Month: September 2010

Religious Health Care

by digby

You learn something new every day:

Who is this Barack Obama who mocks the armies of the living God?” demanded James Lansberry, Christian crusader against government-regulated health care, last summer in the heat of the battle over reform. Since the health-care reform bill passed last month, Lansberry has become a hot commodity on the conservative talk-radio circuit where he sings the praises of health-care-sharing ministries (HCSMs), Christian nonprofit organizations through which members agree to cover each others? health-care costs. As president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, Lansberry, and his team of lobbyists, had persuaded Senate lawmakers to exempt alliance members from the individual mandate. That exemption, Lansberry said, made those ministries “an island of freedom amidst this terrible piece of reform legislation” and “the last pro-life option for Christians of faith.”

Did any of you know about this exemption? I missed it. And it’s very, very interesting because it’s a loophole that will undoubtedly be very lucrative for the hucksters.
Read on …

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We Just Have To Get Through This Political Moment

by digby

So Paul Ryan is concerned that if people find out what it is her really proposes to do with social security that people might not want to vote for Republicans. Did I say this guy’s intelligence was overrated? He’s smart enough to figure that out:

During an appearance at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, Ryan criticized Democrats for “the political weaponization” of Social Security, and asked candidates on the campaign trail to please stop bringing up Republican plans to gut entitlements. Politico reported:

“We’ve got to get through this political moment. The political weaponization of entitlement reform is very unfortunate. It’s hurting our chances of actually getting bipartisan agreement in the near future. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to get out there.” Though he called for candidates to stop talking about entitlement reform on the campaign trail, Ryan also cast his Roadmap in a soft light to deflect criticism that it will hurt seniors. He reminded the audience that his plan doesn’t affect those over 55.

Of course, Ryan’s plan would radically alter Social Security, to the detriment of the program, which is something that needs to be talked about. Remember, under the Roadmap, Social Security would be privatized through the creation of personal investment accounts and benefits for future retirees would be cut, all without setting the program on a path for solvency.

I’m fairly sure he was counting on the Democrats staying mum because they made it very clear for the past two years that they are anxious to “reform” SS in order to prove to right wingers that they are Very Serious People. And I’m sure that a lot of them are going to rush to join that faction if the Dems lose their majority. This is why Ryan just wants people to get through this “political moment,” meaning the election. He’s counting on the usual Democratic retreat.

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Every Last Bit Of Authority From God

by digby

What do Jim DeMint and Daniel Webster have in common? They love this guy, and have both appeared on his radio show in the past couple of days.

In this speech to the Values Voters this month, he very usefully explains the difference between the evil Islamic theocrats and good Americans like himself:

We know that politicians get every last bit of their authority from God. We know that there are certain things that are right in the sight of God and certain things are evil in the sight of God. And I would submit to you that the conscience of the man of God cannot rest as long as the authority of God is being used to trample the will of God. The conscience of the man of God cannot rest as long as it is being used to trample on the moral law of God.

Now one last thought, we know another thing about public officials. They are ministers and servants of of God. Paul twice refers to them as deacons or ministers of God. They are literally ministers or deacons of God. A third time he refers to them as servants of God. Paul goes out of his way to drive home the point that political figures exercise a vocation that is every bit as sacred as the role of pastor of your church. Now I ask you who has a greater interest in the selection of the ministers of God for our culture than the people of God.

Now some will accuse me of advocating for theocracy — because I believe November 2nd we are going to choose the ministers of God, we’re going to choose the Pastors of our public culture — will accuse me of advocating a theocracy in which God rules a nation through its clergy. To borrow a phrase from a politician who has troubled America by forsaking the command of God, “let me be clear”: I am not talking about an arrangement in which God rules the United States through the church. The role of the Church is to be the conscience of a nation not to govern a nation.

If you believe in theocracy, then the dark and dangerous and devious religion of Islam is for you. … I’m talking about an arrangement, the arrangement I’m talking about the the arrangement where God guides and governs the United States of America through statesmen who are committed to align the public policy of the United States with the will of God.

I am talking about an arrangement in which God, to borrow a phrase from the founding fathers, in which God governs and guides the United States through statesmen who are determined to align the public policy of the United States with the laws of nature and nature’s God. I’m talking about the same arrangement that Sam Adams spoke of on July 4th 1776, who said “we have this day, restored the sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in heaven from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His kingdom come.”

