Y'all Come Now, Y'hear?

-- by Sara

In about half an hour (2:00 PDT, 5:00 EDT), I'll be hosting the FDL book salon. I'm kind of excited about it -- particularly given that I've been discussing the coming generational shift for a while now, and 2008 is shaping up to be the year we finally get it.

My guests, Morley Winograd and Michael Hais, have written entire book on this shift -- what's creating it, how the Democrats can best navigate it (and how not to screw it up), and what it means for the next 40 years of American politics. Their thesis draws on William Strauss and Neil Howe's saecular theory of history, which is the theory that got me interested in futures in the first place. After all these years, it's still got more predictive value than any other theory I've encountered, and Millennial Makeover shows in very concrete terms how that theory is playing out right now.

Come on by and say hi. We'll be around for a couple of hours.

Hey, Didja Hear The One About The Uppity Black Man?

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

The NRA Convention is always good for a few ripe samples of eliminationist right-wing "humor," but today, Mike Huckabee reached new depths:

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

If that was another Obama dog whistle we just heard, then we should contemplate what it was whistling. It’s not as though we don’t know who the target audience might be.

In the meantime, I do hope Huckabee doesn’t try the "they took it out of context" defense. The video above includes the larger context of Huckabee’s remarks, which were all about how those libruls are a bunch of worthless elitists who hate Real Americans.

Corruption Bubbles Up Amid The Immigration ‘Crackdown’

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Whenever you hear nativists like Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo wank endlessly about "cracking down on illegal immigration," you always hear them give lip service to the idea that they also have to crack down on the people who are doing the hiring. That’s why Bush’s "immigration crackdown," when announced, featured lots of talk about making employers toe the line too.

But this week’s immigration raids in Iowa – like similar raids elsewhere — have made clear that this is all just a lot of empty wank. The reality, as always, is that the impoverished brown people are the only ones facing consequences.

So far, the chief employer involved in the raids, Agriprocessors Inc., has not been charged with anything, nor have the plant’s managers or owners been rounded up like cattle and herded into detention centers.

I wonder if this couldn’t be because one of its top officials is a major donor to Republicans:

A top official at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in Postville that was the subject of an immigration enforcement action Monday is an active Republican campaign contributor, records show.

Sholom Rubashkin, whose family owns the company, since 2000 has made $23,750 in federal campaign contributions, according to Federal Election Commission records.
That includes $5,750 to the Republican Party of Iowa from 2002 through 2004.
Rubashkin also gave $2,000 to Rep. Tom Latham, an Ames Republican, in 2004; $1,500 to candidate William Dix in 2006; $3,000 to candidate Stan Thompson from 2001 through 2004; $2,000 to Sen. Charles Grassley of New Hartford in 2004; and $2,500 to former Rep. Jim Nussle in 2000 and 2002.

Grassley collected another $2,000 each from Abraham Rubashkin, Leah Rubashkin and Ryfka Rubashkin, all of Postville, in August 2004.

To be fair, it seems that other plant officials have also given money to some Democrats. But the fact remains that the people who should be joining the Latino immigrants behind bars — and are not — are people with heavy GOP connections. The Register story notes:

Rep. Bruce Braley, a Waterloo Democrat, said there are hundreds of children in Postville whose lives will be changed by the raid, and he wants to make sure they are a priority.
"If people have broken the law, there should be consequences," he said. "I’ll be interested to see if federal authorities will be bringing any charges against the employer."

Well, as Frank Sharry at America’s Voice observes:

We know that the Swift Company never faced any charges after the raid in Marshalltown, and the enforcement of immigration violations against corporations has plummeted during the Bush administration. Until we enforce our immigration laws equally against both employers and employees who break the law, we will continue to have a problem with immigration.

Dee at Immigration Talk has a particular insight into the whys of this raid:

Because there is an ongoing Iowa and federal labor law violations investigation of Agriprocessors and the union fears Rubashkin will use the raid to intimidate workers and throw the next unionization vote.

Mark Lauritsen, International Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers, wrote a May 2 letter to ICE: ICE action could result in employees leaving the plant, interfering with a government investigation that would “ultimately uncover unscrupulous employer acts,” he said.

The most disturbing aspect of these raids, as always, is the horrendous effects they have on immigrant families, particularly children. In Iowa, because of the size of the raid, it could be a significant problem:

Children of detainees might not be cared for if the detainees were afraid to tell immigration officials that they have children, said Sister Mary McCauley of St. Bridget’s Catholic Church.

McCauley said she’s concerned that those who were detained after the Monday morning raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant were afraid their children would be arrested.

“Some could still be in an apartment, maybe with an aunt or older brother or sister,” McCauley said. “How would they get food if they’re afraid to go outside?”

McCauley said her concerns were echoed by many inside the church, where illegal immigrants have gathered since after the raid, seeking sanctuary.

“How do we get into the houses to find out when they’re afraid to open the door?” McCauley said.

Trevor Seibert, who owns 20 apartments in Postville that he said are mostly rented by Hispanics, said he went door-to-door on Monday to check if any children were left unsupervised.

He found all children with an adult, but now fears that many apartments are left unoccupied by Agriprocessors workers who fled Postville after the raid.

So much for those "family values" Republicans.

Nicola Wells and the folks at Standing FIRM have much, much more.

Handling Immigrants The Republican Way — Like Cattle

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 It’s not without reason that Latinos in the USA are feeling terrorized these days, thanks largely to the increasing "crackdown" in illegal immigrants being pursued by ICE officials. This week in Iowa, they had the largest immigration raid yet:

The number of illegal immigrants detained Monday in Postville has risen to 390 in what federal officials now describe as the largest single-site raid of its kind nationwide.
The detainees include 314 men and 76 women, according to figures released this morning by federal authorities. Fifty-six detainees – mostly women with young children – have been released under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We’re here to discuss not only the largest operation of its kind ever in Iowa, but in fact the largest single-site enforcement operation of its kind in the country,” U.S. Attorney Matt M. Dummermuth said.

The detainees included 290 who claimed to be Guatemalans, 93 Mexicans, three Israelis and four Ukrainians. Among the detained were 12 juveniles, six of whom have been released.

It’s all reminiscent, as the folks at America’s Voice pointed out, of the kind of "round ‘em up, ship ‘em out, and let God sort it out" rhetoric favored by the nativist faction that’s overtaken the Republican Party nowadays, especially folks like Rep. Steve King, the Iowa congressman seen in the video above equating undocumented to workers to cattle and saying, among other things:

We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that wouldn’t kill somebody but would simply be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do this with livestock all the time.

As Frank Sharry at America’s Voice observes:

The Bush Administration has given up on real immigration reform to join Congressman Steve King and other Republicans who advocate mass round-ups of immigrant workers. The latest immigration raid in Iowa is an ugly example of the Republican thrust on the complex issue of illegal immigration: scare the public into thinking that immigrant workers are the enemy, round them up like cattle, terrorize immigrant communities in hopes they will leave the country, and pray it helps Republicans win elections this fall.

Moreover, as Joshua Holland at AlterNet recently explored, these kinds of mass roundups are always a bad idea, and always produce atrocities — not to mention a big hangover for civic leaders afterward:

Arizona’s new "enforcement only" immigration law, which mandates the use of an electronic verification system and subjects employers to the loss of their business license for hiring the wrong person, has turned out to be a disaster that might rank up there with the Edsel or New Coke in the pantheon of bone-headed ideas.

