Category: Politics

The Last Hurrah of the Holy Horde

and this is why you saw Glen Beck skate along the edge of the New World Order conspiracy theory chasm at several points during his speech. The fundamentalist right loves that stuff. When you look at Beck you have to say “There but for the grace of a bigger microphone and a bit of polish goes Alex Jones…”

Once again I have woken early on a rain dark morn while a distant train blares it’s horn across the plains as it hauls its hundreds of carloads of coal to the reactor for burning. This time I’m not pondering  mortality but rather the depths of depravity that my political party  has sunk to.

I watched bits and pieces of CPAC over the past few days in alternating bouts of despair and disgust. This is not the Republican party of the past, where people were pro capitalism, pro defense, and pro-liberty but generally minded their own business otherwise. This is the barking ugly underbelly – with Birchers invited openly, and even rumors that Nick Griffin of the openly Supremacist BNP was going to attend. (you can find reference to those unsubstantiated rumors at Stormfront, Amren, and in a press release from the newly formed “Sons of Liberty” at MSU – I refuse to link to those batshit sewers of hate and paranoia – if you don’t believe dig yourself, there are enough keywords in this parenthesized section to find what I’m referring to through Google easily enough.)

I’ve already spoken about what I think of politicians who would speak at this forum here , and here, but now it’s time to talk about the pudding head pundits who appeared. I watched Glen Beck play Kermit the doomsayer, and I watched him hearken back to one of our greatest presidents while trashing other great Republicans in direct opposition to Reagan’s dictum of never speaking ill of another Republican. Meanwhile Andrew Breitbart brayed in the lobby still fending off the accusations against him and his wannabe Alinksy-Right political operative, James O’Keefe.  The Oil and Coal lobbies were certainly well represented on the Global warming panel, but reason and science were entirely absent as one courageous questioner from the audience had the temerity to point out.

Early on in the conference Michelle Malkin was congratulated over the sale of Hot Air to Salem, and now there’s few voices on the right who are not owned lock stock and barrel by the religious right. This is why you see Jerome Corsi and the whirled nuts daily crowd widely accepted while the other right wing blogs make faint disclaimers to the general press (wink wink, nudge nudge.) This is why you see the nativist Vdare and Birchers accepted with open arms, and this is why you saw Glen Beck skate along the edge of the New World Order conspiracy theory chasm at several points during his speech. The fundamentalist right loves that stuff. When you look at Beck you have to say “There but for the grace of a bigger microphone and a bit of polish goes Alex Jones…” Then when you look at one of the spokespeople for Young Americans for Freedom, Ryan Sorba, you have to say “WTF, is that a member of Westboro Baptist?” At some point you have to ask yourself “if Glen Beck, Ryan Sorba, and James O’Keefe represent the future of the Republican party, what kind of debacle are we headed for?”

I’ve lived through dim times for the Republicans before. It was a disheartening day when political operatives nick-named “The Plumbers” tarnished the whole party and caused the resignation of a sitting Republican President. It was dark times when the only widely heard voices on the right were populist piss and vinegar pundits like Joe Pyne, and his obverse, the overly erudite William F. Buckley who turned average Americans off. I fear we are headed to those days again as I look at the plumbers who are now widely embraced by the right, and the Tit for Tat tu quoque  instead of direction and principle from the major outlets of the right. I see those days coming again as I watch Christians lie for the cause and throw principles and morals overboard in search of ends that justify their evil means.

It doesn’t phase me much, because I know that truth does win out over time and the American public will see through phonies like these eventually – for these hypocrite holy and culture warriors cannot help themselves from going many steps too far, and their support and funding will be drying up over the next few years since the fully fundamentalist loons are truly a dying demographic. At some point in the next decade or two the old curmudgeons will all be dead, and there’s going to be as many pundits on the right who wished they hadn’t destroyed all of their credibility during this period as there are people on the left regretting that tattoo they got. Personally although I choose neither, I’d rather have tattoo regret than to know my life was one big lie after another.