Now I believe on November 2nd we have a fresh opportunity as the people of God to restore the sovereign to whom all people ought to be obedient and I say we do it.

Perhaps the distinctions he cites between Islamic theocracy and his own version are meaningful to you, but I think the more common definition of theocracy well encompasses what this man regards as the proper United States “arrangement.”

Theocracy is one form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state’s supreme civil ruler, or in a higher sense, a form of government in which a state is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. In Common Greek, “theocracy” means a rule [kra′tos] by God [the.os′].

But Mr Fischer is a reasonable man, you say. There’s nothing threatening about his comments at all, regardless of which meaning of theocracy you use. Well, here are a few examples of Fischer’s thoughts on gays:

The time Mr. Fischer said that ‘Homosexuals in the military gave us…six million dead Jews’

The time Mr. Fischer said only gays were savage enough for Hitler The time Mr. Fischer invoked a Biblical story about stabbing “sexually immoral” people with spears, saying we need this kind of action in modern day The time Mr. Fischer compared gays to heroin abusers The time Mr. Fischer told us to just shut up The time Mr. Fischer oddly interpreted past historical oppressions The time Mr. Fischer directly compared laws against gay soldiers to those that apply to bank robbers
Here’s Fischer yesterday on the Grayson/Webster flap, explaining that women don’t have to submit to their husband — unless there’s a disagreement.:

Grayson’s conduct was so inexcusable that even lefty groups like the Annenberg Public Policy Center and the Orlando Sentinel issued full-throated condemnations of Grayson, who heretofore has been their pet. [Jon Stewart too, with an uncharacteristically obtuse “we’re good and they’re evul” rant as well — ed]

As an aside, you cannot find a more stark contrast between Islam and Christianity than on their respective teaching about marriage. While Islam instructs husbands that they literally may beat their wives into submission, Christianity instructs husbands to imitate the example of Christ, who loved his bride (the church) so much that he laid down his life for her.

This is just another example of the profound, unbridgeable chasm between the value system of Islam and the value system of the West. They are and always will be irretrievably incompatible. Every advance of Islam in America will come at the expense of liberty and of rights for women.

Now there is probably no other concept that is more misunderstood, both inside and outside the church, than the Bible’s teaching on submission and headship.

The first myth is that in a Christian marriage only the wife submits to her husband. But the first statement the apostle makes is this: Both husbands and wives are to “submit…to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:21).

So a Christian marriage is to be one of mutual submission, not the domination of the husband over the wife. There is a profound sense in which a Christian husband submits to his wife as much as she submits herself to him. Submission takes a different form for the man than it does for the woman, but it is submission nonetheless.

Ok. That’s not so bad. They both submit in love to one another.

Well, let’s not get carried away:

The Scriptures clearly instruct wives, “Submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord” (Ephesians 5:22). The word “submit” is comprised of two Greek words, one of which means “under” and the other of which means “to set” or “to arrange.” So a wife is instructed to arrange herself, put herself, set herself, under the leadership of her husband in the home.

What’s critical to understand here is that there is no verse in the Bible that instructs a husband to see to it that his wife submits to him. This is a matter between a wife and her Lord, not between a wife and her husband. It is not her husband who is asking her to submit, it is God. It is a matter of reverence for Christ rather than for her husband that prompts her to voluntarily arrange herself under her husband’s leadership.

It is a gift that she gives to her husband, not a right that he demands. She demonstrates her reverence for Christ by not challenging her husband’s leadership in their home but by supporting him and working with him to help him succeed in shaping and directing the life of their marriage and family.

How does a husband submit himself to his wife? As Webster reminds us, husbands are told to “love your wives, as Christ love the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). That is, he submits himself to his wife by refusing to use his headship simply as an excuse to get his own way, or as a cloak for his own selfishness. He submits himself to his wife by making a determination to use the authority God has given him in his home to give his wife and children what they need rather than to get what he wants.

Marriage is not and can never be a democracy. Somebody has to have the tie-breaking vote when the poll reveals a one-to-one tie. In a Christian marriage, the husband is the tie breaker. The way it is designed to work is that a wife willingly defers to her husband on those rare occasions when they cannot agree on a course of action, and the husband makes the decision that his conscience tells him is best, not for himself, but for her, their marriage, and their home.

