I remember reading Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon many years ago. It's about an old Soviet apparatchik fallen from grace and thrown into one of Stalin's prisons to await some miserable and sordid fate in the Lublyanka cellars. It came to mind because there's a mention in it of group photos of the Old Guard, the early, idealistic, committed Communists out to make a better world and how one by one, the official photos on the office wall were replaced by newer ones with certain people missing, certain others added.
It was long before digital photography and before it made it so easy for unscrupulous, devious, dishonest, America hating, indecent propagandists to produce photos of John Kerry and Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.
It's far too easy for an American public so insanely desperate, so grossly, childishly irresponsible that they will get into bed with the Moonies just to have one more idiotic piece of dung to fling at the opposition. It's so easy for a public who never reads to miss the parallels between what they do and what the people they claim to hate did. It's so easy for an infantile America to dismiss someone for having Communist cooties because they simply haven't the brains to do much more and certainly can't be expected to discuss her actual qualifications and record.
It's so hard for a person who likes to see people get their just desserts when those people are the country he so wishes to be proud of.
Sometimes I meet the nicest people, kind, outgoing, articulate and with many shared interests. A Saturday afternoon barbecue, a manicured garden, a convivial crowd of fellow boaters; many with experiences I can only envy, of cruising the beautiful and exotic parts of the globe.
I mention a planned sail to the Leeward Islands and a stop in beautiful Dominica with it's mountains and waterfalls and hot springs and black sand beaches like the Hawaii of long ago. "Maybe I'll never come back," I say.
"Maybe we'll all have to go elsewhere" says she, "before those Liberals ruin the country with all that debt and, you know before that Obama destroys capitalism."
There's that sick, sinking feeling again; the realization that beneath the tranquil surface, there's a dangerous reef to rip your bottom out. I should have known; but facing the isolation one feels when surrounded by people passionately inimical to your every thought and steadfastly obstinate in resisting any facts or any argument that might diminish the comfort of their cherished anger, makes one too desperate to believe someone might not have been infected with that alien zombie virus. Damn it, I let my guard down again.
"I can't watch the news any more, it's all Liberal" she says. Perhaps she doesn't, but she's listening to someone. Someone is not telling her that the debt began so soar in terrifying fashion when George entered the white house; has soared under every Republican president since Ford or reminding her that the tax cuts that were supposed to increase government revenues didn't and that were supposed to create new jobs created no private sector jobs whatever while government jobs and government coasts soared. Someone isn't telling her that our senseless military endeavor that appears now to have been embarked upon for profit has already cost more that World War II and continues to burn through billions. That kind of debt doesn't count, only debt that might help Americans who aren't already in the club. No -- best not to listen to the Liberals on the TV news.
"It's true that 24 hour coverage leads to a format that's mostly speculation and opinion and it's true that at least one network simply lies and invents and misquotes and twists facts, " I said. Her brow began to furrow. "That's why I try to read as many sources as I can. "I read three or four to a dozen newspapers most every morning," I say. " I listen to everything from Al Jazeera to Haaretz on line." I can see the suspicion growing, the bestial voice in her head growling liberal.
I'd ask her to define liberal, but I know she's define it as its opposite. I know she has no awareness of current events, history or anything outside the Yacht Club Republican cocktail-hour school of economics and social criticism. I know there's no point in flexing a consciousness that's been ossified in one position for 75 years, so I do what I always have to do and smile and say:
"Oh, don't worry, it's a strong country and I'm sure we'll survive," even though I'm far from certain.
One of the definitions of a prostitute is, "a person who willingly uses his or her talent or ability in a base and unworthy way, usually for money." So, if you're getting over $400,000 a year from a bunch of guys in a particular industry, does that make you a whore?
And what does it make you when you side with your "financial backers over the public interest"? A brazen hussy.
In the wake of last month's catastrophic Gulf Coast oil spill, Sen. Lisa Murkowski blocked a bill that would have raised the maximum liability for oil companies after a spill from a paltry $75 million to $10 billion. The Republican lawmaker said the bill, introduced by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), would have unfairly hurt smaller oil companies by raising the costs of oil production. The legislation is "not where we need to be right now" she said.
Well I sure would hate for the little bitty oil companies to get hurt while thousands of gallons of oil a day are pouring into the Gulf, threatening the entire ecosystem, the wetlands, the marine life, the coastline, the fishing industry and the tourist industry, and the quality of life of its inhabitants for decades to come.
I wonder just where Mukowski thinks this legislation should be right now. I wonder if she's considered, or if she even cares, where the money is going to come from to pay for the cleanup and all the other fallout from this disaster. I wonder if she thinks about those 11 men who were killed - and their families. I wonder if she thinks.
Murkowski's move came just hours after Washington's top oil lobby, the American Petroleum Institute (API) expressed vociferous opposition to raising the cap. It argued that doing so would "threaten the viability of deep-water operations, significantly reduce U.S. domestic oil production and harm U.S. energy security." API's membership includes large oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP America, as well as smaller ones.
An API spokeswoman told TPMmuckraker that the bill represented "a knee-jerk reaction that could have unintended consequences." she added: "It's important that the Senate did vote it down."
In fact, the Senate didn't vote on the bill. Thanks to Senate procedures, Murkowski was able to block it simply by objecting to a voice vote request on the bill.
It's not clear that Murkowski's move will end up affecting how much BP and Transocean pay. The White House told TPMmuckraker last week that if the courts find BP to have been "grossly negligent or to have engaged in willful misconduct or conduct in violation of federal regulations," -- which would seem likely -- then the $75 million cap disappears. And there will likely be further efforts in the coming days to raise the cap.
