Month: October 2010

The Republican Plan For Senior Penury

by digby

As if you didn’t know this already:

Today, three new studies were released examining the impact of Republican Social Security privatization plans. All three reports find privatizing Social Security and turning it over to the whims of Wall Street, would cut Social Security benefits for seniors. According to the Chief Actuary of Social Security in a report for Congressman Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), Chairman of the Ways & Means Social Security Subcommittee, Republican proposals—including those by Budget Committee Ranking Member Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)—would result in Social Security benefits cuts ranging from 10% to as high as 50%, with workers losing nearly 30% of their Social Security benefits on average. Read the report» The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis confirms and builds on those findings—showing that the Ryan plan would cut benefits for 70% of Social Security recipients, just by basing benefits for new retirees on changes in prices rather than changes in wages. Social Security benefits for a medium-earning retiree would be cut $350 a month (someone earning $43,000 in today’s terms–once the plan is fully phased-in, in 2080):

And that does not include the Ryan plan’s proposal to increase the full retirement age, which cuts benefits for all Social Security beneficiaries even further. Read the report» Finally, a report released by Joint Economic Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) finds that two central elements of the Social Security proposals put forth by Republican lawmakers—privatization and progressive price indexing—would result in benefit cuts for millions of middle-income workers, jeopardize the solvency of the Social Security Trust Fund and undermine the program’s ability to keep millions of Americans from living in poverty. And with privatization, retirees’ benefits will be subject to fluctuations in the performance of the stock market:

Read the report»

Now over in cheese eating surrender monkey-land the government is trying to raise the retirement age to 62 and the citizens aren’t too happy about it. Evidently, employers there like to fire people at age 55. (It’s happening here too and will likely become more common with our new “structural unemployment” and workplace deregulation.”) Somehow I doubt we’ll see scenes like this:

For the last week, French unions have organized strikes at French petroleum refineries and fuel suppliers, creating major difficulties in transportation with a shortage of gasoline in more than 1,500 gas stations, where huge lines of cars were observed in the last few days.

Truck drivers have joined the movement and made the fuel refinery strikes worse by blocking access to fuel storage tanks in the western part of France—such as in the cities of Rouen and Caen—before French police used force to remove the blockade.

In Le Mans, a high school was totally destroyed by a criminal fire during the night of Monday, Oct. 18, only one hour after angry students had built barricades to prevent its opening the next day. In Lyon, cars were burned and several shops were destroyed during student protests.

Though fewer strikers may have been counted in the main sectors, such as public transportation, the movement has turned more radical in the last few days, making it the largest opposition movement in France in the last 15 years.

I’m guessing the American people will get mad at the government and vote Republican when it happens to them. After all, the Republicans are the ones who said that government can’t do anything right — right?

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Negative Ads Work

by digby

I think it’s fairly clear that Conway drew blood with the ad that made the villagers run for the smelling salts:

Mike Huckabee has recorded a radio ad and a robocall for Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul, in which the former presidential hopeful says Democrat Jack Conway should “repent” for a “classless attack” on Paul’s religion.

Bringing in the preacher to shore up the libertine libertarian is a sign they … need shoring up.

Meanwhile, take the John Galt Quilting Bee and Ladies Pearl Clutching Society’s ranting about the unfairness of using someone’s college pranks against them (Paul was 27, by the way) and throw it in the compost pile of other manufactured hissy fits:

Turns out that Rand Paul — who has been incensed over Jack Conway’s suggestion that Paul’s college hijinks are relevant to the Kentucky Senate race — was very recently the candidate making attack ads aimed at the decisions another man made in his college years.

Back in the hotly contested Republican primary, which pitted Paul against establishment pick Trey Grayson, Paul had a field day making an issue out of Grayson’s college-age support for Bill Clinton…

Update: Oh my goodness. Even the sainted Mike Huckabee? Where will it end?

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said he considers his rival Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith a religion, not a cult, but questioned whether Mormons believe “Jesus and the devil are brothers.”

Huckabee raised the question on his own in an interview to appear in The New York Times magazine on Sunday, and ignited a new flap in the up-for-grabs race to be the Republican Party’s nominee in the November 2008 presidential election.

Huckabee was asked if he considered Mormonism a cult or a religion. “I think it’s a religion,” he said in the interview, published on the newspaper’s Web site on Wednesday. “I really don’t know much about it.”

Then he asked: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Romney, who has tried to dispel conservative Christians’ worries about the Mormon faith, responded on NBC’s “Today” show on Wednesday.

“I think attacking someone’s religion is really going too far. It’s just not the American way. and I think people will reject that,” the former Massachusetts governor said.

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Operation Tea Drunk Eagles

by digby

TPM reports

Poll watchers in Harris County, Texas — where a Tea Party group launched an aggressive anti-voter fraud effort — were accused of “hovering over” voters, “getting into election workers’ faces” and blocking or disrupting lines of voters who were waiting to cast their ballots as early voting got underway yesterday.

Now, TPMMuckraker has learned, the Justice Department has interviewed witnesses about the alleged intimidation and is gathering information about the so-called anti-voter fraud effort.

“We are currently gathering information regarding this matter,” Justice Department spokeswoman Xochitl Hinojosa said in a statement confirming the Civil Rights Division’s involvement.

Harris County, the biggest county in the state, is where a Tea Party group called the King Street Patriots launched an anti-voter fraud initiative called “True the Vote,” which recruited poll watchers and amped up fears over groups like the community organizing group ACORN.

Chad Dunn, a lawyer who is representing the Texas Democratic Party, told TPMMuckraker a number of witnesses have been interviewed by Civil Rights Division lawyers already. “We’ve gotten a number of reports — quite a few out of the Houston area — that poll watchers, King Street Patriot training poll watchers, are following a voter after they’ve checked them out and stand right behind them,” Dunn said. There’s at least a dozen reports that they could confirm with witnesses, he said. “Interestingly, it’s all in the polling places in Hispanic and African-American areas,” he added.

Terry O’Rourke, the first assistant in the Harris County Attorney’s office, told TPMMuckraker that there have been allegations of poll watchers talking to voters, which they are not allowed to do, as well as hovering over voters as they are waiting to vote. He said the complaints came from Kashmere Gardens, Moody Park, Sunnyside and other predominantly minority neighborhoods of the county.

“There are far more poll watchers in this election than we’ve ever had before. The Republican Party has 300 poll watchers on their ready list,” O’Rourke said. He can’t say for certain that they are connected to the Tea Party. “None of the people who walk in the door have Tea Party buttons on,” he said.

Former Voting Section Chief John Tanner, who resigned from the Justice Department in 2008 after he commented that voter identification laws were an imposition on white people because “minorities die first,” is representing the county attorney’s office.

“There are a lot of allegations out there on both sides. I think the county’s perspective is that they are trying to do everything possible to protect the rights of all voters,” Tanner told TPMMuckraker. “[The county has] faced a lot of difficulties,” Tanner noted, including the fact that the warehouse storing voting machines burnt to the ground.

O’Rourke said Tanner made a request on Tuesday to have federal election monitors sent to the county. County Attorney Vince Ryan met on Tuesday with the Democratic and Republican chairmen in the county after he received complaints of possible voter intimidation on the first day of early voting as well, the same day the Houston Chronicle printed a story detailing the allegations

O’Rourke said the chairs agreed to share their lists of poll watchers with one another, and Ryan sent out a notice to all of the election judges and alternates on Tuesday, reiterating the role of the poll watchers.

Meanwhile, the Texas Democratic Party is accusing the Tea Party group of working alongside the GOP on their anti-voter fraud effort. The Texas Democratic Party expanded a lawsuit alleging collusion between the GOP and the Green Party to include the King Street Patriot Tea Party group, the Austin Chronicle reports. The GOP’s website features a page promoting poll watching initiatives.

Voting rights experts have said they are concerned that independent groups like this Tea Party group would not be sure of the rules.

Wendy Weiser, Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center, told TPMMuckraker last week, “It’s much harder to disseminate information because there’s not a central repository of information that everybody’s listening to. It seems less likely they’ll have some good information on what’s allowed and what’s not allowed.”

“A lot of folks are probably newcomers to the political process and so there’s some of that newness as well,” she added. “We are worried by these disaggregated private policing efforts that… are going to be much more difficult to monitor and to control against illegal activity, again, knowing or inadvertent. I think that really changes the landscape a lot.”

As TPMMuckraker has reported, Tea Party groups have picked up the mantle of voter fraud allegations, which voting experts say are not as much of a problem as groups made it out to be.

Again, I get wingnut chain emails every single day filled with ACORN conspiracy mongering setting forth the “fact” that because the voter registration rolls often have erroneous information that means that there is massive vote fraud, which has never been shown to have happened in the modern era. They are all convinced that ACORN cooked the books to make it possible for an army of African Americans and illegal immigrants to vote illegally. I’m sure they’re very sincere in their belief that the only way Democrats can ever win elections is by stuffing the ballot box. It fits in perfectly with their worldview.

However, that’s not the real reason this “voter fraud” campaign. The reason they do this is because it gives them an excuse to “hover” also known as “intimidation” which, they hope, translates into making people think twice about voting. After all, busy people may not think it’s worth their while to stand in line and then have some Tea Party asshole breathing down their necks while they’re trying to vote. And for good reason, many members of the minority communities are cautious about dealing with the authorities and don’t think it’s smart to go looking for trouble from a bunch of white busybodies. That’s the whole point.

It’s the same as it ever was. But they’re getting much more aggressive in this, as they are in all things.

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David Neiwert and the NAACP are very shrill

by digby

I’m sorry David, but I’m fairly sure you’re not allowed to say this, regardless of the accuracy of it:

The NAACP has now fully backed up its accusations of racism within the Tea Party movement with a meticulously documented report on the Tea parties’ multifarious connections to racists and various far-right extremists. The report, “Tea Party Nationalism,” looks at the relationships and differences between the six major Tea Party organizations — FreedomWorks Tea Party, 1776 Tea Party, Tea Party Nation, Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, and Tea Party Express — and the various ways that each group has established connections with, and empowers, outright racists and white supremacists, as well we far-right “Patriot” extremists of various stripes. “In these ranks, an abiding obsession with Barack Obama’s birth certificate is often a stand-in for the belief that the first black president of the United States is not a ‘real American.’ Rather than strict adherence to the Constitution, many Tea Partiers are challenging the provision for birthright citizenship found in the Fourteenth Amendment,” write authors Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, which produced the report for the NAACP. The heart of the report is the section titled “Racism, Anti-Semitism and the Militia Impulse, which includes some previously overlooked facets of the movement and revealing details.

This is not politically correct. Unless these tea partiers come forward and admit upfront that they are all racists, then one cannot even mention this sort of thing. At least that’s what I’ve been told.

As David writes, cue the waahmbulence:

[T]he Tea Party Express’ Sal Russo said that “[t]o attack a grassroots movement of this magnitude with sundry isolated incidents only goes to show the NAACP has abandoned the cause of civil rights for the advancement of liberal Democrat politics.”

That’s particularly rich coming from the GOP conman Sal Russo:

In the days leading up to the Delaware primary, Sal Russo hosted a radio fund-raiser, organized a political rally and pressed the case with reporters that Christine O’Donnell was the Tea Party’s choice for the United States Senate. He also set off what he calls a “money bomb,” pouring at least $250,000 into television and other advertisements promoting the little-known candidate. With Ms. O’Donnell’s upset victory in the Republican primary on Tuesday, Mr. Russo, the chief strategist behind an upstart group called the Tea Party Express, had racked up another win. But in becoming one of the movement’s most successful players by helping Tea Party favorites oust incumbents or trounce rivals in four states, Mr. Russo is also fast becoming among the most divisive. Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause. Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records. While most of that money passed through the firms to cover advertising and other expenses, that kind of self-dealing raises red flags about possible lax oversight and excessive fees for the firms, campaign finance experts said. “They are the classic top-down organization run by G.O.P. consultants, and it is the antithesis of what the Tea Party movement is about,” said Mark Meckler, a national spokesman for Tea Party Patriots, a coalition of grass-roots organizations that does not endorse or contribute to candidates.

You’ll recall that Mark Williams, frequent Fox guest and author of the infamous “letter” to Abraham Lincoln, was Russo’s spokesman until he revealed in living color that he’s a screaming bigot.

Good for the NAACP for coming back after having been so timorous during the heinous Sherrod episode.

