Return of Bircherism

The Tennessee General Assembly passes a delusionally paranoid, anti-UN resolution against Agenda 21. The fact that it's anti-environmental? Bonus!

WHEREAS, according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, social justice is described as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded us by society and the environment which would be accomplished by socialist/communist redistribution of wealth

This sounds like the John Birch Society bullshit (h/t @Trace Sharp) I heard growing up in Tennessee 40 years ago, and sure enough it is. Don't any of them wonder how we're still free if fluoridation was a communist conspiracy to drug us all into sheep-like obedience?

Rick Perlstein (h/t Paul Krugman) notes that the crazy conservatives have been with us a long time - longer than we've called them wingnuts.

[A]longside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That's because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it's because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they've been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).

Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it's not going away, either. It's just getting more powerful. That's a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.

What we had until Ronald Reagan and talk radio brought them out of the darkness was a social norm that scoffed at the fever swamp of ultra-conservative imagination. Well, nationally, not in the South. We no longer have that moderating national norm, which is really depressing, and the continuing reason wingnuts are so sensitive to any norm that limits their various and sundry bigotries.

Still, it's hopeful to look back with a gimlet eye and see that we liberals have overcome the wingnuts before. Now, to do it again.

Update: Lest I get too optimistic, more lunacy on Agenda 21.

The 1970s were so socialist

How much has trickled down? Hardly any of it.

What we got by electing Ronald Reagan: We confirmed and made much more extreme previous policy choices by Congress and Jimmy Carter that put investment interests ahead of national interests and certainly ahead of the interests of the middle class.

Misperception is reality

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Elephant always forgets

Is it senility or willful forgetting?

Ronald Reagan said that his tax cuts would reduce deficits, then presided over a near-tripling of federal debt. When Bill Clinton raised taxes on top incomes, conservatives predicted economic disaster; what actually followed was an economic boom and a remarkable swing from budget deficit to surplus. Then the Bush tax cuts came along, helping turn that surplus into a persistent deficit, even before the crash.

The evidence suggests that Republicans don't care about the size of the economy. They care about income inequality. Unlike Democrats, Republicans favor more inequality.

That way, their wealthy friends can feel yet greater self-esteem than already oozes out of their pores.

Mr. Reagan, tear down this economy

When I said a couple of weeks ago that there was nothing Republicans wouldn't screw up for sake of private profit, I had no idea it would be so graphically illustrated so soon. Here's one of the graphs - on income inequality:


No one should be surprised by this. It is intentional Republican policy to make rich people richer.

Ronald Reagan made people feel better as a sop for not making them better off. Just say no.

(h/t Susan Gardner on DailyKos)

Sarah Palin's appeal

Sarah Palin is only convincing to people who aren't mature enough graduate from middle school. That's why Heathers bullshit like this comes out of her well-lipsticked mouth:

"It's kinda like getting out in the playground, a bunch of kids ready to fight, and one of the kids saying 'go ahead, punch me in the face, I am not going to retaliate, go ahead and do what you want to with me.' "

It deserves every bit of President Obama's condescension, if not more:

"[L]ast I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues."

...

"I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin."

Palin's an idiot. No news there. And of course she's forgotten that Ronald Reagan also signed a START treaty with the Russians.

Why doesn't the media do something equally random and ask Obama about Anne Hathaway's opinions? She's much prettier than Palin, and - as a very special bonus - she is undoubtedly smarter and better informed.

Alexander Haig

When John Hinckley tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan, then-Secretary of State Al Haig, who died today, infamously announced to the White House press corps, "I am in control." Many of my fellow liberals pilloried him for this.

They were wrong. Worse, they had to know that they were wrong.

On that very day, it was clear to me from his remarks that he said what he said to reassure our friends and warn our adversaries that our government was not leaderless. That was indeed public service - and not a power grab - and he bore the scars from those attacks with honor like the soldier he was.

I didn't agree with his politics - though it looks pretty good compared to current Republicans - but I didn't question his basic understanding of and adherence to the Constitution - again, unlike current Republicans.

