Month: December 2010

Following Beck Into The Heartland

by digby

BagNews is featuring an extraordinary photo essay by award winning photographers Nina Berman and Alan Chin that you simply have to check out:

“Hell is Real”

A billboard along Interstate 71 just north of Wilmington warns drivers of the guaranteed retribution awaiting non-believers.

Glenn Beck and his entourage will descend on the small town of Wilmington, Ohio, to tape his radio show, sell books, and perform in an extravaganza that he calls “America’s First Christmas.” He chose Wilmington because it is hard hit by the recession, with 8000 jobs lost when the main employer in the area, DHL, closed its facility in 2008. He claims that the people here neither want nor accept government help, saving themselves through prayer and self-reliance. But this is completely untrue, as more than $11 million dollars of federal stimulus money was specifically directed to retrain unemployed workers and alleviate the dire economic situation.

[…]

Jason Willhite has been unemployed for eight months, laid off from a printing press job, and before that, by DHL. He sold his car and cashed in his 401k to pay rent. He and Sandy and their two little boys have been living on $535.00 a month in welfare plus food stamps. “I get lucky now and then and get a tire to change or something,” he said. Even the temp agencies have nothing. He feels horrible about taking money from the government and to make up for it, has been volunteering at a homeless shelter. Their case worker says that John Kasich, the new Republican governor, wants to get rid of cash assistance for the poor.

A few times a week, they go for free meals at the Sugartree Ministries, a charity jointly operated by more than thirty churches across denominations and politics. Beck says he will donate some of his proceeds to Sugartree.

FYI: Berman and Chin are among the two top photographic chroniclers of our time — Berman having shot the searing photo “Marine Wedding” and Chin the iconic photo of the lady with the American flag in front of the convention center after Katrina. These photos of Wilmington are amazing.

The Audacious Man Called Petraeus

by digby

I have long been concerned about The Man Called Petraeus and the rather dangerous cult that’s built up around him over the past few years. (His continuing references to the civilian overseers like Richard Holbrooke as his “wingmen” doesn’t exactly put one’s mind at ease.)

Here’s a piece about him that deserves to be widely disseminated because the way things are going, the country may very well be looking for the proverbial man on the white horse soon — and TMCP is made to order:

DAVID PETRAEUS – HERO FOR OUR TIMES

By Michael Brenner

Professor of International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh

Nations deserve the heroes they get. A hero usually is one part the actuality of person and performance; three parts need of the observer for confirmation, reassurance, hope. Heroes are made more by the yearnings of others than by their own features and feats. Where the intensity of those needs stunts critical faculties, the powers of illusion and self-delusion grow. That holds for the object of hero worship as well – for the emotional currents flow both ways.

Heroes are enemies of truth. For they evoke powerful feelings that give distorted meanings to inchoate emotions. They provide the personified symbols of legendary dimension that inspire unjustified confidence and offer the comfort of a cult. Thoughtless loyalty follows.

Contemporary America’s craving is exceptional. It is diffuse yet at the same time self centered. Each one of us badly wishes to have the mythology of our collective identity and meaning restored. Abstract yet omnipresent, few can cope without it. The personal resources of our fabled individualism quickly run dry without the steady sustenance provided by the blind belief in our exceptional virtue, competence and claim on the future. Suspicions that we may not be destiny’s child born under a providential star erodes the optimistic self confidence that is our lifeblood.

Those who have emerged as saviors offer no plan to resolve our tangible problems, no exciting doctrine of salvation, no fresh vision. Instead, they are amplifiers of our discontents with a gift for bolstering faith that restoration of the true and authentic America is within our grasp. It’s the eternal American story of self redemption and self-realization that admits of no flaw in our basic character. Whatever is out of kilter just has to be fixed.

