Month: September 2010

Quackpot Dr Paul

by digby

Ok, this is getting ridiculous now:

Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul belongs to a conservative doctors’ group that, among other things, has expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters.The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, based in Tucson, Ariz., advocates conservative and free-market solutions on health care and a variety of other political issues.But it also uses its medical journal and Website as forums for unorthodox medical views.

[…]

Speaking to the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons’ annual conference last October in Nashville, Paul said he has been a member of the group since at least 1990.“I use a lot of AAPS literature when I talk,” he told the group.

Nichols said one of the AAPS’ most disconcerting positions is to question whether the human immunodeficiency virus is the cause of AIDS.More than two decades ago, in 1988, a committee of the National Academy of Sciences asserted that the evidence linking AIDS and HIV is “scientifically conclusive.” Other medical authorities have reached the same conclusion.But the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons published an article in 2007 saying “both official reports and the peer-reviewed literature afford substantive grounds for doubting that HIV is the necessary and sufficient cause of AIDS and that anti-retroviral treatment is unambiguously beneficial.”

(3 of 6)The article doesn’t otherwise suggest what would cause AIDS.“They don’t understand science at all?” Nichols asked. “To deny that is to not be in touch with reality.”

Read the whole thing. Daddy belongs to this crackpot group too.

At this point I’m not sure if it isn’t safer to have this quack in the Senate than practicing medicine on unsuspecting patients.

Update: Karoli at C&L has much more.

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Boehner and Tiger: Ho Ho Ho

by digby

Howie sez:

It was… well, awkward when Chris Wallace interviewed John Boehner yesterday about his silly Pledge. The one-eyed aunt sitting atop the elephant in the room was Boehner’s affair with what’s-her-name… that K Street lobbyist. Wallace could have asked Boehner for another non-denial denial, but that would never happen on American TV… short of the Stephen Colbert Show (although then Steny Hoyer might get himself all puffed up and protest.)

(…)

Nor is Hoyer the only Congressional prig puffing and protesting. Last night Mike Pence, who wants to run for president, had his flack call me– and late at night– to demand I retract my assertion that it was Pence who leaked the story about Boehner and the lady lobbyist. The flack said it isn’t true. I asked him how he knows. He said he was “100% certain.” I said that that was impossible and that my informant was 100% certain it was true and that it was a firsthand account. He demanded to know who my informant was. I asked him to put Pence on the phone. He refused and said he would send me a written statement; he didn’t.

I don’t have to tell anyone who reads this blog how much I loathe Mike Pence. Apparently his staff is just as unctuous and thin-skinned as he is.

The palace intrigue surrounding Boehner and the rumors of his intimate relationships with lobbyists, is rich. What with the other stories about Paul Ryan pouting and Eric Cantor scheming it looks like the GOP leadership cat fight is going to be more interesting than the election itself.

Anyway, the above video is the newest in our series of ads. As Howie says, “enjoy it here; you won’t see it anywhere else– unless you’re in Mike Pence’s inner chamber and he’s showing it to his cronies so they can all get a good chuckle.”

If you’d like to help the progressive Democrat Justin Coussoule put John Boehner out of his misery you can donate here.

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It Will Always Be On The Table

by digby

Greg Sargent reports that the president said this today:

“But what I’m seeing out of the Republican leadership out of the last several years has been a set of policies that are just irresponsible. We saw in their Pledge to America a similar set of irresponsible policies. They say they want to balance the budget, they propose $4 trillion worth of tax cuts, and $16 billion in spending cuts. And then they say, `We’re gonna somehow, magically balance the budget. That’s not a serious approach.

There’s no doubt that he’s correct. But I would caution that if he thinks he will be rewarded for being serious about balancing the budget he needs to think again. The Democrats thought they had banished the “big spender” label for all time when Clinton not only balanced the budget but created a surplus. The thinking was that nobody could ever say again that the Democrats were irresponsible stewards of the economy and they could finally “take that off the table.”

