Month: March 2010

Queen Bee Decree

by digby

David Shuster had Sally Quinn on his show to discuss the Vatican scandal. She says that it’s the Catholic Church’s Watergate and that the Cardinals will be marching up to the papal residence any day now to tell the Pope that it’s time for him to go. She said it with such assurance that you’d think she has informants on the inside which I think we all know that’s highly unlikely.

Her expertise on Catholicism is a tad overstated, as she has previously demonstrated. Melinda Henneberger wrote about it at the time:

For years, Catholics have been arguing about who is and is not supposed to receive Communion. Until now, these were family fights, always over abortion, and nearly always involving elected officials. After pro-choice presidential candidate John Kerry received the Eucharist at my parish in 2004, for instance, the priest was so excited, he announced the big news at a subsequent Mass, and got a standing ovation. (I know, right? Oy.) While at the other end of the spectrum, some cowboy in vestments recently refused to serve the conservative pro-life jurist Doug Kmiec, for the supposed sin of having smiled at Barack Obama. (OK, he endorsed him, in Slate.)

But then non-Catholic Sally Quinn took Communion at Tim Russert’s funeral—and blogged about the body and blood in the Washington Post-Newsweek religion site “On Faith.”

Last Wednesday at Tim’s funeral mass at [Holy]Trinity Church in Georgetown (Jack Kennedy’s church), communion was offered. I had only taken communion once in my life, at an evangelical church. It was soon after I had started “On Faith” and I wanted to see what it was like. Oddly I had a slightly nauseated sensation after I took it, knowing that in some way it represented the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Last Wednesday I was determined to take it for Tim, transubstantiation notwithstanding. I’m so glad I did. It made me feel closer to him. And it was worth it just to imagine how he would have loved it. After I began “On Faith,” Tim started calling me “Sister Sal” instead of “Miss Sal.”

This reads a little too much like a restaurant review for my comfort; Christ Almighty: Tangy Yet Nauseating? And good as he was, we don’t really take Communion to feel closer to Tim Russert.

Knowledge of the church’s rituals be damned, if the Queen Bee says the Pope is going to resign, then everyone has to take notice.

As for what should happen to the pope, well, I’d say he probably needs to be arrested. But I’m not making any predictions. Unlike Quinn, I don’t have access to the Village tarot deck so I’m hesitant to say exactly what’s going to happen. Let’s just say I’m doubtful that they operate like American politicians. They don’t put a lot of stock in popular opinion.

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Under The Veneer

by digby

Following up on my post last night about the militia raids in Michigan, I see that Dave Niewert, a certified expert in militia culture, has weighed in. He compares the “mainstream” Michigan Militia (which threw these “Christian” militia men under the bus yesterday) to the Washington State militia that he covered:

The WSM was a lot like the Michigan Militia in that it liked to sell itself as a civic-minded group whose main purpose was to defend citizens from government oppression and to perform various civic function. I’ll never forget John Pitner, the WSM’s “commander,” telling reporters outside a meeting hall in Mount Vernon in January 1996 that he and his members had been heavily involved in sandbagging efforts to combat the floods that had hit local rivers the week before.

That was how they behaved when out in public, trying to recruit mainstream conservatives to their cause. Then we discovered that what they were saying in private was quite a different thing altogether.

Pitner and six of his comrades were arrested in July 1996 and hit with a variety of charges, most notably for making pipe bombs. At the trial, it emerged that the FBI had videotaped many of the militiamen’s meetings, and so both the trial audience and the jury got to hear Pitner and his cohorts planning various acts of violence, including bombing a local reporter’s home and a nearby train tunnel.

That’s why that poster I featured of their little family picnic with the kids and the guns is so creepy. If they listen to Fox and Rush, as most of these wingnuts do, they probably even believe that they are mainstream. In fact, they are violent radicals, but that seems to be all the “rage” these days in certain quarters.

