American Political Elites Are Really Bad-- Roundup

Painting by Attila Richard Lukacs

Ken's back in action and he'll be taking back this slot starting tomorrow. If you think you're happy, imagine how I feel!

Heidi Heitkamp-- Cowardly And Disappointing

You probably heard about the tremendous disappointment that 4 Democratic senators-- Heidi Heitkamp (ND), Mark Pryor (AR), Max Baucus (MT) and Mark Begich (AK)-- made common cause with the Republicans against the bipartisan background check amendment offered by Second Amendment fanatics Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Pat Toomey (R-PA). Former Obama Chief of Staff, Bill Daley wrote a blistering OpEd this past weekend for the Washington Post about how Heitkamp betrayed him. She didn't only betray a wealthy and powerful contributor like Daley; she betrayed the Democratic values and principles that have propelled her into the Senate.

She voted to block legislation to make gun background checks more comprehensive. Her vote-- along with those of 41 Republicans and three other Democrats-- was a key reason the measure fell short of the 60 votes needed for passage.

Polling has shown that nine in 10 Americans and eight in 10 gun owners support a law to require every buyer to go through a background check on every gun sale. In North Dakota, the support was even higher: 94 percent. Yet in explaining her vote, Heitkamp had the gall to say that she “heard overwhelmingly from the people of North Dakota” and had to listen to them and vote no. It seems more likely that she heard from the gun lobby and chose to listen to it instead.

...The other two Democrats who voted against background checks are Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Max Baucus of Montana [who announced today that he's throwing in the towel; more on that tomorrow]. Like Begich, they will be running for reelection next year. And no doubt they’ll come to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and other cities looking for money to fuel their campaigns. These cities, of course, are also too often the destination for illegal guns flowing in from out of state.

So I’ll have some advice for my friends in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles: Just say no to the Democrats who said no on background checks.

Far more progressive elements in the Democratic Party released this video about Heitkamp's betrayal yesterday:



GOP Fears Another Todd Akin Catastrophe In Georgia

Right-wing crackpots cheered when conservative Senator Saxby Chambliss announced he was retiring. After all, his lifetime ProgressivePunch crucial vote score is 1.95-- tied for the 17th most right-wing Member of the Senate with neo-fascist crackpot Jim Inhofe (R-OK)-- and his score for this session is zero. But that wasn't good enough for the extremists... so now they're liable to get stuck with one of two congressmen who make Todd Akin seem almost mainstream, Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey.

In a recent fundraising letter, [Broun] boasted that he was the first member of Congress to call Obama "a socialist who embraces Marxist-Leninist policies."

That makes Broun a tea party and evangelical favorite. To other Republicans, however, such comments stir memories of 2012 losses in Senate races in Missouri and Indiana where the GOP nominees, Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock, made controversial comments about women, rape and abortion.

"There's no question that the Republican Party in Georgia and the nation are concerned that we could have another Todd Akin-type scenario here," said Heath Garrett, a Republican campaign consultant and former top aide to U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson.

Not Sure If Fred Malek Is Still A Jew Hater, But If He Is, He's Now A Pro-Gay Jew Hater

Malek is a rich GOP fundraiser for extreme right-wing candidates and causes now but he's best known as Nixon's "Jew counter," who worked to make sure there weren't "too many" Jews working for the government. He told Think Progress yesterday that he's in favor of marriage equality. "I feel it’s overdue and I support gay marriage... It’s a free country. They ought to be able to get married and they ought to have legalization of that." The candidates he finances through the shady PAC he operates, the American Action Network, do not favor marriage equality. In the 2012 cycle Malek spent $11,689,399 on independent expenditures trying to elect vehemently anti-gay candidates like Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster (R-FL), Jeff Denham (R-CA), Richard Mourdock (R-IN), Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY), Chip Cravaack (R-MN), and Jesse Kelly (R-AZ). But he supports gay marriage. And he likes the Jews too.