The state had a very low unemployment rate when the law was passed — it was, at least in part, a "solution" to a problem they didn’t have. Unemployment was at 4.1 percent when the law went into effect in January, and had been at 3.7 percent when a judge upheld the measure in early 2007.

Law-makers are now scrambling to undo the shock they’ve inflicted on the state as up to eight percent of the population — according to one estimate — have decided to hightail it out of Arizona en masse. The people of Arizona are learning that immigrants not only supply labor, but also demand goods and services in turn — and the labor that goes into them. They’re also learning that newer immigrant communities have a mix of people with different legal status all jumbled together, and that when there is a widespread perception that politicians (and citizens) are attacking immigrants, it doesn’t much matter that some differentiate between those who are "legal" and "illegal" — Arizona is losing citizens and lawful permanent residents among that eight percent drop in population.
Arizona is now faced with labor shortages, and when combined with the loss in demand from all those worker/consumers, the whole enchilada might end up costing the state’s economy tens of billions of dollars.

I have a hunch the fine folks of Iowa are eventually going to feel a similar hangover. And they can thank their good Republican representatives for it when they do.

McCain Courts Voters The Moneyed Republican Way

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 It looks like John McCain is getting some of his campaign pointers from the Bush Squad. Today he’s going to be campaigning here in my Seattle neck of the woods, but the public won’t ever see him.
No, he’s doing it the classic Republican way: With an elite fund-raiser costing a mere $33,100 per person. And you better be ready to pony up the big bucks if you want to hang with this crowd:

McCain has scheduled a 5 p.m., $10,000 per person photo reception at the Hyatt, followed by a $2,300 per person VIP reception and a $1,000 general reception. A Victory Dinner that costs $33,100 per person begins at 7 p.m.

Why isn’t McCain doing anything public here in the Seattle area? Why not get out and grip a few babies?

Well, maybe it has something to do with McCain’s public and not-so-public support for (and involvement with) Airbus — an association that recently meant Boeing lost out on a big DOD tanker contract, costing the state thousands of jobs.

Of course, our wealthy Republicans, like wealthy Republicans everywhere, aren’t really all that concerned about the plight of the proles, so they’re evidently happy to write checks. But meanwhile, for working-class and otherwise "normal" Washingtonians, John McCain is roughly the equivalent of
a possum who’s been hanging out in the middle of the road for a few weeks.

Which no doubt explains why all the money being raised at this fund-raiser isn’t going toward Washington Republicans. It’s going elsewhere — to the Republican parties of Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico and Wisconsin, all of which are potential swing states this fall.

Indeed, it’s probably a bit of a blessing. It’s highly unlikely we’ll be forced to endure a McCain visit this fall, because Republicans aren’t really fond of massive crowds of protesters populated largely by working-class folks. If he does campaign in Washington, it’ll likely be over in the more GOP-friendly eastern side of the state (though even that is a gamble, since Boeing is also a big employer there).

Most likely he’ll find excuses to campaign elsewhere.

McCain’s fund-raiser, incidentally, is taking place in Darcy Burner’s back yard. Darcy suggests a donation of $33.10 to her campaign as a statement about the difference between the new generation of Democrats, and old-style Republican hacks like John McCain.

Limbaugh And The Tide Of Race Baiting

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Did Rush Limbaugh affect the Democratic primaries or didn’t he? Actually, it’ll be difficult if not impossible to tell (though I don’t think it would be hard to argue that Rush’s "Operation Chaos" provided Hillary her victory margin in Indiana).

But something Rush said this week does reflect his leadership in an undeniably real political trend: the return of race-baiting as an acceptable form of discourse. It happened when he was being interviewed by Fox News about Hillary’s suggestion he has a "crush" on her. He quipped:

I understand now why Bill Clinton hit on my date about a year ago at the Kobe Club in New York. I was minding my own business and Clinton came in. And the short version is he used the mayor of Los Angeles to distract me, while hitting on my date. […]
He came over three or four times, had Ron Burkle with him and the mayor of Los Angeles, who I thought was either the shoe shine guy or a Secret Service agent.

That "mayor of Los Angeles" is, of course, Antonio Villaraigosa, a Latino man.

This is in fact classic race-baiting. While the meaning of the term has been confused by years of abuse by folks like Limbaugh (by referring to it whenever a minority politician stands up for their group), its most common form was precisely this kind of talk: raising ugly and demeaning racial stereotypes and associating them with individuals, dangling the stereotype for the audience to swallow the ugly underlying message.

But the response, so far, has been a deafening silence. Indeed, as Think Progress observes, the media (aside from Keith Olbermann) have completely ignored his having said this — though they’re more than happy to comment on his "crush." Because, you know, that’s what’s important.

And that really is the problem, even more than Limbaugh making these kinds of remarks. After all, we’ve gotten accustomed to them — which may be why the media haven’t even batted an eye this time around. But letting this kind of hate-mongering stand should be unacceptable in a society built on equality of opportunity.

When the media turn a blind eye to this kind of stuff, it becomes permission for more. And so the tide of hateful rhetoric has been steadily building over the past decade and longer, led in no small part by Limbaugh himself. But he has never been alone in this.

And in recent years, it’s become common to let race-baiting like this bubble up, especially if the targets are Latino immigrants.


Mario Soliz-Marich has noticed this too:

As a member of the largest minority ethnic group and a member of the media, I am continually puzzled and outraged by the idea that anyone can say anything about Latinos without fearing any consequence. While it would be out outrageous for anybody to have said a similar thing about an elected official of almost any other ethnicity, Rush will certainly not receive any heat at all for supposedly “mistaking” the Latino Mayor of the nation’s second largest city as a shoeshine guy.

There will be no national debate about whether he should step down as there was when Imus referred to a women’s basketball team in a derogatory fashion. There will be no national outrage like there was following the racist vocal vomiting of “comedian” Michael Richards. There will be no slam down and painful lame excuses like those offered by Mel Gibson after his anti-Semitic comments. The rules for Latinos are different.

Rush, Lou Dobbs, and a host of shock jocks are well aware of this different set of rules. Dobbs & Rush inc. can freely accuse Latinos of spreading Leprosy and TB, of raping children, and even planning the violent overthrow of the US, without any proof whatsoever.

However, race-baiting has come slyly back into fashion not just with Latinos, but really with the entire range of minorities. This is why the GOP can indulge dog-whistle speeches and dog-whistle ads attacking Barack Obama, and the media not only ignore the racially incendiary nature of it all, but find ways to repeat them relentlessly.

Because, of course, all race-baiting and dog-whistle tactics have a certain surface deniability that most people can see right through (which is kind of the point of all the winking and nudging). For some reason, the media are refusing to do so. And the longer it goes on, the deeper the shit is going to get.

The Progress Report has more.

Wingnuts’ Ferry Terror ‘Suspects’ Were Just Ordinary Tourists

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 Remember those swarthy, olive-skinned fellows seen taking pictures aboard a Seattle ferry who set the wingnutosphere a-flapping last year? Well, as most of us suspected all along, it turns out they were just swarthy, olive-skinned tourists:

The FBI has called off a global manhunt for two men who looked Middle Eastern and were spotted snapping pictures and demonstrating "suspicious behavior" on a Washington ferry last summer.