Update: More on Sorba the geek at The Atlantic

Politicians Who Suck for Signing up to Speak at a Bircher Sponsored Convention

Here’s the list from CPAC, where the John Birch Society and Oathkeepers are Cosponsors. All of the people below are listed as confirmed speakers at the CPAC website.  I’m a lifelong Republican, and I will not donate a dime to any of these people or their causes in the future. I will actively campaign against them and for their political opponents even though I will have to hold my nose in a few cases while doing so.

Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney – you suck. Mitt won’t be receiving any money from me in 2012 like he did last round if he speaks at a Bircher sponsored convention.

Hon. Dick Armey, Hon. John Ashcroft, Rep. Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Amb. John Bolton, Andrew Breitbart, Herman Cain, Tucker Carlson, Liz Cheney, Ann Coulter, Sen. Jim DeMint, Hon. Newt Gingrich, David Keene, Wayne LaPierre, Rep. Ron Paul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Rep. Mike Pence, Rep. Tom Price, Hon. Mitt Romney, Hon. Marco Rubio, Hon. Rick Santorum, Hon. J.C. Watts, George F. Will

The Party is Over; Time to Take Out the Trash

While Tea Party groups fight for ownership of the fractured and fissured political franchise their popularity continues to plummet, and without a positive vision and direction they are not going to sway the masses.

In a fit of desperation after the debacle of last election the old coalitions within the Republican party split and several lobby groups and factions jumped aboard the Tea Party movement which became the only loud voice in the power vacuum on the right. Anger and acting out can only carry you so far however, and the latest Rasmussen poll demonstrates why the Tea Party movement will get Republicans the loose and help maintain Democrat superiority in an election cycle where Republicans should instead make huge gains.

Running for government office while decrying government as evil is a contradiction, and that contradiction is becoming clear to the public. The various factions of the Tea Party movement reached out to the extreme right to bolster their butt weight and to gather people passionate enough to show up and demonstrate, something average Republicans don’t usually do in large numbers. So we have the John Birch Society at CPAC, and the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Dominionist Constitution Party members running some tea party locals. The other flavor of tea is more Earl Grey, it’s the same groups that put Bush in office trying to gain control of the movement while disavowing all knowledge of their past (Duke Cunningham, Ralph Reed, Abramoff, etc. etc. etc.)

We have infighting from those groups over who controls the message; while the SoCon and Paleo-industry factions are trying to control the death spiral through traditional means the fringers are trying to redefine conservatism to fit their bigoted and exclusionary templates. It’s a clear formula for failure and it’s why if you care about the future of the right you better stand up now and haul out the trash like the birthers who were at the Tea Party convention.

While Tea Party groups fight for ownership of the fractured and fissured political franchise their popularity continues to plummet, and without a positive vision and direction they are not going to sway the masses. Constantly bathing in bile makes them stinky, and freely associating with known creeps isn’t going to get them elected.

It’s past time the Republican leadership recognizes the demographics I pointed out post election, and it’s time to start building a platform and direction the public will buy. Nihilism doesn’t gain you followers; it does however appeal to trash fringers – it’s certainly nothing equivalent to Morning in America, instead it’s more like Mourning in America and it has to stop.

Update: The state of affairs right now appears depressing – but there are signs of sunlight on the horizon. NRCC Young Guns

Update: More on the fractured Tea Party at the NYT, and LGF.

Boondock Stooges

James O’Keefe & Co. have reached the nadir of their fifteen minutes, and from here it is downhill. You can read about his arrest, etc here, here, here, and in this video:

Many are characterizing him as a self-styled James Bond or “Junior G-Man” however I don’t see it that way. James O’Keefe’s long conservative activism for pro life causes coupled with his overuse of the Latin “Veritas” suggest to me that he sees himself instead as a real life Holy warrior cut of the same cloth as the brothers in the fictional “Boondocks Saints”. I would wager he’s seen the movie more than once, and wonder if he has a tattoo like the brothers in the ultra violent movie: “Veritas” “Aequitas” – or “Truth” and “Justice”. If you think my speculation is a stretch, page through O’Keefe’s Tweet feed — go back to October before the Acorn sting where you can see a few asides, and a link to an article adoring Franciscan monks.

