Nuts.

Aravosis: Speaker Pelosi warns against "climate of violence" 

It's finally been said. She'll be eviscerated for it by FOX News and by the Republicans. And when some crazy Republican picks up a gun and shoots someone, or blows something up, remember Pelosi's warning, and remember how the Republicans spurned it. The cat is now out of the bag. There will be no more chance for Republicans to say "we had no idea any of our supporters would become violent." Now they do. Let's see how they react to the warning. Will they try to calm things down, or will they shoot the messenger?

QOTD, John Cole:

Some days I honestly think the current Republican party is little more than a long running Second City comedy sketch:

Atrios: The Monorail Wasn't Working Correctly

I know CoT hit this already, but I don't think the full just laughing at anti-government protesters demanding better government service. This is also about people not from cities seeing cities - especially DC - as big urban theme parks. The monorail ride broke down.

Eclectablog (Daily Kos) on the gov't services the Teabaggers used in DC:

Rep. Brady is from...wait for it...Texas.

"These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration," Brady wrote. "These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them."

I broke my calculator trying to figure out on how many levels this is pure, teabagging, hypocritical irony.

• Those millions tens of thousands of teabaggers used the facilities of the government-run National Park system.
• They left a significant amount of trash behind in garbage cans (mostly anti-socialism signs, of course) for the government-run sanitation department to dispose of.
• They arrived at the Tea Party on government-built and -maintained roads.
• They relied on government-funded police to provide security.
• Many of them are on government-provided social security and/or Medicare.
• And, most ironically, they used government-run public transportation to get around the city.

And now they're complaining about it. They are not satisfied with the level of service from the socialist services that they decried on countless signs and in countless chants and of which they freely availed themselves.
Brady was apparently particularly outraged that some of the elderly and physically handicapped attendees had to pay for cabs with their very own money! Teh h0rR0rz!!!
Oh, Em. Eff Gee.
I'm just sayin'...

• John Cole adds:
  
  

  It gets even better:
  

  Back in July HR3288, a Transportation and HUD appropriations bill, came up for a vote. It included $150 million for emergency maintenance funding for the DC Metro.
  Brady voted against it.
  The only appropriate response to people like this is open, mocking laughter.

  I concur.

John Cole: Obama Surrendered To the Commies!

Prepare for a complete and total shit fit from the 101st Chairborne, because the US is canceling the construction of missile defense sites in Czech Republic and Poland.
I’ll wait for Larison’s take, but I will say this- what would you think if China or Russia were building missile sites in Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico? How do you think we would react to that?

• Kevin Drum adds:
  
  

  Will this buy us some goodwill from Russia? Will it send the Bill Kristol wing of the conservative movement into Munich/striped pants/appeasement hysterics? I'd say maybe to the first but definitely yes to the second, which all by itself probably makes it worth doing.

Ackerman: Evidence-Free Lieberman Missile Response Preemptively Disarmed

The reaction from Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) to the missile defense announcement is too detached from reality to be taken seriously:

“This deeply regrettable decision sends the wrong message to Tehran, Moscow, and our European allies at a critical time in our effort to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” Senator Joe Lieberman says in a statement. “Moreover, it means that we will have a less capable missile defense system to protect the United States and our European allies against the Iranian threat. The administration must take immediate and tangible action to reassure our allies in Central and Eastern Europe that we are committed to their security and independence.”

Every part of this is blinkered. For the actual Iranian short-range missile threat, the Obama administration is substituting the next wave of anti-ballistic missile technology for an outmoded one. Only a fool or a reflexively right-wing Connecticut concern troll would actually believe better technology provides a more porous defense. Additionally, what actually contributes to the “security and independence” of eastern Europe is improved political ties with Russia, and what doesn’t is an outdated-before-it’s-ever-deployed missile shield that Russia justifiably interprets as a needless provocation. Focusing better technology on Iran rather than inferior technology on Russia is a positive-sum development. It’s statements like this that demonstrate why the only people who think Lieberman is a serious defense thinker tend to lose presidential elections.

Sully: Yglesias Award Nominee

"Despite the outcry that President Obama has sold out the Europeans and caved to the Russians by cancelling missile defenses in Europe, it was the right thing to do. Those defenses were not going to work (or work well enough or soon enough to matter in any major crisis with Iran), and the diplomatic price we were paying for them was far out of proportion to any small gains we might have made by annoying the Russians or reassuring the Czechs and the Poles," - Tom Nichols, NRO.