(. . .)
Menendez was scathing in response to Murkowski's move, telling reporters: "Either you want to fully protect the small businesses, individuals and communities devastated by a man-made disaster -- this is not a natural disaster; this is a man-made disaster -- or you want to protect multibillion-dollar oil companies from being held fully accountable. Apparently there are some in the Senate who prefer to protect the oil companies."
If you are as angry as I am and if you want to scream at the top of your lungs, here's a couple of ways to go about it:
The Republicans sometimes like to talk about their big tent. Others, in consideration of the exploits and shenanigans of the party of values and families and apple pie may think it's more like a freak show tent, but we shall see soon enough which kind of tent the Donna Milo show winds up in.
Cuban born, 48 year old "Conservative" Republican Ms. Milo is running to unseat rather liberal Broward County Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Yes, Miami Cuban Republicans are pretty numerous and at first glance one who didn't know that Ms. Milo used to be a Mr. Milo, whose friends called him Ed, wouldn't think anything was out of the ordinary.
Donna Milo is a person who prides herself in getting to where she is by her personal ability and in spite of her differentness -- not like those who we support with our tax money or special favors to Cuban immigrants, perhaps. Will that differentness matter more to the GOP than the traditional Republican attitudes she publicly displays?
It remains to be seen whether the party so traditionally inimical to the rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people -- their agenda -- as they so often phrase it, will welcome her into the three ring big top with the other anti-Castro, pro-corporate liberal-bashing Miami paranoids or ushered out the side door.
I admire Arizona's own particular brand of conservatism. Some would rather have it called Libertarianism but whatever you call it, I don't think it goes far enough. To give license to any policeman to assume probable cause to stop and search and demand papers of anyone who looks foreign is all well and good, but if it's confined to Arizona it just ain't enough. We need to follow Arizona's lead and make it national policy and any cop from Athol Massachusetts to Zebulon Georgia should be able to stop and demand papers of anyone below a certain level of blondness.
Because of Arizona's proximity to sources of ethnic pollution all cars with AZ plates should be stopped and searched and all air passengers arriving from Phoenix should be shunted aside for special handling. If even one leaf blower wielding, dish washing, fruit picking, leprosy carrying insurgent is stopped, it's worth the minor inconvenience. Of course there are those who need to be exempted from the rule - take New Mexico Governor Richardson or former Attorney General Gonzalez. We could have RFID transponders injected under their skin to identify them as trusted members of suspicious races so no celebrities, lawyers or politicians will be Tasered, beaten or otherwise humiliated in the process.
Again, Arizona leads the way in demanding that all candidates for President must present proof of US birth to be on the AZ ballot. Libertarians who profess to be strict constitutionalists may find a problem here, but I'm sure that the gravity of the problem will change their minds. It's also very important to define the nature of the proof lest the candidate furnish a state certified certificate attested to by the governor and director of vital records and attempt to fool State officials with it. It will take some work, but it can be done. In fact the bill gives the Arizona Attorney General discretion in the matter. According to the bill passed by the Arizona House on Monday, partisan or racial or ethnic suspicion alone is probable cause to reject the candidate and keep him off the ballot. Fortunately, House Republicans were able to pass the bill before Tuesday so as not to give Liberal terrorist supporters (if you'll forgive the redundancy) a chance to say it was done in honor of Hitler's birthday.
There are some Hitler loving, Maoist Liberal heretics in Arizona however. It's hard to believe but Phoenix Democratic Representative Kyrsten Sinema thinks all this is making Arizona a laughing stock, but that's easily countered by a sustained barrage of hysterical accusations of Communism, Fascism and palling around with terrorists. Works every time. It's like shooting Liberals in a barrel.
Sometimes I don't know whether to keel over dead from laughing at the people insisting I think Barack Obama is a messiah and trying to force that sour confection down the throats of Democrats or to have a fatal stroke yelling at them about how they've been trying to shove messiahs of their own up the other end.
Of course America is always looking for a hero and wants one so badly we've made heroes out of some strange characters, but one man's hero is always the other man's Devil and nowhere more so than in the USA. Did FDR save us from complete economic collapse and a likely shift away from faith in the Capitalist economic model, or did he make it far worse because he was in fact only a puppet: like Truman and Eisenhower, a Quisling serving his Soviet Masters? As I said, one man's Messiah is the other guy's Satan. At least he and Ike and Truman didn't succeed in handing over the reigns to Stalin or Kruschev -- or did they? It depends on the definition of Communism and what looks like a free market to one person is obviously not to another. There will be no reconciliation until long after it becomes moot and the US is a distant memory to be made into an object lesson for propagandists yet unborn.
At any rate the longing for some kind of return to a past that didn't happen as described is alive and thriving like bacteria in some Texas bus station men's room and making it impossible for us to be a real nation rather than the loose confederacy of Hobbsian States they envision. Take Texas - please.
Newsweek says that the tenacity of Texas Governor Rick Perry tells us much about America in the age of Obama. I think it tells us a lot about America in the age of James Buchanan; divided irrevocably on issues that now seem morally and legally obvious to most of us.
The US in the mid 19th century was a cultural hodgepodge, filling up with immigrants speaking many languages, publishing papers and supporting theaters and associations using German Polish, Italian, Russian, Czech, French languages and more. Governor Perry thanks that "hodgepodge" sapping our "moral strength" today. It's strange to behold when in my lifetime civilization was on the brink of collapse because of the far right Utopian dream of ethnic and linguistic "purity." It's a strange kind of freedom that is allowed only to people of certain ethnic and religious backgrounds, but Texas is a strange kind of place.