Baldwin on points

The first round of Alec Baldwin vs. Joe Lieberman goes to Baldwin. Lieberman started with a tiresome old Reaganesque chestnut, badly delivered:

“You know, make my day.”

Baldwin, who disclaims any intent to run, offers this rejoinder:

"Part of me would hate to see Lieberman go, because there are so few moderate Republicans left in the Senate today."

Lieberman is going to need better writers, at least until Democrats get a candidate.

Triumph of Reaganism

If this isn't irrefutable evidence of the success of the class warfare of the rich on the rest of us, I don't know what would be.

Note when it started.

Frame-up

In a news article, I seldom see examples this glaring of Republican framing than this claim that Obama's budget is a battle between the thoroughly deprecated LBJ and St. Reagan. As if that alone were not enough, the article gives the Reaganaut myth-makers both the first word and the last.

My diagnosis: This was an RNC press release with a few convenient Democratic comments shoehorned into the middle in the name of faux balance.

'Cause Fred said

Why can Fred Thompson still get on TV? He's a snoozer. He's less popular than Dennis Kucinich, and you don't see him turning up on your screen. Is Kucinich's jaw wired shut or something?

I've got it. Fred is soooo gorgeous. That must be it.

What he says makes no sense either:

"If he takes us down the road of tripling our national debt in ten years and making us vulnerable to higher interest rates and higher inflation, and things of that nature, I want all those policies not to succeed," he said.

Somehow CNN's John Roberts is not prepared to ask Reaganite Fred to compare Obama's plan to what Reagan and Bush did in their 12 years - multiply the national debt by a factor of four and a half! Saint Ronnie tripled it on his own.

Update: In the liquor store, there's Fred again, cover boy of "Cigar Aficionado" magazine. Run, Fred, run! I guess Jeri hasn't had enough of the spotlight.

Franken sense

One commenter on CNN, someone who calls himself Musicboy8, gets the cosmic joke that reality is playing on the wingnuts, if only they had consistency circuits in their brains:

February 16th, 2009 2:39 pm ET

You know what the really funny thing is here? All of the Republican clones are upset that a man who was a professional humorist is going to be a Senator, and then they turn right around and bow at the alter of a dead president who starred in "Bedtime for Bonzo"…..lol. Sorry, little red voters, your double standard is showing. You lost, democracy won, not hush and let the new leaders start cleaning up your mess.

Tried to make me go to rehab

Ruth Marcus said, "No, no, no." Glenn Greenwald is, of course and to America's benefit, all over the unwillingness of the Washington elite to punish fellow members of their incestuous little club.

Marcus pays insincere lip service to the rule of law. Then, like the conservative caricature of a squishy liberal, she pronounces it all o.k. if the on-going crime syndicate that the Republican Party is will just promise not to do it again. But, in fact, she won't even extract that promise; she only assumes that the next set of punks and lawbreakers will learn from the complete lack of sanctions on their predecessors that the right thing to do is not to break the law of the land.

Let's review:

• Tricky Dick Nixon used his government to subvert freedom and democracy in the name of national security.
• Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon for his crimes.
• Ronald Reagan subverted the Constitution with Iran-Contra.
• George Bush was in the loop but issued the most transparent lies claiming that he hadn't been.
• Bush then pardoned Caspar Weinberger. Ollie North and John Poindexter got off on legal technicalities.
• Duhbya came into office, his regent a man who learned his dark craft in the Nixon White House, and took us to war on false pretenses. He also subverted the Constitution, the U.S. Code, and 200 years of common practice. Even more than Nixon, he did what he goddamn pleased and dared anyone to stop him. The Marcus-style Democrats failed utterly.
  
• Duhbya commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Look for more pardons between now and January 20.

I'm sure John Connolly told Whitey Bulger not to do it again. Like that worked.

An observation or two:

• Any political system that is built on self-reinforcing elite courtiers, even one with the trappings of democracy, is not a government of laws.
• The choice between rehabilitation and punishment is a false choice. A just legal system must have both.
• The RICO law has low barriers to standing to bring a civil suit, but it's hard to assess a monetary value to liberty violated.
  