Atrios: Desperately Seeking Hitler

I think the great failure of the Right since their awesome adventure in Iraq has been to create a new Hitler for us to fear and fight. They tried with Iran, but didn't quite manage. Their hero Bush looked in Putin's soul and declared it pure, so that one won't work. The business side of the coalition won't let them go after China. We need an enemy damnit!

Ta-Nehisi Coates: Flip And Pop My Collar Like The Fonz 

Andrew on Malkin and Limbaugh's dishonest white fear-mongering:

These people are going off the deep end entirely: open panic at a black president is morphing into the conscious fanning of racial polarization, via Gates or ACORN or Van Jones or a schoolbus in Saint Louis. What we're seeing is the Jeremiah Wright moment repeated and repeated. The far right is seizing any racial story to fan white fears of black power in order to destroy Obama. And the far right now controls the entire right.
Do they understand how irresponsible this is? How recklessly dangerous to a society's cohesion and calm? Or is that what they need and thrive on?

Yes. Yes. And yes.
I got a note from a good friend yesterday expressing shock, and anger, about Drudge and Malkin's usage of that alleged racial beat-down on a school-bus. On some level, I wonder if something's wrong with me. I'm neither shocked, nor angry. This is exactly how I expected these fools to respond to a black president.
If anything, I'm a little giddy. For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades.  Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us.
It's intensely grating to live say, in Atlanta, and have some dude in Harlem crowned as your unelected leader. It's even more grating if said dude's agenda seems, in large measure, come down to standing in front of cameras and tweaking his opponents. It's no mistake that O'Reilly and Sharpton would break bread together at Sylvia's--they feed each other.
But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.
It's about time.

Anonymous Liberal: You Can Tell a Lot About People By Who They Choose to Demonize

The current conservative-generated hysteria over ACORN is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with both of our major political parties and the general state of our political discourse. Let's put aside for a moment the Glenn Beck-hyped "sting" videos of ACORN employees supposedly engaged in nefarious behavior (I'll get back to that in minute).

First, let's take a step back and consider just what ACORN is. It is a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower and improve the lives of poor people. As with many other organizations, ACORN has a number of legally distinct parts, each of which has different sources of funding and engages in different kinds of activities (ACORN's conservative enemies routinely conflate these various parts to imply that ACORN is using federal money for improper political purposes). Since its founding the 70s, ACORN and its employees and volunteers have fought successfully to, among other things, increase minimum wages across the country, increase the quality of public education in poor areas, and protect people from predatory lending practices. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ACORN helped rebuild thousands of homes and assisted victims in relocating and finding housing outside of New Orleans. The ACORN activity that has drawn the most conservative ire is its voter registration efforts which, consistent with ACORN's mission, are primarily aimed at low-income voters (who tend to vote Democratic).

Republicans have made a lot of breathless claims about ACORN-related voter fraud, most of which do not hold up to investigation or scrutiny. Now Glenn Beck and his minions are hyping a series of "sting" videos taped by conservative activists posing as pimps and prostitutes. As an initial matter, it is worth noting that these videos were shot and edited by people with a clear political agenda. We'll see how this plays out, but having watched the videos, it would not surprise me if they have been edited so as to severely distort and misrepresent what actually happened. The videos do not show a dialogue; the film-makers intersperse their own representations as to what they said with the supposed responses of the ACORN workers. I suspect that they are edited in this way to remove necessary context and make these conversations look worse than they actually were. The ACORN office in California is claiming exactly that, that the employee captured on film was playing along with what she assumed was a joke (and having watched the video, that seems perfectly plausible). I suspect the unedited footage looks very different. Moreover, I virtually guarantee that for every one of these videos aired, there were numerous attempted "stings" in which employees acted appropriately and therefore didn't provide any good footage.

But even if you take these film-makers at face value and assume the worst, the reality is that ACORN has thousands of employees and the vast majority of them spend their days trying to help poor people through perfectly legal means (and receive very little compensation for doing so). Even before yesterday's Senate vote, the amount of federal money that went to ACORN was very small. This is a relatively insignificant organization in the grand scheme of things, but it's an organization that has unquestionably fought over the years to improve the lives of the less fortunate in this country.