I think it’s fairly clear that didn’t work out the way they planned it. The Republicans have a neat trick of running up huge debt and creating economic crises when they are in office and then vilifying the Democrats for what they have to do to clean up the mess.Once it’s done they come back into power and pass out all the goodies to their rich friends. It’s a clear pattern. There’s no “taking it off the table.”

As long as this pattern holds, Democrats will always be on the defensive, stuck with the dirty work and never being able to reap the electoral rewards for doing it. So they should probably just forget trying to earnestly prove to America that they really are the “responsible” party and concentrate on delivering peace and prosperity. I have a sneaking suspicion that’s what people really care about.

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Virtually Speaking Sunday

by digby

SUNDAY, Sept 19, 5pm pacific , 8pm eastern
Simulcast on BlogTalkRadio – http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2010/09/27/virtually-speaking-sundays
Subscribe via iTunes – http://bit.ly/8Szklp
Follow them all: https://twitter.com/jayackroyd/virtuallyspeaking

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
THIS WEEK : Avedon Carol and Susie Madrak talk about developments of the week , highlighting issues that were neglected on the Sunday morning broadcasts.

I have a feeling Susie Madrak and Avedon will be chatting about Axelrod and hippies too. You can call in with questions or join them at Virtually Speaking in Second Life.

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Deadman’s (Learning) Curve

by digby

The latest in taser news:

[A]a study of major U.S. cities, found deaths in-custody actually rise sharply – nearly six times – during the first year a department uses tasers. Dr. Byron Lee of the University of California at San Francisco led the study.

After the first year in-custody deaths returned to the same level as before tasers were introduced. Tasers are now used by more than 12,000 law enforcement agencies.

So the allegedly life saving technology spikes the death count six times higher until it finally goes back to the same death count as before it comes into use. I guess that’s considered a success.

But one thing tasers do is very clear, aside from all the deaths. It makes it possible for the police to abandon all their training in crisis management and psychology to simply torture people into immediate submission. Like this for example. It’s a look at duel cases of violent police confrontations in Dallas, Texas. Oddly, the police who didn’t kill their suspect by beating him are being charged, while those who killed theirs by electrocuting him are being lauded for their efforts.

Of course, they are blaming the electrocution death on drugs, attributing it to the disease Taser International has sold as the cause of all these deaths called “excited delirium” which is a very strange condition that only afflicts people in police custody (and mostly in the first year of their use by the department, apparently.) It isn’t recognized by anyone but medical examiners who have been wined and dined by Taser International at one of their junkets teaching seminars:

The Globe and Mail has reported on the cozy ties between Taser International and some coronors, the officials often responsible for investigating Taser related deaths; a cozy relationship which creates an appearance of bias on the part of one very prominent Canadian coronor.

In Taser firms picked up coroner’s lecture tab the Globe reports that Taser International has paid hotel and travel expenses for prominent Canadian coronor Dr. James Cairns, Ontario‘s deputy chief coronor, who has given seminars “on the phenomenon of “excited delirium,” a medically unrecognized term that the company often cites as a reason people die after being tasered“. The article indicates that Dr. Cairns does not see any conflict of interest on his part.

In Symposium aims to define ‘excited delirium’ DEATHS IN CUSTODY: TASER HELPS FUND RESEARCH the Globe and Mail reports on the second annual Sudden Death, Excited Delirium and In-Custody Death Conference underway in Las Vegas. Many of the nearly 20 talks touch on the role of Tasers. “The key issue is excited delirium, a collection of symptoms that is quickly becoming the leading explanation offered when a person dies in police custody or after a taser is used.” Two researchers who presented disclosed that Taser International funds their research. As reported by the Globe & Mail, the Taser subsidized research presenters “conducted research on the negative effects of taser use on the human body; they found very few”.

Here’s how the Dallas paper reported on the taser death:

It is likely to be months before the Dallas County medical examiner determines what caused Lockett’s death. But preliminary signs point to a textbook case of excited delirium, a medical state in which an overdose of adrenaline typically associated with drug use contributes to sudden death, police said.