The men appeared at a U.S. Embassy two weeks ago and identified themselves as European business consultants who were on a trip to Seattle, FBI officials said Monday.
Special Agent in Charge Laura Laughlin said the men took a couple of days off in the middle of the July visit and decided to ride a car ferry. They took photos to show relatives back home, she said.

FBI agents have seen the photos and found them to be innocuous, as were the pair’s business activities, Laughlin said.

The consultants came forward to clear their names, stating that they feared getting arrested if they returned to the United States. They gave U.S. Embassy officials documentation of their identities, jobs and the reason for their trip to the U.S. last summer.

Among the wingnuts wildly flaming the fans of public hysteria in the case was Bill O’Reilly, who as Joel Connelly points out actually sent a camera crew to the home of the P-I’s publisher to harass him for the paper’s refusal to run the men’s picture:

Fox New host Bill O’Reilly assumed full dimensions of self-importance last summer and condemned the Seattle P-I for choosing not to publish pictures circulated by the FBI of two "suspicious" ferry passengers.

The chief commentator at the "fair and balanced" network followed up by making the P-I chief villain of a November commentatary entitled: "Why is the far left putting the military and all Americans in danger?"

O’Reilly sent out an aspiring slayer of straw men, his producer Jesse Walters, to conduct an ambush interview with P-I publisher Roger Oglesby, outside the latter’s Seattle home.

"Are you proud of that decision, sir? I mean, they still haven’t found those guys," Walters sneered at Oglesby. A few moments later, Walters said the two men were "still on the loose."

On the loose? No crime was committed. No illegal act by the two men was ever alleged or attributed. No effort to sabotage Washington’s marine highway was ever found.

The two men were identified and photographed by a fellow passenger for a simple reason: They looked Middle Eastern.

You may also recall that this little bit of irrational hysteria was once again being pumped up by the Internment Queen, Michelle Malkin, who among other multiple posts on the subject castigated the P-I (and thereby probably giving O’Reilly’s producers the notion of harassing Oglesby).

It was all part of her now-moribund "I Am John Doe" campaign, which as I pointed out at the time was actually very much of a piece with her defense of the World War II internment camps.

So far, I haven’t seen any sign that Malkin has acknowledged that, once again, she was flat-out wrong about this. I’m not holding my breath either. And I assume that the same holds true of O’Reilly.

Because, in the Bizarro World of movement conservatism, the right is never wrong. Even when they are.

UPDATE: Sure enough, Malkin has noted this news not as proof that she was wrong once again, but that she was right all along.

A thousand words redux

-- by Dave

In the fine tradition of previous great right-wing minds.

From the Houston Chronicle.

The Passing of the Great White Kvetch

-- by Dave

Just when you think Pat Buchanan's racism -- already evident for some time -- couldn't get any more explicit without him donning the pointy-headed white hat, he's always going out and topping himself.

Now he's gone and done it again:

An Augusta, Ga., group, The National Policy Institute, has meshed the figures on fertility rates with the continents and races on Planet Earth -- to visualize what the world will look like in 2060.

In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.

More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth -- a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany -- will vanish by 2060.

The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.

It's revealing, of course, that Buchanan's thesis hinges on a report from an "academic racism" institute that's been designated a bona fide hate group by the SPLC:

After a year of soliciting funds for a "new think tank" in Washington, D.C., the National Policy Institute was established with a staff of four in September 2005 by far-right publisher William Regnery. The institute's mission statement says it aims "to elevate the consciousness of whites, ensure our biological and cultural continuity, and protect our civil rights. The institute ... will study the consequences of the ongoing influx that non-Western populations pose to our national identity." In an August 2005 speech to the Chicagoland Friends of American Renaissance (see group profile below), Regnery warned that "within the first or secondhand memories of people in this room, the white race may go from master of the universe to an anthropological curiosity." The institute has published two studies: a critique of affirmative action, which the institute opposes; and "Mass Deportation is a Viable Solution to America's Illegal Immigration Crisis," written by Edwin Rubenstein. (Rubenstein, a frequent contributor to the V-Dare hate site, is president of ESR Research Economic Consultants of Indianapolis and has served as research director for the conservative Hudson Institute, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, an economics editor at the National Review, and a contributing editor at Forbes magazine.) The institute's senior fellow is Wayne Lutton, an extreme-right writer, and its spokesman is Kevin Lamb. Its board includes Louis R. Andrews, American Renaissance Editor Jared Taylor, and James B. Taylor, who is also on the board of directors of the Reagan Ranch Program. Its advisory committee includes Kevin MacDonald.

But even more remarkable -- and obvious, really, to anyone with a knowledge of the history of racism -- is that this piece doesn't just echo old racists who have been uttering the same -impending-doom warnings for the, as so much of his previous work does. It practically plagiarizes them -- and one in particular.

That would be a fellow named Madison Grant, whose 1916 national bestseller The Passing of the Great Race. Its thesis:

"We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century, and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America 'an asylum for the oppressed,' are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control, and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all 'distinctions of race, creed, or color,' the type of native American of Colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo."

Grant not only inspired a whole generation of American eugenicists, his book was also a major source of inspiration for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, particularly in developing the notions of "racial cleansing" that produced the Holocaust:

It received a large boost during the '30s under Nazis patronage. Seeking a holistic artist, scientific, and philosophic basis for their political program based on race especially the blond, blue-eyed Aryan ideal, Grant's book and the genre in general received significant support. Hitler had read Grant's book and wrote a letter to him stating that it was "his Bible". The Nazis used Grant's ideas about eugenics to justify compulsory sterilization, and used his ideas about Nordic superiority to justify programs such as Heinrich Himmler's Lebensborn Society, which existed to preserve typical Nordic genes, such as blond hair and blue eyes, by sheltering blond, blue-eyed women and subjecting them to breeding programs. All this was related to Grant's claim that the Nordic Race is in danger of being out-bred by inferior racial stocks.

Just so we're all clear on where this kind of stuff inevitably heads. The "white race," meanwhile, seems to continue to be doing just fine, and probably will continue to do so for many generations to come. But no doubt, ninety years from now, and a hundred and ninety, there will be some fresh new Buchanan or Grant to warn them of their imminent doom.

Republicans And The Two-Faced ‘Moderate’ Ruse

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Ever wonder how Republicans maintained their hold on congressional power from 1994 to 2006 — a grip that enabled them to enact probably the most sweeping rightward shift in governance in our history — in spite of polls showing that, on the issues, most voters disagreed with the majority of their policies? Well, a lot of it had to do with so-called "moderate" Republicans. Guys like Dave Reichert.

These were folks who, on the campaign trail, often touted moderate-sounding rhetoric, largely as a sop to their moderate constituencies — but who, once back in the Beltway, toed the GOP’s party line on nearly every significant issue before them. And that party line was anything but moderate: misleading the nation into war, handing over huge tax cuts to the wealthy, mishandling the economy, destroying jobs, working to outlaw abortion (especially through court appointments), and opening the floodgates of cronyism and corruption to the GOP’s corporate sponsors.

A lot of these policies and actions came down in Congress to a handful of votes, and what you had to notice (and at least grudgingly admire, in a way) over the years was the discipline within GOP ranks: The Republican line always held, and a few Liebermanesque Dems would then wander over too. But you could always count on the "moderate" Republicans to be doing what the party poobahs required of them, regardless of how extreme the measure (the numerous Bush tax breaks being the classic case of this).