That the GOP and its conservative supporters would single out this particular organization for such intense demonization is telling. In September of last year, the entire world came perilously close to complete financial catastrophe. We're still not out of the woods and we're deep within one of the worst recessions in U.S. history. This situation was brought about by the recklessness and greed of our banks and financial institutions, most of which had to be bailed out at enormous cost to the American taxpayer (exponentially more than all of the tax dollars given to ACORN over the years). The people who brought about this near catastrophe, for the most, profited immensely from it. These very same institutions, propped up by the American taxpayer, are once again raking in large profits.

But rather than focus their anger on these folks, conservatives choose to go after an organization composed almost entirely of low-paid community organizers, an organization that could never hope to have even a small fraction of the clout or the ability to affect the overall direction of the country that Wall Street bankers have. ACORN's relative lack of political influence was on full display yesterday, when the U.S. Senate (in which Democrats have a supermajority) not only entertained a vote to defund ACORN, but approved it by a huge margin (with only seven Democrats opposing).

Meanwhile, with a Democratic President elected on a mandate to reform health care and large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, the prospect of meaningful health care reform passing remains doubtful. Why? Because such reform is opposed by very influential lobbies, groups that--unlike ACORN--have the money and the clout to actually affect the lives of average Americans in significant ways.

But thanks to the Glenn Becks of the world, ACORN has now been so demonized that its future as an organization is in doubt. Never fear, though, I'm sure Beck will find some other obscure powerless group to demonize soon.

C&L: Why Won't The Media Address the Real Issue? 'ACORN' Is Wingnut Code for The 'N' Word.

By Susie Madrak Thursday Sep 17, 2009 6:00am

Those right-wing anti-ACORN activists tried their little trick in several cities that didn't provide them with the response they wanted - and yet, I haven't heard FOX News mention this. Hmm.

It's hard out here in Philly for a pimp.
At least, it appears that's the lesson that self-described filmmaker-activist (and graduate student at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution) James O'Keefe learned when he and cohort Hannah Giles showed up at the Philadelphia ACORN headquarters on July 24 in the middle of a probe that has touched off a conservative-media firestorm.
O'Keefe and Giles were dressed as a pimp and prostitute, just as they were during undercover visits to ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., over the summer. ACORN stands for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.
Those visits were part of an investigative probe into the anti-poverty group - as ACORN staffers were secretly videotaped giving O'Keefe and Giles advice on how to hide illegal sex businesses in low-income housing. ACORN has fired three workers implicated in the films.
Giles, in a post on the Web site Biggovernment.com, said she and O'Keefe had been driven by their belief that "ACORN is corrupt" and are on "a quest for truth unraveling the mystery of organized corruption."
But when the phony pimp and prostitute tag team visited ACORN's local office, on Broad Street near Parrish, on July 24, they were apparently shown the door.
Philadelphia ACORN president Carol Hemingway said in a statement on Monday that "after causing a major disturbance, they were asked to leave the office, and a police report was filed."
Hemingway e-mailed copies of the incident report to the news media. No charges were filed against O'Keefe or Giles, and their visit to the City of Brotherly Love has not been part of a series of reports aired on the Fox News Channel.

I'm sure this will be prominently mentioned on Glenn Beck's show tonight. Right?
From today's Times:

In a statement over the weekend, Bertha Lewis, the chief organizer for Acorn, said the bogus prostitute and pimp had spent months visiting numerous Acorn offices, including those in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami and Philadelphia, before getting the responses they were looking for.
“I cannot and I will not defend the actions of the workers depicted in the video, who have since been terminated,” Ms. Lewis wrote. But she defended the group’s overall record and said it had become “the boogeyman for the right wing and its echo chambers.”
Robert L. Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, called the tactics used to go after Mr. Jones and Acorn “McCarthyite,” and said the critics were harping on minor failings and distorting records that over all were admirable. “This is dangerous stuff,” Mr. Borosage said. “I don’t think progressives will sit back and let this gain momentum.”

Until progressives learn to speak in plain language and effectively call out racism when they see it, of course it will gain momentum. It already has.
In the meantime, I've filed an ethics complaint against our young filmmaker friend at his school. I'll let you know what happens.