If a husband believes before God that the best decision in a given situation is different than the one his wife prefers, he does not order her to follow him, he asks her. The decision is then up to her. He’s not forcing her to do anything. He leaves the issue squarely where it belongs, between her and her God.

If you have a problem with a Christian view of marriage, fine. Don’t become a Christian then. Nobody is going to make you, again unlike Islam where the choice is convert or die. But if you do decide to follow Christ, his instructions regarding marriage are clear.

Basically then, if a Christian woman refuses to go along with this “arrangement” she can go to hell. Literally. But hey, I agree that that’s her choice. What I object to is the fact that people who believe these things also believe, as Fischer clearly said in his speech before the Values Voters, that these are the beliefs that should guide our “statesmen.” That’s when his metaphorical fist hits my metaphorical face and I don’t like it.

Of course that’s not really what Daniel Webster’s Christian reconstructionist mentors mean anyway. Bill Gothard, at whose institute Webster made the comments in Grayson’s ad, is known for his institutional indoctrination programs:

Gothard’s additional errors contribute to the overall harmful nature of his ideology. Because favor with God must be earned through works of submission, one must have a structure that requires submission. He misinterprets key Scriptures about authority, perceiving that the church and the family operate under a military-style, chain of command authority structure. Because one must work to accumulate this mystical substance of merit, mistreatment and abuse merely provide needed mechanisms for accumulating merit. Unless an authority requires a Christian to commit an overt sin, Gothard teaches that all authority must be obeyed at all costs.

. . . Those who live at the top of the food chain fair well, but in the process of this chain of command/humility system, those who fall at the lower end of the hierarchy are required to submit and suffer all manner of injustice to improve their character and work God’s mystical and often indiscernible divine plan.

Here’s Fischer’s conclusion:

Getting back to the Websters, it’s worth asking how this whole leadership/submission thing works out in practice.

Here is Sandy Webster, Dan’s wife of many years: “Dan has been an amazing husband and father, and the finest man I have ever known.”

Here’s a wife who believes in the biblical view of roles in marriage, and seems quite happy to be married to a man who is dedicated to using his strength to protect her and provide for her, and to “nourish and cherish” her as the Bible says. What wife wouldn’t?

I don’t care what Mrs Webster does with her life. It’s none of my business. But I do care that her husband is a candidate for office and he belongs to a dangerous cult that believes the nation should be run under theocratic rule. And just as I don’t care for the fact that these folks believe women have second class status, I also don’t care for the fact that I’m supposed to pussyfoot around this issue and pretend that semantic distinctions between these and other pre-modern religious beliefs about female submission are somehow substantial and that the similarities are a matter of degree rather than scale. And while Factcheck.org and Jon Stewart and other very reasonable people may not be aware of it, Bryan Fischer is surely conversant with Webster’s mentor Bill Gothard, who doesn’t explicitly condone the beating of wives to be sure — but does believe that if they have an abortion or are unfaithful, they should be stoned to to death.

Now, all this may just add up to more of the same old, same old we’ve been seeing for the past quarter century of Moral Majority/Christian Coalition civic involvement. If that’s the case, then it simply means yet more incremental claw back of many of the rights and liberties, mostly for women, enabled by the usual timidity of liberals who run over each other in an attempt to distance themselves from anyone who confronts these people head on. (Best to find more “common ground” by whittling away at women’s autonomy. Don’t want to rock that boat too hard ..) But if the far right’s power grab in the Republican party is successful then these ultra-right social conservatives are going to be in a position to demand far more than they have been able to get in the past and things could get very interesting very quickly. I just think it’s probably important to be aware of the belief system that’s “guiding” our “statesmen.”

Here’s a reminder of how defacto Senate Monarch Jim Demint put it:

David Brody: Are you concerned at all that some of the social conservative issues, abortion and same sex marriage, some of these other issues because they are taking somewhat of a back seat right now at least to the fiscal issues that there are some inherent problems for social conservatives in something like that?

Senator Jim DeMint: No actually just the opposite because I really think a lot of the motivation behind these Tea Party crowds is a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution. A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.

Senator Jim DeMint: I’m ‘praying for you’ comes up more than anything else in these crowds so I know there’s a spiritual component out there.

Senator Jim DeMint: I think as this thing (the Tea Party movement) continues to roll you’re going to see a parallel spiritual revival that goes along with it.

David Brody: Just so I understand, when you say spiritual revival how are you terming that? What do you mean specifically as in “spiritual revival?