There is one celebrity with the makings of a national hero, someone who has the qualities that might carry him right into the White House. It is David Petraeus. He is almost universally credited with the brilliant achievement of saving American honor and gaining an approximation of ‘victory’ in Iraq. President Obama himself is in awe of this warrior intellectual to whom he defers on all matters in the Greater Middle East. Petraeus’ mythic standing is a perfect example of how the compelling demand for a hero creates the illusion that indeed a savior has arrived. The so-called ‘surge’ for which Petraeus takes unabashed credit did not change anything fundamental in Iraq. The record is clear that the decline in violence, sectarian and anti-American, was due to three factors independent of our actions. They were: the emergence among the Sunni militants of the sawa’h movementthat turned on al-Qaeda in Iraq for their own tribal and cultural reasons; the Sunnis defeat by the Shi’ites in the civil war of 2005-2007; Iranian political intervention to persuade Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army to stand down so as to strengthen Prime Minister Maliki’s hand in the Iraqi-U.S. negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA). Iran won its bet as Maliki indeed did turn the tables on Petraeus et al in Washington, severely restricting the American military’s presence in Iraq. All this was in the works well before the surge troops arrived, troops that never got beyond Baghdad. Moreover, Iraq today is an economic and political shambles, without a government for nine months, that teeters on the brink of a three-way civil war while Tehran’s influence mounts steadily.

Petraeus, the most political general America has seen since MacArthur, eagerly accepted the unearned laurels. He plays Presidents and public opinion with the deftness he describes in his counter insurgency writings as required to win the propaganda campaign against the native rebels. The doctrine has been far more effectively executed in Washington than in Afghanistan. In Fall 2004, he penned a series of articles lauding George Bush for his brilliant and bold leadership. In them, he proclaimed success in personally building an Iraqi army ready to take over responsibility for the country’s security. That was a complete fiction. In fact, Petraeus had made a series of blunders in recruiting a nearly 100% Shi’ite army composed mainly of party militia members. One of the very few capable units, the notorious Grey Wolves, took the lead in the bloody ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from Baghdad and surrounding districts. 6 years later, the Iraqi National Army of which their American general boasted is still a work in progress.

None of this is of interest to our leaders, to our media, to our public. Hero worship is blind – especially when there is a desperate emotional need to make the country feel good – or, at least, less bad – about its tragic, farcical intervention that tarnished every principle our Republic supposedly holds dear.

Petraeus understands all this. He plays his role skillfully. A shy half-smile for a people that prefers the boy next door variety of hero to the grim hard-edged military man we associate with the bad guys. A chest full of ribbons and medals that, to a few jaundiced eyes, makes him look like a caricatured Ruritanian Field Marshal. Army regulations on decorations say wear only 3 or wear them all. It is highly doubtful that Petraeus ever considered the former option. Modesty is not ‘in’ when it comes to American celebrity culture. Oddly, none of Petraeus’ decorations are for actions in combat. He never has seen combat; he never has been under fire. The very model of a modern hero-general. His big battles were won in the corridors of the Pentagon and the antechambers to presidential power. However confected Petraeus’ legendary triumphs are, they serve no less well as credentials that a sorely tried nation may take as signaling that here is the man who can set the country straight.

Audacity is the key to turning celebrity into hero status. Sarah Palin has it. So too does David Petraeus – in abundance. It took audacious nerve to throw himself into the 2004 presidential election while a serving officer, and do so by misrepresenting a key element in the Iraq debate – one for which he was individually responsible.

It took audacity to maneuver to undercut two of his former commanding officers, General David McKiernan and Admiral William Fallon, whose careers met an untimely demise as a consequence. It took audacity to sideline Ambassador General Karl Eikenberry from last year’s critical Afghanistan strategic review (with the backing of Robert Gates) because his views ran against the grain of Petraeus’ own plans for being producer and director of SURGE II.

It took audacity to qualify in public the White House’s publicly stated commitment to begin a withdrawal of troops by July 1 2011 within days of its being made. It has taken even greater audacity to plant stories via his aides that he has the necessary ‘moral authority’ in effect to reset the mission’s coordinates and resource needs as he deems fit. “Team Kabul,” as Petraeus refers to his Afghanistan staff, says openly that the July 2011 date is “meaningless.”

It takes audacity to launch a campaign of village destruction in Kandahar province, cleansing the countryside of its civilian population, so as to chalk up a larger tally of enemy kills in time for the year end review – even if this means turning on its head the core precept of his own counterinsurgency doctrine.

It takes audacity to spread word of a breakthrough success in the bringing of “a very high level Taliban leader,” Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, to Kabul for “promising” talks (literally as well as figuratively bringing him); and then when the ‘Taliban no. 2’ is exposed as an imposter, a Quetta shop keeper in fact, for Petraeus brazenly to offer the laconic comment that “I was not surprised.” And, to cap it all, to blame the British for the entire episode. That is the kind of audacity that points a general in the direction of the White House whose incumbent is your Commander-in-Chief.

