%. Instead of looking to disaffected Democrats in Asheville, who are bitter about his largely Republican voting record, he thinks it makes more political sense for him to continue to demonize Nancy Pelosi and his own party and to be able to go home in 2012 and tell the voters that he ran against her. He's also offering the few remaining Blue Dogs an opportunity to do the same. Can anyone doubt that the reflexive aisle crossers who weren't obliterated, like Dan Boren (Blue Dog-OK), Joe Donnelly (Blue Dog-IN), Mike Ross (Blue Dog-AR), Jason Altmire (Blue Dog-PA) and Jim Matheson (Blue Dog-UT), will be voting for Shuler? Will anyone else? Remember, of the 40 Democrats who voted more frequently with the Republicans on contentious, substantive matters than with their own party, 30 won't be coming back to the House in January. That's Shuler's constituency.

“If it comes down to this coming week, and she doesn’t step aside, then I will challenge her," Shuler said.

...Shuler said that Clyburn should remain in a leadership post, but Pelosi needs to go.

“Let’s be realistic about it, there’s very few numbers of (moderates) left, the entire House is being pushed further and further apart in their different viewpoints and the moderates have to bring our country together to move our country forward. I would really hope that [Pelosi] would step aside to allow Steny Hoyer, James Clyburn-- those gentlemen-to step forward in the leadership positions that they held in the majority, to be the leader and to be whip,” Shuler said.

Shuler believes that his party didn't get the message on Election Day when voters kicked Democrats out of majority control of the House if his caucus keeps Pelosi at the top of their leadership team.

"I hope that with so many members that we need to go in a different direction, that we have to be able to recruit or get back those members of Congress that lost, and I just don’t see that path happening if she’s at the top of the Democrats,” Shuler said.

Shuler was hoping for that Chief Deputy Whip position reserved for a Blue Dog, the one retiring John Tanner held and was thought to be going to Allen Boyd before he wound up with a mere 41% of the votes on election day. But why should the Democrats reward the shriveled up Blue Dog Caucus with anything. Xavier Becerra seems like a far more logical choice, which would be ironic given Shuler's virulently anti-immigrant hysteria.

And Tonight's Random John Wayne Quote

Is the Republican fetish for destroying public education tied up in the virulent racism the party of Lincoln fell into in the 1970s? In an interview he gave Playboy in 1971, right-wing icon John Wayne may have given a little something away. "I believe in white supremacy until Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility."