quote of the day

via twitter:

PIGS Y U NO FLY? AWESOME SHIT WILL HAPPEN WHEN U FLY.

one-way trip

from dc comics' wasteland #1 (1987), artist david lloyd, who, with writer alan moore, gave us "v for vendetta" and who will literally blow your mind with the dopest dope you'll ever toke ...

... or so they say.

(story by john ostrander and del close, art by david lloyd, color by lovern kindzierski)

the art of the backdown

(former) pastor melvin thompson:

the parents wanted to know exactly who had a problem with their future son-in-law.

"me, for one," thompson replied. he added, "the best thing [stella] can do is take him back where she found him."

i do not believe in interracial marriages, and i do not believe this [ban] will give our church a black eye at all.

an eastern kentucky church under a firestorm of criticism since members voted to bar mixed-race couples from joining the congregation overturned that decision sunday ...

... thompson has said he is not racist and called the matter an "internal affair."

thompson has since been replaced with a new pastor who said that everyone was welcome at the church.

see:
"kentucky church votes to ban interracial couples"
"ky church overturns ban on interracial couples"
"pastor nullifies church ban on interracial couples"

enemy of the taitz

this assistant sec of state, attorney general, sec of state and 5 appointee puppets on the committee are nothing but lying traitorous scum, which will be standing trial for fraud, forgery and treason. as a reminder, penalty for treason — is life in prison or death penalty. that what all of them deserve together with obama, pelosi, onaka, fuddy and a few corrupt judges.

— birther "queen" orly taitz
(malware warning)

birtherism died, along with donald trump's always-dubious presidential ambitions, a very public death on the last week of april 2011, when a visibly-irritated president obama made public his "long-form" birth certificate, quelling pesky doubts about his right to hold office. birtherism's coffin was sealed days later with obama's announcement of the dramatic death of osama bin laden, firmly establishing without further question who indeed was wearing the pants in washington.

so if birtherism is dead, why are we talking about it? well, i'm glad you asked ...

on friday november 18, the new hampshire ballot law commission entertained a challenge to obama's inclusion on its primary ballot from none other than moldovan energizer birther "queen" orly taitz. given that birthers have never won anything but ridicule in their three years of tireless and tiresome attempts to unseat the kenyan usurper, the commission's ruling against the worst lawyer on the face of the planet was of course a foregone conclusion — as was, to those who've been keeping score, the birther reaction, captured in rare public display:

"traitors!" shouted one woman. "spineless traitors!"

"saying a treasonous liar can go on our ballot?" yelled state rep. harry accornero, a republican from laconia. "you're going to have to face the citizens of laconia. you better wear a mask."

... [the commission's] response to the testimony during the hearing angered many of those in the room, including state representatives.

"unbelievable," fumed state rep. susan delemus, a republican from rochester, walking around the room during a break in the hearing, before the commission took its vote.

"let's just bury the constitution now and have a funeral," delemus said. "it just makes me want to throw up."

the situation was "getting ugly," mavrogeorge said, so he suggested to his client, assistant secretary of state karen ladd, that they walk to the state house to prepare for the subsequent hearings. but mavrogeorge said they were stopped in the hallway by delemus and rep. harry accornero of laconia, who promised to follow them across the street because accornero said they were "demanding answers to why this liar was being allowed on the ballot."

"at this point i knew there was no way that we were going to be able to leave the legislative office building without having an angry mob following us to the state house," mavrogeorge wrote.

looking to his left, mavrogeorge said rep. al baldasaro of londonderry was silently "staring at me with an angry look on his face."

"i did not know what these people were capable of in the state of mind that they were in at the time," mavrogeorge said.

mavrogeorge recalled ducking into a nearby room with ladd and calling delaney's office and state house security for help. members of the crowd yelled and banged on the door, he said."