Memory hole

Get John McCain off of a simple formulaic message, and he often stumbles. Does this mean he's suffering from dementia? I don't know, but he didn't always do this. A Bill Clinton style policy wonk he never was, but he must have made sense on the 2000 straight talk express, when he wasn't getting so much careful political management. Else what did they talk about? Sex, drugs, and Abba?

What I really have trouble understanding is how McCNN can point to Ronald Reagan's famed age quip in 1984 without acknowledging the ample evidence that Reagan was already suffering from cognitive decline at the time, and of course, it's public record that he did turn out to have Alzheimer's. But here's the sum total of all Reagan references:

Or McCain might take a page from Ronald Reagan, who was 73 when he ran for re-election in 1984. During a televised debate against Walter Mondale, then 56, Reagan famously began by saying, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I will not hold my opponent's youth and inexperience against him." The audience laughed. Reagan went on to win the election.

Did the reporter think that wasn't relevant? Or did he just not want Tucker Bounds or Nicolle Wallace yelling at him and his editor?

No more GOP

No one should ever again vote for a Republican.

The Republican Party has proven over the last forty years to be a party of fascist criminals. It should be subject to a RICO indictment and stipped of all assets.

Whoa! Isn't that too extreme for Americans! (Nope, just too unstintingly accurate and unpleasant for television.)

Here's the evidence: Four of the last five Republican Presidents engaged in banana republic subversion of the Constitution. Gerald Ford, the sole exception, was appointed by dint of negotiation between a Democratic Congress and the first of the criminals, Dick Nixon. And even he participated in the no Republicans held accountable plan.

Let's review!

Nixon, who left Washington one step ahead of impeachment and conviction, cast himself above any law, used the power of the IRS and the FBI against his political opposition, tampered with evidence (oh, please, you believed that Rosemary Woods cock and bull story?), egged goons to assault citizens, and was deeply involved in a criminal conspiracy to select and destroy his reelection opponent.

St. Ronnie, who left with dementia setting in, had only implausible deniability (and our fundamental dismissive assumption that he was a mere figurehead) between him and Iran-Contra. Even Ollie North, whose only respect for brown Latinos stems from their affection for juntas made up of colonels, didn't believe Reagan's daft denials. Democracy? Law? Who needed 'em!

Duhbya's father, Bush I, said he was "out of the loop" on Iran-Contra, meaning of course that he was definitely not in Chicago at the time. Well, not downtown anyway. HW carried his water in the ongoing criminal conspiracy by pardoning Caspar Weinberger's substantive perjury. People like them (including Scooter) aren't criminals; you can't send them to jail just because they broke a few eentsy-weentsy Democratic laws.

Duhbya, the worst, the apotheosis of the criminal Republican, has a rap sheet unrivaled since at least Grant, maybe ever:

stole the 2000 election - set out to do it and succeeded using the resources his father had pre-positioned

neglected his duty to protect the country

chose to invade Iraq on the basis of lies in order to implement the PNAC plan for empire

effectively ended judicial oversight of surveillance of American citizens

made torture the policy of America

drove a truck through habeas corpus

used the "Justice" Department to install cronies who would trump up politically motivated charges against Democrats

robbed the Treasury for the benefit of the most wealthy Americans

sat by while domestic energy cartels almost openly manipulated prices for vast profits

brought partisan politics deep into law enforcement

reinfected the military with propaganda

subverted intelligence gathering

exposed secrets and a covert agent for short-run political gain

refused the just oversight and jurisdiction of the other branches

asserted the kingly power of the "unitary executive" to control the access Americans have to information

Could the Republicans in Congress be salvageable? Consider:

the trumped up show trials of Bill Clinton

the complete abdication of oversight and separation of powers

the constant willingness to side with the rich against the rest of us, all while pigging out on their slops

the end of any concern for environmental impact of any kind

steady defense of Bushist lies on every topic, large or small

By all means, America will have a conservative party. The sleepwalkers, sheep, and mouth-breathers need representation, too. I recommend that conscientious former Republicans, who are similar to former Iraqi Baathists in this, start with the Democratic Leadership Council. Joe Lieberman has been pretty lonely. You could make his day; give him something to do besides moping around Baghdad in a flak jacket.