Teabaggers Show Their True Colors – Or Their True Whites

Unbelievable Totally believable:

Rep. Andre Carson (D-Ind.) claimed Saturday that health care protesters at the Capitol directed racial epithets at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) as he walked outside.
Carson, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus along with Lewis, told The Hill that protesters called Lewis the N-word.
Tea Party protesters held a rally outside the Capitol on Saturday, which included speeches by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and actor Jon Voight, and then proceeded into the halls to lobby members at the 11th hour.

And:

Rep. Barney Frank got an uglier version of the treatment. Just after Frank rounded a corner to leave the building, an older protestor yelled “Barney, you f****t.” The surrounding crowd of protestors then erupted in laughter.

I can remember last fall, when Keith Olbermann had Janeane Garofalo on his show, and she said that much of the opposition to any and everything Obama tried to do was “flat out redneck racism.” She took a ton of heat for that comment from the wingnuts – and even “serious” commentators called it a bridge too far, since Keith had been talking about policy details at the time. I admit even I thought it sounded jarring and out of context, since there were no incidents mentioned at the time of overt racism.

But Janeane was right, and it only took the increasing likelihood of passage of the health care reform bill tomorrow to bring out the true character of the teabaggers. I’ve had two separate teabaggers on Twitter assume I was gay based on nothing more than my picture — and make disparaging remarks about it, like that was a bad thing. And of course there have been the recurring stories about the posters seen or photographed at various teabagger events, with Obama as a jungle witch-doctor with a bone through his nose, etc. But most people who’ve been interested in politics and have an overall tolerant attitude know that it can bring out the fringe, and that that fringe is usually a very tiny minority who do not represent the views of anyone outside of themselves and a small group of similarly-twisted compatriots.

I don’t believe that anymore.

There have simply been too many stories, too many photographs, too much nastiness of a sort that has nothing whatsoever to do with health care policy details. The kind of hatred on display yesterday goes much deeper – and is much older – than simple policy disagreement. When you take the time to make multiple copies of a sign like this one, and bring it to a public political rally and proudly display it, it’s not just an overreaction or a momentary slip of the tongue or a “poor choice of words.” It’s what you really think:

It’s what they really think: the teabagger movement. They are not about “stopping socialism.” Hell, many if not most of them can’t even correctly define socialism. It’s about the other oft-voiced sentiment you hear at their rallies and town halls at which they abuse elected representatives: they want their country back; and by that, they mean, the country they believe they once owned, when people like them were in the unquestioned majority and didn’t have to suffer much the bleatings of lesser races and groups. They are, as Janeane Garofalo put it so bluntly and accurately all those months ago – stone cold bigots. Terrified, violently angry, reactionary bigots. Period. And if there are still those who count themselves among that crowd who believe that’s an unfair characterization, who feel themselves to be in alignment with the purported political ideas of the teabagger movement but not with the violent, xenophobic, fearful and bigoted tone that characterizes virtually all of their events, then it is up to them – those who feel the “bigot” label is unjust – to denounce and expel those in their ranks who consistently behave like this. Because when you don’t do so, when you stand on the same stage or in the same crowd as those who spout such harmful, hateful statements so readily, you should not be surprised when the label gets applied to your movement as a whole…including yourself.

CNN Announces Hiring Of Red State’s Erick Erickson

No, really – they did:

W.T.F., CNN? Seriously! I mean, are you trying to out-FOX FOX? Are you trying to provide “fairness and balance,” offering up Erickson as a serious, reasonable kind of guy, like some kind of counterweight to all the (nonexistent) notorious progressive bomb-throwers in your employ and all over your airwaves, currently? I mean, you’ve got Carville…but you’ve also got his “lovely” wife, Matalin. You’ve got Begala…but you’ve also got Castellanos.

Who are you trying to balance out with this latest hire, Candy Crowley? Wolf Blitzer? Christ. To actually counterbalance a guy like Erickson, you’d need someone like Ward Churchill on as a regular commentator. I can’t watch CNN anymore; they’re just complete idiots. Or – worse – they think we are.

For crying out loud, Erickson is the man who – only months ago, referred publicly (on Twitter) to Supreme Court justice David Souter as “a goat-f***ing child molester.” No, really. He did. And yet THIS is (according to you), a guy who’s “a perfect fit for ‘John King, USA’,” apparently because he’s both “an agenda-setter” and “a person who still lives in small-town America.” And according to CNN political director Sam Feist, that means “Erick is in touch with the very people John (King) hopes to reach.“

John King hopes to reach people who are prone to think – and publicly announce – that Supreme Court justices are “goat-f***ing child molesters?”

OK, then. That pretty much settles the whole “most trusted name in news” bit – as well as answers whether you’re intending to fashion your own path through the minefield of today’s 24-hour newsscape, CNN, or whether you just intend to ape FOX.