Except the only “textbook” written about this bogus condition is by the manufacturer of the weapon that is likely to be found liable if all these deaths prove to be caused by their product. Neither the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association recognize it as a legitimate condition.

It’s very convenient to say that the taser didn’t cause the death, but it’s fairly clear that he wouldn’t have died that moment if he hadn’t been tasered. I just can’t fathom the logic that says this is anything but homicide. You could try to make a case that it was justifiable homicide, but to say the taser didn’t cause the death is absurd.

H/t to bb

Cat Out of The Bag

by digby

John Boehner inadvertently gives away the Republican game plan:

Chris, we make it clear in there that we’re going to lay out a plan to work toward a balanced budget and deal with the entitlement crisis. Chris, it’s time for us as Americans to have an adult conversation with each other about the serious challenges our country faces. And we can’t have that serious conversation until we lay out the size of the problem. Once Americans understand how big the problem is, then we can begin to talk about potential solutions.

Translation:

We’re going to block any attempts to fix the economy and relentlessly fear monger until we can make the American people so desperate and so afraid that they will accede to any crackpot scheme we can devise to benefit our wealthy patrons. But we will give them plenty of scapegoats and lots of Jesus to make up for the destruction of the American dream.

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On Hippie Punching

By digby

I haven’t weighed in on this because Susie pretty much said it all. But this post in the NY Times persuaded me to say something. It details the exchange with Axelrod, where she asks him if he knows what “hippie punching” is. Tobin’s summary:

“He was apparently at a loss. So, I assume, were plenty of other people. “Madrak was referencing a phrase thrown around by bloggers who think the Obama administration has treated its liberal base with disdain,” reported CBS News’s Stephanie Condon, which seems fairly obvious in context, but isn’t much help in terms of derivation or meaning. As for being “thrown around,” I can only remember seeing the phrase once before, and not on a liberal blog.”

He then links to Ann Althouse to explain it. (I assume he did that since she’s a female and so is Madrak? There’s absolutely no other reason to consult a right wing crank like her on the matter.)

Ok, first things first. The term “punch a hippie” has been around for decades, although it’s recently cropped up again on the right blogosphere. It’s considered a pastime, fun, a sort of recreation for ignorant neanderthals. I don’t know how many people actually do this (real hippies aren’t as easy to find as they used to be, and you might just make a mistake and beat up Ted Nugent or Toby Keith) but they love to chit chat about it in joking fashion. It’s one of those primitive, sadistic forms of wingnut entertainment like blowing up frogs or tying cats tails together and throwing them over a clothesline.

Let me give you an example from the violent right wing “humor” blog IMAO** (most famous for his side splittingly funny t-shirt that said “Rope, Tree, Journalist”):

Often I’m asked, “Why, if I punch a hippy, would I be arrested for assault? Are we supposed to believe that the Founding Fathers wanted hippies to walk around un-punched?”
He’s practically begging for me to punch him. Why can’t I?

First off, the Founding Fathers hated hippies as much as you and in no way intended America to be a place hippies could feel safe. What they knew, though, is that allowing people to punch hippies could lead to abuse of the law where someone would punch a non-hippy and claim he thought he was a hippy. So the reason we can’t punch hippies is to protect non-hippies from being punched.

I would support a change in the law, though, where it is legal to punch hippies, but the punched can afterwards legally challenging the punching by claiming to not be a hippy…

Now, I’m not saying these legal changes in the area of hippy punching won’t cause some problems, I’m just saying it will be worth it to put forth the clear message that if you’re a hippy and dare walk the street in America, you will be punched.

The hilarity continues in the comments:

Why stop at punching when we can blow thier[sic] LSD addicted brains out.

