GOP Conservative Tea Partying Hate Mongers

They love branding their Democratic and Liberal enemies as "Hitler" while acting like little Goebbels themselves. Hard to say who the worst is, but the current king seems to be Glenn "Protocols of Zion" Beck:

Nazi propaganda called Jews drahtzieher—wire-pullers. They constitute a power above and beyond ordinary government authority. “There is a super-government which is allied to no government, which is free from them all, and yet which has its hand in them all,” Henry Ford wrote in The International Jew.

If you know this history, you’ll understand why Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before.

...

Beck’s implication is that there was something sinister in Soros’ support for anti-communist civil society organizations in the former Soviet Union. Further, he sees such support as evidence that Soros will engineer a communist coup here in the United States. This kind of thinking only makes sense within the conspiratorial mind-set of classic anti-Semitism, in which Jews threaten all governments equally. And as a wealthy Jew with a distinct Eastern European accent, Soros is a perfect target for such theories.

You can read The Daily Beast piece and see for yourself how Beck smears Soros. But he's not alone in his prejudiced hate mongering. There's a hate-spewing Jewish woman herself, from Florida, with a radio following, who was slated to be Chief of Staff for a newly-elected Representative - until her words sparked plans for violence:

As you might recall, someone emailed Kaufman's radio station, WFTL, declaring that he or she was planning a violent act against some kind of government building, possibly a school. A phone call to the station yesterday, from a woman identifying herself as the e-mailer's wife, later warned that this man could potentially commit a terrorist act against a public school. That prompted a countywide lock down of all public schools.

The local Fox affiliate since reported that the threat-maker had said he was inspired by none other than Joyce Kaufman, who had received publicity in the last few days for her previous calls for violent action against the government in order to protect citizens from the tyranny of the Obama administration.

...

The negative publicity had centered around video of comments that Kaufman had made at a Tea Party rally this past Independence Day, on how to change a government that has become destructive of the people's rights: "And then the Founding Fathers were ever so brilliant -- and I don't care how this gets painted by the mainstream media, I don't care if this shows up on YouTube, because I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave a Second Amendment. And if ballots don't work, bullets will."

Pure evil. She'll probably become a Fox commentator now that she gotten her publicity.

And, of course, there's Massa Limbaugh:

"We've got the Democrats worried that Clyburn's getting the shaft because he's not going to have a car, he's not going to have a driver, he's not going to have security, he's not going to have any of the stroke, or the perks," Limbaugh said. "A white, racist leadership of the Democrat party trying to ace out Clyburn." Limbaugh got his information on Clyburn's driver from Martin Frost, who appeared on MSNBC.

...

"Clyburn's new position: driving Ms. Nancy," Limbaugh said. "He's not in the back of the bus, he's in the driver's seat. And she's in the back of the car being chauffeured."

Racist fucks. Rabble-rousing hucksters all. The fact that mainstream media hasn't called them out, that their networks and stations haven't fired them, that the public outcry isn't huge, is what our times are all about. Fake news, faux controversies, Southern strategy in bloom.

Watch out, America. They're eating your soul.

Steamroller

It's comedy, like a cartoon now. The GOP leaks out their airtight case against Judge Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court Justice, Obama headfakes with his old friend Judge Diane Wood leaked as visiting the White House, instead has Sotomayor in last Thursday without the press getting the least wind of it, and today announces her as his first nominee. And Wile GOP Coyote suddenly finds itself run out of cliff beneath its feet, puff of smoke, long fall.

There will be conservative talking points and smears and no one will be listening this time because Obama has selected the perfect replacement for David Souter, similar in judicial temperament, but a wildly groundbreaking choice, another Obama star-making ceremony today. And who could fail to be moved by the now commanding President, this Horatio Alger story judge representing the hopes of American women and Hispanics -- double sticks of Roadrunner dynamite -- accompanied and blessed by the older Catholic man who will make certain her path through the Senate confirmation process is a successful one.

At the announcement they had her mother, who worked six days a week as a nurse to raise her in the Bruckner Blvd. projects tens of thousands drive by daily. The President reminded us that Sotomayor is the judge who saved baseball. All that was missing was the apple pie:



There's no real play for the GOP, not unless something freaky comes out of the woodwork, because they can't afford to alienate every last Hispanic or non-reactionary woman in the country, even in their current state. But of course, as scripted as a sarcastic prime time cartoon, out comes Boss Limbaugh:

Do I want her to fail? Yeah.