Somehow this doesn’t make me feel safer:

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Upside Down

by digby

After a hilarious recap of the slow-at-first-then-all-at-once destruction of McCain’s reputation at his own hand, Charles Pierce becomes the only person (that I’ve read anyway) to note the most amazing moment of the McCain-Palin teabag extravaganza this week-end:

John McCain has flown in Sarah Palin to be the featured speaker at a rally that he hopes will push him to victory over a guy whom even all the other congressional dumbasses thought was a box of rocks. She’s endorsing him but, at the rally, HE’S introducing her …

He created this monster and now he’s subservient to it. There’s some poetic justice in that.

h/t to bb

Hot Steele

by digby

Evidently Michael Steele likes to travel in style. According to this, he likes it so much he considered having the RNC buy its own plane. (He’s settled for chartering jets instead.) But what the party boss really likes to do isparty hearty:

Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent [update: the amount is actually $1,946.25] at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.

Far be it for me to deny a guy the chance to blow off some steam, but you’d think the Republicans would at least require him to confine himself to some good old fashioned hetero bondage. That lesbian imitation stuff makes it seem like he’s immoral or something.

Update: Evidently it was an RNC staffer hanging out at the bondage club, not Steele himself. Steele himself just spends lavishly on travel and accomodations. Well ok then.

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Was Gekko Railroaded?

by digby

Daniel at Crooked Timber goes back in time and looks at the case against Gordon Gekko. Turns out he probably didn’t actually break any laws. Greed really is good. Or at least it isn’t illegal.

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Patriot vs Patriot

by digby

Add this one to the tally of wingnut groups out there. Seven arrested in FBI raids linked to Christian militia group:

At least seven people, including some from Michigan, have been arrested in raids by a FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana as part of an investigation into an Adrian-based Christian militia group, a person familiar with the matter said…

Sources have said the FBI was in the second day of raids around the southeastern Michigan city of Adrian that are connected to a militia group, known as the Hutaree, an Adrian-based group whose members describe themselves as Christian soldiers preparing for the arrival and battle with the anti-Christ.

[…]

Mike Lackomar, of Michiganmilitia.com, said both The Southeast Michigan Volunteer Militia and the Michiganmilitia.com were not a part of the raid.

Lackomar said he heard from other militia members that the FBI targeted the Hutaree after its members made threats of violence against Islamic organizations.

“Last night and into today the FBI conducted a raid against homes belonging to the Hutaree. They are a religious cult. They are not part of our militia community,” he said.

I guess they’re on their own …

One of the Hutaree members called a Michigan militia leader for assistance Saturday after federal agents had already began their raid, Lackomar said, but the militia member — who is of Islamic decent and had heard about the threats — declined to offer help. That Michigan militia leader is now working with federal officials to provide information on the Hutaree member for the investigation, Lackomar said Sunday.

“They are more of survivalist group and in an emergency they withdraw and stand their ground. They are actively training to be alongside Jesus,” he said.

What’s wrong with that? Why aren’t these patriots going to defend their brethren’s constitutional right to bear arms in the war on Satan (Islam?) Don’t the same principles apply? Apparently, this group was a bridge too far even for them.

According to the SPLC, the Michigan Militias are always in some kind of catfight, so perhaps this is just par for the course. They have other things on their minds anyway:

It’s just a big old family picnic. With ammunition. And there are lots of these groups:

The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, antigovernment conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Antigovernment “Patriot” groups – militias and other extremist organizations that see the federal government as their enemy – came roaring back to life over the past year after more than a decade out of the limelight.

The SPLC documented a 244 percent increase in the number of active Patriot groups in 2009. Their numbers grew from 149 groups in 2008 to 512 groups in 2009, an astonishing addition of 363 new groups in a single year. Militias – the paramilitary arm of the Patriot movement – were a major part of the increase, growing from 42 militias in 2008 to 127 in 2009.

