Your Evening Wingnut: Denim Edition

I'm starting to wonder if any - any - repuglicans left in the fold are sane. If any don't suffer from serious delusions. I don't know if they are lying, because a lie is intentional, and for many they just seem to believe things that are patently untrue. How does one fix this?


Oops, says Kurtz: Truer Words Never Spoken

Fox anchor Megyn Kelly: "Fox News covered these Tea Parties, and we were one of the only organizations to give it any publicity or p.r."

Watch.

Commenter in response to Cillizza's Wag the Blog: Did the Tea Parties Succeed?

Posted by: Straightline | April 16, 2009 1:42 PM

LMAO...maybe here in liberal lala land AKA WAPO maybe it didn't succeed but reality??....The millions that turned out across America represent just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until a "Tea Party" happens on a non work day...Like the 4th of July? Then come back with your angry and immoral comments.

I smell fear...

Sully: Moore Award Nominee

"I’m really enjoying this whole teabag thing. It’s really inspiring some excellent daydreaming. For one thing, it’s brought together the words teabag and Michelle Malkin for me in a very powerful, thrilling sort of way. Not that I haven’t ever put those two concepts together before, but this is the first time it’s happened while in the process of reading her actual columns...Now when I read her stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth. It vastly improves her prose," - Matt Taibbi, True/Slant.

sgwhiteinfla excerpts more Taibbi:

The really irritating thing about these morons is that, guaranteed, not one of them has ever taken a serious look at the federal budget. Not one has ever bothered to read an actual detailed study of what their taxes pay for. All they do is listen to one-liners doled out by tawdry Murdoch-hired mouthpieces like Michelle Malkin and then repeat them as if they’re their own opinions five seconds later. That’s what passes for political thought in this country. Teabag on, you fools.

C&L Heather - Colbert and teaparties Thursday Apr 16, 2009 11:30am

Sully: Checking The Blogosphere

Only a day after a massive, sustained and widespread outcry on the bloggy right about the DHS convening a study to worry about right-wing extremism, we get news of illegal and excessive wire-tapping under Bush. Not a single right-wing blog I can find via Memeorandum has commented. If you think the right is sincerely concerned about civil liberties for all in this country, this is not encouraging. But let's not lose all hope. I'll post any comments on conservative blogs or sites protesting excessive surveillance of US citizens when the Republicans were in power.

• Sully finds My bad..

  Glenn Reynolds did indeed mention the NSA spying scandal. The NYT reports today:

  The intelligence officials said the problems had grown out of changes enacted by Congress last July in the law that regulates the government’s wiretapping powers, and the challenges posed by enacting a new framework for collecting intelligence on terrorism and spying suspects.

  While the N.S.A.’s operations in recent months have come under examination, new details are also emerging about earlier domestic-surveillance activities, including the agency’s attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip, current and former intelligence officials said.

  What is Reynolds' spin? "Change you can believe in." So the apparatus set up under Bush, with abuses that reach back into the Bush administration, are described as entirely a function of Obama's taking office. In fact, the review that found these abuses, started at the end of the Bush administration but continued through the current one. Ah, yes, that principled libertarian. If Republicans do it, it's patriotism. If Democrats do it, it's dictatorship.

Yglesias: Frum on Conservative Paranoia

David Frum’s Spectator article on the political challenges facing the modern Republican Party has a nice ditty on the tide of extreme paranoia sweeping the conservative mediaverse:

Yet to listen to Fox News and other conservative media, you’d think we were living in Czechoslovakia in the final hours before the 1948 communist coup. Anchors end interviews by solemnly pledging to defend liberty and oppose tyranny. The network’s rising star Glenn Beck has mused about the coming turn to totalitarianism — and warned his audience that he has not been able to ‘debunk’ fears that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is constructing an archipelago of concentration camps for political opponents of the Obama administration.

Now to be fair, during the Bush years more than one person passed me this “14 Characteristics of Fascism” document in order to prove that under George W. Bush the United States had become a fascist regime. Overreaction to policies you don’t like is a pretty understandable human impulse. The difference is that mainstream, prominent outlets usually try to restrain that kind of impulse. But this sort of over-the-top rhetoric isn’t burbling from the grassroots up, it’s being driven the very most prominent figures in conservative media and also by a large number of members of congress.