Senator Jim DeMint: Well, I think people are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God. It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.

Maybe DeMint is just another in a long line of Elmer gantry’s taking the true believers for a ride. Or maybe he isn’t.

Oh, and both Palin and Huckabee are associated with Gothard too. Just FYI.

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Tax Cuts ‘N You

by digby

This is well done. In fact, I think the president should go on Larry King and do a Ross Perot thing with the same white board.

People are not well informed about these tax cuts, even rich people who believe that if you make a dollar more than 250k all of your income will be taxed at the higher rate. (Dave Johnson has a nice little primer on this.) Maybe it’s the result of years of wealthy interests’ propaganda or insecurity or some combination, but when it comes to taxes, people get hysterical and frankly, dumb. So the explainers need to dumb it down.

In Memoriam, Arthur Penn

by tristero

A very great film director has died. I had the privilege of composing music for one of his later films, Dead of Winter. I would agree that it is not one of his better movies – although it has much of great interest – but the experience of working with such a talented and experienced man was unforgettable and priceless. Unlike nearly every other director I’ve worked for, he gave me carte blanche to write what I want and, with that much confidence behind me, I wrote one of my best scores.

Thank you, Arthur. It was a pleasure to get to know you, albeit briefly. I learned so, so much.

Foreclosure Madness

by digby

This has been making the rounds all day and it’s just simply horrifying:

Given that the IMF and others believe a large part of the “structural unemployment” in our country is related to the struggling housing market and underwater and barely-hanging on homeowners, what is to be done? One option is to allow for options like lien-stripping in bankruptcy courts, reseting mortgages by zip code, etc. Another option is for courts to accelerate foreclosures by ignoring due process, proper documentation and legal process in order to kick people out of their homes and preserve the value of senior tranches of RMBS while giving mortgage servicers a nice kickback.

What option do you think our country is taking?

We should all be very concerned about the foreclosure situation in Florida. If you are a homeowner or potential homeowner, you should find it offensive that people’s property rights are being violated in such a flagrant way. If you are an investor, either as “bond vigilante” or someone with a generic 401(k), you should be worried that servicers have gone rogue and the incentive structure to maximize value instead of fees associated with foreclosures has broken down.

And if you care about basic Western liberalism–the classical kind, with a Lockean understanding of freedom to own property along with freedoms of speech and religion– you should be pissed off. This is a clear-cut instance of the rich and powerful decimating other people’s property rights, rights that are supposed to protect the weak from the strong, in order to preserve their wealth and autonomy. Unless you think property rights are mere placeholders for whatever the financial sector demands are, this should be resisted. This should be viewed as a problem an order of magnitude larger than Kelo v. City of New London.

The short problem is that banks are foreclosing without showing clear ownership of the property. In addition, “foreclosure mills” are processing 100,000s of foreclosures a month without doing any of the actual due diligence or legal legwork required for the state to justify the taking of property and putting people on the street. Even worse, many are faking documentation and committing other fraud in the process. The government is allowing this to happen both by not having courts block it from going forward, but also through purchasing the services of these mills. As Barney Frank noted: “Why is Fannie Mae using lawyers that are accused of regularly engaging in fraud to kick people out of their homes?”

Why indeed?

This is a huge story that’s been closely reported for some time on the econ blogs but is just now rising to the surface. My friend Jon wrote in with this observation:

And for today’s developments, see this (from Yves Smith)

” Alan Grayson’s office provided a particularly troubling example, that of a counterfeited court summons. It’s bad enough that servicers and foreclosure mills are making up securitization-related paperwork out of whole cloth, but now court documents to seize someone’s home? This is lawlessness. “

Yves Smith is right. This is absolute, balls-out lawlessness. Read all her posts on this. They’ve set up special courts that are run and controlled by the banks, where people being thrown out of their homes are not even allowed to present their evidence to a judge. The judge just rubber stamps the foreclosures and won’t even hear the cases. Complete, blatant lawlessness of the first order.

Maybe Daniel Webster can perform an exorcism on the houses. I’m guessing that’s the best we can hope for from the government at this point.