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He’s A Big Boy Now

by digby

If you want to see a shining example of a right wing moral cripple, meet CNN’s newest gasbag, Eric Ericksson. He appeared on Howard Kurtz’s show today and C&L caught the exchange
:

KURTZ: Erick Erickson made his debut this week as a CNN contributor. He is a Georgia lawyer, a church deacon, and managing editor of the conservative Web site RedState.com. Erickson’s hiring generated a great deal of publicity, most of the decidedly negative variety.

I spoke with him earlier from Atlanta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KURTZ: Erick Erickson, welcome.

ERICKSON: Thanks for having me.

KURTZ: You have been getting hammered by liberal commentators since CNN decided to bring you on as a contributor to John King’s program, and it all revolves around the things that you have written. So let’s just go through some of them.

ERICKSON: Right.

KURTZ: On the administration’s health care spokeswoman, you wrote, “Linda Douglass is really the Joseph Goebbels of the health care shop.”

You’re comparing her to a notorious Nazi?

ERICKSON: Yes, to propaganda. I probably shouldn’t have said that. And to be honest with you, I got her confused with one of the congressman who, the same day she came out and was urging people to begin e-mailing in to the White House the — forwarding on the e-mails from friends who were “misrepresenting” the president’s health care plan, a congressman came out and referred to people as “brownshirts.” And I got my wires crossed that day and thought, you know, if they’re going to go down that road, I will too.

I probably shouldn’t have, but I did.

KURTZ: Yes. And She never said that, and she assures me that she never said that.

The first lady, you wrote the following — the headline was, “Is Obama shagging hookers behind the media’s back?” And you write, “I assume not. I assume that Obama’s Marxist harpy wife would go Lorena Bobbit on him should he even think about it.”

Why would you describe Michelle Obama in those terms?

ERICKSON: Well, you know, back during the campaign trail in 2008, a lifetime ago, frankly, in blogging, I was very passionate, very aggressive in defending my side. And at the time that I wrote that, the Eliot Spitzer story was breaking, and the point was — distracted by the language, obviously — that Barack Obama was as much a creature of the media as Eliot Spitzer was. Neither have been investigated. And, you know, since that time, I’ve really learned, headed into, frankly, the David Souter comment, that I don’t have to get personal in blogging to make my point. I’ve definitely evolved over time.

KURTZ: Well, let’s deal with the David Souter comment. When Justice Souter announced his retirement, you said, you wrote, “The nation loses the only goat (EXPLETIVE) child molester ever to serve on the Supreme Court.”

Do you regret writing that?

ERICKSON: Yes, absolutely. It was about the dumbest thing I’ve done.

You know, counterintuitively, I guess, some good came out of it. It was the very first time I realized, Howard, how what I do for a living affects my family as well. Having my 3-year-old heckled and booed in the front yard by a neighbor, having my wife be berated at her office, you know, being a blogger, up until that moment I always considered I was just a guy chatting with friends, even on Twitter. And I realized that I actually reached a point where people listen to what I say and care about what I say, and frankly it was a wake-up call to me that I had to grow up in how I write

Ericksson has been writing a blog for many years. And apparently he never considered that his writing affected people until May 9th of last year. That’s right, Ericksson finally decided he needed to stop tweeting that Justice Souter was a goat fucking child molester less than a year ago. And it only occurred to him that it might not be a good idea to call Souter a goat fucking child molester in public because his wife and child had to put up with some criticism. No word on whether or not calling people goat fucking child molesters is wrong on the merits.

As utterly revealing as his little mea culpa was, I think this is actually more revealing — and unintentionally hilarious:

KURTZ: Well, ,you know, at a time when there’s this great debate about threats against Democratic — mostly Democratic and some Republican lawmakers in the health care debate, I stumbled upon something you wrote about a Washington State controversy in which you said, “At what point do people march down to their state legislator’s house, pull them aside and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?”

Now, I assume you were being metaphorical, but some people might react differently to that.