Here, for example, is Representative Michael McCaul who appears to be calling on the crowd to shed the blood of the tyrannical Obama administration:

It’s about our founding fathers who in 1773 threw a little party called the Boston tea party. And fought against tyranny and oppressive taxes, does that sound familiar? We’re continuing that revolution right here in Austin, TX today. Thomas Jefferson once said that the tree of liberty will be fed with the blood of tyrants and patriots. You are the patriots.

I’m sure that 99.9 percent of the people listening to Rep. McCaul understand that this is just hot air and BS. They understand that he doesn’t really mean what he says, and doesn’t really think that what patriots should do is risk their lives in an effort to kill authority figures. But suppose 5,000 people are conservatives and fans of Michael McCaul and 99.9 percent of them remember not to take him seriously. What do the other five people do? Shoot an IRS agent? Try to kill the President? There’s a real need for people in positions of authority to act more responsibly than this.

Benen: WILL TACKLES FASHION....

The Washington Post's George Will tends to get into trouble writing about economics. His problems with columns about global warming are obvious. Will occasionally will write about baseball with minimal controversy, but those items tend to be rather dull.

Today, the conservative columnist branches out a bit, focusing his energies on pants. Not just any pants, mind you, but pants made of denim. Will, apparently, doesn't care for them.

Denim is the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances. But the appearances that people choose to present in public are cues from which we make inferences about their maturity and respect for those to whom they are presenting themselves.

Do not blame Levi Strauss for the misuse of Levi's. When the Gold Rush began, Strauss moved to San Francisco planning to sell strong fabric for the 49ers' tents and wagon covers. Eventually, however, he made tough pants, reinforced by copper rivets, for the tough men who knelt on the muddy, stony banks of Northern California creeks, panning for gold. Today it is silly for Americans whose closest approximation of physical labor consists of loading their bags of clubs into golf carts to go around in public dressed for driving steers up the Chisholm Trail to the railhead in Abilene.

This is not complicated. For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Edmund Burke -- what he would have thought of the denimization of America can be inferred from his lament that the French Revolution assaulted "the decent drapery of life"; it is a straight line from the fall of the Bastille to the rise of denim -- said: "To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely." Ours would be much more so if supposed grown-ups would heed St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, and St. Barack's inaugural sermon to the Americans, by putting away childish things, starting with denim.

Will proceeded to say we should all get off his lawn, unless we're wearing slacks, in which case we can stay.

OK, I made up that last part, but Will really did write a 747-word column on a fabric he doesn't like.

I'm at a loss.

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Sully: Tea-Baggers In West Virginia

Here's the local paper's summary of the cause:

Joseph, a regular Republican candidate for the House of Delegates, rattled off a list of taxes Americans pay. State income tax. "No more!" chanted hundreds of protesters from a crowd of umbrellas and American flags. Sales tax: "No more!" Gasoline tax: "No more!"

So a protest against government debt actually proposes abolition of several major revenue streams ... and no spending cuts. If you want to know what's wrong with the right, you'd be hard put to express it more acutely. Then there's the agenda in the crowd:

Ralliers held signs saying, "Mr. President, Stop Stealing from My Piggy Bank" and "Revolution is Brewing." Other signs said "Imagine No Liberals," "Obama: One Big Awful Mistake America," "We are a Christian Nation," and "Read 'Atlas Shrugged.'" One man held a flag picturing an assault rifle that said "Come and Take it."

The rally ended with a prayer where the Rev. Brandon Hudson asked God to help West Virginia add a marriage amendment to its state constitution.

Yglesias: RSCC Says Senator Burr’s Bank Runs Comment “Highlights Perfectly the Competing Views of the Two Parties”

I noted back on Tuesday that Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) has apparently been touring the state trying to spark bank runs with an anecdote about telling his wife to panic and pull money out of their bank accounts. It seemed irresponsible to me. And the issue caught some fire in the blogosphere, then the DSCC started pushing it out, then the North Carolina press started taking a closer look. So naturally the RSCC is firing back. But as Chris Orr observes, the RSCC is firing in a strange direction; instead of just dismissing the story as a mountain/molehill kind of thing being constructed out of a joke, their spokesman is saying that “The Democrats’ response highlights perfectly the competing views of the two parties when it comes to strengthening the economy.”

The Democrats’ response, as best I can tell, is that it’s a bad idea for politicians to frighten people and provoke bank runs. Is that really such a bad approach?