And they’re still at it. One of the elders of the "moderate" set, Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, came in for a well-deserved whacking from Senate Guru the other day for continuing to sell herself to voters in Maine with a moderate-seeming image and voting and acting as a party-line conservative back in D.C.

They’re everywhere to be found, really. In Washington state, Rep. Reichert — who represents a demographically fast-changing district, once largely a lily-white suburban area that has never elected a Democrat but where an influx of highly educated technology workers has permanently altered the playing field — is playing the same game.

Reichert has successfully sold the local press on the notion that he’s a political moderate, someone who votes independently of the party; he’s known to support certain limited environmental measures as a way of enhancing his "green" credentials. But you have to figure that if he’s someone that George W. Bush will fly out and campaign for (resulting in a smashingly successful fundraiser for his opponent, Darcy Burner), there’s little likelihood he’s someone who treads on honcho toes.

And in fact, that is the case. Dan Kirkdorffer at On the Road to 2008 has compiled and analyzed Reichert’s voting record and, as he’s noted previously, there’s "a pattern to Reichert’s voting record that is not being reported where he opposes legislation from being considered or coming to a vote, seeks to amend and change it, tries to table or kill it, before flipping his vote and voting for it on final passage." Dan has it all laid out in a table.

As he explains:

Now let me make a point clear here: the issue isn’t that Reichert votes with his party. You would expect a Republican to vote with Republicans, just as we expect Democrats to vote with Democrats. At first blush that appears to be what is mostly happening. The point however is that Reichert is trying to portray himself as a moderate, someone who votes independently from his party, and the media has parroted that claim. Yet, when you look at these votes, that’s not what we see. Instead, what we see is that many of the votes Reichert would like to use to bolster his claim as a moderate, have in fact been backed by his own opposition to the very bills he claims to support.

In effect just as John Kerry was accused by Republicans as having flip-flopped on the Iraq war, Reichert has flip-flopped multiple times on the same bill on the same day!

There is, of course, one solution: "Elect more and better Democrats." Especially Darcy Burner. After all, she invented the phrase.

Those Pastoral Ties

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 "As a nation, America is under the curse of God, even now."

– Pastor John Hagee

I have to admit that I’m officially baffled by why whatever it is Jeremiah Wright thinks – and not what John Hagee thinks — is a big stinking deal.

Because my churchgoing experience — and one I think I share with most other churchgoers — is that the church community has always been more important than the pastor, and is the reason we have chosen to attend a given church. The pastors do their thing, and we usually agree, but sometimes disagree. But we attend because of the church, not the pastor. And it has been that way for me since I was young.

I belonged to a small Methodist church in Idaho Falls when I was a kid. One of our more memorable pastors was a fellow named Willis Ludlow, a very liberal man who even in the mid-1960s railed against the Vietnam War from the pulpit. This infuriated my father, the Goldwater Republican, and the rides home from church were often dominated by his grumbling. But we still attended every Sunday because it was our church.

I realize that things are different at a number of churches, especially those that specialize in charismatic fundamentalist rhetoric (and it’s particularly so at churches that revolve around a narrow theological center, such as Christian Identity). But I don’t think that fits the description of Trinity United Church of Christ. It’s a huge church representing a significant mainstream black community. And leading pastors like Wright are significant figures within those communities, but they typically are not the reasons people like Obama attend them. They attend because of the community.

Maybe Hillary Clinton and John McCain would have walked out if they had heard incendiary rhetoric from the pulpit, as they claim. But a lot of people in fact stay put in such situations, because they understand that they’re not always going to agree with their pastor. For many churchgoers, the pastor is up there to make them think, not necessarily to say things they agree with.

Of course, some folks seem to believe a pastor is there to tell them what to think. But that probably reveals more about them than anything that might be said about people who believe otherwise.
So it’s one thing to sit still in the pews while the pastor says disagreeable things, because people have a range of good reasons for doing so. People do often change churches because they disagree with their pastors; but many don’t, and they have a range of legitimate reasons for not doing so.

It’s quite another thing, on the other hand, to actively pursue as a political candidate the endorsement of a religious leader who says extremist things — because that pursuit clearly indicates full agreement with that preacher’s beliefs. It’s an all-out embrace.

Which, of course, is what John McCain did with Pastor John Hagee. And even after Hagee repeats his charge that Katrina was God’s wrath directed at New Orleans, McCain not only blows off the connection — observing only that Hagee endorsed him — but the media continue to give him a free ride on the fact that McCain actively sought it. He admits it was a mistake, but still says he’s "glad to have his endorsement."

And no one bats an eye.

Because, you know, black preachers who bring up things Americans don’t like to talk about are much, much, scarier and much more important than influential white fundamentalists who want to help the Middle East blow up in a big mushroom cloud.

Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action has more on Pastor Hagee’s extremism and America-hating rhetoric.

Things Americans don't like to talk about

-- by Dave

One of the oddities of the emerging media meta-narrative about Jeremiah Wright is the way it is now readily assumed by the broad range of talking heads that Wright's recent comments have only proven the charge that he is deeply "anti-American," embodied in the endlessly repeated "God damn America" sound bite.

There's no doubt that a lot of Wright's views are indeed deeply critical of America, even pugnaciously (and thus disconcertingly) so, and some -- particularly his apparent absorption of racial theories regarding the spread of HIV -- are dubious at best. Considering Wright's contentious performance yesterday at the National Press Club, one really can't blame Obama for washing his hands of the man.

But it's also apparent that the larger context in which Wright condemns American behavior -- the reason he shouts "God damn America" -- in fact reflects hard historical realities that Americans, and the American media especially, really don't want to talk about, let alone confront the present-day consequences thereof.

And doing so, evidently, is now proof of being "anti-American."

Among the things, evidently, that we're not supposed to bring up because it interrupts Peggy Noonan's fantasy vision of an American history populated mostly by noble 49ers and industrious Henry Fords, are the following:

-- The genocide committed against Native Americans.
-- Slavery.
-- The "lynching era" and Jim Crow.
-- Sundown towns.
-- The forced incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

It's human, of course, to want to think of yourself as a good person, and your country as a good country. Which is why it's human of white Americans -- the descendants and beneficiaries of the people who perpetrated these atrocities -- to want to forget that these things happened. And they want to believe that because these events were in the past, and they took some initial steps toward reconciliation 40 years ago, the issues should have gone away, and if they haven't, well, it's the victims' fault.

The victims and their descendants, however, cannot forget that these things happened, because they continue to live with the legacy of them every day. And white Americans should not delude themselves into thinking that they could or should have forgotten, either. Ask any Native American living on a reservation, or any descendant of Japanese camp internees, or any African American, whether they can forget these things.

Perhaps when young black men no longer face persistent job discrimination or lowered life expectancies, when racial residential segregation is no longer a persistent reality, when hate crimes are a distant memory, when our response to great national war-inducing traumas is no longer imbued with xenophobic hysteria -- perhaps when white Americans take actual steps beyond those four-decade-old baby steps to confront the legacy of their very real history of shameful behavior toward nonwhites, then perhaps we can ask for that forgetting.

Assuming that they should -- and indeed insisting that the fact that they haven't is proof that they "hate America" -- is simply childish. But then, that's what we've come to expect both of the American right and the American media.

Tuesday Bloggage

-- by Sara

This week's post at Blog For Our Future is about Jeremiah Wright, who (as it turns out) has a long history of being one of liberal Christianity's most stubborn and durable bulwarks against a variety of conservative efforts to corrupt the Christian message. That fact, it turns out, has everything to do with why the Wright story won't die -- and why the right wing will stop at nothing to take him down.