Governor Perry worries that our country is run by government bureaucrats, instead of the Confederate model where it was run by wealthy landowners, and the current Republican model where free elections don't legitimize a candidate they don't like and where the country should be run by a confederation of wealthy Corporations and perhaps officially sanctioned religious leaders.
Am I making unfair comparisons to pre-Civil War era conditions? Keep in mind that Perry, when asked by Newsweek to explain his Capitol Steps talk about secession, only mumbled about long term debt and "what this administration is doing from an economic standpoint."
No the government is the enemy unless the Government is the enemy: "wants to be the epicenter and one size fits all. .. . . we have very, very different ideas about the structure of this country and how it should work" and as far as I can see, they're pretty much the same as those of Jefferson Davis and bear an uncanny similarity to the ideas of many America Royalists who quite liked the State religion and its forced conformity, heresy laws, witch trials and all.
"I don't care how hard you work. We are going to take more" are the words he puts in the mouth of the Democrat Demon. He needed to since it wasn't there in the real world he's such an alien to: the world where the Yankee president is going to take your slaves and let them whistle at white girls and where Obama is gonna take your guns even though he ain't. The Yankees are gonna make it hard for us to use public schools to teach far out fringe conjectures about a 6000 year old universe and magic creation of men out of mud. Of course if we taught them that Allah made us out of a blood clot, you'd soon hear the tune change from their "god given right" to teach our children to another assumed right to demonize other people's rights and lie about the data.
So how do you argue with someone for whom the truth is like silly putty; where you need absolute proof of some things and sneer about the entire idea of proof or even ignore evidence with other things: someone who believes in absolute authoritarianism yet decries absolute authoritarianism in Democracy? How can the smug insistence that huge debts and massive borrowing is just fine unless it's done by Democrats?
You don't.
How do you argue with someone who insists the Depression started with Roosevelt and not with Hoover's huge tax cuts: someone who insists that FDR's spending didn't end or ameliorate the depression but admits WW II did because of the huge government deficit spending? How can you make him tell you why we should be more patient about seeing results from trillions spent to do unnecessary nothings in Iraq than about seeing a complete economic turn around after 15 months. How do you argue with someone who will defend unto death, or at least until the Thorazine kicks in, that contradictions and unanswerable questions weaken an argument, that freedom is all about ethnic and religious purity, that orchestrated demonstrations of inchoate anger are an acceptable way of petitioning for redress of grievances and undoing elections?.
You don't and I can't and I'm tired of trying. I'm tired of listening to How Obama has squelched our freedom of speech, how the midwest meteorite and the earthquake in China are the result of health insurance reform and other totally imaginary, seditious things, many of which are the deeds of previous administration and even supported by Conservative leaders. I'm disgusted to live in a country that allows itself to be eaten alive from the inside and won't lift a finger to help itself.
This won't end well, if it ends at all. It won't end as long as we entertain ourselves with new and ever changing diatribes of just what liberals do and just what liberals did and just what liberals are. No one but the innocent are ever burned as witches, but moreover, we'll never be able to be constructive, we'll never be able to have a democracy that works and I have to believe that the people behind this insanity know it quite well and wouldn't have it any other way.
My local Tea Party is gearing up for another froth and drool session on tax day although at least half of them know by now they won't be paying Federal Income Taxes this time or at least less than they paid the year before. You can be damned sure there won't be any of the local Billionaires (there are quite a few) amongst the cracker crumbs.
The Dow is over 11,000 as I write this, investor optimism boosted by earnings reports and economic data. Inflation remains contained at one tenth of one percent, despite the solemn assurances of Weimar style runaway. Retail sales continue to climb more than expected as the economic expansion continues.
"The amount of diesel fuel bought using credit cards at U.S. truck stops increased in March to the highest level in more than a year, indicating the recovery is broadening beyond manufacturing "
says Bloomberg and truck tonnage, which accounts for 68 percent of freight transported in the U.S., increased on a year-over-year basis in February for a third straight month, as truckers benefit from inventory rebuilding, increased exports and stronger sales.
It's getting harder not to call this a recovery, but it would certainly be hard to associate the news with the kind of implosion into economic chaos a Marxist economy and tyrannical Pol Pot killing fields some of the more extreme viewpoints have been forecasting.
"Bleak is the New Black"
writes Newsweek, but it's in the context of the increasing disparity between the sound and fury and the tale told by economic data.
"America is coming back stronger, better, and faster than nearly anyone expected—and faster than most of its international rivals."
and at present, the Dow is up over 70% in the last year. As to whether we would have turned around earlier if there had been no bailout, no stimulus package and a program of austerity, tax cuts for billionaires and continued deregulation as the Republicans demanded after 1929 -- it seems harder still to believe that we would be talking about recovery as anything but a cruel joke just now. Even so, despair, panic, and even hysteria are the stock in trade of the Fox News doomers and gloomers - the same folks who blamed pessimistic Liberals for "talking down" the solid economy of the Bush years. No, certainly a continued, uninterrupted recovery is hardly a sure thing, but more balanced Republican observers may be beginning to wish the fear mongering Murdoch would reign in his dogs a bit tighter before American voters realize that the last thing the Republicans seem to want is what they want: a recovery.
President Obama could have proposed a tax rebate of $10,000 and the conservatives still would have gone stark raving mad. When the Health Care Bill passed Republicans and Tea Partiers turned into a raging sea of childishness, insanity, ugliness and stupidity.