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Oh Andrea

by digby

Here’s Andrea Mitchell this morning:

Of course, the Republicans are pouring money — both sides are pouring money in– and that’s where the battle ground is, with Republicans trying to nationalize [the election] and Democrats trying to localize it.

Maybe the feel good factor, the marginalized factor is that the markets are up. That does seem to translate rather quickly as people feel that wealth effect.

It certainly doesn’t translate from their houses and that’s the other big hazard out there for Democrats, the foreclosure issue. That’s why they’re have a big crisis meeting at the White House (giggle) … as though they could do anything about it in this short term.

Where to begin? First of all, there’s no acknowledgment that the Republicans and their allies are pouring in rivers of cash compared to the Democrats small stream. Seas of cash. Mighty oceans of cash. Her reflexive “both sides do it” in this context is beyond misleading.

Secondly, the slight uptick in good feelings about the economy is highly unlikely to be a “wealth effect” unless they are only polling people with six figure incomes and above. Working people in this country do not feel a “wealth effect” from the stock market. They feel a wealth effect from the job market and the housing market, both of which are still stuck in the mud.

But the final comment is what made me re-run the segment: is it beltway CW that the foreclosure issue is a “hazard” for Democrats? I’m guessing that Mrs Greenspan thinks so because Democrats are the ones stepping up on behalf of all these deadbeat American citizens while the Republicans (and yes, some Democrats too) are the ones doing the “responsible” work of protecting the banks and Wall Street from being held liable for their crimes. Certainly, that’s what you read in the Wall Street Journal. And that’s what you hear from all the Very Serious People in the media.

But whether or not those silly billies in the White House can reap political rewards from the foreclosure fraud epidemic before the election, they are still responsible for running the government and maybe, just maybe, they think that miles of fraudulent foreclosure documents and the prospect of a legal battle royale between Wall Street and the banks over who is going to be left holding the bag for it might just be considered a pretty real damned crisis. Whether they will do the right thing is still unknown. But for gawd sake, is it too much to ask that the press takes this as seriously as they do that tweeting cretin from Alaska?

What made me see red was the dismissive attitude about the foreclosure fraud crisis. It’s a perfect reflection of the villager mentality: they see people who were foreclosed upon as deserving whatever they get. And the ones who are being wrongly foreclosed upon are collateral damage. (“It’s only a small percentage” dontcha know.) They worry incessantly about moral hazard among the plebes — people might just get the idea that they don’t have to be responsible, that they will be bailed out, that they will not be held accountable for breaking contracts and breaking the law. And never once do they turn that scolding, moral tone on the malefactors of great wealth who are ripping this country to shreds purely so they can save a couple of percentage points on their taxes.

But then Mitchell and the rest of the beltway press are part of the wealthy ruling class too, aren’t they? And when the media are part of the ruling class, as William Greider asked almost two decades ago, who will tell the people?

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Tilling The Soil With Big Bucks And Beck

by digby

Everybody’s already read about the big conservative corporate confab mapping out how they are going to buy the government for their own purposes. It’s fairly horrible on all levels, but I have to think this is the most jarring piece of it:

ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite…As the memo states, Beck has addressed this regular gathering of conservative corporate executives in previous years. Past Koch meetings have included various Republican lawmakers, including DeMint, and Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia as speakers.

Chamber lobbyists found common cause with Beck and many of the conservative talking heads. Shortly after our investigation, Beck hosted an on-air fundraiser, asking his audience to give to the Chamber. Casual observers might have been surprised by the Chamber’s swift alliance with Beck (Chamber executives appeared on the Beck radio program and sung Beck’s praises on the Chamber blog), who has compared Obama to Adolf Hitler and called the President a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” By telling his listeners to give money to the Chamber, Beck, who owns a media company worth more than $32 million dollars and an experimental Mercedes Benz, essentially told his working class viewers to give their wages back to their employers. However, Beck never disclosed his long working history of discussing political strategy with America’s largest corporations. The Koch memo clearly shows that Beck has been collaborating with the Chamber, as well as other titans of industry, for years. In his latest appeal for support to the Chamber’s foreign-funded trade association, which already counts JP Morgan and ExxonMobil as dues-paying members, Beck yesterday told his audience that the Chamber simply “defends the little guy.”