OK, gang, if this recent announcement from the most busted name in news has left you feeling the same way it’s left me feeling (that is: as if you’d like to forget you ever heard such toxic nonsense), then come join me in some tasty mind-bleach.

The Sham Recovery

Robert Reich lays it out. Bottom line? It’s not getting better for the vast majority of Americans, only some of the numbers make it appear as if it is:

The US economy grew at a 5.9 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2009. That sounds good until you realize GDP figures are badly distorted by structural changes in the economy. For example, part of the increase is due to rising health care costs. When WellPoint ratchets up premiums, that enlarges the GDP. But you’d have to be out of your mind to consider this evidence of a recovery.

Part of the perceived growth in GDP is due to rising government expenditures. But this is smoke and mirrors. The stimulus is reaching its peak and will be smaller in months to come. And a bigger federal debt eventually has to be repaid.

So when you hear some economists say the current recovery is following the traditional path, don’t believe a word. The path itself is being used to construct the GDP data.

Go read the whole thing. It ain’t pretty.

Good Morning, GOP!

Sending this one out to James O’Keefe III and the rest of Michael Steele’s homies who’re down with GOP (yeah you know me!). Enjoy!

Are ALL Male Elected GOPers Closeted Gays?

Good grief. I’m starting to think that running for state or national office as a man on the GOP ticket is merely these guys’ way of getting a widely-distributed personal ad saying “straight-acting (and voting!) gay man seeks random encounters” for free.

Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, RedState

Anyone want to take odds on this? Via ThinkProgress, news surfaces that Georgia Rep. (and noted wingnut) Paul Broun revealed under questioning during a radio interview on Thursday that he does not know whether Barack Obama is either a citizen of the United States or a Christian (although Broun says he does know that Obama is a socialist). The exchange took place on Sirius XM between Broun and Sirius host Pete Dominick (You can listen to the relevant portion at YouTube). In it, Broun said:

DOMINICK: The President and the Democrats are gonna pass a bill that’s going to kill jobs, increase premiums, and wreck health care in the country.
REP. PAUL BROUN: Absolutely.
DOMINICK: Do you think President Obama’s a socialist?
REP. PAUL BROUN: (pause) I know he is. In fact, if you look at his own writings, he said when he was in college, he leaned to Marxist tendencies, and Marxist professors, he joined Marxist clubs. You look at who he’s put in his administration; they’re avowed socialists.
DOMINICK: But you think he’s an American citizen and a Christian?
REP. PAUL BROUN: Well, I’m not going to get involved in that, it – it – it’s – what…I’m talking about healthcare.
DOMINICK: You can’t say he’s an American citizen?
REP. PAUL BROUN: Well, listen, uh…
DOMINICK: (interrupts) You can’t say the President’s an American citizen?
REP. PAUL BROUN: I don’t know.
DOMINICK: You don’t know? And is he a Christian?
REP. PAUL BROUN: I don’t know that. Only…I’m a Christian, but only me and the Lord know that for sure, so…
DOMINICK: (interrupts) Congressman, thank you so much for your time…

Dems Not In As Bad Shape As Some Think…?

First, before I say any of this, let me preface it with the usual caveats about how polls are often wrong, and this far out even more so. So, caveat lector, as Bob Somerby would say.

Having said that, let me also stipulate a piece of very common conventional wisdom these days: that Democrats are in for a drubbing in November. Now, there’s reason to suspect this may be the case; witness the election of Scott Brown to the seat held by Ted Kennedy and his brother John before him. Witness the Virginia and New Jersey Governors’ races prior to that. Witness any of a number of polls showing many Democrats in some tough re-election fights. It’s true, Democrats have a lot to lose, and there are certainly some signs out there that they may lose some – if not many – of them.

However, there’s a reason this type of analysis is called “conventional wisdom,” and that reason has to do with the fact that such perspectives are a) widely held and b) often based on pretty run-of-the-mill analysis. Often, in fact, it’s not even based upon any sort of rigorous analysis at all, but rather on assumptions about “how things work.” Anyone who lived through the shocking discoveries of Saddam Hussein’s massive stockpiles of WMDs, for example, knows how dangerous it can be to rely upon guesses based upon a perceived understanding (one’s own, or that of some outside “expert”) of “how things work.”

Part of the conventional wisdom that says Democrats are in for a rough time this fall stems from the fact that it’s simply counterintuitive to expect a party – any party – to amass a third (overall) “winning election” in a row. Democrats ran the table in 2006 as a result (largely) of the public’s frustration with the worst problems of the Bush years, and they won big again in 2008. Although there’s little beyond a vague grasp of the law of averages behind it, most pundits and prognosticators (especially the vapid TV variety) appear to believe that it simply defies common sense (another word for “conventional wisdom”) that Democrats would rack up a third winning election in a row.