Representative John Boehner went apoplectic chanting "Hell no, you can't." Frank Rich, in a New York Times Op-ed piece, The Rage Is Not About Health Care, suggests Boehner "had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons."
In a debate with David Ploffe on ABC's "This Week," Karl Rove frothed at the mouth and went on a non-stop tirade. Such antics have become less funny and less entertaining.
Republicans have shouted "you lie" and "baby killer" in House chambers, violating every rule of decency and decorum. To steal a phrase from Joe McCarthy, Republican Congressional representatives have become Tea Party "fellow travelers."
For over a year Tea Party protests have attracted increasingly large crowds. They have grown louder, uglier, more threatening and more violent as time has passed. They have shouted racial and homophobic slurs at respected members of Congress and have thrown bricks through their offices - similar to a mini-Kristallnacht in 1938 Germany.
According to Rich, there was heated reaction when Social Security was passed in 1935 and Medicare thirty years later. "When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association."
But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill...you have to look to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.
That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.
In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer...
The election of a black president and a female House speaker, the appointment of a Latino to the Supreme Court, and a gay Congressional committee chairman "would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play."
In this writer's opinion, the Tea Partiers - just like the Birchers, the patriot groups, and other extremist groups have a serious case of paranoia. And racism - despite social scientists' claims to the contrary. Maybe they should have read the liberal blogs in the early days - especially those written by southerners.
The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935.By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.
After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist (Richard) Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.
Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.
In my very humble opinion the Tea Partiers and Beck and Co. are one thin hair away from being seditious. If we were a police state, as that monumental wonder Beck proclaims, everyone of those thugs would be in jail.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said NO to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine's proposal to write a joint statement condemning threats to members of Congress.
The draft text of the statement says that while Steele and Kaine disagree on the health care bill, they would "together call on elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry" and ask "all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior."
Sounds civil to me.
DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told reporters that Kaine sent the letter to Steele today and then phoned him asking the chairman to release a joint bipartisan statement "condemning the threats and acts of vandalism over the past week, calling for an end to such tactics and urging a more civil tone in our politics." "This afternoon, Chairman Steele, through staff, declined Chairman Kaine's offer," Woodhouse said.
Oops. Stonewalled again.
RNC spokesman Doug Heye whined to TPM, "Gov. Kaine had an opportunity to condemn such activities when he was sitting next to Michael Steele on the set on Meet the Press. He chose not to, and instead decided to use it as an opportunity to raise money,"
Heye added:
Obviously, a large majority of Americans - a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats and Independent - are upset that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid pushed through health care legislation that increases premiums and raises taxes and did so through strong-arm tactics, closed door meetings and sweetheart deals. Voters have a right to be angry. Unfortunately, some have chosen to engage in language and actions that go too far.
So that's it. The Republicans are just mad that they didn't get their way and they want to punish the outlaw Democrats. One thing for sure, the right-wing nuts have learned well from their mentors if their blog comments are any indication. SOS. SOS. SOS.
NO, that's not it. How can the party of "you lie" and "baby killer" say YES to civility? Why, they could never be uncivil again! They could not abuse traditional rules of House decorum! Worst of all, they could not encourage the wing-nuts to get down and dirty!
That Al Gore lost the state of Kentucky in the 2000 Presidential election was a bit of a surprise to some of us. Polls had him up as much as 8%, but of course he lost that state and his loss was accompanied by jeers, of course. Republicans love to hate Al Gore although some have since begun to love Lieberman. They'd also love to forget all the accusations of voter fraud and the way they excoriated all who were suspicious that those voting machines with no means to check whether they had been hacked or not might have in fact, been tampered with in several states. Sore losers, we were called by the smug victors who currently are losers sore enough to the point of threatening us all with violence and insurrection.
In a country with a memory, the mockery might haunt Republicans, but of course they live in the moment and reality is created anew every day to suit each day's requirements. The conviction of a former judge and seven others on Thursday gives renewed strength to the argument that the electoral victory in 2000 and perhaps the Bush-Kerry contest were influenced or decided by corrupt Republicans. former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle and former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams along with five others were convicted of a federal racketeering conspiracy and several of them of other charges, including mail fraud, extortion and laundering the money that was used to buy votes.
Some of the juries are still out but the mockery, the Liberal bashing, the accusations of treason are sounding more and more off key as we move forward from the 8 year reign of the Right and we have to speculate on what might have been, for better or for worse, if the corrupt and unscrupulous, with all the lip service paid to freedom, had had respect for the law and tolerance of Democracy.
This will be the first of a series of posts, which I will call The Bozone Report. What is a Bozone Report, you ask? First, a definition:
The Bozone is an aura surrounding exceptionally stupid people for whom no amount of knowledge or intelligence is known to penetrate. Although chemically inert, the Bozone Layer is highly toxic and known to destroy any productive reaction that comes in contact with it.
My first Bozone Report focuses on Senator James Inhofe, the ranking Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee. Long known for his global warming denialist propaganda, Senator Inhofe is now using (read: abusing) the resources of a Senate committee to threaten 17 leading climate scientists with criminal prosecution.
You did not misread the previous paragraph. This Minority Report released by Inhofe’s staff contains 83 pages of false and misleading statements, shameful accusations, and a list of federal laws allegedly broken that threatens 17 climate scientists with prosecution. In other words, this is the worst case of political thuggery since Senator Joseph McCarthy first employed these tactics 60 years ago. Here is a list of the accused:
Raymond Bradley - Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Keith Briffa - Deputy Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia.