Beck, as I noted yesterday, is the most highly regarded “intellectual” among tea partiers, and he constantly compares progressives, not just the president, to Nazis, among other things.

These people have come a long way since the Powell Memorandum, which for all its aristocratic and plutocratic intent, didn’t propose to hire spokesman to prepare the country for the elimination of their fellow Americans. And that’s what Beck is doing.

Last year at this time, I thought the Big Money Boyz were ginning up the Tea Party at least partially as a tactic to scare the big donors:

Yesterday I heard Tony Blankley make the astonishing remark that Obama had “confiscated” General Motors. (It was so astonishing even Chuck Todd was taken aback.) And it occurred to me that all this absurd, over-the-top talk of socialism and “big government takeovers” may not just be being used by the big money boyz to keep the rubes confused, but may also be being used by wingnut welfare queens to scare the big money donors. After all, the ideas expressed in The Powell Memorandum would never have been taken seriously if there hadn’t been a feeling of chaos in the air and impending social and economic change. The left is failing to deliver on the social chaos this time, so it must be delivered by the right. And the paranoia undergirding the memorandum can still be relevant if they can persuade enough conservative donors that the Obama administration is the second coming of the Bolsheviks.

In any case, the fact is that billionaires (with some exceptions) are almost always most concerned with keeping as much of their money as possible and the wingnuts give them the political cover to ensure that the government works for their benefit. (One would think they would be more concerned about the gambling addicts who run the financial sector, but evidently they can’t quite wrap their minds around the fact that all those smart young fellas aren’t as smart as they need them to be.) Just as the teabaggers are susceptible to talk of FEMA camps and Kenyan jihadists in the White House the billionaires are susceptible to tales of government “confiscation” and worry about the center right Democrats getting uppity. I’m guessing we will see more blatant political moves from the malefactors of great wealth in the coming months.

Today I think it’s either gotten out of hand or the Owners have drunk the kool-aid. Either way, this seems to have ratcheted up considerably and I’m thinking we are in a much different landscape.

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What’s He Telling Them?

by digby

In light of recent events, I just thought I’d revisit some polling and focus groups that were done over the past few months:

Glenn Beck is the most highly regarded individual among Tea Party supporters of the people we tested. He scores an extraordinarily high 75 percent warm rating, 57 percent very warm.

This affinity for Beck came through very clearly in the focus groups. The only news source that participants said they could trust was Fox. Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity were cited as people who “are not afraid to tell it like it is” and support their arguments with solid facts. Beck was undoubtedly the hero in these groups. Participants consider him an “educator” (in contrast to the popular Rush Limbaugh who is an “entertainer”) who teaches people history and puts himself at risk because he exposes the truth. In the words of a woman in Ft. Lauderdale, “I would trust my life in his hands.”

Other comments are just as laudatory:

I like the way he’s trying to get back to the basics of the Constitution of the United States because I think that’s where our government is losing focus. They’re trying to change the Constitution or somehow twist it…

He brings out facts… And he actually shows the people saying the things. It’s not like just sound bites. It’s not chopped and really edited. And he is scary because every time I watch the show, which is pretty much every day, my heart feels…and I feel like I want to do something.

I’m frightened for him… Because of the things that he says. I think that he is stepping on some big toes.

He really does his research and he really lays it out to you well; a good professor.

And this:

Beck supplants Dan Rather as the fourth most admired name in news, according to Pew’s newest polling. He was ranked as the most admired by 3 percent of respondents; no one collected more than 5 percent.

(The first three were Diana Sawyer, Katie Couric and Bill O’Reilly.)

And this, from Tea party icon, Pam Stout:

Stout said Beck had “made me think and re-think” her positions on various issues.

Ok, so it’s clear that Beck is very well liked by the Tea Partiers and can legitimately be called one of their leaders and perhaps their intellectual guide.

So, what do we think about this little compendium of quotes that Media Matters gathered together? (This is just a sampling. There’s more at the link.)

Beck: Obama advisers show “the kind of thinking that … eventually led to the Holocaust.” On his October 5 radio show, Beck said that statements by Obama advisers John Holdren, Ezekiel Emanuel and Cass Sunstein indicate “the kind of thinking that led to … the extermination program that eventually led to the Holocaust.”