Then there is the slightly more serious permutation like this one from the early days of the war, in which bloodthirsty right wing sites sold t-shirts that looked like this, to support the marine NBC journalist Kevin Sites had caught on camera in the act of killing a wounded Iraqi in cold blood inside a Mosque:

This was the sales pitch:

Support our Marine
$17.99

The Marine who killed the wounded insurgent in Fallujah deserves our praise and admiration. In a split second decision, he acted valiantly.

On the other hand, Kevin Sites of NBC is a traitor. Beheading civilians, booby-trapped bodies, suicide bombers?? Sorry hippie, American lives come first. Terrorists don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. This Marine deserves a medal and Kevin Sites, you deserve a punch in the mouth.

Printed on high quality superheavyweight, preshrunk cotton (6.1oz)

That’s the right wing “hippie punch” rhetoric that’s been around forever, which apparently the NY Times has never run across before, but with which those of us who actually know right wingers in our real lives are unpleasantly familiar. And it’s an article of faith among them that liberals are hippies.

Here’s Ann Coulter to make it obvious:

My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.

Unfortunately, the Democratic political establishment, timorous and afraid of their own shadows as always, are petrified that Real Americans might make that same absurd connection. So nearly forty years on from the chaotic ’72 Democratic convention, the left, whether Netroots or “Professional” are still seen as disruptive, scary hippies and it is assumed they are loathed by all decent people. Just like the idiotic right wingers, they conflate “the left” with that carefully nurtured anachronistic wingnut fantasy of the “smelly, dirty, hairy” leftist and are scared to death of being tarred by it. And it is why many in the left blogosphere defiantly took the moniker “DFH” which stands for Dirty Fucking Hippie.

The blogosphere’s subsequent adoption of the term “hippie punching” is a shorthand to describe how Democrats like to debase the left in order to appeal to so-called Real Americans. It’s a sort of proxy bullying, in which the Party attempts to prove their middle of the road bonafides by attacking what they believe Americans see as their out-of-the-mainstream fringe. (It’s like a gang initiation where you have to beat up your childhood best friend to prove your loyalty to the new crowd.)

Needless to say, this is neurotic and delusional. Nobody is ever convinced and the Republicans spend huge amounts of time and money to make sure of it. No matter how much they distance themselves from the left, they will never be able to escape being associated with it and by demeaning their own largest political faction they ensure that a certain number of Real Americans continue to believe there is something truly distasteful about them — and by extension, the Democrats in general. After all, if the party leadership is repulsed by their own voters, even if they aren’t literally “fragrant, hirsute pie wagons,” there must be something awfully wrong with them. What kind of party would even associate with such people?

When the administration complained about liberals and “the professional left” they were plugging into a long-standing meme in Democratic politics that goes all the way back to the 1980s. Aside from 1992 campaign, when Clinton managed to eke out a win in a three way race with his DLC poll tested triangulation technique, it hasn’t really worked very well for the Democrats over the long term. Instead, it’s created a nation in which identifying with the left is equated with something viscerally unpalatable.

That’s the background to Susie’s question. The situation was unusual because nobody ever brings it up in polite, establishment company (of course, DFHs are rarely invited into polite establishment company, so the opportunity doesn’t happen very often.) This tension has been around for a very long time but it hasn’t been articulated until fairly recently.

What we know is that the way the Republicans treat their base is substantially different than the way the Democrats treat theirs. The GOP may go to some trouble to downplay the Christian Right, for instance, but they would never publicly insult them to gain respectability among the beltway chattering class or big donors. They see them as an asset to be managed rather than a target to be used to prove their mainstream bonafides. It’s a very different approach.

Maybe this will still work out well for the Democrats in the long run. I doubt that anyone cares what a bunch of bloggers think about anything, so this kerfuffle will hardly change the course of history. But the Democrats, of all people, should remember that it only takes a few lefties to peel off to a third party run to throw an election to the other side. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before (and for many of the same reasons.) It could easily happen again and there won’t be anything the DFH bloggers can do about it.

*I’m not sure when “punch a hippie” came to be adopted by the left as a way to describe this phenomenon, but I know the first time I heard it. It was right here, in a post by dday. I’ve been using it ever since.