Timothy Carter - Research Professor at the Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Helsinki, Finland.
Edward Cook - Senior Scholar at the Tree-Ring Laboratory, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, New York.
Malcolm Hughes - Regents' Professor in the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona.
Dr. Phil Jones - Professor at the University of East Anglia’s CRU.
Thomas Karl - Designated Transitional Director of the NOAA Climate Service.
Dr. Michael Mann - Professor and Director of the Earth System Science Center, Pennsylvania State University.
Dr. Michael Oppenheimer - Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs in the Woodrow Wilson School, and the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University.
Dr. Jonathan Overpeck - Co-Director of the Institute of the Environment, and Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona.
Dr. Benjamin Santer - Research Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Gavin Schmidt - NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
Dr. Stephen Schneider - Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, Professor of Biological Sciences, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University.
Dr. Susan Solomon - Senior Scientist at the Chemical Sciences Division (CSD) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), NOAA.
Peter Stott - Climate Monitoring Expert and Head of Climate Monitoring and Attribution at the Met Office, Hadley Centre.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth - Senior Scientist and Head of the Climate Analysis Section, the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
Dr. Thomas Wigley - Senior Scientist in the Climate and Global Dynamics Division, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.
The Minority Report accuses the Climate 17 (listed above) of unlawful use of federal funds and ethical misconduct. Specifically, it calls for an investigation to determine if any of the following Federal laws were violated:
Freedom of Information Act – accuses the Climate 17 of deliberately withholding information to prevent FOIA release.
Shelby Amendment – accuses them of failing to comply with an Agency request for raw data produced with federal funds.
OSTP Policy Directive – accuses them of “misconduct in research,” which is punishable with “criminal liability” and debarment.
Federal False Statements Act – accuses them of falsifying, concealing, or covering up: of making materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements; of making or using documents known to contain false, fictitious, or fraudulent entries; punishable by fines, or imprisonment up to 5 years, or both.
The False Claims Act (Criminal) – accuses them of creating a “tampered database” and making claims for payment from Federal funds (note: this statue requires no proof of specific intent to defraud).
Obstruction of Justice: Interference with Congressional Proceedings – accuses them of providing false or misleading testimony (although the Climate 17 never appeared before Congress).
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin), the ranking Republican on the House global warming committee, has sent a letter to Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, calling for these scientists to be blacklisted.
Thus, Congressional Republicans are employing every possible means to suppress research data. Furthermore, Congressional Republicans, in refusing to allow a fair hearing of evidence on climate disruptions and its implications, are trying to withhold these data from the public.
In an interview with the Guardian, Michael Mann noted a sharp rise in hostile email since November:
"Some of the emails make thinly veiled threats of violence against me and even my family, and law enforcement authorities have been made aware of the matter," he told the Guardian. He said the attacks appeared to be a coordinated effort: "Some of them look cut-and-paste."
Gavin Schmidt has seen an increase in Freedom of Information Act requests:
"In my previous six years I dealt with one FoIA request. In the last three months, we have had to deal with I think eight," he said. "These FoIAs are fishing expeditions for potentially embarrassing content but they are not FoIA requests for scientific information … The idea very clearly is to let it be known that should you be a scientist who speaks out in public then you will be intimidated, you will be harassed, and you will be threatened … The idea very clearly is to put a chilling effect on scientists speaking out in public and to tell others to keep their heads down."
The Minority Report is pure McCarthyism. This is not just an attempt to politicize science but to criminalize it; not just a threat to prosecute but to persecute. The Republicans are at war against academic freedom; at war against science; at war against the free exchange of knowledge and ideas … in short, the Republicans are at war against humanity.
The Minority Report is affront to my most cherished beliefs and values. The tactics employed by Congressional Republicans are as oppressive and dastardly as any employed by a totalitarian regime in recent memory. As much as I regret having to say this: The Republicans are also at war against me, and I intend to fight them with any and all means necessary.
After listening to the self-contradictory, incoherent, quasi-literate and massively hate-packed rhetoric emanating from CPAC, where we were told that the concept of progress was a Marxist idea, that Progressives wanted to progress toward Communism. Liberals were the enemy of freedom and most insane of all: "Royalists" It's hard to hold on to any hope that what's left of the American Right retains even a rudimentary grasp on reality or any commitment to any ideal in any way related to Democracy and the Rights of Man. Taxes are Communism, protection of the rights of minorities is Communism, secular democracy is communism, but collusion between corporations and government isn't, as Mussolini Defined it, Fascism -- it's freedom.
A party that won a solid majority in a free election is an "insurgency." Teddy Roosevelt, his opponent Woodrow Wilson and Adam Smith are all Communists who tried to destroy us and Glenn Beck got what he calls a "free" education, not by attending any private school, but by using taxpayer funded, government owned resources at the public library. Yes those of us who have pushed through legislation that finally allowed women and minorities to vote or own property or live like free men and women are simultaneously Nazis, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists, and yes -- Royalists. Those of us who think vast sums of corporate money are corrupting the system are any wildly preposterous political epithet that comes to mind, but also Communists, Marxists, Trotskyites and the kinky sex partners of the Taliban. That they're not calling non-Republicans Irridentists or Scrooby Separatists is only the result of their neglected education, but of course those things are only another form of Marxist Islamofascism and Trotskyite lesbo-Feminism with a bit of royalism thrown in for flavour.
