I Do Not Heart Huckabee

GOP Presidential also-ran/religious troll Mike Huckabee inadvertently hit (or at least suggested) the wingnut trifecta Saturday when speaking to the Iowa Republican Party’s “Celebrate Life” event. Via Rawstory:

During his keynote speech at the Republican Party of Iowa’s Celebrate Life event on Saturday, Fox News host Mike Huckabee compared abortion in the United States to the systematic elimination of the Jewish population by the Nazis.

If you absolutely must watch Huckabee’s execrable comments in their entirety, here you go (barf bag not included):

Mike Huckabee has managed to remain even somewhat relevant in US politics for as long as he has due to two main factors. The first is that this kind of awful, lunkheaded horseshit is exactly what a large swath of today’s GOP base wants to hear. That gives him a built-in constituency. But there are plenty of others with as much or more hate to spew. Why has Huckabee succeeded – to the extent he has – where others have failed?

The second main factor in whatever success Huckabee has had is that the man sounds reasonable. And by “sounds,” I mean the actual sound of his voice. It’s also generally known – if you’re familiar with Mike Huckabee at all – that he is not just a former governor of Arkansas, but also a preacher. A man of God. That knowledge, coupled with the soothing and quite pleasant tone of his voice, almost serve to mask the hateful garbage that comes out of his mouth. Someone like Rush Limbaugh sounds and has the mannerisms of a nasty, brutish schoolyard bully: simultaneously full of fear and loathing at anyone he perceives as “the enemy™.” By contrast, Huckabee sounds like a kindly father figure – or if “father” is a bit much for you to stomach, maybe scout leader or youth group advisor. He sounds nice, even though he isn’t, and it’s what’s allowed Huckabee’s voice to be heard where people with very similar views get (rightly) marginalized for those views.

But when you get a dose of The Full Huckabee, from a setting in which he’s more-relaxed and feels he’s speaking exclusively to an audience of like-minded people (like he apparently did at the Iowa GOP’s “Celebrate Life” event), that’s when the ugliness shines forth so brightly that not even the folksy charm and soft-spoken demeanor can conceal it.

Aside from the generic awful inappropriateness of likening much of anything to the Holocaust, it struck me as interesting that Huckabee would choose to use the Schindler story as his touchstone for the comparison. Huckabee made it a point to mention that Schindler was a “bad guy” initially, highlighting that he made much of his fortune from the forced free labor of the Jews in pre-war Germany.

As I sat there seething, listening to this hateful garbage drop from Huckabee’s lips in that charming folksy voice, it occurred to me that he shouldn’t be complaining about it, he should be organizing! I mean: the GOP isn’t pro-life, they’re simply pro-birth. They’re not interested in funding Head Start or increasing funding for education, they don’t favor providing health care to expectant mothers, any of a host of other pro-ACTUAL life (not just birth) measures are anathema to the modern GOP. So why not use that indifference to the actual lives of others? Why not take Oskar Schindler’s whole example, since Huckabee was holding him up as an example anyway? Why not just go the full monty and advocate not only the eradication of legal abortion, but push for a companion law that allows the actual children who are the products of state-mandated births to poor mothers who would’ve chosen otherwise to be shipped as soon as they’re old enough right to America’s factories, to live lives of indentured servitude as a neverending repayment for their upbringing at someone else’s expense?

It’s genius! It’s clear large chunks of the south are still angry about and have not gotten over the loss of the Civil War. Shipping the human products of universal anti-abortion laws off to factories helps solve that by bringing back slavery, and it increases industrial production at virtually NO cost, since you don’t need to PAY slaves! Think about it! The wingnut trifecta: outlaw abortion, bring back slavery and increase private wealth!

Oy. This is what happens to me when I’m unwise enough to watch Huckabee speak for any length of time.

Sometimes I Am Not-So-Proud To Be From This State

From Slate, Georgia’s Hunger Games. Simply infuriating and disgusting; no other way to say it.

Four People Shot To Death In PA – While NRA Press Conference On Newtown Was Happening

Wayne LaPierre of the NRA Looks On In Annoyance As Someone Manages To Tell A Little Truth

To be clear, no, the people were not shot AT the NRA press conference. But if you listened live to NRA head Wayne LaPierre’s whiny, aggrieved, aggressive bullshit this morning at the NRA press conference, then really, the only rebuttal or answer of any kind that needs to be made can be made by the local Pennsylvania news media:

BLAIR COUNTY, Pa. — The Blair County district attorney said that four people, including the alleged gunman, are dead after a series of shootings along a rural road on Friday.