... "they showed a complete lack of respect for me as an assistant attorney general and as a human being," he wrote. "yesterday was the first time in my professional career that i felt that my safety was in danger."

colin manning, spokesman for gov. john lynch, said the "disgraceful" conduct at the hearing deserves investigation.

"a line has been crossed in terms of civility and decorum that cannot be tolerated," he said."

... rep. al baldasaro, an o'brien leadership team member, is visibly amused and comfortable with the proceedings documented in the video, and in fact goes on to highlight how he and other birthers can work with the speaker to pass legislation barring president obama from the ballot.

birthers behaving badly after losing badly ... again. so what? birtherism is still dead. who cares? well, i'm glad you asked ...

after the 2010 midterm "tea party revolution" a soon-to-be-discovered number of sore losers and obsessed crackpots gained elective office across the country and they are committed to preventing the marxist muslim imposter from stealing another term in their white house. new hampshire was only the first salvo:

the OBAMA STATE BALLOT CHALLENGE 2012 is what is going to stop obama from taking office again in 2012. obama’s name on the ballot will be legally challenged in every state. the evidence of a forged birth certificate on whitehouse.gov and the evidence that he is using a connecticut social security number that does not belong to him, will be submitted in each court. ... this is where you come in. we need people to contact their states secretary of state and find what the rules are for challenging a candidate ...

so get ready for a bit of loud, pointless, protracted and divisive mischief coming soon to a state legislature near you, inspired by orly taitz, tireless defender of the freedom to persecute anyone and everyone that gets in her way: (malware warning)

i am in process of writing to the speaker of the house of representatives of NH as well as the supreme court of NH, seeking emergency hearings. house of representatives can recall the sec of state who is committing elections fraud and treason. supreme court can stay the designation on the ballot. we have to fight for every inch of the terrain. we can’t let thugs rule. keep in mind, you are fighting not just for yourselves, but also for your children and granchildren against this criminal enterprise, that took over this nation. sooner or later we will try for elections fraud, forgery and treason all of the involved individuals, all of the corrupt officials and all of the corrupt judges, who are involved.

will you be the next enemy of the taitz?

the republican problem

as framed by nobel prize-winning economist paul krugman:

i have a structural hypothesis here: you have a republican ideology, which mitt romney obviously doesn’t believe in. he just oozes insincerity, that’s just so obvious. but all of the others are fools and clowns. and there is a question here: maybe — my hypothesis is maybe this is an ideology that only fools and clowns can believe in. and that’s the republican problem.

can't be too picky

i'm hopeful that this entire scandal will fade, but i'm also braced for the worst: i don't care much about any kind of sexual misdeeds myself at this moment:

STOP THE RAPE OF THE TAXPAYER! STOP THE RAPE OF THE BORDER! STOP THE RAPE OF OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM!

i don't think perry or romney are all that concerned about the BIG rapes of our entire freaking NATION! so even if cain were a serial rapist, i'd still support the man. heck! no brainer so far as i'm concerned. we can't afford to be too picky when 90% of our political pros prostitute themselves.

quote of the day

via hardcore conservative watering hole free republic, "attorney for cain accuser says ‘series’ of incidents prompted complaint":

every male i've ever worked with could have a sexual harassment suit filed against him. Every Single One....

except me....

can't believe this is happening

horrifying footage of a 2-year-old girl in china being run over by two separate vehicles and left to die by passersby has stirred outrage throughout the country, with CNN reporting that security footage of the incident has led the nation of 1.3 billion people to do some collective soul-searching.

according to shanghaiist, the two-year-old, who has been identified as yueyue, was run over on thursday outside of a hardware market in foshan in southern china's guangdong province. the driver of the vehicle then backed up over the girl a second time and drove away.

the following video shows more than a dozen passersby walk, ride motorbikes or drive past the young, bleeding girl without stopping to help. they clearly notice the badly injured child, as some motorists swerve to avoid her body. after three people walk past, a different truck runs over the young girl again.

shanghaiist reports that seven grueling minutes passed before a trash collector picked up yeuyue's body and alerted her mother so that she could take the child to the hospital.