Why Most Jews Don't Seriously Consider Voting For Republicans

Not many Jews vote for right-wing political parties. Jewish families usually put a huge premium on education and equality and, let's face it, right-wing political parties couldn't exist without ignorance and bigotry. All through history, however, there have always been a minority of Jews steeped in the same kind of ignorance and prejudice that afflicts other communities. Even if Obama isn't terribly popular among Jews, the vast majority of them voted against Romney and his crackpot, extremist Party of Hatred. Most Jews-- at least outside of Israel-- have learned, and learned the hard way, that the kind of Hatred and Bigotry at the core of the Republican Party, and at the core of all fascist-oriented parties, sooner or later and always works out badly for the Jews. Obama's 70% support among Jewish voters was down 4% since he creamed McCain in 2008 but the 4% drop in the Jewish vote for Obama in the 2012 versus 2008 race is consistent with the modest percentage drop Obama experienced with several other constituencies-- including college graduates, whites, independents, voters under 30 and Catholics.

I bet you didn't know that Budapest has the second biggest synagogue in the world, the Dohány Street Synagogue, second only to Temple Emanu-El in New York City. At one point Jews made up 23% of Budapest's population. That point was just before the rise of fascism in the 20th Century, a time when the right-wing mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, nicknamed Hungary's capital Judapest. Before Hitler came to town, Hungary's homegrown fascist, Admiral Miklós Horthy, had a series of full fledged pogroms against Hungarian Jews on increasingly aggressive levels. By 1941 there were only 861,000 Jews left in Hungary, and there were massacres and widespread murders but it wasn't until German troops occupied Hungary that Horthy allowed deportation of Jews to German death camps. 437,402 Jews were deported by the Hungarians, 90% of whom died in German death camps, particularly Auschwitz. Winston Churchill was getting intelligence that led him to write to his Foreign Secretary that "There is no doubt that this persecution of Jews in Hungary and their expulsion from enemy territory is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world." Of the 861,000 Hungarian Jews in 1941, there were about 200,000 survivors by the time Horthy was saved from the Soviets by Americans, which allowed him to live out the rest of his life in luxury in Portugal (which was still a fascist dictatorship until 1974).

In case you're wondering why all the background on Hungarian Jews, there's been a little incident in Budapest recently. Hungary's third biggest political party is the Jobbik party, very much Hungary's Tea Party and widely considered neo-fascist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, although they describe themselves in a way that would make any Fox News viewer feel perfectly comfortable: "a principled, conservative and radically patriotic Christian party." The party got going in 2003 as a protest movement against-- believe it or not-- "the war against Christmas."

Earlier this month one of Jobbik's Parliamentary leaders, Márton Gyöngyösi, told the legislature it is time “to assess ... how many people of Jewish origin there are here, and especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who represent a certain national security risk.”

Jeb Bush with Republican Jew counter Fred Malek

That's why Jews tend to shy away from right-wing parties. I mean have you heard anyone talk like that since... since... since Richard Nixon hired Fred Malek as his official "Jew counter." Malek, by the way, is still an extremely powerful Republican Party operative and was National Finance Committee co-chair for John McCain in 2008. This year he ran the American Action Network, a fascist-oriented SuperPAC, which had considerably more success than Karl Rove's various PACs, money laundering operations and scam outfits did. Malek's American Action Network spent $$11,660,232 ($4 million of which was contributed, ironically, by America's top Kapo group, the Republican Jewish Coalition) on behalf of a repulsive batch of right-wing hatemongers very much like himself who are trying to win congressional races. His 4 biggest efforts were to try to reelect fanatics Jeff Denham-- successfully smearing former astronaut Jose Hernandez with $2,508,581 in patently false ads-- Chip Cravaack ($1,668,529) and Daniel "Taliban Dan" Webster ($1,119,279) and to elect John Shimkus' horrifyingly corrupt chief of staff Rodney Davis against progressive champion David Gill ($1,482,562). Other miscreants whose campaigns Malek was funneling money to included Gambino Crime Family congressman Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm of Staten Island ($16,930), pro-rape Republican Richard Mourdock ($645,151), and deranged California wingnut Tony Strickland ($168,717), who lost.