By the way, the Editors of the TIMES have offered no comment on the ‘Taliban leader’ episode – a humiliation for Petraeus, a humiliation for America. Americans may pay it little attention; others in Kabul, Islamabad and Teheran do.

I ran the whole essay because I wanted to preserve it, but if you follow the link you’ll find other interesting articles on Petraeus and Afghanistan. This one gets to the nub of the issue, in my view.

h/t to RP

Setting The Trap

by digby

Oh my goodness, here are some Republicans trying to help Obama pass his tax cut bill. How bipartisan of them:

You may recall Crossroads GPS – the shadowy third-party group that doesn’t disclose its donors, which spent tens of millions of dollars running campaign ads in the midterms, largely against Democratic candidates. President Obama repeatedly railed against the group, which was founded with the support of GOP guru Karl Rove.

In order to maintain its tax status, the group needs 51% of its expenditures to be issue-related, instead of campaign-related.

And it has begun – with $400,000 for a one-week radio buy for ads to run in the congressional districts of a dozen House Democrats, to encourage them to vote for the tax compromise negotiated by President Obama.

Now I suppose it’s possible that a Rove sponsored group is doing something that that they know won’t benefit the Republican Party politically, but it would be the first time in history that such a thing has happened. Karl Rove is a political animal. Putting Republicans in office is his raison d’etre. The idea that he would try to pass a bill that he thought was bad for Republicans is ludicrous.

They want this bill because it will reward their wealthy constituents to be sure — the estate tax deal alone is better than they could have dreamed. And they are happy to extend middle class tax cuts too because they want to starve the beast. They love the payroll tax cut because they knew they will probably never raise it back up, which will make the social security projections look worse than ever and give ammunition to the destroyers. And, yes, they are happy to extend unemployment insurance at Christmas time because they can pretend that they are human beings.

But mostly they love this deal because it gives them their favorite issue to bludgeon the Democrats with over the next two years: “they promised to raise your taxes!” They know the Democrats won’t actually do it but like an overfed cat with an injured mouse, they just like to torture them for their own (and their voters’) amusement.

Here’s movement zombie Ralph Reed dancing on the head of a pin on Spitzer Parker last Friday setting up the play:

SPITZER: Ralph, I want to start with you. Senator DeMint, a very conservative and increasingly powerful voice has come out vehemently against this, saying it is a budget busting tax cut, we can’t afford it, a cave to special interests.

First, where do you stand on the so-called compromise? I don’t view it as a compromise. Why do you stand on it? Do you agree with Senator DeMint?

REED: Well, I think, like Senator DeMint, Elliot, I would much prefer just a clean bill where you simply extend the Bush tax cuts. And I would prefer that we not extend them for two years.

(CROSSTALK)

SPITZER: Which means so not the unemployment benefits and some of the other tax —

REED: Not the other stuff they weighed it down with. Now you know —

PARKER: Wow, you’re hard core.

REED: Well, thank you very much. I’ll take that as a compliment.

But you know I — look, I was on the Hill during the Reagan tax cuts. And that was what Reagan wanted. He simply wanted the rate reductions, no baubles, no Christmas ornaments, just pass my bill.

That’s unlikely to happen. So, you know, we’ll see what happens. I mean it’s kind of a moot point right now to the extent that the House Democrats have said they may not even bring it to a vote.

SPITZER: Well, let me put you on the — given Senator DeMint’s critique that it’s a budget busting bill, because of the loss of $4 trillion of revenue over 10 years — two years, you know, about $1 trillion, how do you respond to that critique?

REED: Well, again, I’m in favor of extending the Bush tax cuts. I favored originally the Bush tax cuts being permanent.

SPITZER: Right.

REED: So — and I certainly don’t think it’s a good idea for us to be sitting here basically two or three weeks from the end of a calendar year and 26 million small businessmen and women and job creators and entrepreneurs having no idea what their tax rate is going to be.

I mean, we have a very weak economy. We have the longest and deepest recession in the post World War II period. The real estate market is still flat on its back. This thing is not over yet. We’ve got 15 million Americans out of work. And what this is, is this is just showing Washington isn’t — is broken and Obama can’t lead and that’s not good for anybody.