ERICKSON: You know, the left tried to blow that one up, and I’ve written subsequently about that with a legislator in New York who wants to ban salt in restaurants. And I think the point is valid. The left may not like it.

I’m a local legislator myself, and I am afraid and have been since that time that we’re reaching a point where reasonable people are just going to get kind of crazy with government intrusion in their lives. The particular case in that situation was Washington State banning phosphates from dishwasher detergent.

There’s nothing that will drive a good man or woman over the bend like banning phosphates from dishwasher detergent! Can you blame anyone for going down to their legislator’s office a beating him to pulp when they are intruding on your life to such a degree that you can’t buy phosphate-filled detergent? Where oh where will it end? When the jack booted thugs can take away your phosphate detergent, you’re just one small step away from the gulag.

Let’s face it, these people are ridiculous. At least the 60s revolutionaries were trying to stop the government from fighting a war, fergawdsake. These people are trying to stop the government from helping people buy health insurance. Have you ever heard anything so absurd?

Actually, now that I think about it, yes I have. Even more absurd is the fact that CNN has hired this fatuous fool thinking that his point of view is even remotely indicative of anything other than a massive temper tantrum by a bunch of sore losermen who simply refuse to acknowledge that they are in the minority.

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They Wouldn’t Listen

by digby

Howie has a blockbuster post up about the child molesting cult leader of the legionnaires of Christ, Father Maciel. It’s even worse than I knew. If you are following this Catholic sex scandal, this bizarre sub-plot is amazing.

Meanwhile,here’s more on the horror of the deaf boys who couldn’t get anyone to listen to them:

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What Good Were They?

by digby

One of the dumber moves the Democrats made in recent times was allowing ACORN to go undefended because those silly costumed miscreants doctored some tapes to portray the ACORN workers as idiots and criminals. Its destruction may end up being the most important conservative movement action of the era because of what it did to Democratic infrastructure:

A Summary of Recent Accomplishments (pdf)

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is one of the nation’s largest and most successful community organization of lower income families. Since 1970 ACORN has been building solidly rooted and powerful community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and have taken action and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members. Our priorities include living wages for low income workers; an end to predatory financial practices and foreclosures; decent and affordable housing, for first time homebuyers and tenants; public schools that work for all students; voting rights, and full participation in our electoral system; a path to citizenship for new immigrants to this country; and an equitable response to natural disasters such as Katrina. ACORN achieves these goals by building community organizations that have the power to win changes – through direct action, negotiation, legislation, and voter participation.

The following report describes some of ACORN’s major accomplishments in these areas over the past decade. In addition, every day local ACORN chapters are taking action and winning on issues as diverse as getting traffic lights at dangerous intersections, increasing police protection in their neighborhoods, and forcing landlords to make necessary repairs. These activities are the building blocks that help the organization recruit new members, teach the skills of public engagement, and build the power that allows ACORN to take action and win on the critical issues that face our constituency:

The first few listed are all laudable community organizing activities. But it’s the final one that made them a long standing GOP target:

More Income for Poor Americans
Taking on the Predatory Lenders
Passing Laws to Stop Foreclosures
Preserving and Creating Affordable Housing
Rebuilding After Katrina
Improving Schools in our Communities
Stopping RAL Rip-offs and Providing Free Tax Prep

Bringing New Voters Into Elections

ACORN’s non-partisan voter registration drives have successfully helped build an American electorate that is beginning to look more like America — with more African Americans, Latinos and young people voting in 2008 than ever before. ACORN has collected and submitted nearly 3 million voter registration applications since 2003: 1.152 million in 2003-4, 540,000 in 2006, and close to 1.3 million in 2007-8. Based on our knowledge of voter registration drives, we estimate that 70%—more than 2 million—of these applications resulted in a successfully registered new voter or a necessary address change to keep a voter on the rolls. Our best estimates indicate that ACORN’s 2008 voter registration and GOTV work, combined with the continuing impact of ACORN’s registration drives from 2003 through 2006, helped bring approximately one million voters to the polls last year.