Beck likened reporting about him to “what Goebbels did.” Complaining on the August 27 edition of his radio show that ABC reported a statement by Beck that blacks don’t own Martin Luther King without also noting that he also said whites don’t own Abraham Lincoln, Beck said: “You know what? I’m gonna get a lot of heat for this, but stand in line. That’s what [Nazi propagandist Joseph] Goebbels did. That’s what Goebbels did. The truth didn’t matter.”

Beck equates children singing about Obama with “Hitler Youth.” On the June 17 edition of his radio show, Beck said that children singing about Obama was “the playbook of the progressives from … the former regime in Germany, the Third Reich.” Beck added, “This is Hitler Youth.”

Beck: Putting “the common good” first “exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany.” Attacking criticism of him by Jewish Funds for Justice’s Simon Greer, Beck asserted on his May 28 radio show that Greer’s comments about putting “human kind and the common good” first “is exactly the kind of talk that led to the death camps in Germany,” adding, “[a] Jew, of all people, should know that.”

Beck: “frightening similarities” between Sunstein, Goebbels. On the May 27 edition of his radio show, Beck claimed there were “frightening similarities” between Cass Sunstein and Goebbels.

Beck: “You can’t just change the law” to raise BP’s liability cap; “Is that what we fought the Nazis for?” On his May 4 radio show, discussing a reported proposal to retroactively increase liability limits to cover the costs of the Gulf oil spill, Beck responded: “Did we go and fight Germany for this? Is that what we fought the Nazis for? Is that why those millions of people died?”

Beck: Progressives use “democratic elections” to push dictators — “Hitler, ‘democratically elected.’ ” On the April 28 edition of his Fox News show, Beck stated that progressives use “democratic elections” to push dictators, then stated, “You’ll hear this when they talk about the ‘democratically elected’ leader of Iran; the democratic leader Chavez, ‘democratically elected,’ you know; Castro, ‘democratically elected’; Hitler – ‘democratically elected.’ “

Beck: “Progressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have.” On the April 22 edition of his radio show, Beck stated that “[p]rogressives build the structure that a communist, a Marxist, a Nazi would love to have.”

Beck invoked “first they came for the Jews” poem to respond to ad boycotts. On the April 8 edition of his Fox News show, Beck portrayed ad boycotts of his show as being orchestrated by the Obama White House in order to “destroy” his “career” and “silence” him, adding: “Is there absolutely no chance whatsoever that you might be a target at some point in the future? What’s that poem? First they came for the Jews, and I stayed silent?”

Beck invokes Nazis to attack worker ID cards: “It was only one of the first things that Hitler did.” On the March 9 edition of his radio show, Beck discussed a proposal by Sens. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) to implement national ID cards for workers and said, “It was only one of the first things that Hitler did.”

Beck: Obama campaign videos were Goebbels-like “propaganda.” On the February 16 edition of his radio show, Beck said that videos produced by Obama campaign manager David Plouffe were “propaganda” out of the Nazi “playbook”: “Remember, Goebbels, king of propaganda. … This is yet another playbook — page taken right out of the playbook.”

Beck documentary linked progressives to Hitler. Beck’s documentary Revolutionary Holocaust purported to link progressivism to the atrocities of Hitler, among other brutal dictators. Numerous historians denounced the inferences Beck drew in the film.

Beck on NEA conference call: “You should look up the name Goebbels.” On the November 3, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, discussing an NEA conference call in which artists reportedly discussed how “to help lay a new foundation for growth, focusing on core areas of the recovery agenda,” Beck said that “advocating through art is known as propaganda. Hmm. You should look up the name Goebbels.”

Beck compared Fox News to Jews during Holocaust, other news organizations to silent bystanders. On the October 13, 2009, broadcast of his radio show, Beck compared Fox News to the Jews during the Holocaust, telling other media outlets, “When they’re done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, ‘first they came for the Jews, and I wasn’t Jewish.’ ” He went on to say, “When they’re done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they’re going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? … If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you’ve missed the point of many brutal dictators.”