Obama’s Hyberbole

President Obama decried the new Supreme Court ruling on corporate money in politics stating:

The Supreme Court has given a green light to a new stampede of special-interest money in our politics … It is a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health-insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans. — President Barack Obama

I disagree with the word “New.” Special interests learned to get their message out while accommodating the restrictions of McCain-Feingold and other limits in a manner that makes the “who” behind the money much harder to find. I like the Supreme Court ruling because I would rather know who is paying whom for what.

Instead of Corporations paying for message directly and the public knowing who is behind the latest meme, everything is indirect and several places removed. So you have a Union or Corporation paying a foundation, and that foundation paying a faux political action group, a Faux think tank, (aka “Stink tank” – Discovery Institute, Heartland Institute, ACORN, Worldwatch, etc.)

These in turn spin off chaff for highly conservative and highly liberal “news” outlets (e.g. Frontpage, Pacifica Radio, AFR, etc. etc.,) which in turn back candidates and causes. Their chaff in turn is re amplified by crowd sourcing the bloggers within the political spectrum, and I suspect there’s a bit of “paid promotional amplification” going on as well. (see this very interesting Berkman Center lecture, then think about comment Spam and it’s origination after.)

It’s very time consuming if you you want to track that buzz or meme or outrage of the day to true source, but more oft than not it can be followed back to a special interest group who is highly anonymous to the general public.

I prefer a political environment where anyone may freely speak or pay, but where every penny is associated back to true source and recorded online as part of public record within 48 hours. Americans are some of the smartest media consumers in the world and it’s counterproductive to create restrictions that demand subterfuge for communication because with each step removed from the original source of the sometimes valid argument additional hysteria, hyperbole, and sometimes outright lies get baked into the message. It’s very hard to have an adult conversation about true issues in that media environment. We don’t need to limit money or speech, but we do need to see who is signing the checks. In my opinion it’s well past time to update our restrictions on political speech to match the new media.

Update: more background on this law, other campaign laws, and conflicting claims at Politifact.

Nativists, Nazis, Tea, and Sarah

Where does Sarah Palin come into the picture? Well recently she opted not to speak at CPAC since one of the sponsors is the John Birch Society. Instead she has decided to be the headliner at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville. Since Nashville is a hotbed of activity for Council of Conservative Citizens, she’s basically jumped from frying pan into fire.

Normally I would not link to an Al Jazeera video report because I know with certainty that they are biased on matters pertaining to the Middle East and they have been the mouthpiece as well as distribution point for many terror organizations. (Al Qaeda screeds against the west usually appear first at AJ – same goes for Hamas and Hezbollah.)

That said they have done a factual report on Nativists and White Supremacism in the US, as well as their ties to organizations like the Minutemen, Council of Conservative Citizens, and to the tea party movement. As the tea party movement carries on it’s important to note that many of the organizers and leaders are not Republicans, but rather Constitution party, JBS, CoCC, and other like groups. I can back up the reporting in this video with links and proofs if you hesitate to rely on AJ, since I’ve seen this in my own research by crawling through the sewers of white supremacist sites on the web. I’m not going to subject my readers to that unless someone requests it in comments.

There’s a couple of important things in this video – you can see where the Tanton nativist movement is rebranding to the Flavor of the Day in politics (economy is issue one instead of the border now,) and you can see that the younger leaders of the white supremacists are working hard to mainstream their movement. Pay particular attention when one of the handlers muzzles an elder nazi when he goes off message and honestly displays what the group is really about.

Where does Sarah Palin come into the picture? Well recently she opted not to speak at CPAC since one of the sponsors is the John Birch Society. Instead she has decided to be the headliner at the Tea Party National Convention in Nashville. Since Nashville is a hotbed of activity for Council of Conservative Citizens, she’s basically jumped from frying pan into fire. You can bet CoCC will be there, and since it’s only a short drive from Millington up I-40 to get to Nashville, I would wager that the Political Cesspool might cover the event as well.

One other note about the National Tea Party convention: Judging from the high ticket prices I would also wager that the event will be an interesting mix of just the leaders from these groups, and that the media will be tightly controlled to prevent the “wrong photo op” of Sarah with one of these White Supremacist leaders. More on Rainmakers Crashing the Teaparty at Newsweek. Hint: Rainmakers aren’t the only crashers.