That same logic was also being used to some extent in 2008, however, from off-the-cuff predictions of Democratic losses (or smaller-than-expected gains) to lengthy, pendulous pieces full of ominous-sounding but anecdotal “evidence,” proclaiming doom for specific Democratic candidates. All such guesses were incorrect (in the case of specific predictions; wildly off-the-mark in the case of wide-sweeping predictions). And there’s hardly more reason to suspect things to be different this fall based solely on probability. Are there some Democratic losses in the offing? Yes, there probably are. Blanche Lincoln is almost certainly doomed this fall, and there are a few other races in which the Democrat is behind — some by quite a substantial margin.

Yet there are also signs that the opposite is happening, too. All throughout the long, hot summer of discontent in ’09, angry teabaggers disrupted townhalls and a consensus grew among the chattering class that there was “energy” on the right but no longer on the left; that Democrats were “in trouble.” When Scott Brown scored his upset victory over the hapless Martha Coakley, that conventional wisdom solidified into a virtual narrative. Democrats were despondent, and headed for the rocks this fall, while the GOP, through sheer mule-headedness, party discipline and the resurgent teabaggers, were headed back into a much greater share of power.

But take a look at two separate polls, both from last week, which don’t seem to bear that narrative out. The first is a Research2000 poll for DailyKos, covering the Illinois Senate seat previously held by Barack Obama (and most recently by Roland Burris, of Blagojevich-fame). Senate seats are always important since there are only 100 of them and they wield outsize influence as a result, but this particular seat has been something of a plum for Republicans in much the same way that winning Ted Kennedy’s seat was. The symbolism of turning Obama’s old seat red, in the first election since he vacated it, is a tantalizing one indeed for the GOP faithful. And, until recently, Republican Mark Kirk had been either competitive with or in some cases held a commanding lead over Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Yet in this most-recent poll, Giannoulias leads Kirk by 43-36. Yes, there’s months to go, and yes, there are 19% still undecided…but those numbers were just as big – or bigger – when previous polls showing Kirk ahead were done.

Similarly, another thorn in the GOP’s side recently has been the defection of former-GOP (and now Democratic) Senator Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. Specter was one of the Reagan Republicans, and had been for decades. He was always one of the more moderate, “gettable” Senators, occasionally crossing the aisle to work with Democrats on certain issues. That never endeared him to the hard-core GOP, but when Specter voted for President Obama’s stimulus package last year, he earned the everlasting enmity of Pennsylvania’s far-right, who vowed to defeat him in the upcoming GOP primary. Specter shrugged it off for a while, but when multiple polls showed him losing badly to Toomey among the sort of hard-core conservative base voters who show up for GOP primary contests, he made a pragmatic decision to switch parties. The GOP, I’m sure, thinks of it as an unprincipled or even craven decision – and I’m none too sure I’m suddenly a fan of Specter myself just because he made a calculated choice to put a D after his name instead of an R. But from Specter’s perspective, he’s a savvy enough politician to understand that he was simply going to lose, no question about it, in a contest among hard-core right-wing ideologues — even if he likely could have won the general election — which he could have (and still can). Ideologues have no room in their calculus for compromise or tough decisions, and a far-right (but untested) conservative firebrand like Toomey is always preferable to them to someone they perceive as a feckless RINO like Specter.

So Specter switched parties, thus making him “dead” to most of the GOP, who now consider him a traitor. And his opponent is the man who would have certainly defeated him in a hypothetical matchup in the GOP primary, Pat Toomey. Only now, Specter will be facing Toomey in the general election, where Democrats will be weighing in, as well as independents and swing voters. And lo and behold, here’s another poll (this time from Quinnipiac, saying Specter has pulled into the lead in the PA-Senate matchup, for the first time in months. Until this poll, Toomey had been leading – sometimes even dominating – Specter, lending superficial credence to the conservatives’ suggestions that perhaps Specter had burned too many bridges in PA and now nobody wanted him.

But in PA – as in IL (and, I contend, elsewhere) – most people are not political junkies, and they don’t follow the ins and outs of political intrigue and infighting. Especially not a year or more from election day, or even beyond about six months. Arlen Specter has had, and continues to have, one of the most-recognizable brand names in Pennsylvania politics, and he doesn’t lose that overnight just because he irritates hardcore conservative ideologues. That doesn’t mean that just because people know him, they’ve got a favorable impression of him, although there is often a certain “better the devil you know” effect in politics. The truth of the matter is that it’s still too far out to say for certain what will happen in either Specter’s race or Giannoulias’ race…but the notion that Democrats are simply in for an across-the-board drubbing this fall is not borne out by these most recent polls, and will likely wind up as yet another example for the historians of poor political pundit-prognostication. Probably.