Beck told Newsmax: “I fear a Reichstag moment.” On September 29, 2009, conservative news website Newsmax.com reported of its interview with Beck:

But his real worry is that many Washington elitists really don’t like our form of government and want to see it abolished. “I fear a Reichstag moment,” he said, referring to the 1933 burning of Germany’s parliament building in Berlin that the Nazis blamed on communists and Hitler used as an excuse to suspend constitutional liberties and consolidate power. “God forbid, another 9/11. Something that will turn this machine on, and power will be seized and voices will be silenced.”

This is the person the Tea Partiers say makes them “think and rethink” everything they know. So is it really such a big surprise that they see nothing wrong with hiring private thugs to push Democrats and “the liberal media” out of their campaign events? They think Democrats and liberals are literally Nazis.

(Limbaugh, the second most admired man among the teapartiers, has been doing this for years as well, just without the pseudo-historical background. The field has been well tilled.)

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Go Hillary

by digby

*Remember to wear purple tomorrow.

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They Aren’t Populists

by digby

I have written before that I like Dylan Ratigan’s righteous populism, but I have less respect for his understanding of politics. He just opened his show with a perfect example of why that is:

Ratigan: Today we find ourselves yes with a very strange brew. Two weeks before the election the Tea Party movement making headlines for every single wrong reason. Instead of arresting reporters and criticizing gays, I thought Tea Party candidates would speak out on property rights and defend the ability of any given American to actually retain their own freedoms and protect themselves from financial injustices. Wasn’t that the point?

Unfortunately this isn’t rhetorical on his part. He’s often held up the Tea Partiers as potential allies in fighting the big banks and Wall Street. He has never been right about that.

Sure, Ron Paul’s “tea parties” in 2008 sort of started the whole thing and Rick Santelli’s rant was sort of about property rights (if you think that screeching about deadbeat neighbors running down your property values qualifies.) But the Tea Party as we know it has been a right wing, social conservative, John Birch society anti-tax movement from the beginning and allowing them to pretend to be something else for so long has severely impaired the ability of the real populists — like Ratigan — to make their case.

The Tea Party is the far right, period. They are not populists, they are opportunists who don the mantle of populism to give cover to the plutocrats. Hopefully, this election cycle has finally put to rest any notion that they are.

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Tea Party Liberty

by digby

I wrote about Oathkeeper Teabagger Alan West’s affiliation with biker gangs over the week-end. Here’s a TV report of an incident at a public rally in which West’s “security” used the same tactics (in different costumes) as Alaskan Tea party candidate Joe Miller’s “security” used the other day:

So, according to both campaigns,these events are all “private” even though they’re advertised to the public and held in public places. Therefore, the campaigns have the right to oust anyone they don’t approve of.

I think these two incidents are very important and people should pay close attention to them. They reveal the essential nature of the Tea Party which, for all it’s wearing of tri-corner hats and waving of the constitution, is hard core authoritarian. They simply do not see the contradictions. In their view, the constitution was written for Christian conservatives to use to protect the country from those who disagree with them.

Update: Egad, the Miller episode just got much worse. Here’s Greenwald:

The ADN now reports that not only was Joe Miller’s excuse for why he had hired private guards a lie, but two of the guards who handcuffed the journalist and threatened others are active-duty soldiers in the U.S. military:

Was Joe Miller required to bring a security detail to his town hall meeting Sunday at Central Middle School? That’s what Miller, the Republican Senate candidate, told two national cable news networks Monday in the wake of the arrest by his security squad of an online journalist at his public event. But the school district said there was no such requirement made of Miller . . . “We do not require users to hire security,” she said. . . . Meanwhile, the Army says that two of the guards who assisted in the arrest of the journalist and who tried to prevent two other reporters from filming the detention were active-duty soldiers moonlighting for Miller’s security contractor, the Drop Zone, a Spenard surplus store and protection service. The soldiers, Spc. Tyler Ellingboe, 22, and Sgt. Alexander Valdez, 31, are assigned to the 3rd Maneuver Enhancement Brigade at Fort Richardson. Maj. Bill Coppernoll, the public affairs officer for the Army in Alaska, said the two soldiers did not have permission from their current chain of command to work for the Drop Zone, but the Army was still researching whether previous company or brigade commanders authorized their employment.

If the wrongness of this isn’t immediately obvious to you, click over to Glenn’s post.

It would be interesting to ask Miller about the Oathkeepers and watch him turn himself into a living pretzel trying to explain how all this works.

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