Sure, Romney and the teabaggers are all “against” the tax cut deal. But keep in mind that like Reed, they say it’s because they believe the tax cuts are not permanent and there’s too much “pork” — like unemployment insurance. They want to be on record being for permanent tax cuts and against unemployment insurance, but none of them are calling for this bill to fail and the big teabagger class isn’t in congress yet so they don’t have to vote for it. It’s the best of all possible worlds.

One final note. Here’s the boyish demon seed Ralph Reed with a little piece of advice that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up:

REED: Here’s what Clinton did that Obama should do. I’m not saying it will guarantee his reelection, but he should do it. He should recognize that what happened on November 2nd is a wave. It’s coming. OK, you can’t stand on the beach and yell at it and make it go away. It is on top of you. It is either going to hit the beach, ride up and then recede, or it will break you.

And there are certain elements of this, the Bush tax cuts being permanent, fiscal restraint, lower spending, and a forward strategy of freedom and the war on terror that he ought to concede, because if he doesn’t, it will break him.

I’m sure Ralph just wants to be helpful, aren’t you?

“I want to be invisible. I do guerrilla warfare. I paint my face and travel at night. You don’t know it’s over until you’re in a body bag. You don’t know until election night.” –Ralph Reed, Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, 9-Nov-1991

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Banishing The Evil Spirits

by digby

Some people seem to be surprised at this, but I’m not:

The American public is highly critical of the recent release of confidential U.S. diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks Web site and would support the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by U.S. authorities, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.

Most of those polled – 68 percent – say the WikiLeaks’ exposure of government documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy harms the public interest. Nearly as many – 59 percent – say the U.S. government should arrest Assange and charge him with a crime for releasing the diplomatic cables.

Why wouldn’t they think this since virtually everyone on TV, including journalists, is acting as if telling the truth about the US Government, even when it’s done in league with reputable newspapers, is going to kill us all in our beds? It’s not as if they are being told the truth — even about that.

And frankly, it’s clear that under the stress of rapid social change and economic insecurity, America is morphing itself quite comfortably into a police state, yearning to believe that it is under the most serious threats mankind has ever known (well, except for the real ones like climate change, which they increasingly believe is a hoax)in order to justify putting themselves into the hands of people who say they are protecting them. Like those lab rats who repeatedly shock themselves for rewards, they are so overstimulated that they are excitedly eating up the fearmongering and demagoguery, just so they can watch the authorities use their power to make it stop.

It helps them feel safe to believe that these allegedly mortal threats can be banished when the police incarcerate and punish a single “evil” man. It also means protecting the very people who are really making them so terrified — but that’s how authoritarians roll.

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Short Term Thinking

by digby

I think it’s fairly obvious that the Democrats failed to uhm … think ahead when they let the middle class tax cut extension go all the way to the end of this year before acting. But then, thinking about how to take advantage of their power to create future political advantages isn’t exactly their strong suit. The Republicans, however, think of little else:

As the first congressional session of Obama’s presidency draws to a close, what began as a slow process of confirmation has ballooned into a full-blown judicial crisis. The Senate has overseen the slowest pace of judicial staffing in at least a generation, with a paltry 39.8 percent of Obama’s judges having been confirmed, according to numbers compiled by Senate Democrats. Of the 103 district and circuit court nominees, only 41 have been confirmed.

By this time in George W. Bush’s presidency, the Senate had confirmed 76 percent of his nominees. President Clinton was working at a rate of 89 percent at this point in his tenure.

While the confirmation process is slower now (a function of a packed legislative calendar and Republican obstruction), Obama’s nominating pace also lags behind his predecessors. His 103 total nominations compare to 142 by Clinton and 131 by Bush at this same juncture.

Ronald Reagan had twice as many judges confirmed by this time in his presidency, with his 87 confirmations dwarfing Obama’s total. George H.W. Bush had moved 70 judges through the Democratic-controlled Senate.

They placed a huge emphasis on court packing over the years and it’s paying off in spades for them now. And evidently, the Democrats are willing to let them continue to do it (or at least fail to challenge it) because well … I don’t know. I realize that the Democrats have been dealing with an obstructionist Senate minority, but with all the “deal making” and “compromise” that everyone’s telling us is absolutely necessary, it might have been smart to throw some judicial confirmations into the mix.