The district attorney said the victims are one woman and three men, including the gunman.

Three Pennsylvania state troopers were injured.

Remember: all this happened while Wayne LaPierre was explaining to the national press that the NRA’s much-ballyhooed “meaningful contributions” were, in essence: suggesting having armed guards at all schools. In other words, more men with guns. As if Virginia Tech didn’t have its own police force. Jeebus.

As someone on Twitter remarked: isn’t it terrible there weren’t men with guns at Ft. Hood? They could have prevented that tragic massacre.

The debate on guns – and the culture of guns – in the country needs to change. Now. After Newtown, it may finally be starting to.

(h/t BoingBoing)

There’s Just No Compromise With Nonsense Like This

It must be refuted and then roundly laughed out of the room, each and every time it rears its cro-magnon head. Holy cow:

(h/t: Joe.My.God)

Why Zero Hedge Will Always Be Correctly Viewed As Cranks

The men and women (though, in truth, it’s nearly exclusively men) at Zero Hedge seem always very concerned with being right, especially if/when they perceive others as being wrong. Their output as observers of the financial scene is comparatively quite prodigious – and I know this because I monitor a fair number of econ/trading sites: Zero Hedge consistently produces far more posts-per-day than other such sites. And they can usually be counted to be among the first, if not THE first, with any new financial news. I’ve learned of many new developments on Zero Hedge’s site before other sites had them. I obviously don’t know for sure, but I’d bet the principals of ZH all have Bloomberg terminals in their offices (perhaps even in their bedrooms, for all I know, judging from the time-stamp of some of the posts they write). And they certainly don’t suffer from an overabundance of respect for the financial elites of this country – or this world. Sometimes, you can find cogent, Cassandra-like financial analysis at Zero Hedge that’s difficult if not impossible to find anywhere else. All of that can be quite worthwhile.

Unfortunately, even more frequently, what you find at Zero Hedge is a chronic – bordering on terminal – sort of wisecracking insider’s myopia. The same willingness to offend the world’s fiscal and political elites with fearless criticism begins, after a while, to more closely resemble not fearless truth-telling, but a sort of Blackboard Jungle-delinquent’s need to offend. And that’s what makes so much of Zero Hedge’s analysis suspect and tinny sounding: it’s not the reflexive Ron Paul fixation (though lord knows, there’s more than enough of that on display at ZH), it’s not the glassy-eyed goldbug zealotry (though, again, there’s plenty of that). It’s pieces like this one from today, in which the authors, in their seemingly reflexive need to be the coolest/savviest guys in the room, subtly (or, often, not-so-subtly) attempt to pretend reality is different than what it is so they can once again slam their usual suspects list of perceived bad actors on the economic stage.

Georgia On My Mind

…and not in a good way.

Normally, I’ve titled posts like these in the past something on the order of “why is it always my state,” but in truth, this time, Georgia is hardly alone in diverting funds from the foreclosure fraud settlement into areas other than their intended target (distressed mortgage-holders). Still, it’s cold comfort to know that the Republican governors of quite a few states are using these funds as a sort of sub-rosa, backdoor stimulus to prop up their state budgets or “rainy day funds” so that the effects of the brutal, anti-government “austerity” they favor won’t be as apparent to the average voter/citizen who just glances at the state’s balance sheet.

Sigh…

Robert Gibbs Sends Me A Fundraising Letter. I Reply.

Sitting fresh in my email inbox just moments ago was the following letter from Robert Gibbs, using a Democrats.org email address and attempting to fundraise off Mitt Romney’s admittedly cringe-worthy sucking up to the southern states this week, as he heads to what looks like across-the-board defeats to either Santorum or Gingrich in The Deep South™.

This particular fundraising letter appears to be so hot-off-the-presses that, as of this writing, I cannot find a copy of it online to link you to (my guess is that I got targeted with it because I actually live here in Georgia). So instead, I’m reproducing Gibbs’ letter in full below (and my reply follows):

Mitt Romney has got to stop saying “y’all.”

Campaigning for the Alabama and Mississippi primaries the last couple of weeks, he’s been making his way through the South and coming out with stuff like this:

“Mornin’, y’all. Good to be with you. I got started right this morning with a biscuit and some cheesy grits.”