Update: If you think I am being unfair to Al Jazeera, here’s just the latest example of them furthering false agitprop without even basic fact checking; quotes are not that hard to verify. I trust this documentary more than their usual swill because it is from independent filmakers and because I am already familiar with the groups and facts detailed in it.

Update: As predicted above The National Tea Party Convention will be held behind closed doors without press coverage except by “selected Journalists.” It will  be a tightly controlled event with only sympathetic members of the press allowed. Would that be Robert Stacy McCain, Michelle Malkin and possibly the rest of the VDARE “tea-cup”white supremacists? Time will tell the tale.

Eugene Robinson Gets it Wrong on Cuba

Eugene makes the same mistake that much of the loony right does: he seems to think that all terror originates with Islamic radicals when all terrorism is not Islamic in origin. Cuba still harbors terror suspects from ETA, FARC, ELN, and up until 2004 they had harbored members of the IRA who were training FARC in use of explosives.

In his first pop quiz of the decade Eugene gets the answer wrong on his own test. He states that Cuba doesn’t belong on the list of nations where passengers must undergo extra screening to fly to the US. While relations with Cuba are getting better and there are several signs of good intent in the regime lately, it’s still an origination point that we shouldn’t fully trust.

Eugene makes the same mistake that the loonier extremes of right does: he seems to think that all terror originates with Islamic radicals when all terrorism is not Islamic in origin. Cuba still harbors terror suspects from ETA, FARC, ELN, and up until 2004 they had harbored members of the IRA who were training FARC in use of explosives.(here’s a PDF from an ’04 report to Congress that examines both sides of the issues)

Above and beyond that there have been more airline hijackings from Cuba than anywhere else in the world, and some are relatively recent (2007.)

My hope is that Cuba moves swiftly to democracy and relations with all countries, and they have signed 12 international terror agreements. That said they are still a dictatorship and could change in an eyeblink on the whim of single person. So I have zero grief with the extra screening and think it’s a necessary precaution when considering the previous history.

Here’s a recent blog update on Cuba’s status and the stance of the Obama administration. (note: linking to this story does not mean I agree with the views of the blog’s author)

State Department on the designation of Cuba as state sponsor of terrorism.

Blasphemy in Ireland

If you are religious you will most likely find these quotes offensive, and I used to really care a lot about not offending religious people even though I’ve been atheist all my life

Ireland’s new blasphemy law is being purposefully flouted by the atheists of Ireland. The group has put up a website that publishes 25 quotations that are blasphemous to contest the law in the courts. Right now the site is getting crushed with traffic, so I will link instead their Google cache. As a proponent of individual liberties and rights I have to show my solidarity, so please take some time to read up on this ridiculous law.

If you are religious you will most likely find these quotes offensive, and I used to really care a lot about not offending religious people even though I’ve been atheist all my life. (Even as a child going to Sunday school I never really believed, bible stories were just another genre of fiction to me – not quite as good as Tom Swift, nor the factual articles in Encyclopedia Britannica and Americana, however I’ve always taken pains not to offend the religious with my atheism.)

That has changed slowly over the past four years as the Religious Right in the US has hijacked the Republican party. Rather than being another PAC or group within the big tent, they have declared themselves owner of the tent with veto power over who gets in and who doesn’t. All of their bigotry against atheists and homosexuals and other minorities is now on virulent display across the right wing blogosphere, and some things that used to be confined to hate groups like Fred Phelp’s church and Randall Terry’s hate group Operation Rescue, are now on virulent display and just accepted. So I’m not worried about offending them anymore – there’s no God that can shut me up either.

Continue reading “Blasphemy in Ireland”

Why I’m Seriously Considering Registering as Democrat

I can’t believe this sad sickness displacing reason within the Republican party.

I will never get in bed with Birchers, ever. Anyone Speaking at this convention will receive zero dollars from me, and zero support. In fact, anyone speaking is going to be constantly slammed by me as someone who spoke at a Bircher convention.