*The two Supreme Court appointments replaced liberal Justices, which is good, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that the lower courts are packed with conservatives and that the retirees aren’t being replaced by liberals and they aren’t building a bench of liberal jurists. It’s short sighted.

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Ticking Time Bomb

by digby

MSNBC on the Assange bail hearing:

Stephanie Gosk: the Swedish authorities had two hours to challenge this decision and that’s exactly what they’ve done and it has to be heard by Britains high court within the next 48 hours and that means that Julian assange will be in jail during that time. If they lose that case, and Julian Assange is granted bail as the magistrate has granted him today, he will be allowed to go but he has to stay at a registered address and one of his supporters, luckily enough, has a 600 acre mansion in southern England and he’s going to be allowed to stay there. He’s not going to be free to run around, he’s going to have electronic surveillance, he has a curfew and he’s already turned in his passport. But it has been a victory today, a small one, he trying to fight that extradition back to Sweden.

Andrea Mitchell: He can be on a 600 acre estate with all sorts of electronic monitoring … but can he go on the internet?!

… and sexually assault some female avatars and then destroy us all with his x-ray vision and cyber-army?? Run for your lives!

The Wikileaks saga has exposed the vapid stupidity of the celebrity press corps like nothing since the Great Clinton Panty Raid. One thing is very, very clear — they aren’t journalists and don’t even consider themselves journalists. They are celebrity public relations professionals who just aren’t as bright as the real public relations professionals.

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Ooopsie. They Left Out The Severability Clause

by digby

Inept or corrupt? The perennial question:

Quite often, legislators include what’s known as a “severability clause” in their bills. These are meant to protect the bulk of a law in the event that a small portion of it is determined to be unconstitutional. That small portion must go, or be changed, but pretty much everything else is allowed to stand.

In a sin of omission, Democrats left such a clause out of the health care law, and now the plaintiffs in at least one of the cases against it want the court to take an axe to the whole thing if the judge decides that the individual mandate provision is unconstitutional.

The good news for supporters of the ACA, according to one leading expert on the reform plan and the suits against it, is that — even under the worst case scenario — most of the law will likely remain intact. The bad news is that some of its most important and popular provisions could become ensnared by a ruling against the mandate, and nixed by the court.

I would think this was an inexcusable error if it weren’t for the fact that the wingnuts were clearly telegraphing their intentions to the New York Times. It’s very hard to believe anyone could possibly be this stupid. But regardless of why they did it, they have left the conservative judiciary a tool with which to smash the already rickety edifice of this program.

Not that it’s even necessary. As Adam Serwer wisely observes:

In Citizens’ United, the court proved itself willing to go beyond the question originally posed to the court to entirely dismantle campaign finance reform. If anything, that ruling showed that the court is entirely prepared to make broad rulings on matters of partisan fixation. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court will do whatever they have the votes to do, whether it’s overturning the law entirely, just eliminating the mandate or merely offering an angry dissent.

Update: Adding that this doesn’t seem to apply to yesterday’s ruling, which appears to be fatally flawed in its own right according to many constitutional experts.

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The Next War

by digby

We’ve recently seen a big revival in the idea of American “exceptionalism, so it stands to reason that Manifest Destiny might be making a comeback too. And as with so many other contemporary issues, CNN analyst Erick Erickson’s Red State is out in front.

Like it or Not: Mexico is America’s Next Afghanistan

It’s time to ‘man up’ and face a fact that most politicians know, but few care to admit.

With the exception of, perhaps, Texas governor Rick Perry, no public official wants to publicly admit an obvious fact: The United States of America will likely be forced to invade Mexico. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. The question then becomes: What to do with Mexico after we invade it and wipe out the drug cartels (as much as can be). Does the United States merely return Mexico to a nation state of corrupt politicians, failed economic policies, and lawlessness, or do we annex Mexico and turn it into the 51st state?