... "many people are discussing what they perceive as a loss of morality in chinese society," [CNN's enuice yoon] said to erroll barnett. "... some observers have been pointing out that china education system really has failed here, that it's failed to emphasize and reinforce the need to respect human life at a time when 1.3 billion people all clamoring and rushing to climb up the economic and social ladder."

... [the telegraph's peter foster wrote] "others blamed china's compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a good samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.

"they didn’t ignore the girl, they just didn't dare help her," said one comment among many that said that chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.

[continue reading ...]

a failure of morality? poor education? economic pressure? a fear of lawsuits? i'm not so sure, especially when so many are ready to paint an enormous country with such a sweeping brush. i'd rather hear from the passersby themselves about why they ignored the little victim, if we ever get the chance to. their stories might shock us, but not, i suspect, in the direction that the media is driving the narrative.

i have my own theory. a few years back, i was discussing one of those awful church shootings that periodically grips the attention of the nation. a friend was having a hard time trying to understand why the victims took so long to react to the crisis. i suggested that most of them probably couldn't even believe what was happening. they probably refused to believe it. i suspect that, in an uncertain or puzzling or unfamiliar situation, most people will not immediately jump to the worst conclusion. especially when, in most cases, we're relieved to find out that it's not. so when those first shots went off, instead of running for the doors, i suspect most people first tried to find a safe explanation for them: "is that a car backfiring?"; "are those firecrackers ... balloons?"; "a television?"; "those can't be gunshots ..."; "i don't want to look like a fool ..." i don't think the reality of the situation dawned on anyone until the screaming started. then it could no longer be denied. who wants to believe that a homicidal maniac is in the building? who wants to put themselves in the middle of that?

so, excepting the inital driver, who was either blind, scared or depravedly indifferent, i believe that we're dealing with a suspension of belief, in a way that helps us avoid getting sucked into a horrible situation that might be unfolding in front of us. and if we don't see panic or alarm coming from anyone else around us, it can only help us in our denial. no one in the video becomes alarmed — a reaction that was probably self-reinforcing: "that's not a child lying injured in the street; it's just a discarded doll, perhaps even a toddler-shaped pile of rags ... besides, no one else seems to be reacting as if it's an injured child ..."

if no one else is panicking, then we can assume that everything is perfectly normal. nothing to see here, folks. we can therefore go about our lives as normal. because if what we most fear is true, then our safe routines are gone. we find ourselves forced to be a victim of horror, or perhaps something worse, a witness to horror, in this case burdened with the responsibility of saving a child's life.

the patriarchy has you

wake up, colluders!

(art by tatsuya ishida, h/t pz myers)

steve jobs, r.i.p.

over nearly thirty years, every computer i've ever owned was made by apple. as a computer-curious artist, steve had me with macpaint. i still have a copy of the program and a working mac plus to run it on ...

macpaint (1984)

apple iic (1984), something of a novelty item

macintosh plus (1986), my first art computer

performa 600 cd (1992), color! with built-in cd drive

power mac 8500 (1996), my first video-capable unit

powerbook lombard (2000), my first laptop

powerbook g4 line (titanium, 2001 & aluminum, 2005)

ipod g3 (2003)

ipod g5 video (2005)

macbook pro (2010)

see also:
computer comix v1.0
computer comix v2.0
computer comix v3.0

bi-Zarro bat-Man

as a fan of all things batman, i couldn't resist chip kidd's and tony millionaire's 2001 homage to creator bob kane's original concept — here two ever-so-slightly warped send-ups which, despite their intended seediness, successfully evoke the distinctively creepy atmosphere of our grim hero's world.