Aravosis: New Homeland Security report warns of rise of right-wing extremism

The irony is that while these people claim they love America the most, they are the least American among us. The report isn't that long, less than 10 pages, it's worth a look (pdf).

Paralleling the current national climate, rightwing extremists during the1990s exploited a variety of social issues and political themes to increase group visibilityand recruit new members. Prominent among these themes were the militia movement’sopposition to gun control efforts, criticism of free trade agreements (particularly thosewith Mexico), and highlighting perceived government infringement on civil liberties as well as white supremacists’ longstanding exploitation of social issues such as abortion, inter-racial crimes, and same-sex marriage. During the 1990s, these issues contributed tothe growth in the number of domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups and an increase in violent acts targeting government facilities, law enforcement officers, banks, and infrastructure sectors.

That paragraph, as Joe noted to me last night, is the most chilling. The report is being diplomatic. By "during the 1990s," they mean "the Oklahoma City bombing." It's saying that the things that led to the bombing look an awful lot like what the right-wing is saying and doing today. Republicans should be very careful where they, and their allies at FOX and among the hate groups of the religious right, tread. Because they started inciting violence during the campaign last fall, and they haven't let up. One of these days, one of their followers will get the message. And that's the day that the GOP, FOX, and the religious right will have an awful lot of explaining to do.

Benen: COBURN RAISES THE TEMPERATURE...

Richard Poplawski recently gunned down three police officers, in part because he feared the non-existent "Obama gun ban." In the wake of tragedy, I'd hoped some of the less responsible voices on the right might be inclined to lower the temperature a bit, especially since the administration hasn't made any efforts to pursue new gun control measures.

So much for that idea.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said this week that the administration will try "all sorts of things" to chip away at the individual right to own a gun, warning of gun control policies aimed at "disarming us."

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Cushing, Oklahoma, Coburn warned that Attorney General Eric Holder "doesn't believe in the second amendment" and "doesn't even know what an assault weapon is."

"He doesn't believe in our right to own and hold a gun," Coburn said of Holder, whose nomination he vigorously opposed. "He doesn't believe the Second Amendment means it's a right for me to have a gun to protect myself."

Coburn added, "I'm very worried about the Second Amendment, in terms of this administration," adding, "Even though the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Second Amendment means we get the right to own a gun."

First, the Supreme Court's ruling in Heller wasn't "unanimous"; it was a 5-4 split. (Coburn was only off by four justices.)

Second, what possible good could it serve to have a sitting U.S. senator tell a group of voters that the administration is pursuing policies aimed at "disarming us"? A report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security, which was requested and prepared by Bush administration officials, just told us that irrational fears of gun control are stirring political radicals and extremists.

Coburn doesn't even have Rick Perry's excuse for irresponsible nonsense, since Coburn hasn't announced whether he'll seek re-election, and will probably win fairly easily if he does.

It's the height of irresponsibility to spout such drivel. That Coburn seems to believe his own rhetoric doesn't make it any better.

Think Progress: Rep. Peter King Responds To Extremism Report, Says DHS Should Be Targeting ‘Mosques’ Instead

On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report requested by the Bush administration that warned of the rising threat of right-wing extremism. The political right has been up in arms over the intelligence assessment, falsely claiming it is an assault on conservativism.

Today on MSNBC, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) used the release of the DHS assessment to advance his well-documented anti-Muslim agenda. King told Joe Scarborough that, instead of discussing the threat of anti-government radicals, DHS should focus on the threat emanating from “Muslims” and “mosques” at home:

KING: [Napolitano] has never put out a report talking about look out for mosques. Look out for Islamic terrorists in our country. Look out for the fact that very few Muslims come forward to cooperate with the police. If they sent out a report saying that, there would be hell to pay.

Scarborough agreed: “Oh, it would be blowing up!”. Watch it:

King often likes to blame “mosques” for terrorism. In 2007, he claimed that it is “unfortunate” that the U.S. has “too many mosques,” a remark that was swiftly condemned by Muslim groups:

Unfortunately, we have too many mosques in this country. There are too many people who are sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how we can infiltrate.

Unfortunately, these types of remarks unfairly targeting Muslims are commonplace for King. He has previously claimed that Muslims are “the enemy among us.” “[Y]ou could say that 80-85 percent of mosques in this country are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists,” he said in 2004.

Furthermore, King suggested that DHS under Napolitano’s leadership is trying to downplay the threat of “Islamic terrorists.” Perhaps he should do his research before making such an outlandish claim.