For many of us, there is a certain false security in believing that, since most of America’s streets are not filled with the murder and mayhem that is going on just South of our borders, we have nothing to worry about. The feeling that most Americans likely have is: Well, it’s their problem, not ours. However, that illusion of security is quickly being eroded with the stories of American police officers being threatened by Mexican drug cartels, of kidnappings and drug murders in Arizona and Texas, of control of certain parts of Arizona and forays into New Mexico and Colorado by drug cartels, of teenagers being turned into hitmen, and American tourists being kidnapped or killed while on vacation in Mexico.
[…]
… Is the U.S. ready for another protracted foray into nation building? Or, in the alternative, does Mexico enter the United States as the 51st state? Now, this should not be considered an ‘endorsement’ of either idea (see note below). Rather, it is more of a cost-benefit analysis that requires much more study:

Rather than nation building, which would be much more costly to the U.S. treasury (which can ill afford it), a case can be made for statehood (albeit, not without controversy), given the amount of Mexico’s citizenry that is already residing in the U.S., as well as Mexico’s historically mis-managed economy and resources (i.e., oil, farmland, beaches, ports, etc.). Moreoever, as so many illegal immigrants work already in the U.S., but send their earnings back to Mexico, by having Mexico become the 51st state, the money exported would not leave the U.S. but would stay in “our economy” and could offset the costs of an invasion/humanitarian mission. Most importantly, by assimilating Mexico into the U.S., with the Constitution it would solve the the issue of immigration reform in one fell swoop.

I particularly like the “albeit, not without controversy” disclaimer about turning Mexico into the 51st state. So reasoned. So civil. The invasion is a given. The only question is, what do we do with it when once we take it over?

So how did it come to this? Perhaps this from today’s Washington Post will explain:

No other state has produced more guns seized by police in the brutal Mexican drug wars than Texas. In the Lone Star State, no other city has more guns linked to Mexican crime scenes than Houston. And in the Texas oil town, no single independent dealer stands out more for selling guns traced from south of the border than Bill Carter.

Carter, 76, has operated four Carter’s Country stores in the Houston metropolitan area over the past half-century. In the past two years, more than 115 guns from his stores have been seized by the police and military in Mexico.

As an unprecedented number of American guns flows to the murderous drug cartels across the border, the identities of U.S. dealers that sell guns seized at Mexican crime scenes remain confidential under a law passed by Congress in 2003.

A year-long investigation by The Washington Post has cracked that secrecy and uncovered the names of the top 12 U.S. dealers of guns traced to Mexico in the past two years.

Eight of the top 12 dealers are in Texas, three are in Arizona, and one is in California. In Texas, two of the four Houston area Carter’s Country stores are on the list, along with four gun retailers in the Rio Grande Valley at the southern tip of the state. There are 3,800 gun retailers in Texas, 300 in Houston alone…

Drug cartels have aggressively turned to the United States because Mexico severely restricts gun ownership. Following gunrunning paths that have been in place for 50 years, firearms cross the border and end up in the hands of criminals as well as ordinary citizens seeking protection.

“This is not a new phenomenon,” Webb said.

What is different now, authorities say, is the number of high-powered rifles heading south – AR-15s, AK-47s, armor-piercing .50-caliber weapons – and the savagery of the violence.

Federal authorities say more than 60,000 U.S. guns of all types have been recovered in Mexico in the past four years, helping fuel the violence that has contributed to 30,000 deaths. Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to Washington in May and urged Congress and President Obama to stop the flow of guns south.

We can’t do that, of course. It would defy the only meaningful amendment to the constitution and interfere with our constitutional right to sell guns to anyone we choose. There are some principles we must uphold no matter what the consequences. These are principles for which we must be prepared to fight, indeed invade another country, if necessary.

The sad truth is that we must invade Mexico to protect our right to bear arms.

And while this fine fellow hasn’t quite put it together yet, he will undoubtedly get to it sooner or later. For our own protection, we must fulfill our Manifest Destiny which was, ironically, first invoked to argue for the annexation of Texas.

(And since we’re probably going to have to gin up a new war somewhere pretty soon anyway and wouldn’t it be nice if it could be close to home this time? With really good guacamole and margaritas? Si se puede!)

Update: Note that the post is not written by Ericksson himself, but by a writer at his blog named, apparently without irony, “laborunionreport”

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Judicial Activism

by digby

This ought to be good. From Right Wing Watch:

Dobbs: You’ve got a terrific idea that you’re going to implement with the new Congress: a course on the Constitution for incoming Congressmen and women. Tell us about that.

Bachmann: We’re going to do what the NFL does and what the baseball teams do: we’re going to practice every week, if you will, our craft, which is studying and learning the Declaration, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Justice Scalia has graciously agreed to kick off our class. The hour before we cast our first vote in congress, we’ll meet in the Capitol, we’ll have a seminar on some segment of the Constitution, we’ll have a speaker, we’ll have questions and answers, we’ll wrap our minds around this magnificent document [and] that’ll set the tone for the week while we’re in Washington.