He’s been calling himself an “unofficial Southerner.” Yesterday he said he thinks catfish is “delicious” when, month before last, he said he didn’t like it.

I’m not sure it’s actually physically possible for a person to be any more phony. And this is a guy who thinks we’ll be fooled into thinking he’s got our best interests at heart because he uses a contraction.

Actually, he’s a career politician from 1,200 miles away who would give tax breaks to millionaires over the middle class and roll back everything President Obama’s done to create jobs and make sure our families have health care. And catfish is the least of what he’s changed his mind about: unions, Roe v. Wade, climate change — the list goes on.

He thinks he’s got a chance to win our votes. I can only figure that he thinks we’re stupid because we talk differently than he does. No matter how he does in today’s primaries, let’s get together and send a message from us straight to him: We’re not stupid, we’re not buying what you’re selling, and you don’t get to say “y’all.”

Can you give $5 right now to support Democrats and President Obama to crush this guy, soon as we can?

Thanks for whatever you can pitch in. If you can forward this to family and friends who aren’t any more inclined than you are to see Mitt Romney on TV for the next four years — let alone in the Oval Office — I’d appreciate it.

Also, it’s “cheese grits,” Governor. Not “cheesy.” Just “cheese.”

Thanks,

Robert Gibbs

My reply:

Dear Bob,

Didn’t read your letter.

Why? Because it came from you. I briefly scanned down to the bold link to make sure it was a fundraising appeal, and that’s where I stopped reading.

You see, I’m a member of the “professional left” (though of course I’m actually NOT a professional politician or advisor of any kind…unlike yourself, it’s worth noting). That means I occasionally find things about every politician that I disagree with – even the guys I usually agree with. That includes the politicians whom I know you think are supposed to be on “my team” and therefore, a la Reagan, we shouldn’t ever criticize them — at least, according to you.

This latter group would include your boss, on whose behalf you waxed apoplectic about people like me in The Hill lo these many months ago. So we’re clear, let me make sure you understand something – because you seemed not to at the time of that interview. I (and a lot of folks like me) support President Obama, mostly. Voted for him last time. Gave a fair amount of money, in dribs and drabs, when I could. Volunteered a little bit, even. But I don’t think President Obama is perfect, and I reserve the right to say so, if/when I think he’s made mistakes or done the wrong thing. That’s how democracy is supposed to work, isn’t it? 

Here’s the part you should pay attention to, Bob: I”ll probably give money again this cycle at some point between now and fall – maybe more than once.

But not to you.

Your sneering contempt for anyone like me whom you deemed an insufficiently loyal partisan hack – excuse me, I mean “team player” – came through loud and clear in that interview, Bob. Message received. And that message’s only effect, other than to ensure I’ll never give a dime to anything with your name directly attached, was to make me LESS enthusiastic in general about future Obama fundraising letters – even the ones that don’t come from you.

If – as it seemed in the Hill article – what you really want more than anything else is simply to let your rage boil over, and tell people like me how worthless you think we are…well, then, mission accomplished, Bob; you need do nothing more. But if, instead, your highest goal really IS to raise money for your President Obama’s “re-elect,” then you’d better find someone who doesn’t so clearly despise both my willingness (and seemingly even my ability) to criticize an elected official I often agree with, and get that person to ask me for it. 

In my everyday, face-to-face life, I neither respond nor even listen to people who treat me the way you seemed so eager to do during that interview. I’d be willing to bet you don’t allow people to talk that way about you to your face, either. So like I said, Bob: either go get someone else to ask me for my money – someone who isn’t as contemptuous of so many of the people he’s asking to fund him as you are – or go find yourself and your boss another ATM, you sanctimonious a$s.

Have a lovely day.

I’m obviously not naive enough to think that my refusing to give to any Gibbs-sponsored or affiliated initiative will mean anything by itself to Obama’s chances of reelection. In fact, it’s not my goal to hurt Obama’s chances of reelection. I just won’t interact with someone who’s been that much of a dick to me – especially if that interaction is in the form of said dick asking me for money. And I have to wonder whether Gibbs understands that I’m likely not anywhere close to the only one who felt turned off in some way by Gibbs’ insults, and that he did his boss no favors that day. Sucks when chickens come home to roost, eh, Bob?

Choke On It, Joe

The Rude Pundit says all that needs to be said about the junior Senator from Connecticut.