** You can find that link from googling the quotes. I’m not up for a troll invasion today.

Update: Fergawdsake. Yeah Steny, that’ll impress people.

Update II: How’s all this working out for us?

Overall, would you describe the views and policies of each of the following as too extreme, or as generally mainstream?

The Republican Party

Too extreme 36%

Generally mainstream 58%

Mixed/Neither (vol.) 4%

No opinion 3%

The Democratic Party

Too extreme 42%

Generally mainstream 53%

Mixed/Neither (vol.) 3%

No opinion 2%

The Tea Party Movement

Too extreme 43%

Generally mainstream 41%

Mixed/Neither (vol.) 6%

No opinion 10%

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TV With The Sound Off

by digby

Perlstein writes a withering review of the new Democratic logo and slogan for the NY Daily News. He reminds us that the Obama administration was once the envy of Madison Avenue for their innovative marketing and branding (and wonders where all that creativity went.)

But he also points out the way the Bush administration used to stage manage the presidency itself, something I don’t the Democrats have ever done very well. Here’s an article from the NY Times during the Bush administration:

First among equals is Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer who was hired by the Bush campaign in Austin, Tex., and who now works for Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Mr. Sforza created the White House ”message of the day” backdrops and helped design the $250,000 set at the United States Central Command forward headquarters in Doha, Qatar, during the Iraq war.

Mr. Sforza works closely with Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman whom the Bush White House hired after seeing his work in the 2000 campaign. Mr. DeServi, whose title is associate director of communications for production, is considered a master at lighting. ”You want it, I’ll heat it up and make a picture,” he said early this week. Mr. DeServi helped produce one of Mr. Bush’s largest events, a speech to a crowd in Revolution Square in Bucharest last November.

To stage the event, Mr. DeServi went so far as to rent Musco lights in Britain, which were then shipped across the English Channel and driven across Europe to Romania, where they lighted Mr. Bush and the giant stage across from the country’s former Communist headquarters.

A third crucial player is Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer in Washington who is now the director of presidential advance. Mr. Jenkins manages the small army of staff members and volunteers who move days ahead of Mr. Bush and his entourage to set up the staging of all White House events.

”We pay particular attention to not only what the president says but what the American people see,” Mr. Bartlett said. ”Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don’t have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals as communicators. So we take it seriously.”

Karl Rove always said that politics was TV with the sound turned off and the Republicans put that into action in every way possible. It didn’t fool people forever, but it went a long way to making the president appear to be a larger than life figure who people could trust long after it was obvious that he wasn’t.

Obama has done much better with this sort of thing than the Democratic congress. But I don’t think either of them have done it as well as they could have. Then again, it’s possible that in times like this — a sort of grinding discontent rather than a dramatic period of war and international leadership — this sort of thing wouldn’t work anyway. But it couldn’t hurt to think about it. I don’t know what people are seeing with the sound turned o0ff, but considering the polls, I’m guessing it isn’t all that good.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

F for fake

By Dennis Hartley

Catfish: Photoshop is creepy!

So-would you believe me if I told you that showman P.T. Barnum, in point of fact, never actually uttered the words “There’s a sucker born every minute”? You know how I found that out? I Googled it. It says, right here in the Wikipedia, that P.T. Barnum’s “famous quote” never left his lips. And since I read it on the internet, it simply must be true, right? Oh, and have I mentioned that I am a wealthy, athletically built, 6’2” 34 year-old male, with a PhD in quantum physics, into music, literature and film? Are you buying this shit?

In the documentary (-ish) Catfish, a buzz-generating entry at this year’s Sundance, directors Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost ask their audience to buy a lot of shit. In spite of a cast billed as playing themselves, and Universal’s press kit trumpeting that “filmmakers” Schulman and Joost “…had no idea that their project would lead to the most exhilarating and unsettling months of their lives”- well, if this film is a “documentary”- then I am a wealthy, athletically built, 6’2” 34 year old male with a PhD.