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Spending All Your Money On R&B Ringtones

by digby

I guess this kind of talk is back in vogue since it doesn’t even garner a comment from the NY Times:

“We as Republicans need to realize that you can’t just cut off the welfare queen and balance the budget,” says Rand Paul, a Senate candidate in Kentucky, who has some extreme views on other issues but is evidently pro-arithmetic

You know what that’s all about:

Welfare Queen mythology consists of massive exaggerations of welfare fraud that resonate with those in the anti-welfare movement. This mythology is rife with overt negative racial and class stereotypes where Welfare Queens are portrayed as lazy leeches on society, pilfering vast sums of money from “hard working people’s taxes.”

You don’t hear it much these days, but I suppose if you’re a guy who’s still smarting over the passage of the Civil Rights Act, it probably still feels pretty relevant:

And anyway, Dr Paul is way behind the times. The modern designation is “Health Care queen”:

During my last night’s shift in the ER, I had the pleasure of evaluating a patient with a shiny new gold tooth, multiple elaborate tattoos, a very expensive brand of tennis shoes and a new cellular telephone equipped with her favorite R&B tune for a ringtone. Glancing over the chart, one could not help noticing her payer status: Medicaid. She smokes more than one costly pack of cigarettes every day and, somehow, still has money to buy beer.

And our Congress expects me to pay for this woman’s health care? Our nation’s health care crisis is not a shortage of quality hospitals, doctors or nurses. It is a crisis of culture — a culture in which it is perfectly acceptable to spend money on vices while refusing to take care of one’s self or, heaven forbid, purchase health insurance. A culture that thinks “I can do whatever I want to because someone else will always take care of me”.

I dunno. I think if we could just stop paying for health care for people who waste it on stuff like “R&B ringtones” we’d have plenty of money to balance the budget, don’t you?

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Stoning For Astrology

by digby

Another expert on the Religious Right, Bruce W. Wilson who writes at Talk2Action, has delved into Daniel Webster’s ties to Christian Reconstructionists and writes this fascinating piece for Alternet. He notes Webster’s continuing association with Bill Gothard, (at whose Institute Webster was recorded making his remarks about women submitting to their husbands in 2009):

As an August 5, 1996 article in the Gainesville Sun quoted Webster, ‘I respect (Bill Gothard) as much as anybody. ..
Bill Gothard, in turn, was a close ally of R.J. Rushdoony, considered the father of Christian Reconstructionism and founder of the movement’s flagship institution, the Chalcedon Institute.As Vice President of the Chalcedon Institute Martin Selbrede stated in the Institute’s March/April 2010 issue of Faith For All Of Life, the only reason Bill Gothard didn’t agree to use Chalcedon founder R.J. Rushdoony’s monumental Institutes of Biblical Law tome in Gothard’s sprawling evangelical empire is that the two couldn’t agree on divorce. Rushdoony’s Institutes was a template for instituting Biblical law in government (for more on Reconstructionism, see story appendix.)As Selbrede wrote,

“[T]he divide between Gothard and Rushdoony on divorce was a deep and abiding one. Gothard proposed using Rushdoony’s Institutes of Biblical Law as a resource for his massive ministry; the sheer volume of the resulting sales would have made Rushdoony both rich and famous. Gothard’s condition for moving forward on this was letter-simple: Rushdoony merely needed to remove the section on divorce from his book, and the highly profitable deal would be sealed.Rushdoony refused the offer.”

So, while Gothard was categorically opposed to divorce, Rushdoony, a virulently racist Holocaust denier who espoused Geocentrism, was a little more liberal on divorce. In other words, the two men were otherwise in substantial agreement – except for the sticking point of divorce, they both agreed that Rushdoony’s vision for Biblical law should be imposed upon America.That vision included instituting stoning as a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and “unchastity before marriage.”Daniel Webster’s association with Bill Gothard’s Institute For Basic Life Training has continued into the present, and a speech Webster made at a Nashville IBLP conference in 2009 has now become a source of controversy due to a new Alan Grayson campaign ad. Grayson is currently taking a media drubbing because of a campaign ad that calls Grayson’s political opponent, Republican Daniel Webster, “Taliban Dan.”An assessment from Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, that a new Grayson campaign ad attacking Grayson’s political opponent, Republican Daniel Webster, for allegedly taking out of context statements Webster made in a speech at a 2009 conference of a religious organization called the “Institute of Basic Life Principles.”Die-hard religious right researchers at ReligionDispatches.org are challenging Factcheck.org’s immediate charge, and Religion Dispatches editor Sarah Posner calls out Factcheck.org for blandly describing Bill Gothard’s IBLP as a ”non-denominational Christian organization that runs programs and training sessions.”Many across the political spectrum appear appalled by the Grayson campaign’s “Taliban” label but Daniel Webster’s nearly three-decade long, intimate involvement with the Bill Gothard and the Institute For Basic Life Principles suggests that the label may be less than hyperbolic.