"Protect our precious Medicare?" Well that's not communism even tough it and Social Security were until the country voted for health care reform. Why? because Obama is a Fascist follower of Pol Pot, trying to corrupt our youth and a Communist, Muslim, illegal alien, soft-on-terrorism, cannibal none the less - and because any hateful insanity must be true if it vilifies Obama - he's a Royalist.
No accusation is too ludicrous whether it contradicts all the other accusations or not. It' s not important to make sense or to tell the truth; it's only important to pump up the accusations, pump up the hate.
After listening to John Yoo describe a Republican justice department according to which, an American president like the one he served has more power than any European Monarch did in the age before Democracy, including the right to wage wars, internal and foreign, suspend civil rights, amend laws, refuse to obey laws, to lie, misrepresent and fabricate and to justify any action by Presidential fiat, it's hard to believe we're not simply listening to cross talk between parallel but vastly different universes. Is it legal for the President to order that the testicles of an innocent child be crushed to make his parent talk? But of course says Professor Yoo! Do as the President says shall be the law -- but we're Royalists all the same.
It's not so much that the Republicans seem to have defined conservative values as Marxist and indeed almost everything including evil itself as its opposite, they're inventing their own paranoid psychotic reality permeated by gibbering, drooling and incoherent rage, it's that we're not in open revolt against them; that they have a huge, armed and vastly wealthy base of support.
When I heard about the failed attempt to blow up an airplane yesterday, my first reaction was "how long will it take the Republicans to blame it on the President and/or Liberals. Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, as if he'd read my mind, stepped right up to the plate with
“People have got to start connecting the dots here and maybe this is the thing that will connect the dots for the Obama administration.”
Of course he has no way of knowing exactly or even generally what is known by the President, his advisers, the NSA or anyone else for that matter, but by implying that something is obvious and Obama has been oblivious, he wins another point in the fantasy touch football game of insinuational politics. Of course by some rule of the game I've never understood, it's still off-limits to insinuate that the George W. Bush administration ignored the idea that Terrorists could use airplanes and followed some imaginary, if not fraudulent dots straight to Baghdad.
Hoekstra, or Hokey, if you prefer went straight to Twitter and implied to whatever birds of that feather read his bird brained utterances, that the Obama administration had made some sort of outrageous solecism worthy only of an incompetent and coward by calling a failed attempt a failed attempt, which, of course it was.
"Administration says attempted terrorist attack. No. It was a terrorist attack! Just not as successful as they (AQ) planned." tweeted our friend Hokey.
A white House spokesman had been quoted by AP as saying
"We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism."
By that logic, I'd have to say that my tossing a rock in a northerly direction is an actual attack on Atlanta, the importance of which is undiminished by Atlanta being some 500 miles away and my throwing arm no longer what it was.
I'm guessing with some confidence that the correct course of action would, according to Hokey, be to run down Pennsylvania Avenue shrieking "terrorist attack -- terrorist attack" because the panic factor has proved to work in the Republicans' favor often enough to warrant another try.
Unfortunately the determination as to whether we've indeed suffered an official terrorist attack is the job of the Attorney General who may have wanted to take more than 5 minutes to look into the sketchy and ever changing reports coming in from Detroit as to who did it, what was done and with what kind of device.
Of course I continue to assert that if the Republicans can do no more than sift and comb through ever word, action or inaction of the opposition for something that can be twisted, misrepresented or edited into a scandal they can use to bash Obama, they continue to be the worst enemy we have.
Fox may just be the most busted name on Television, but it never seems to affect them or the faithfulness of their coven. We've heard plenty from them about how President Obama is a racist and the lack of evidence doesn't keep them from clinging to the slur or using it to disparage anyone who dares disagree. It also doesn't keep them from airing obnoxious and personal racist attacks without any disguise at all. What else would you call Bo Dietl, pulling on his eyes and mocking CBS anchor Katie Couric for looking Chinese and "oriental?" Probably the same thing he would call me if I put burned cork on my face and said "Holy Mackerel, Andy:" a racist idiot.
"Ten years ago, she looked American," Dietl remarked. "Today she is an Oriental"
as though nobody of Asian ancestry could possibly be an American. As though nobody with dark skin could possibly be one either. As though Dietl weren't a nasty little racist prick.
Dietl, who is a frequent Fox contributor, former Bush appointee and midwife to the "birther" hoax, chose Imus in the Morning simulcast on Fox for this infantile insult. In any other venue, he would immediately be fired and Imus, if he had a brain in that zombie-like head of his should have thrown him off instantly, but of course Imus is Imus and all he could do was to call Curic a rodent in that whiskey and heroin voice of his, but of course it was on Fox and the racism and ugly slander is fair and balanced, you dirty Liberals.
Sure, they'll have an excuse, it wasn't racist, he was misunderstood, Liberals have no sense of humor and yada yada. We've heard it all before. They'll get away with it because Roger Ailes, Rupert Murdoch and their employees are pigs who deserve nothing better for Christmas than to be visited by the ghost of Bruce Lee who can demonstrate to them just how hilariously funny it is to be Chinese.
A friend of mine used to have the job, back during the Vietnam war, of flying a helicopter over dangerous areas so as to draw fire from hidden gun emplacements, flushing out the enemy so that we knew where they were. Barak Obama has been a bit like that and sad to say, I've now identified far too many enemies, some that I thought were friends.
I got another e-mail this morning, from someone I would hardly call a redneck: a northeasterner, ex military intelligence with a long career at the Pentagon. "I despair for the country" was the title and it had a link to a YouTube video wherein the President confesses to being a Muslim. It's an obvious cut and paste job that wouldn't fool anyone who didn't want to be fooled -- and there's the rub. Too many want to be fooled and bask like pigs in the warm and stinky deception. The hate and fear of our President long preceded his election and for some it preceded his birth. The closeted racists of America desperately need such insultingly stupid stories as a defense against the obviously true accusations of racism.