I talk about how this battle has been fought on a couple of fronts. There's a lot about Obama and Wright (and, for that matter, John Hagee and Rod Parsley) that doesn't really come into focus until you know the whole backstory. If you want some context the media's not giving you, check it out. As usual, ratings love is always appreciated.

A lot of the information in this post came from Sarah Posner's new book, God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters, which is a short, brisk, very enlightening read.

And yes, I know I'm on deck to write another post or two on the FLDS. Now that this is done, that's coming up next. Stand by.

ExposeObama Exposed: The GOP’s Sleazy Nutcases Surface

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 

John McCain’s manifest impotence in his dealings with the North Carolina GOP’s dog-whistle ad campaign has, predictably, been translated in MediaSpeak into further evidence of his "maverick" status — and just as predictably, he’s being criticized in some quarters for even protesting the ads in the first place.

Bruce Hawkins,
tax scamster/Obama hater

But the GOP’s ad is only part of the picture regarding what’s happening in North Carolina. For the bigger picture, we need to talk about Floyd Brown and Bruce Hawkins.
You see, in addition to the Wright ad, there’s a right-wing operation titled "ExposeObama.org", operated by our old friend Brown, running ads on North Carolina stations that are even more incendiary, even more obvious in their dog-whistle nature — overtly associating Obama, through imagery and implication, with black criminals.

And as Joe Conason adroitly observes, McCain has remained strangely silent about these ads — no doubt because he can claim that this is an independent conservative 527 organization with no official ties to the GOP. His hands are clean.

Which is how this scam is supposed to work. As we’ve explained, that’s exactly how Brown has operated over the years, ever since the days of the Willie Horton ad, through the Clinton "conspiracies" and the swiftboating of John Kerry: Do the dirty work for the GOP, tossing in the grenades. Give them the chance to look noble disavowing you, at which point the media will play the ad endlessly. Worked wonders for the North Carolina GOP, just like it has for Brown & Co. in the past.

Along the way, Brown not only indulges in dog-whistle race-baiting, but he also consorts with all kinds of racists and extremists. Conason details, for example, Brown’s long association with the ardent segregationist "Justice" Jim Johnson, who fed him a steady stream of baseless smears of Bill Clinton that then made their way into the mainstream press.

The sleaze at ExposeObama.org doesn’t end with just racially incendiary ads. There’s also an element of good ol’ right-wing rip-off snake-oil sleaze along for the ride.

The group’s executive director, Bruce E. Hawkins, was in fact disbarred in 2006 for peddling tax-fraud schemes of a distinctly far-right odor. And in 2007, the Justice Department filed suit against Hawkins to prevent him from peddling the schemes even after his disbarment.


Hawkins presents himself, in his role at ExposeObama, as a "political expert" mostly by touting his role as the Washington state campaign coordinator for Pat Robertson in 1988 and for Pat Buchanan in 1996. A Bill Berkowitz piece about the group describes his role:

The ExposeObama team includes Brown, who is also president of Excellentia Inc., which according to Brown’s bio is "a consulting company specialising in non-profit organisational strategy, development and the marketing of ideas"; and executive director Bruce E. Hawkins, "a highly skilled political strategist" who has worked for such conservative leaders as Pat Robertson, Pat Buchanan and Mike Huckabee.

At ExposeObama, Hawkins’ bio touts more of his high political skills:

As Washington State Director for Pat Robertson, Hawkins delivered Robertson’s only Super Tuesday victory in 1988. As National Field Director for Pat Buchanan in 1992, Hawkins organized all of the states outside of New Hampshire. As Washington State Director for Pat Buchanan in 1996, Hawkins managed to win half the delegates for Pat with no money, no budget and no paid staff. As Straw Poll Manager for Mike Huckabee’s Iowa Campaign, Hawkins helped stun the world with a powerful second place finish and propel Huckabee into the top tier of major candidates. Governor Huckabee recently said of him, “He was exceptional in not only understanding, but having the ability to create and execute a very effective plan for us to compete despite being outspent by an estimated 20-1 from other candidates.”

But back in June 2006, Hawkins was permanently disbarred by the Washington Bar Association for selling classic old "Patriot" style tax scams. You can see the sleaziness in the Bar’s description of the operation:

Hawkins associated with several nonlawyers who maintained websites that promoted a program to reduce or eliminate consumer credit-card debt through private arbitrations based on the premise that national banks could not lawfully issue credit cards. Debtors throughout the United States made "applications" to the "program" through the websites. They paid fees and were referred to a private arbitration service organized to facilitate the "program." Hawkins stipulated that he knew that since 1996 the Department of the Treasury, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency had decided it is well established that national banks can issue credit cards. He stipulated that of the approximately 100 clients he represented, he knew of none who achieved the promised zero credit-card balance. He stipulated that debtors following his program achieved the goal of having accounts closed with a "paid as agreed" notation in about five percent of his cases, and that he would consider such cases "a mistake on the part of the bank." He also stipulated that many attorneys called him to "make huge accusations of fraud and illegality."

The applicants found one of the websites and paid $200 to "apply." They were referred to Hawkins. They paid him a fee of $5,722. Hawkins sent the applicants documents for the arbitrations, and he referred them to an arbitration service without disclosing that he had a financial interest in it. The applicants paid the arbitration service $139 for each arbitration and received five "arbitration awards." Hawkins then advised them to hire another lawyer to "confirm the awards." They did so, but when they filed the "awards," two of the banks filed oppositions and won. In the other two, after the banks communicated with them, the applicants stipulated to dismissal. The Committee approved payment of $6,417 to the applicants representing the $5,722 in fees paid to Hawkins plus the five payments of $139 paid to his arbitration service.

Hawkins also was sued by the Justice Department to stop him from soldiering on, as he did after his disbarment, with any further tax-scheme promotion:

Justice Department attorneys filed a civil suit to try to stop a disbarred Gig Harbor lawyer from promoting what they claim are tax-fraud schemes. Federal attorneys claim that Bruce Hawkins helped customers set up bogus corporations in the West Indies through which customers could claim their money was being held by foreign companies and was not taxable. The civil injunction suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Seattle, asks that Hawkins be ordered to disclose to the Justice Department his customers’ names, addresses and other information so back taxes can be collected where warranted. The government claims that Hawkins, who was disbarred in September, had been promoting several types of schemes since 1997 regarding allegedly fraudulent offshore tax shelters and corporations. Hawkins has not been charged with a crime. In the complaint, government attorneys allege that Hawkins also promoted the schemes at seminars; over the Internet; and in CDs, DVDs and a book. Hawkins "actively promoted, assisted and advised customers" to establish these fraudulent companies, partly through setting up Prosperitas Internationale Credit Union in Nevis, West Indies, which boasted supposedly tax-free, interest-earning accounts, the complaint said.

And in August 2006, the federal courts indeed enjoined Hawkins from promoting these schemes in any fashion, legal license or no.

Meanwhile, Hawkins gave us a clear look at the kind of extremist politics he promoted with a Seattle P-I op-ed that called for a Republican agenda that would, among other things, repeal the 16th Amendment (providing for a federal income tax), "Root out political correctness in all our armed services," withdraw the U.S. from the U.N., institute racial profiling at the borders and ports of entry, enact mass deportations, and make English the official language.

The John Birch Society agenda, in a nutshell.