Indeed. Hyperbole is hardly necessary when we are comparing two worldviews that believe there should be laws making stoning a form of capital punishment for rape, kidnapping, murder, heresy, blasphemy, witchcraft, astrology, adultery, “sodomy or homosexuality,” incest, striking a parent, extreme juvenile delinquency, and “unchastity before marriage.”You can argue that comparing the Christian Reconstructionists to the Taliban is too politically hot or theologically imprecise. What you cannot say is that they don’t have the same primitive worldview.

The rest of the article is equally damning. Take this bit for instance:

Some critics have accused Gothard of employing exorcism which, in the following account, would seem, to function as a method for disciplining unruly wives. In her 2003 book Bonshea, by Coral Anika Theill, Theill describes undergoing the following therapeutic regimen at one of Bill Gothard’s facilities:

“My husband counseled over the phone with Mr. Jim Logan, a man who specialized in counseling in matters regarding demon possession. He suggested my husband take me to the Bill Gothard Indianapolis Training Center in Indianapolis. A few months later, in September of 1994, my husband took me by plane to Indianapolis for counseling and reprimand. Mr. Bill Gothard of Basic Youth Conflicts runs this “Christian” training center.[…]I was told how I had not learned to submit to my husband and religious “authorities” and that God was punishing me because of my rebellious spirit. I was accused of witchcraft and they tried, through prayer and exorcism, to cast demons out of me on a daily basis.I was forced to listen to presentations by the Institute every single day on how to be a more submissive wife. The central theme message was from 1 Cor 11:3-9, “But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” ” [Bonshea, pages 56-57]

I realize that it’s completely, shockingly irresponsible for Grayson not to have explained the full theological meaning of Webster’s beliefs in his 30 second ad, but the fact remains that it’s completely true that Webster believes that women should submit. But perhaps Grayson’s ad will have the perverse effect of making people in the district ask just what it is that Daniel Webster believes. And if they scratch the surface, they’ll find that he is a very extreme fundamentalist theocrat who is unfit for public office anywhere but perhaps 16th Century England or 21st Century Afghanistan.

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Kooks Got The Mojo Rising

by digby

Where do they find these people? First we hear of the latest Brietbart/O’Keefe stunt to lure a reporter on to a boat and film her among dildos and dirty magazines in a supposed attempt to embarrass her. (Sounds more like a blackmail set-up to me.)

And then there’s this creepy guy:

“For nearly six months, Andrew Shirvell, an assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan, has waged an internet campaign against” Chris Armstrong, who is the openly gay student assembly president at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. Shirvell maintains a blog called Chris Armstrong Watch where he regularly berates Shirvell and complains about what he calls the “homosexual lifestyle.” The blog even features mocked up graphics Shirvell has created of Armstrong, including one where the assistant attorney general has written “racist elitist liar” on a picture of Armstrong’s face. Additionally, the assistant AG has even demonstrated outside Shirvell’s home and allegedly stalked him on Facebook.

This guy’s an assistant Attorney General?

Oh, and just as Breitbart and O’Keefe claimed to not have a racist bone in their bodies when they trafficked in cartoonish African America stereotypes, this fine fellow told Anderson Cooper that he doesn’t have any hate in his body at all:

COOPER: Do you consider yourself a bigot? SHIRVELL: Absolutely not. I’m a Christian citizen exercising my first amendment rights. I have no problem with the fact that Chris is homosexual, I have a problem that he’s advancing a very radical agenda. COOPER: I bring up the bigot question because Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines bigot as a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her prejudices…labeling a student a Nazi, picketing his house, it seems to make you appear intolerant at the very least. It seems you hate this guy because he’s gay. SHIRVELL: Well, Anderson, that’s your spin on it. The real bigot here is Chris Armstrong. I don’t have any hate in my body at all.

Of course not.

But seriously, these kooks are seemingly everywhere and are getting kookier by the day. My fear is that this is one of those frogs in slowly heating water things and everybody’s just getting used to it until it seems normal.