But I could be wrong. Perhaps the events “documented” in this film did actually transpire as presented, and I’m just an embittered, mean old cynic who has seen too many movies. In fact, let’s all play along just for a moment. Let’s say that Schulman and Joost really were in the process of making a documentary-in-search-of-a-story, when it struck them that the “story” was right in front of them the whole time. Schulman’s brother Nev, a professional photographer blessed with his own camera-friendly good looks, had struck up a social networking-based friendship with an artistically gifted 8 year old girl from Michigan, who initially intrigued him by snail-mailing strikingly mature oil paintings based on his photos. When the girl’s 19 year old sister introduced herself into the mix, Nev struck up a web relationship with her as well; a relationship of a more involved and potentially amorous nature. Inevitably, Nev (now the official “subject” of his brother’s doc) reached a point where he wanted to take the next logical step-and not necessarily for the reasons you might think (sorry about the vagueness; I’m trying to keep this as “spoiler-free” as possible). Suffice it to say that our intrepid NYC-based trio of dazzling urbanites-turned detectives are soon packing up their film gear and heading to Ted Nugent country for a surprise visit. Ah, but which of the parties involved in this bit of cyber-intrigue is in for the bigger surprise? I could tell you…but then I’d have to kill you.

I do have to hand it to the filmmakers-they have at the very least constructed a virtually critic-proof product. If one decries the possible fakery of the film, then the filmmakers could counter that the heart of the story is, after all, about the inherent deception of cyber romance (the old “So how do you know that the hot 19 year old college cheerleader you’ve been sexting isn’t in reality a fat, middle-aged truck driver named Skip?” meme). Also, the Universal press kit I quoted from earlier does refer to the film as a “reality thriller”-which could be thrown back at critics as a caveat emptor (“Hey-we never exactly claimed that this was a documentary.”). Maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, but in a post Blair Witch Project world I feel it is my duty as a critic to bring this up. Oh well…wasn’t it Godard who said that “Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.”?

If you can get past the “Is it real or Memorex” conundrum-this is not necessarily a bad film; it’s intriguing enough to hold your interest through to the end. And if the point is to show how we have become a world of Walter Mittys and Eleanor Rigbys, spending the long dark nights of our souls pecking away on our keyboards, busily reinventing ourselves to assuage our lives of quiet desperation, then the film does convey a bittersweet poignancy in the denouement. And I have a confession to make. I’m not 6’2”.

Previous posts with related themes:

My Kid Could Paint That

The Hoax/Color Me Kubrick

Top 10 Mockumentaries

Part dos: Viva Espana!

Stigmata: Heavy bleeding, in glorious B&W

The Festival of New Spanish Cinema is playing here in Seattle this week; through the auspices of SIFF (through Sunday, September 26th) so I thought I’d share a couple of highlights with you. Now in its 3rd season, the Festival showcases a number of unique and off-beat offerings from contemporary Spanish filmmakers. If you don’t live in the Seattle area, don’t despair; between now and the end of the year it will be making whistle stops in New York City, Portland, Houston, Miami, Chicago, and Washington D.C. (more details, including the remaining dates for Canada and Europe, can be found here.)

Stigmata (aka Estigmas) is a film that is so visually intoxicating, striking in tone and steeped in rich atmosphere, that one is compelled to overlook (forgive?) its relatively thin narrative and decidedly glacial pacing. Based on the graphic novel by Lorenzo Mattotti and Claudio Piersanti, the film is directed by Adan Aliaga. In his acting debut, champion Spanish shot-putter Manuel Martinez stars as the central character, Bruno, a classic “gentle giant” (replete with the requisite heart of gold) who wakes up one morning with mysterious, painless wounds in both hands, which proceed to bleed copiously and continuously. Naturally, this makes him an instant social pariah. He finds refuge with a travelling carnival, where true love, tragedy and redemption transpire. I assume much of the simmering angst and sublimated religious subtext will resonate more strongly with my Catholic brethren (although, as a Jew, I can sort of empathize). I was reminded of Fellini’s La Strada, with a few echoes of Lynch’s The Elephant Man as well. Pere Pueyo’s B & W cinematography is outstanding, and Aliaga is a talent to keep an eye on.