In 2008, ACORN’s Get Out the Vote and voter education programs made more than 470,000 contacts with voters, mostly African American and Latino infrequent voters, with strong programs in states including NC, OH, NM, and MN. ACORN also ran a successful Get Out the Vote program as part of the We Are America Alliance, targeting immigrant voters in CO, AZ, NM, FL, and WA. In 2004 ACORN’s Get Out the Vote program made an estimated 2.3 million face to face contacts in low income and minority communities, and in 2006 made and well over a million voter contacts, speaking to a universe of 580,000 people one to three times.

Finally, ACORN’s voter mobilization methodology has been scientifically tested – and it works! Yale Professor Donald Green and team conducted a controlled experiment to evaluate ACORN’s person-to-person voter mobilization program and concluded: “ACORN’s campaign ranks as the most successful voter mobilization experiment involving more than 1,000 voters. Among Latinos in the targeted precincts, voter turnout more than doubled when voters were mobilized by ACORN canvassers. This campaign illustrates the powerful effects of an intensive, personal approach to voter mobilization.”

Promoting and Protecting the Right to Vote: ACORN has worked to improve enforcement of the NVRA’s public agency voter registration requirements throughout the country. The greatest success to date has come in Missouri, where, after research by ACORN and Project Vote indicated that the state was failing to implement the NVRA, ACORN successfully sued Missouri to force the Department of Social Services (DSS) to live up to its obligation to help register low-income residents. As a direct result of that suit, more than 100,000 Missourians will register to vote at the DSS by the fall or winter of 2009.

Throughout the 2008 election season ACORN played a leading role in protecting voting rights: In New Mexico, ACORN joined the ACLU and other partners and filed suit to stop partisan operatives from intimidating minority voters in direct violation of the Voting Rights Act. In Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg ruled in favor of ACORN, denying the GOP’s attempt to stop ACORN’s voter mobilization in the state. And ACORN played a part in other 2008 voting rights victories in AZ, FL, GA. MD, MO, and OH, which blocked voter caging schemes or otherwise protected the right of all citizens to register and vote.

A Note on Collaboration: In many of these campaigns, ACORN worked closely with critical allies, including other community organizations, research and public policy groups, labor unions, churches, and elected officials. Credit for these victories should be shared with our partners: social change is a joint venture, dependent on a dense infrastructure of progressive organizations. What makes ACORN unique, however, and a critical actor in these important campaigns, is the organization’s base of low and moderate income members in cities throughout the country, and its ability to mobilize that base in a coordinated, strategic set of activities. ACORN often provided the “juice” that helped convince policymakers to enact these reforms.

Maybe the Democrats didn’t think all that matters, but the Republicans certainly did. They worked for years to take out ACORN and that little jackass finally got it done. Believe me, it wasn’t because they were worried about “voting integrity.” They were worried that in the new white minority world, too many people of color would vote. We know what that means. (They tend not to vote for the racist party.)

The Democrats showed no instinct for self-preservation on this one, which isn’t surprising.

Food For Thought

by digby

69.2: The percentage increase in the size of the main course in 52 paintings of the Last Supper over the last millennium, a study in the International Journal of Obesity found. The study, by the brothers Brian Wansink of Cornell University and Craig Wansink of Virginia Wesleyan College, also found that plate size increased by 66 percent and bread size by 23 percent. Brian Wansink says the findings suggest that the phenomenon of serving bigger portions on bigger plates — which pushes people to overeat — has occurred gradually over the millennium as food has become more abundant and affordable.

I inherited some old china a while back and noticed that the dinner plates were the size of what are commonly thought of a salad plates today. Downsizing the dinnerware is a pretty easy way to downsize the calories, especially if you were raised in a “clean your plate” household.

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