"the mad monk returns"

(stories by chip kidd, art by tony millionaire, cover by matt groening, color by jim campbell)

a mitt romney presidency

see also:

"a rick perry presidency"
"a michelle bachmann presidency"
"a herman cain presidency"
"a newt gingrich presidency"
"a rick santorum presidency"

arrested development

when we last saw daryn j. moran, he'd gotten himself discharged from the air force for various patriotic reasons, but he especially wanted everyone to know he wasn't interested in taking orders from a usurper any more.

turns out that was just the warm-up.

today mr. moran's geting serious:

hello everybody, my name is daryn john moran in omaha, nebraska. it's about 3pm on monday, september 26th and today's video, the purpose, is to let everybody know, uh, what needs to be done.

um, as a result of nobody fulfilling their responsibility to enforce the law and arrest the president for his crime of a forgery, which is proven fact, um, i've decided that i must do it myself.

what do i mean? i'll gas up the car, drive in my vehicle to washington, dc, knock on the president's door and tell him he's comin' with me.

now along the way, obviously, if you're still listening and not just laughing, somebody's gonna have something to say about that and that's what we need, we need a confrontation. not a violent one — i'm not comin' with a shotgun, i'm not comin' with a knife. i'm comin' with the constitution in my hand and the bible and the fact that he's a criminal and a known forger.

just like in the ol' wild west when men would walk into town with wanted posters hanging on the do— on the walls, ah, they only came with their cronies on their horses so they could escape in an' out ...

president obama gonna be on the run for the remainder of his days, until he gets right or til he leaves otherwise. but he's gonna be held accountable.

so, to the mayor's office in omaha, who has not responded to me, when i went and put in a request to see the mayor of omaha, jim suttle, no response, i'm gonna do your job. to the county sheriff

who i spoke to, captain torres, supposed to pass my flyer on. to tim dunning, the sheriff in omaha, nebraska, i'll do your job and arrest, ah, put out a warrant out for the arrest of obama, i'm gonna do your job. to the city council that was protected by your guardian warren weaver, who said "i dunno why you're actin' this way and you can send a letter to the city council", and took the receptionist's message, my name and phone number and gave it back to me, i'm doin' your job. this is not just a federal issue, this is a national issue, down to everybody everywhere.

so, there ya have it. i dunno what'll happen next, i dunno which americans will stand by me. i'm not the moron, i'm not the stupid person. my wife comes from mexico and she says what separates america from the third world countries? the third world countries don't have anybody enforcing the law. and here the constitution is being overthrown daily.

i just heard from a friend: walter fitzpatrick was arrested again. this poor man's been fighting by himself for three years against this illegal president. it's time the rest of us followed his example, the wisdom of the gray head of walter fitzpatrick, a retired navy officer.

and to the military out there, STOP HIDING OBAMA. STOP PROTECTING HIM. HE IS A CRIMINAL.

i was in the marine corps from '91 to '95. i was in the air force from 2002 to 2011. before gays were allowed in the military — now i'm not against a gay man or a woman: I'M AGAINST YOUR ACTIVITY. i'm against you pro-, promoting your lifestyle to families, and literature and education system. BEIN' A GAY IS A SIN IN THE BIBLE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. IT'S A SIN.

so, i was in the military BEFORE the gays were in. when we knew it was a sin. whu-when it was a shame to say that openly. and general mullen's comments that the military is stronger and has more tolerance? more tolerance for what, general mullen? more tolerance for sin? yeah, are you even a christian? do you know the bible? IT IS FOOLISH AND IGNORANT TO IGNORE GOD AND IGNORE THE SCRIPTURES IN THE BIBLE WHEN YOU'RE MADE AWARE OF IT.

now, the islam religion and muslims, who barack obama knows the prayers, knows the calls, knows the words and all his best buddies are muslims, they wanna chop off our heads if we claim we're a christian. i saw a video of the new director of transportation saying they're identifying christian identity people as the new terrorists. well, what in the world is he talkin' about, another czar of obama?