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Tea Party Takeover

by digby

What a morning. I had just finished reading Matt Taibbi’s report on the Tea party before I read this:

As I’ve noted here, the impact of the Tea Party on the GOP and the broader political landscape is only beginning to be felt, and now the new NBC/WSJ poll finds that an astonishing 71 percent of Republicans describe themselves as Tea Party supporters.

Taibbi’s take on the movement seems right to me except in two important respects. The first is that he completely leaves out the importance of Fox News in the building of this movement. It literally couldn’t have happened without it, and the most powerful leaders of the group are creatures of the Murdoch media empire. He does discuss the corporate influence on the group through various other astroturf organizations, and a major thesis of the story is the fact that the Tea Partiers are deluded patsies for the corporate overlords, so that aspect of the story isn’t missed. But the insidious Fox agenda is a story unto itself.

The other thing I think he missed was the merging of the Tea Party with the Religious Right. The Glenn Beck MLK day at the Lincoln Memorial was a sort of national invitation. It’s necessary since the churches form the main grassroots organizing function for the GOP.

Jim DeMint signaled this a few months back:

David Brody: Are you concerned at all that some of the social conservative issues, abortion and same sex marriage, some of these other issues because they are taking somewhat of a back seat right now at least to the fiscal issues that there are some inherent problems for social conservatives in something like that?

Senator Jim DeMint: No actually just the opposite because I really think a lot of the motivation behind these Tea Party crowds is a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution. A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.

Senator Jim DeMint: I’m ‘praying for you’ comes up more than anything else in these crowds so I know there’s a spiritual component out there.

Senator Jim DeMint: I think as this thing (the Tea Party movement) continues to roll you’re going to see a parallel spiritual revival that goes along with it.

David Brody: Just so I understand, when you say spiritual revival how are you terming that? What do you mean specifically as in “spiritual revival?

Senator Jim DeMint: Well, I think people are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God. It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.

So, within the Tea Party now you have the anti-government (for people they hate) obsessives, the Birchers, the gun fetishists, the neo-confederates and the social conservatives, with spillover between all of them. And the corporate leadership is bankrolling it, knowing that these folks are driven by tribal resentment (Taibbi’s description of this is right-on) and are uninterested in their machinations. It’s the GOP coalition. If I have any quibble with Taibbi it’s the fact that he’s so sanguine that these people can do no real mischief once in power. I think the corporate overlords have a tiger by the tail and will find it much harder to control it than they imagine. At the very least they are going to have to throw it a substantial amount of red meat to keep it placated. (I’m guessing it’s going to have a lot of taco seasoning on it.)

The big question is, who are the 29% of Republicans who don’t approve of the Tea Party? Mike Castle types who just haven’t awakened to the radical takeover of their party? And will they keep voting Republican when Jim DeMint officially becomes the spiritual and intellectual leader of the GOP?

Update: Pat Boone’s on board:

“I am an American,” Pat Boon belted out the other day to an adoring crowd. “Born to be a rootin’, tootin’, flag-waving citizen.”

Boone looked young and fit at 76, with his perpetual tan and stay-press hairdo. As I approached the stage, he was singing the song he’d written for the occasion — the first-ever “Beverly Hills Tea Party” rally.

“I love the Pledge of Allegiance, one nation under God,” Boone sang. “If you can’t say it with me, you’re free to leave, by God. Cuz I am an American. My blood’s red, white and blue.”

And he was just one of the roughly 200 patriots on hand, including a Revolutionary-themed drum and bugle corps, and two guys who waved a “No More Socialism” banner.

Most of the people in the crowd were middle-aged or older, white and very angry in a Libertarian way about taxes and government spending. Several speakers and attendees said the movement isn’t a Republican or Democratic thing; it’s about the fact that political leaders are out of touch elitists, and the political process is broken and bankrupt.

[…]

Someone handed me a flier for Chelene Nightingale, a candidate for governor of California. Ever hear of her? I hadn’t, but she’s an immigration hard-liner, according to the literature, and lest you doubt it, there’s a photo of her with a big smile and an even bigger gun.

Near the stage, I asked a man what drew him to the event. “I think there should be less government and more power to the people,” said Robert Santner, who spoke for many.

Joe Clark complained about how the overtaxing, overreaching government is determined to decide what car we drive, what doctor we see and what foods we eat. He doesn’t trust either party, he told me. But his sign left no doubts about his preference.

“Teach A Man to Fish, The Democrats Lose a Vote.”

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