And right there at the front page of the ExposeObama site, you’ll see a prominent link to a piece by Hawkins that compares Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology to the Ebola virus. Charmingly eliminationist, don’t you think? (And coincidentally, it also significantly bolsters Wright’s claim yesterday that the attacks on him are really about attacks on "the black church.")

The ExposeObama ad campaign makes the North Carolina GOP ads look tasteful in comparison — which is clearly the point. Pushing the envelope is a right-wing nutcase tradition, and it works like a charm in moving the public discourse so far to the right that any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.

In a way, it’s probably just as well that McCain hasn’t publicly denounced the Brown ads yet — because the moment he did, Fox, CNN, and MSNBC would begin playing them in an endless loop, just like they did the Wright ad. And really, we don’t need that.

But if the NCGOP ad is really so odious that it requires denunciation because it would "hurt Republicans," the ExposeObama ads should earn far worse, since comparatively they take the campaign straight into the racial sewer. For a supposed Straight Talker like McCain — who loves to peddle an image of flinty integrity, which is what the meaningless North Carolina spat was really all about — it would be good know where he stands. Indeed, it’s important.

Even if it is just the McCain of the Moment.

So Much For The End Of Racism

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

One of the right’s favorite ways of characterizing the state of racial relations in recent years has been to proclaim that for the most part, racism is a dead letter, an anachronism, a quaint artifact of dusty history mostly relegated to a few dark fringish corners. Dinesh D’Souza even wrote a wingnut-welfare book about it titled The End of Racism. And then there was the time Tony Snow proclaimed: "Here’s the unmentionable secret: Racism isn’t that big a deal any more. No sensible person supports it. Nobody of importance preaches it. It’s rapidly becoming an ugly memory."

Liberals, of course, have snorted at such nonsense, with good cause: You only need to have tuned in to any of the past couple years’ worth of Republican fulminations about immigration to know what a load of crap that is. Of course, they deny with vigorous red faces that racism has any part of it, but then we listen to their spokesmen — from Pat Buchanan to Douglas Bruce — and it’s not hard to figure out that this is just so much hot air. For that matter, we only need to turn to some of their dog-whistle fulminations about Obama and their post-Katrina speculations about black people and in general, the way they talk about race, to figure out that the GOP is the main refuge of the lingering racist element in American society. But then, we’ve known that since the advent of the Southern Strategy.

But before Democrats start feeling smug about that — and the fact that one of their two major candidates is African American — they better take a hard look within their ranks as well. Because, as Greg Mitchell reports, the election results from Pennsylvania indicate that there’s a problem with race for many Democrats, too:

Long before that, I had suggested that many understate the number of older Democrats who are (still) racist and who would tip many contests to Clinton. But I closed yesterday’s post by saying that if Obama won or came close in Pennsylvania that might put the issue to rest.

Didn’t happen. And the exit polls show, again, that one in four Clinton voters claim they would not vote for Obama in November — for whatever reason. And she got 70% of the white, blue-collar vote in most regions, including the area of central Pennsylvania where I spent a lot of time growing up and heard many a racist remark.

Here’s the money quote from a New York Times analysis of the exit polls: "Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 54 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 16 percent said they would not vote at all."

This is largely the same trend Paul Lukasiak uncovered when looking at national data and voting trends so far in these races. Democrats may want to believe, like Republicans, that the racism thing doesn’t matter anymore, that the post-Civil Rights era has finally enabled us to move beyond race. But it’s clear that that ain’t so.


A lot of why this trend is manifesting itself has to do with a kind of willful blindness about race that’s pervaded American society since the Civil Rights era. The truth is, we’ve let the legislative advances of that era, and the body of anti-discrimination laws that came out of it, stand as a kind of proxy for the cultural, economic, and broader social changes that need to occur alongside — but if we look at them honestly, they haven’t.

A recent Atlantic piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates about Bill Cosby’s conservative approach to race observed that his concerns were remarkably like those of earlier black reformers:

Cosby’s, and much of black America’s, conservative analysis flattens history and smooths over the wrinkles that have characterized black America since its inception … Indeed, a century ago, the black brain trust was pushing the same rhetoric that Cosby is pushing today. It was concerned that slavery had essentially destroyed the black family and was obsessed with seemingly the same issues—crime, wanton sexuality, and general moral turpitude—that Cosby claims are recent developments …

In particular, Cosby’s argument—that much of what haunts young black men originates in post-segregation black culture—doesn’t square with history. As early as the 1930s, sociologists were concerned that black men were falling behind black women. In his classic study, The Negro Family in the United States, published in 1939, E. Franklin Frazier argued that urbanization was undermining the ability of men to provide for their families. In 1965—at the height of the civil-rights movement—Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s milestone report, “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” picked up the same theme.

At times, Cosby seems willfully blind to the parallels between his arguments and those made in the presumably glorious past. Consider his problems with rap. How could an avowed jazz fanatic be oblivious to the similar plaints once sparked by the music of his youth?

To which Russ Douthat responded:

The fact that prior generations of intellectuals fretted, Cosby-style, about African-American crime rates, family structure, and so on doesn’t change the fact that those problems have grown much, much worse in the interim. And the fact that some moralistic crusades are foolish and misguided doesn’t mean that all of them are. The anti-jazz crusaders confused the music with the venues where it played, but that doesn’t mean that they were wrong to inveigh against alcoholism and gambling, and the fact that fifty years later jazz has become easy-listening music for the haute-bourgeoisie doesn’t mean the same thing will happen – or should happen, more importantly – to this kind of thing.

But the anti-jazz crusaders weren’t simply opposed to alcoholism and gambling, though as with the KKK, waving those particular bloody shirts gave them plenty to rail about regarding their larger objective: suppression of racial minorities. There was a reason the racists called it "jungle music," and a reason that the Nazis tried to outlaw jazz. Because there was a profoundly racial component of the anti-jazz crusades, which despite all their diversionary rhetoric were in fact focused on "defending white culture" — that is, keeping black culture in check:

[A]t the time, people believed that jazz was the forerunner of the decline of Western civilization. The anti-jazz crusade was motivated by an apocalyptic fear. The anxiety that jazz was "endangering our civilization," as the populist William Jennings Bryant put it in the New York Times in May 1926, was the subtext to many of the voices. People felt, in other words, that the dawn of the Jazz Age heralded the decline of Western Civilization.

An assessment in the New York Times pronounced: "The consensus of opinion of leading medical and other scientific authorities, [is that jazz] is harmful and degrading to the civilized races as it always has been among the savages from whom we borrowed it."

Besides papering over historical reality, all of these observers — Cosby, Coates, and Douthat alike (not to mention Steve Sailer, who waded into Douthat’s thread to explain that this is all because of genetically wired-in cultural traits regarding fatherhood in Africa) — similarly refuse to confront the persistent reality: While segregation and Jim Crow have been outlawed, and residential and employment discrimination officially banned, the underlying causes of the century-ago black activists’ angst have not substantially diminished, especially residential segregation, continuing job discrimination, and general equality of opportunity.

Sure, we passed anti-segregation laws, but that doesn’t mean we’ve achieved actual desegregation. We talk high-mindedly about color-blindness, but stereotypes and broad prejudices about racial characteristics persist at all levels of society. If we want to talk about the festering persistence of crime and poverty among blacks, this is where we need to begin looking. But we never do.