WW2 espionage buffs won’t want to miss Garbo the Spy, an absorbing documentary about a Spanish double agent who arguably changed the course of the war in one brilliant play. In 1944, he managed to convince the Germans (who thought he was working for them) that the D-Day landings were merely a diversionary exercise (the Nazis may have otherwise thrown even more weight behind the defense of their crucial Normandy beachheads). It’s a fascinating tale of an enigmatic and unlikely hero, who one interviewee calls “one of the greatest actors” who ever lived (at one point, he had 22 “operatives” working for him-all creations of his own imagination, and juggled so masterfully and convincingly that his German employers truly believed that they were an actual consortium of intelligence gatherers). Director Edmon Roch uses a clever device, weaving in footage from classic WW2 espionage thrillers to put events in context. One bit of footage (from the 80s) showing a choked-up “Garbo” visiting the U.S. cemetery in Normandy, is a beautifully moving tribute to the great sacrifices made on those beaches.

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The Stinking, Filthy Libs

by digby

Today’s wingnut email was forwarded to me from three different sources, so it must be making the rounds. It starts off with a list of the federal agencies in 1948 and contrasts it with a list of federal agencies in 2008, representing “40 years of the filthy libs in power.”

It concludes with this:

THE LIBS PLAN TO DESTROY US

The above departments, agencies and programs all represent fully staffed offices both large and small, many with with mutable locations throughout the nation. The people employed in these offices generally earn 31% more than their civilian counterparts and enjoy far better retirement, insurance and benefits. All are supported 100% by the American taxpayers employed in the private profit producing sector. None of the gov. offices produce one red cent in profit- they are all parasites. Every 100 gainfully employed American tax payers supports 6.5 gov. employees 100%.

The filthy libs, socialists, democrats and fellow travelers in America understand, just as did the Bolsheviks in Russia, that, to be victorious over the people, they first had to rid themselves of the opposition. In Russia, in those days, the Mensheviks or “whites” represented the only group blocking their path to total domination. This opposition to the communists was a relatively small group made up of military officers, former members of the Czar’s government, a few independent farmers ( Kulaks) and the landed aristocracy- no way near enough to stop the mobs of street rabble and great unwashed assembled by the evil murderous leftist movement. In America ,the middle class today blocks the stinking libs just as the opposition tried to in Russia.

The American independents, republicans, libertarians and the religious right represent the bulk of the middle class. There are a lot more of us than there were Mensheviks in Russia in 1917. There are enough of us so hat we blocked the libs attempt to grant wholesale amnesty to the illegal Mexican invaders in 2007 and we stopped ( so far) their attempts to impose a horrendously stupid but terribly destructive so called “carbon tax” on us just today.

On top of horrendous fuel costs that are killing our budgets and forcing hundreds of independent truckers off the roads, and many airlines out of business causing thousands of lay-offs, the stinking libs wanted to add an idiotic carbon tax on our backs to accelerate our economic demise. Can you believe it? They wanted to pass a bill that would further tax us for electricity and fuel, – any use of carbon based energy would be taxed- driving us into the ground like tent pegs!

So far, America is just about evenly divided. The Middle Class represents a little more than half the voters and we certainly have a strong collective voice…

Here’s what I know- The stinking libs realized many years ago that in a prosperous country like America run by capitalistic independent, rugged individualists and entrepreneurs, there was little support for their brand of weak- limp -wristed, collective pinko- socialism. As the middle class grew and prospered after WW II the liberal movement grew weaker and had was losing its appeal.