He's so funny when he's fat. But for c-h-u-t-z-p-a-h, how about an instant (as in previously written) oppositional opinion from noneother than war criminal and conspiratorial co-architect of U.S. torture policy, Attorney (for now) John Yoo. I'd quote him, but then I'd have to waterboard you.

What's happening now is The Summer of Shove. Obama had the agenda forced on him by economic meltdown even before he was sworn in. He's handled that well enough that his real agenda -- the one America voted for -- can begin. And per Al Giordano, the President will be backed up by the same grand-scale community organizing that won him the job: grassroots action:

The political class of the Republican and Democratic Parties may plan on spending the summer on Martha’s Vineyard, or in the Hamptons, or in Newport, or in Mountain West resort towns, or along elite California beaches, or at country clubs all over, but like NFL players and soldiers at war, community organizers will be at boot camp: sweltering the summer of 2009 door to door with the rest of America for whom such paradises are out of reach.

The door knocking won’t get much, if any, mass media attention, in this season between Memorial Day and Labor Day (did I mention that the news editors and star pundits will be off rubbing elbows with those same elected officials in those same vacationlands?). The Supreme Court nomination spectacle in the Senate – one in which the final result is has a 99 percent probability of raising Justice Sotomayor up on high through a sleepy summer Senate going through the motions of looking busy – will provide cover for the grassroots push from below.

But the real history will be made, this summer - as during the last two - by the unsung heroes and heroines: the organizers. You know who you are. You’re the ones without a second home, or that valiantly choose to skip that beach house, in order to bend the arc of history toward justice once again.

New national healthcare policy legislation, climate change control legislation and Justice Sonia Sotomayor all by the end of this summer.

Don't forget how fast he moved to win both the primaries and the Presidency.

Beep-beep!

We're Listening

Is Eric Cantor the next Michael Steele?



The first Republican official who doesn't give a shit what Rush says about him will be the first one with any kind of shot at the Presidency.

Yar

I don't think the Somali pirate rescue should be over-read or a laurel to rest on, but the specificity of Obama's order is interesting -- and fully in keeping with the successful temperament he's surprised the nation with every step of the way:

The Defense Department twice sought Mr. Obama’s permission to use force to rescue Captain Phillips, most recently on Friday night, senior defense officials said. On Saturday morning, the president agreed, they said, if it appeared that the captain’s life was in imminent danger.

Obama refused to let himself be pressured by time, only by when the threat to the captain's life became non-fiction. The result: decisive action, delivered at exactly the right time -- and not on some panicky botched accelerated schedule.

Three shots, pop-pop-pop, three corpses hit the deck. Crisis resolved.

Over at Daily Kos, JCWilmore exposes the in-broad-daylight Republican failure-wish, with GOP Leader Limbaugh unable to accredit Obama even as the news came in during his show. Will this ever get a nice underline in the media -- will this ever be a PR disaster for the Republican Party? Per JC learned:

What did this minor incident involving piracy have to teach us about the Republican Party?

1. The Republican Party really is hoping that the United States fails. Often. So much so that we crawl back to the Republicans and beg them to take over the government in 2010 and 2012.

2. Because the Republican Party wants the United States to fail, the Republican Party has a vested interest in causing the United States to fail. This perverse incentive can be seen working itself out in the way that Republican talking heads and thought leaders like Limbaugh and Gingrich bet against the United States, predicting our failure before all the facts are in. Limbaugh in particular clearly savors the thought of American failure.

3. The Republican Party's leaders are irresponsible. Politics is supposed end at the water's edge. For Republicans like Limbaugh and Gingrich to go on the radio or television and demonstrate that they are hoping for a hostage rescue to fail so they can exploit that failure for political gain is a clear demonstration that the Republican Party and its leaders are unfit to serve as the leaders of our country.

Strikes me as everything the Left was accused of back when Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Rove were invading a country that never attacked us and encouraging the devastating leverage bubble.

Yo-ho-ho.

King Genius

Rush Limbaugh has finally connected the dots between scary half-black man President, sodomy and disease:

...warning that if the British Prime Minister keeps "slobbering" over President Barack Obama, he'll "come down with anal poisoning and may die from it."

I can't wait for the next dignified elected Republican official to apologize for saying something imperfect about their leader.

Bonus genius: Joe da Plummah. Yet again.

Advice for GOP: Generational change. Which may very well mean twenty years.

See you in 2028.

What a Rush

I remember when the phrase, "rush," first came into vogue back in the 1970's. It referred to drug use, of course, that first over-the-top-of-the-hill feeling that users reportedly experienced when they got high. It also came to mean any sudden, positive excitement, like the first Indiana Jones movie or mega-roller coaster ride or performing onstage in a rock band for the first time. As in, "What a rush!"