Benen: PAWLENTY'S NOT-SO-BOLD ACORN DECISION..

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty's (R) acute case of Romney-itis seems to be getting worse.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty today joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at the ACORN community organizing group, ordering that state agencies "stop all state funding" of the group.
But a local spokesman for the group said there's no state funding to stop.
In a letter sent to Minnesota Management and Budget Commissioner Tom Hanson, Pawlenty cited "recent reports of questionable behavior and potentially illegal activity" by ACORN employees as the basis of his action.

Kevin Whelan, a spokesman for ACORN's Twin Cities affiliate, said the organization has never gotten money from the state "and there's certainly not a dime to cut off right now."
In other words, Pawlenty's grandstanding has the same practical effect as me announcing that I've decided to strip the Political Animal budget of all ACORN funding.
This detail, however, will likely go overlooked in Pawlenty's stump speech, when he proudly proclaims to conservative activists that he boldly cut off ACORN from taxpayer dollars in Minnesota.
It doesn't matter if it's true; it matters if it impresses the base.

Benen: DANCING WITH THE CZARS..

How misleading has the right been with the attacks on "czars" in the Obama administration? Even David Brody, of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, said he's been "researching this topic" and concluded that the rhetoric is "really misleading." (via Right Wing Watch)
"[I]f you want to bring credibility to your argument you need to get your facts straight," Brody said. "Conservative media outlets hurt themselves when the information they provide isn't the total picture. It may play well with Obama's staunch critics but doesn't the full truth matter?
Is that a rhetorical question?

Brody is, all kidding aside, completely right about this. He specifically called out Fox News for misleading reports, and the Republican network has been covering this "story" in the most ridiculous way possible. The DNC put together this short video, noting Glenn Beck complaining bitterly about some of Obama's "czars," all of whom are filling offices created by George W. Bush. Beck only became incensed over this when the presidency changed parties.
"With apologies to Tom DeLay, and despite the railing you're hearing from the Republican caucus room and Fox News, the GOP has been 'dancing with czars' for a very long time. The unmitigated hypocrisy of these attacks not only speaks to the credibility of this manufactured controversy, but to the inability of the Republican party to say no to the marching orders doled out by Glenn Beck and the far right's noise machine," said DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan.
Fox News' claims are, however, getting more audacious. The Washington Post reported yesterday that Bush has "36 czar positions filled by 46 people during his eight years as president." Fox News, reporting on the Post article, said the newspaper had found 16 "czars" in the Bush administration.
The network had one of the digits right, but that's not exactly reassuring.

Benen: POOR BOEHNER....

Some aspects of House Minority Leader John Boehner's (R-Ohio) job are pretty easy. Now that moderates have been largely purged from the caucus, and voters have helped pare down the caucus to a trim 178 members, Boehner at least has ideological cohesion on his side.
But, Glenn Thrush reports, Boehner's job is not without its difficulties. (via Matt Corley)

Like a surfer riding the heavy waves before a hurricane, Boehner, a conservative with a penchant for compromise, has spent the past few months trying to harness the anger of the GOP base without allowing his conference to veer too far to the right. [...]
Long before the tea parties or Wilson's outburst, Boehner and Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) had struggled to moderate the rhetorical excesses of House conservatives hammering away on Obama's birth certificate, decrying the creation of "death panels" and ferreting out signs of creeping socialism.
Sources say they have been especially wary of the possible damage inflicted on the party's reputation by bomb-throwing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who last fall called for an investigation into whether members of Congress are "pro-America or anti-America."

If Bachmann becomes the face of congressional Republicans, the GOP's numbers may shrink even more. But if Boehner takes steps to rein her in, and acknowledge her tenuous relationship with reality, the base will be livid.
I don't imagine Boehner would turn to me for advice, but I suspect one thing the Republican leadership might consider is exercising some control over the caucus' media work. One recent analysis of Bachmann's "surging national media exposure" found the right-wing Minnesotan appears on national television every nine days. Boehner could very easily say, "Michele, we'd like to give some vulnerable incumbents a chance to have some airtime."
As for Democrats, word that GOP leaders are "wary" of Bachmann's antics should point to a valuable weakness for the minority. Every time Bachmann comes up with some crazy thought, the push should be the same: what does John Boehner have to say about that? Does he agree? Is he willing to concede she's gone too far?