I think it’s great and I’m hoping all the members of Congress will partake; it’s bipartisan

Right Wing Watch wonders whether or not it’s appropriate for a Supreme Court Justice to be coaching the congress on what’s “constitutional” but hey, he’s married to a Tea Party activist, so what’s the difference?

Just as interesting to me is the fact that Bachman has invited one of the top theocrats in the nation, Christian Reconstructionist David Barton, to hold one of these seminars:

Bachmann: Every week we’ll start our week with a class on the Constitution and how maybe bills that we’re working on fit in with the Constitution – real time application.

Brody: One guest speaker on the list: influential Evangelical David Barton and his Christian perspective on American history.

Bachmann: The Judeo-Christian heritage isn’t a belief. It’s a fact.

Brody: And there’s another fact Bachmann is bringing to the table.

Bachmann: One thing we know from the Book of Isaiah is that Isaiah tells us that the government is on His shoulders. “We can trust a holy, almighty God with our future and nothing is too big for Him.”

You remember David Barton, right?

David Barton … has already come under scrutiny for addressing two white supremacist organizations.

Barton claimed in both circumstances that he was unaware of the group’s white supremacist ties. But that doesn’t mean he’s not possessed of extreme views of his own. From 1998 to 2006, he served as vice-chair of the Texas Republican party, which is notorious for having one of the most zealously conservative platforms in the country.

In 2004, for instance, the platform advocated the following:

1. The abolition of the IRS and the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.
2. The elimination of the income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains tax, corporate income tax, and payroll tax.
3. “an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.”
4. The abolition of the Department of Education.
5. Eliminating the government’s right to restrict public display of “the Decalogue” (a.k.a. the 10 Commandments).

The Texas GOP also “opposes the legalization of sodomy,” and holds that “[h]omosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.”

Barton is the new “it boy” of the Tea Party Theocrats and one who is very, very valuable to the Big Money Boyz:

Two days after the Election Day conservative tide, Newt Gingrich, David Barton, and Jim Garlow held a conference call for conservative Christian pastors to talk about what it all means. The call brought together Gingrich, an establishment Republican who has been courting the Religious Right for a future presidential bid; Barton, a long-time fixture of the Religious Right who has become a Tea Party celebrity thanks to Glenn Beck; and Jim Garlow, who hails from the dominionist wing of the Religious Right and led religious opposition to marriage equality in California. The elections, they said, were a rejection of secularism and evidence of a new religious Great Awakening that would move America to the right for decades to come.
[…]
All the speakers spoke of the elections as an embrace of the notion of a divinely inspired “American Exceptionalism” that Glenn Beck has been promoting and that a number of Tea Party-backed candidates were sounding as a campaign theme. Barton said that that 90 percent of the congressional freshman class is “pro-God, pro-life, pro-faith, and pro-family.” He repeated the theme that was pounded by speaker after speaker at the Values Voter summit – that fiscal and social conservatism can’t be separated.

In fact, Garlow and Barton went even further, asserting a biblical underpinning for an approach to economics that is probably even further to the Right than many Tea Party activists. Taxation and deficit spending, they said, amount to theft. The estate tax, Barton said, is “absolutely condemned” by the Bible as the “most immoral” of taxes. Jesus, he said, had “teachings” condemning the capital gains tax and minimum wage. This, he declared, was “a great election for biblical values.”

(You’ll notice that “taxation and deficit spending” are combined, with a heavy emphasis on taxation. They will never agree to raise taxes to close the deficit.)

He’s the perfect fellow to be teaching the Teabag Freshman about the constitution, don’t you think? With Scalia opening up the program, these folks will get an excellent primer on how the original intent of the constitution was to serve wealthy corporations and Jesus.

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Where’s The Tea Party?

by digby

So the cloture vote on the tax cut package failed, with only eight Senators voting for a filibuster. It’s interesting that the Teabagging King Jim DeMint, the anti-deficit crusader, didn’t vote to filibuster. These Tea Partiers are extremely principled.

But then, the Republicans have successfully decoupled the deficit from taxes, , which means they can always vote for tax cuts and spending cuts while screaming about debt and profligacy. And the Villagers will let them get away with it either because they are idiots or they agree with them.

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