That comes to mind as I originally intended to take it very easy tonight and just write about the latest total moron in the news, someone so inept that they put their cat in their bong to calm it down and (this is where the story gets, uh, fuzzy) appeared to have smoked the bong with the cat in it.

It's a new Dr. Seuss book: The Cat in the Bong Comes Back. "Would you smoke it with a cat? Would you smoke it in a hat?"

How stoned was that guy? I mean, smoking out of a cat bong...what a rush!

But the real Rush of the week is the gift that keeps on giving:



Per one of Josh Marshall's equally entertained readers:
You know what's great about all this Rush nonsense? It looks like the Democrats, from Robert Gibbs to Rahm to the DCCC, are finally using some of the techniques of bitch-slap politics against the

Republicans. If GOPers are put on the spot and agree with Rush, they're taking an unpopular position about the direction of the country. If they disagree, they're immediately forced to grovel and look weak doing it. Only in this case it's sort of like the bitch-slap theory combined with jujitsu, because the Dems are actually getting Rush to administer the slaps. I'm about your age, and I'm not sure I've ever seen the Dems have the confidence to make Republicans look weak like this.

The Dems have put up the "I'm Sorry Rush" apology widget. How fast was that? And just in case anyone thinks that "Drac" Limbaugh is somehow cuddly, Media Matters has a historic library of Rush's nasty mouth, going back to when he called 13 year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House dog.

But Rush was right about one thing. There was a great desire among maybe almost 50% of the country to want George W. Bush to fail, starting with a desire for him to lost the post-election shenanigans to Al Gore, since he had lost the popular vote. DeRosa World has a nice endorseable list. My personal faves:

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail to steal the surplus the Clinton Administration left him.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in raping our tax code.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail to privatize Social Security.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in mocking climate change.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in letting Osama Bin Laden escape.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail getting re-elected in 2004.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in shredding the Constitution.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in sanctioning torture.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail causing a second Republican 'great depression'.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in looting the Treasury days before he left office.

There's more goodies. In fact, this may be the most entertaining week in non-election politics since Bill Clinton called Newt Gingrich's bluff and turned the tables on his smugness.

There is no star in the Republican Party the equal of Rush. Palin, Jindal, Steele, Romney. I mean, c'mon; Huckabee is the smartest, Paul (i.e. some descendant of his) is the future. Christ and Huntsman and Flake and maybe Owens all show promise. Cantor is a joke, McConnell is relatively toothless (and lucky to still have a job), Boehner doesn't seem very bright. Coleman is dead man walking, Santorum is over, Delay is over, Gingrich is a legend in his own mind, Giuliani is over. Thompson... McCain...

Jeb?

Gotta wonder what they're smokin'.

Like a Violin

Watch the Republicans dance to the jiggy-jig-jig of Rush Limbaugh, as the Obama Administration plays the violin. Per Rahm:



Newly elected Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele tries to distance the mainstream of his party from Limbaugh and, like every single other Republican who has done so before him, gets slapped down by Rush and crawls back in on his knees begging His Corpulence's forgiveness. Grown men.

What's worse, other recent GOP screw-ups feel obliged to jump on the bandwagon:

The most recent offering of support came from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal who on Monday night said that he was glad to see RNC Chairman Michael Steele apologize to Limbaugh after Steele had called the conservative talk show host's program "incendiary" and "ugly."

"I'm glad he apologized," said Jindal, appearing on CNN's Larry King Live. "I think the chairman is a breath of fresh air for the party. As I said before I think Rush is a leader for many conservatives and says things that people are concerned about."

I don't give Steele a year in the job, and by a year I mean June.

Everything is magnified right now because, as E.J. Dionne nails it:

The central issue in American politics now is whether the country should reverse a three-decade long trend of rising inequality in incomes and wealth.

So David Frum, however misguided his political affiliation might be, has how Limbaugh fits in right:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

The Republican Party is in a state of civil war. I'm not sure how long it will last if Limbaugh, Palin and the like continue to define the core party, because it already feels like the moderates and giving up, past a fight or aging out of their roles. Maybe, like the Whig Party, the GOP splits up, with the most rightwing keeping the trademark.

They're promising tactics while Obama is running the long game. Unlike with Democrats of recent vintage, being on the high wire at all times is a key component of his plan. And he's shown he can handle risk -- unlike his current adversaries.

All they do is whine whenever the truth comes out.