I grew up in the 1950's and I'm no stranger to segregation or blood in the streets for that matter, but still I'm amazed at the breadth and depth of the long concealed and highly fermented racial and ethnic hatred that's been lurking in the jungle and is emerging like tracer bullets whose dotted line shows the way, right to their source.
I can't count the outraged e-mails and comments I've seen about the recent California schoolyard rape, which of course has allowed the haters to vent their paranoid fear and loathing of Hispanics. It was of course a Hispanic girl who reported it, not a "regular" American as Archie Bunker would have said, but no matter. Hate has its own sort of statistics and only needs an example to declare it "typical." Indeed, it doesn't even have to be true if you have even a mediocre shareware video editing program.
In its own way, this sick and disgusting incident seems not to be out of context of what is happening in many disparate groups, even of white, Anglo-Saxon protestants, marching in the streets for lower taxes as though Obama had actually raised them; showing pictures of Nazi death camps as though any sane person connects piles of murdered bodies to a government administered health plan -- the people who call the Democratic health care bill "Obamacare" but never think to call Social Security Roosevelt Retirement or identified the GI bill with Communism or call the public library the Socialist Book Store -- or identify the recession with Republican economic policies. These things and more are part of the Us against Them view where the government is "them," the 15% fringe element and the corporate lobbyists are "We the people," the government is the enemy and only illegitimately exercised authority is legitimate.
The twenty or so witnesses to this crime, if they had any compassion at all, were prevented by the entertainment value and hatred of police and the Maverick mentality from doing anything or reporting anything. The criminals are The People, the cops are not and the law is the enemy because it interferes with our freedom to commit crimes ad libidum. Is that really different from not caring how many innocents are killed abroad in a war started and continued under false pretenses and appeals to fear and patriotism? Is that different from not giving a flying damn how many millions die, how many sick children clog the emergency rooms and drive up the cost of insurance and spread disease, or how many lives are ruined by insurance companies? Its them against us and 'them' are the unfortunate, the minorities, the sick the old and unemployed. Who wants the damned law and the government to help them even if it protects us too?
Perhaps you find the connection tenuous or even far-fetched, but I don't. There is no "us" in the US any more unless it's in the context of us against them and that miserable, militant and malicious group who flatter themselves with the stolen title of 'Conservative' are as much to blame as anyone for the rape that is our for-profit, cartel run health "system." Anyone who brings the government in is a "snitch."
Oh no, it's those liberals who insist any criticism of the President is racist and we're not racist at all - it's just that he's a foreign born, Marxistnaziterroristracist who "hates white culture" (whatever the hell that is) and murdered his grandmother and wants to murder yours. It's because he's trying to reconstitute the Auschwitz death camp by giving us health insurance, not because he's a Ni - I mean black.
Hey, we're not responsible for not reporting a vicious and nearly fatal rape, it's because we can't trust the cops, the cops are the problem, the government is the problem and we want less government, you know.
I got an e-mail from Texas Senator John Cornyn this morning. Somehow I had the urge to take another shower. In the relentless crusade to mock, rebuke, deride, insult, sneer at and taunt the "opposition"Cornyn is an endless cornucopia of crepuscular reasoning and shady opinions, such as his assertion that the "delays" in supplying Texas and the United States with hundreds of millions of H1N1 vaccinations argue against the public option in health care reform.
"These delays and limited access make me question whether the government, which cannot run existing public health programs competently, should be trusted with even more responsibility – such as running a new government health plan. " [italics mine]
Of course Cornyn doesn't give examples of how the government can't run health care, either from Medicare, the Veteran's Administration or indeed from the Government health careCornyn and his cronies enjoy. Of course he doesn't have to, he's preaching to Republicans -- a faith-based group who never seem to question thetenebrous tenets of that faith. The Government just can't do anything right: Reagan said so and the Republicans are hell bent for leather to make sure it's self-fulfilling.
Perhaps John can explain what the failure of the oil industry that supports him to end oil shortages and give us 29 cents a gallon gasoline again argues for or against, or why we shouldn't say that Exxon can't run anything properly, including keeping tanker captains sober. One offensively stupid argument deserves another, I should think, and the argument that the Government can't do anything and so shouldn't be allowed to do anything is a stupid argument and an annoying one coming from someone who is part of the government and is stalling, obfuscating and sabotaging health care reform -- right after having supported Bush's massive increases of unaccountable executive power and failed wars for 8 years.
No, A public option for health care is a
"Trojan horse that will ultimately lead to a government takeover of our health care system. "
says John Cornyn: another way of invoking the slippery slope fallacy. If we allow A we'll allow A+B and if we allow A+B, we'll allow A+B+C. . . Of course any truth to this is no more than accidental because none of these steps compel the other, That's why we call it a fallacy, but again, he's arguing to Republicans and Lone Star Republicans at that, not exactly a constellation bright enough to light up the sky. Funny that he didn't argue that an invasion of Iraq would lead to a "government takeover" of the world or that warrantless surveillance and the end of Habeas Corpus would lead to a police state.