After the Eisenhower era however they begin to work out a methodology to gain influence of over the democratic party. Before the 50’s the Democratic party was very much the party of the average working man and helped build the middle class by supporting powerful labor unions which, in their day, provided great strength to the American labor movement. The socialists in the party realized that one way for them to gain power and influence was by creating jobs and the easiest way to do this ( since none of them had any idea of how to open a factory or make anything useful) was to create “GOVERNMENT JOBS.

Because the labor unions were so very powerful and attracted so many members, the Democrats dominated American politics for over 40 years. They did this just by force of numbers ( poll power). During the last 40 years 90% of the above numbered 700 new departments, agencies’ and programs came into existence. mostly by government mandates concocted in the dark halls of the democratically controlled committees and congressional cloak room deals made in the dark of night. In few instances did the American people even know that these programs and offices were being created. Anyone visiting Washington and having cause to visit any of the offices listed here will note that they are staffed almost entirely by incompetents who would find it difficult to find work in the private sector. These weaklings always lick the hand that feeds them- meaning the stinking libs and repay their benefactors by voting for more. “MORE PLEASE’ is the repetitive bleating cry ringing from the halls of these useless and hugely overstaffed and overpaid offices.

Today, the libs, along with their counterparts in the media, have been so successful that they have actually promoted a black man to the head of the Democratic party as a candidate for President of the United States. This guy bama is a disaster and the most liberal guy in the US congress. He comes from the tax and spend, pandering, vote-buying,democratic party in Chicago. The idea is to divide the country as far as possible along racial lines ( which they most certainly have done) and … create, among other nutty and expensive programs, a single payer unbelievably monstrous universal government run medical insurance program which will tax the Middle class into total submission and permanent subservience, just as did the commies in the days of the Soviet Union. This is part of their twisted plan and they are far along……..

Skewing the immigration standards; another part of the plan: Years ago, western Europe was taken off the preferred list for immigration into the United states. The doors were swung wide to admit Latinos, Indians and large groups of uneducated rabble. Actually, anyone who the libs thought might vote for “MORE” and therefore back them at the polls. This worked, and continues to work, very well. In 1946 the population of America stood at about 150 million and today, 62 years later, we have over 300 million. Of the 150 million new citizens few were born in the United States and few came with any education or marketable skills. Because of the “give-away programs” that are paid for by the American taxpayers, most of these great unwashed would favor the libs in any election.

Today, lib attorneys, paid for by the Democratic National Committee and their minions, are suing the INS because they are not able to process the millions of new applicants for citizenship fast enough to vote in the upcoming election in November. They know and they are right, these millions of new citizens will vote their way.

Motor Voter: Another part of the libs sneaky plan has and is working well. This program allows and encourages, even mandates, that workers at the departments issuing state driving licensing throughout the country ask those obtaining a license if they want to register to vote at the same time. Through this method, millions of new voters have been registered with the vast majority of them ( no surprise) registering as Democrats.

The libs are backed and supported by insane environmental groups gnashing their teeth over spotted owls and rare minnows. Rich idiots like George Soros and the Hollywood crowd back them. These people have and continue to block any attempt to let us build power plants. We can’t build nuclear, gas or coal fired plants, we can’t use the great deposits of oil under our own shores and lands, we haven’t built a refinery for 30 years- all because of the despotic, power craving libs in congress. We have been forced by these treacherous disloyal groups to pay western hating Arabs and guys like the tyrannical, despotic, American hating, squat, ugly little Indian in Venezuela for oil.

The stinking libs don’t care about America- they surely don’t care about us- they are, just as the fat pigs who ruled the Soviet empire, after power- pure power. Listen to Harry Reid and Nancy and the rest of the dangerous wackos in congress… in their world we would all be on our collective knees while government trucks drove though our neighborhoods delivering blocks of Velveeta cheese and stale bread… totally at their mercy. That’s their plan for us…….. be careful- they are close to succeeding……..

This is the toxic swill that’s poured into wingnuts’ email boxes all over the country day after day after day. It’s what makes Fox look like a normal news network to these people.

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