In his book Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism, James Loewen explored the broad economic and cultural ramifications of the history of towns across America, most of them outside the South, that outlawed the presence of black people after sundown. There were literally thousands of them, most in the Midwest and West but in fact in every corner of the country. And the legacy of residential segregation they created — and which Americans have never come close to confronting — persists well into this century:

[T]he talk in sundown towns brims with amazing stereotypes about African Americans, put forth confidently with nary an African American in their lives. The ideology intrinsic to sundown towns — that African Americans … are the problem — prompts their residents to believe and pass on all kinds of negative generalizations as fact. They are the problem because they choose segregation — even though "they" don’t, as we have seen. Or they are the problem owing to their criminality — confirmed by the stereotype — misbehavior that "we" avoid by excluding or moving away from them.

Of course, such stereotypes are hardly limited to sundown towns. Summarizing a nationwide 1991 poll, Lynne Duke found that a majority of whites believed that "blacks and Hispanics are likely to prefer welfare to hard work and tend to be lazier than whites, more prone to violence, less intelligent, and less patriotic." Even worse, in sundown towns and suburbs, statements such as these usually evoke no open disagreement at all.

Because most listeners in sundown towns have never lived near African Americans, they have no experiential foundation from which to question the negative generalities that they hear voiced. So the stereotypes usually go unchallenged: blacks are less intelligent, lazier, and lack drive, and that’s why they haven’t built successful careers. [pp. 320-321]

Sundown towns and their continuing legacy have also had a profound psychological impact on blacks, including the internalization of low expectations, and the exclusion of blacks from cultural capital [pp. 353-355]:

Confining most African Americans to the opposite of sundown suburbs — majority black, inner-city neighborhoods — also restricts their access to what Patterson calls cultural capital: "those learned patterns of mutual trust, insider knowledge about how things really work, encounter rituals, and social sensibilities that constitute the language of power and success." …

Making the suburbs unreachable for nonwhites similarly restricts them from making the social connections that are critical to forming networks that help us find work and move ahead in the workforce. Loewen notes that "the trouble is, these networks are segregated, so important information never reaches black America. … Sundown suburbanites know only whites, by definition, except perhaps a few work contacts. Thus sundown suburbs contribute to economic inequality by race."

As I observed earlier:

Most often, we like to overemphasize the progress that has been made racially since the Civil Rights era — while the reality is that the majority of our accomplishment has been more in the legal arena than in the larger societal one, and the bulk of it has been a result of a small handful of laws passed over a brief period in the 1960s: the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Subsequent efforts to create a color-blind society, such as affirmative action and busing, have been muted in the years following by efforts to do away with them.

At the same time, very little has been done to tackle the larger problem of structuralized, institutional racism, created by decades of prejudice that created a segregated society divided into largely white suburbs and rural areas, while nonwhites remain clustered in inner cities, and the resulting segregation by class and power, economic and political.
Indeed, we seem to remain obdurately ignorant of the nature of these issues. What happens more often than not is that we reflexively fall back to old attitudes: The "problem," as we see it, must be with those nonwhites themselves. After all, the thinking goes, slavery ended in 1865, and we did away with Jim Crow and officially sanctioned prejudice in the 1960s. If blacks still fail to advance, it must be something wrong with them. If they fail to move up and into the suburbs, it must be their fault.

Too many white voters, especially in rural and suburban precincts, on both sides of the partisan aisle have absorbed these attitudes. Too many of them continue to believe that a black man, no matter how well educated, will ever have "the stuff" it takes to be president. And that’s why we’ve seen the racial voting trends in Democratic primaries that we have.

It’s not an insurmountable problem for Democrats, should Obama indeed be their nominee. But neither is it one they can hope to paper over and still win in November.

The Limits Of Rush’s Deniability

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Rush Limbaugh, like so many right-wing pundits, loves to make jokes about violence befalling liberals and "government bureaucrats", usually in a wistful manner. And then when said violence actually occurs, he wants everyone to know he had nothing to do with it.

Which raises the question: What exactly is the difference between publicly wishing for an event to occur and actually advocating it? Whatever line might exist between them is in fact pretty thin.

But Limbaugh wants the public to see them as two entirely different things, at least after going on the air and hoping that riots will disrupt the Democratic National Convention in Denver this August:

"Riots in Denver, the Democrat Convention would see to it that we don’t elect Democrats," Limbaugh said during Wednesday’s radio broadcast. He then went on to say that’s the best thing that could happen to the country.

Limbaugh cited Al Sharpton, saying the Barack Obama supporter threatened to superdelegates that "there’s going to be trouble" if the presidency is taken from Obama.

Several callers called in to the radio show to denounce Limbaugh’s comments, when he later stated, "I am not inspiring or inciting riots, I am dreaming of riots in Denver."

Howie Klein wonders why Limbaugh isn’t being charged with advocating violence on the airwaves, and he has a point. The problem is that Limbaugh — as he always does — has constructed this rhetoric as a "joke" or a "schtick," which for years has given him the opening he needs to escape culpability for the underlying ugliness of the "humor", which in fact is largely eliminationist in nature.

No, it seems everyone is eager to just write this off as "that’s just Rush being Rush, right?" But what if there are riots in Denver this summer? Particularly, what if they’re created not by those thuggish (and mostly nonwhite) liberal Democrats, as he envisions, but by right-wing troublemakers inspired by Limbaugh himself?

Limbaugh doubtless again will deny he had anything to do with it. But you have to wonder if he’ll be able to pull it off this time.

The key is that his rhetoric has been focused on his boogadah-boogadah portrait of the modern Democratic Party, dominated by blacks, who of course won’t be able to contain themselves from rioting if Obama is denied the nomination. It’s all part of his "Operation Chaos," which he claims is already working:

Limbaugh’s effort, which began early this year, is a call to arms urging conservatives and Republican voters to re-register as Democrats – and create chaos in that party’s presidential nomination process by casting a vote.

The proof that it is working, Limbaugh says, is in the unusual turnout of turncoats: An estimated 100,000 GOP voters crossed over in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. And he argues it’s no coincidence that TV networks last week appeared reluctant to rely on exit polling and waited more than an hour before calling a solid Keystone State win for Clinton. "Operation Chaos" loyalists have been following orders to mess with exit pollers en masse – by lying to them, Limbaugh says.

"The endgame is to see that neither of these candidates can win by virtue of the primaries," Limbaugh told The Chronicle last week. "One or the other will win only when the superdelegates decide who they want. And whoever the supers choose will infuriate the loser’s supporters. More chaos."

Already, he notes, both Clinton and Obama have been "weakened — which was the objective," and their negatives are both approaching 50 percent. He cheers the fact that Obama "hasn’t won a primary since Feb. 22 … and he has lost in seven of the 10 most populous states."

But the cold reality is that when Limbaugh goes on the airwaves and says he’s "dreaming of riots in Denver," not all of his listeners will conclude that he wants them to originate with liberals. There are, and always have been, unstable characters on the right who won’t wait around for that — they’ll go out and cause the riots themselves.

And they won’t necessarily have to be out there causing trouble as conservatives. Agents provocateur from the right causing trouble by posing as left-wing activists is nothing new.

At the very minimum, Limbaugh’s "dream" of riots in Denver are of the "will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" type of rhetoric: He won’t openly call for people to create riots in Denver, but it wouldn’t break his heart.