No, we're not on a slippery slope toward invading Ireland, the US Postal Service isn't going to take over DHL or UPS or FedEx and none of those could handle a minute fraction of the envelopes, post cards, advertising fliers or periodicals the USPS delivers. No, the public schools aren't going to take over the private schools and the Social Security Administration isn't going to take over your pension. The County Hospital or the VA hospital isn't going to take over the private hospitals. It isn't the "Government" producing the vaccines and if we had to depend on the profitability of doing that to induce the pharmaceutical industry to do it, we'd have far greater shortages and tens of millions who wouldn't get any and couldn't afford it and would help the disease spread because of it. Of course I'm sure Tex Cornyn will get his vaccination, one way or another. He'll get it for free. He gets all his health care for free, so why should he give a Texas damn about you?
There are a lot of Facebook and web pages and blogs from all kinds of people and organizations and it's nothing all that unusual to find something racist, something disturbing something shameful in all the vastness: the enormity amongst the enormousness, for those of you who still make the distinction. I'm quite old enough to remember segregation, Jim Crow, miscegenation laws and even the outrageous Coon Chicken Inn, something that would shock most of us today, and I remember who supported the civil rights we now take for granted and who opposed it.
We have come a long way, or at least most of us have, otherwise there would be more widespread laughter at the audacity of the RNC Facebook page now showing off Susan B. Anthony and Abe Lincoln as GOP heroes. A few years back they were trying to sell Martin Luther King as a Republican hero and some continue to portray Jesus as a Conservative.
Neither audacious or shameful adequately covers posting racist pictures a short time ago, including this one of the President of the United States eating fried chicken and demanding repeal of Love Vs. Virginia that in 1967 locked the intrusive government and its God fearing Southern Conservative bigots out of deciding which races could marry which. It was only a few years after they were forced to stop telling us where we could eat or sleep or live or ride or swim or picnic or find a bathroom or go to school, based on our race. Obviously some Republicans haven't forgiven us for it. Evidently the GOP has done little to excommunicate or even to censure such people. Indeed many of the Republicans I know think such things are funny.
It remained up on the RNC site until those pesky and humorless liberals complained. Disgusting, but typical, and all the sniping from the snarky, snickering anonymous trolls won't change that fact.
When the man behind the curtain speaks, Republicans listen. Others become speechless. It's all too predictable that Limbaugh would support Joe Wilson's outburst and not surprising that he claims to have been squealing "you lie" himself throughout the entirety of President Obama's health care speech.
"He is lying, President Obama is. From the moment he opens his mouth until he ends the speech"
he grunted on his radio show yesterday. Of course and as usual, no discussion of how or about what he actually lied ensued. Boss Hog said he lied, that's enough and Wilson never should have apologized and his colleagues shouldn't have pressured him to do so.
It reminds me of the first time I heard his radio show. I was driving through Georgia, in the days before satellite radio and I decided to give him a minute to see what he was about.
[Rush] "I mean, the guy (President Clinton) just makes me sick"
[caller 1] "Ditto Rush! I see him and I want to vomit"
[caller 2] "Ditto, ditto - oh ditto ? Rush everything about him is disgusting. He makes me sick, sick!"
The call and response chorus went on and on until I turned it off and I've only heard him a couple of other times in all these years - I mean he makes me sick, but I can usually tell you why without inventing things.
That no plan offered by anyone provides health insurance for illegal residents of the US isn't hard to determine, but Rush isn't about facts, he's about emotions; hate for the most part. It's easy for him to say that Obama is plotting
"to completely tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great."
It's impossible however, to make a case for that without lying. In fact his attempts to preserve some of those institutions are the basis for other Limbaugh anger crusades. I'm at a loss to understand what American institutions made America great and are now in peril from the concept of making insurance available to everyone, unless stupidity, dishonesty and perhaps insanity are institutions. I'm at a loss to understand just how
SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS. Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.
Means the opposite of what it says without subscribing to Limbaughian logic. In fact it proves that Rush is a liar, something all to easy to do, but one thing Rush knows is that the more absurd and preposterous the claim the less effective is the irrefutable proof of its falsity. Rush knows and Rush profits and Rush keeps on lying and Republicans keep on following in his wake, terrified to disobey.It's not so much that he makes me sick but that he is the sickness.
". . . whether or not these techniques are immoral, or how immoral they are, surely depends on whether they worked”
said George F. Will regarding the use of torture. How sad that anyone considers this man "conservative" or in fact listens to him at all. Although he supported a commission to study (obfuscate) the matter on ABC's This Week yesterday, Will seems to consider an extreme utilitarianism a valid moral measure. If it works to reduce crime, why not human sacrifice? Perhaps Will would like to be on the commission to "study" that.
Although the idea that a practical end justifies any means or makes crime legal or worse, is the basis of moral judgment, is frankly horrifying and although such thinking may long have been with us, it hasn't, to my knowledge been so clearly championed. The idea that such things still need to be re-examined is sickening, considering that we used opposition to this kind of Spencerian social Darwinism as a rallying cry in WW II and it's more sickening still that Will can call opposition to it "liberal" and Dick Cheney can call it "far left."
Have even the most articulate supporters of Republican policy run so far out of arguments that they have to resort to these mindless dichotomies? A cornered rat does not think of right and wrong and neither, apparently does a cornered Republican. It's just me against you and anything I do to you is justified.
Jane Fonda, for instance, or Barack Obama saluting improperly -- and do it far better than old Ivan in the back room could with a razor and some glue. It is far too easy for the kind of trolls who work for right wing rags owned by foreign born lunatics like the Washington Times to produce photos of Elena Kagan in a black Turban so as to insinuate perhaps, and without any sense of journalistic integrity, that she's a terrorist supporter as well as a probably homosexual cross dresser and part of an "ominous plot" to insinuate Sharia Law into this country.