That, at the very minimum, is the height of irresponsibility for anyone in the business of broadcasting on the public airwaves. Because he’s openly hoping for violence and mayhem. Even his fans in Denver are dismayed:

Denver City Councilman Charles Brown, a Republican and Limbaugh listener, was said he was outraged by Limbaugh’s comments. Brown, who was a teacher in Illinois during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968, said he recalled the injuries, chaos and disgrace for the city as a result.

"Regardless of political labels, for any radio announcer to wish a riot on a city so his party could win, that’s disgraceful and it’s absurd," Brown said.

If violence does occur, and especially if it comes at the hands of someone who spent too much time thinking that Rush Is Right, we can probably figure on an attempt at replaying what happened in 1995, after the Oklahoma City bombing, and Bill Clinton’s subsequent denunciation of "loud and angry voices" railing against the government day after day. We all remember what happened next, right?

Though Clinton certainly never identified Limbaugh as one of those "angry voices," almost immediately Limbaugh responded with cries of censorship and claims that Clinton was attempting to silence him. The protests have continued so steadily that the claim that Clinton blamed Limbaugh has become a stock theme about the supposed perfidy of liberals.

Indeed, Ann Coulter herself continued this meme in her book, Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right, 92-93: "When impeached former president Bill Clinton identified Rush Limbaugh as the cause of the Oklahoma City bombing, he unleashed all the typical liberal curse words for conservatives. He blamed ‘loud and angry voices’ heard ‘over the airwaves in America’ that were making people ‘paranoid’ and spreading hate."

Ah yes, the Avatars of Personal Responsibility. We saw this happen again with the strange case of Chad Castagana — the right-wing nutcase, inspired by Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, who sent terroristic anthrax threats to a variety of liberal figures — when his sources on the right either airily dismissed the connection or simply ignored it.

Sooner or later, they’re going to cause so much mayhem, and the connection will be so obvious, that they won’t be able to write it off as a mere "joke" anymore. But that won’t ever stop them from trying.

Oh, Those Liberal Fascists

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 Remember when Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was on the NYT Bestsellers list and — while doing his best to blow off his critics — Goldberg could be found everywhere explaining that fascism and Nazism were in fact really left-wing phenomena?

So you have to wonder how Goldberg explains a guy like Tony Zirkle: good conservative Republican running for Congress in Indiana’s 2nd District who decides to show up and talk at the Hitler’s Birthday celebration held by the local chapter of the NSM.

You may recall one of our main questions regarding Goldberg’s text:

How does he account for the continuing presence — from the 1920s up through the present — of definably fascist groups, not just American entities like the Ku Klux Klan, the Christian Identity movement, the Posse Comitatus, the Aryan Nations, the National Alliance, Hammerskin Nation, and White Aryan Resistance (to name just a few), but also European groups like Vlaams Belang and Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, all of whom are clearly right-wing political entities? Doesn’t this lay waste to his claim that fascism is "a phenomenon of the left"?

Zirkle himself feigned a certain ignorance about the nature of the group he talked to, which indicates he read Jonah’s book:

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn’t know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn’t believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn’t Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

No, I guess he didn’t read Jonah, who does make a big thing out of that fact that "Nazi" is just short for "National Socialist."

But it’s obvious he in fact fits right in with his audience:

An account of the gathering on www.Overthrow.com says "Zirkle spoke on his history as a state’s attorney in Indiana, prosecuting Jewish and Zionist criminal gangs involved in trafficking prostitutes and pornography from Russia and the Zionist entity.”

… Zirkle said he feels he was misunderstood. His real mission, he said, is to rid the country of pornography, and that’s what he was saying at the ANSWP gathering. So how did his comment about Jews fit in?

"Most of the male porn stars were Jewish at the beginning," Zirkle explained.

I’m sure Goldberg will explain that this is just another case of a Republican being seduced by liberal propaganda.

The Media Want A Frenzy. The Voters, Not So Much

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

So the media whip up a big-ass circus around some remarks that they — a bunch of folks who live in exclusive gated communities — deem somehow reflective of an "elitist" defect in one of the Democratic candidates and spend all week whipping it up. And what’s the result? Well…

Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment may have had little immediate impact in the Democratic primary race in Pennsylvania, according to a poll out this morning.

The Quinnipiac University poll found that Hillary Clinton leads Obama 50 to 44 percent, a margin unchanged since the organization’s last statewide poll at the beginning of the month.

The unchanged margin does not come as a great surprise. Obama’s remark was made public Friday afternoon, leaving only two days to permeate the public.

The poll, conducted Wednesday through Sunday night, revealed no noticeable shift in support for polling done on Saturday or Sunday. It is the first indication that Obama’s controversial remark may not dramatically change the head-to-head match-up in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary next Tuesday.

Anymore, you can pretty much figure that the people making these news judgments and setting daily news budgets built around permutations of the consensus "big stories" are working from faulty assumptions. They’ve been getting it wrong for the past ten years, and longer, after all.

Judging by tonight’s results, the voters aren’t much impressed. "Bittergate" was much ado about nothing, electorally speaking and real-world speaking.

Just another viewpoint

-- by Dave

In the age of Drudge and "Fair and Balanced" news, we all know that facts and falsehoods are just two sides of the same coin, right? So I guess it's inevitable that some Republican somewhere would find it acceptable to speak before neo-Nazis because they're just another interest group, after all.

Sure enough. Jason Miller at the New-Dispatch in Michigan City, Indiana, reports that a bright republican attorney named Tony Zirkle, vying for the GOP nomination in his local congressional district, decided to do just such a thing:

U.S. Congressional candidate Tony Zirkle is facing criticism from one of his primary opponents, and a host of people on the Internet, for speaking at an event over the weekend that celebrated Adolf Hitler's birthday.

Zirkle confirmed to The News-Dispatch on Monday he spoke Sunday in Chicago at a meeting of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party, whose symbol is a swastika.

When asked if he was a Nazi or sympathized with Nazis or white supremacists, Zirkle replied he didn't know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it.

"This is just a great opportunity for me to witness," he said, referring to his message and his Christian belief.

He also told WIMS radio in Michigan City that he didn't believe the event he attended included people necessarily of the Nazi mindset, pointing out the name isn't Nazi, but Nationalist Socialist Workers Party.

The Crown Point Republican spoke in front of about 56 "white activists" at an event honoring the birth of Hitler. The German leader was responsible for the genocide of millions of Jews and others during World War II.

Zirkle said the group asked him to speak to discuss the effect of pornography and prostitution on young, white women and girls.

Actually, it does matter who you speak to if you aspire to publicly elected office: Your presence before any organization lends them legitimacy; and when it comes to neo-Nazis and white supremacists, that's simply irresponsible. That's why it was a problem when folks like Ron Paul and Trent Lott and Haley Barbour spoke before the Council of Conservative Citizens. If nothing else, it speaks of incredibly poor judgment on the part of that official.

But when you read the report of the event from the South Bend Tribune, it's clear that Zirkle's problems go beyond just a lack of judgment:

An account of the gathering on www.Overthrow.com says "Zirkle spoke on his history as a state's attorney in Indiana, prosecuting Jewish and Zionist criminal gangs involved in trafficking prostitutes and pornography from Russia and the Zionist entity.''

... Zirkle said he feels he was misunderstood. His real mission, he said, is to rid the country of pornography, and that's what he was saying at the ANSWP gathering. So how did his comment about Jews fit in?

"Most of the male porn stars were Jewish at the beginning," Zirkle explained.