so the real americans out there are gonna hear me and when they come to your houses to arrest you too and ask you whether you support me or email me or walter fitzpatrick? we need to arrest you too? i dunno if you're gonna load your guns with weapons and defend yourself and your family or your children or not. like i said, today or tomorrow when i leave i'm not goin' with a shotgun, i'm not goin' with a knife ‐ it's not about threats. i'm just comin' to knock on obama's door, say you're comin' with me, your time is up. he's gonna spend the remainder of his days on the run like a common criminal. those of you that support him: that's your mistake and your foolishness. the majorty of americans DO NOT SUPPORT BARACK OBAMA. he has no proof of his birth, anywhere, any day, any time. and the proof that they've offered, it's a lie, it's a forgery; it's been proven so by multiple americans over and over and over again.

if i sound angry, it's because i am. it's because the military's had a coup. it's been taken over by a false commander-in-chief. and this flag ... it— what does it mean anymore? where's the constitution? where are our so-called leaders in the congress and supreme court? YOU'RE NEXT! first is the president. COMIN' FER YOU, BARACK OBAMA! COMIN' FER YOU! the supreme court and the congress is next. BUT I'M COMIN FER YOU BARACK OBAMA, SO CALL YOUR SECRET SERVICE — COWARD! you wouldn't even do an arm wrestlin' match with me if i asked ya. you probably wouldn't do a forty yard dash. WIMP! COWARD! ... COWARD!

and the supreme court and the congress is next. CALL YER FBI, CALL YER SECRET SERVICE, PUT ALL THE CUFFS ON ME THAT YOU WANT, GIVE ME A BLACK AND WHITE STRIPED SUIT AND THROW ME IN JAIL! COWARD! you have no proof of who you are. i mean it's time for americans to stand up a tell you the truth: WE DON'T WANT YOU HERE, WE WANT YOU OUT OF THE OFFICE, WE WANT YOUR CRIMES TO STOP. that's what i'm gonna do. this is public information. this is youtube. my address is [redacted]. my cellphone is [redacted]. i have a public email address as well. i'm here, but i'm leavin' and i'm gonna gas up the car and go to washington dc and arrest the president.

it's time for confrontation. ya, you think yer gonna win. ya, you do, you think so. you think all that money flowin' from all yer muslim buddies and social communist democratic buddies is gonna save you. IT'S NOT GONNA SAVE YOU. there's real americans out there who're gonna hear me and i'm not gonna go ta jail, you're not gonna throw away the key and have me in jail fer life, you're not gonna get away with it, it's not gonna happen. not gonna happen.

so first, barack obama, start runnin'. START RUNNIN'! yu-you're sand is comin'-drippin' out the hourglass. WE'RE COMIN' TA GETCHA! ya! laugh it up, too! laugh it up! you ain't gonna be laughin' when we're in yer face! when the cuffs are 'round yer hands, you ain't gonna be laughin'! ooh! threat! threat'nin' the president! woohoo! threat'nin' the president! send the congress! send the supreme court! us americans, we're so scared! ... [continues]

---

update via ohforgoodnesssakes.com:

daryn moran tells [birther seditionist online rag] the post & email that "two secret service men came at 3:00 or 3:30 this morning. they were escorted by a county sheriff." [would-be birther torchbearer] dean haskins at obama release your records had a phone conversation in which moran said the authorities had first visited his parents; and "he is not, presently, driving to dc to arrest obama."

from what i gathered from our conversation, they explained to him that he can go to DC, he can have meetings about his beliefs, he can state what he believes, but he cannot threaten the "president." they also explained that stating that one is going to arrest the president is a form of threat, so he is not allowed to do that.

since moran's tirade was about his being prepared to gas up the car and, come what may, pursue obama "for the remainder of his days" ... will a simple dressing-down by the usurper's protectors take the tiger out of his tank?

a herman cain presidency

see also:

"a rick perry presidency"
"a michelle bachmann presidency"
"a mitt romney presidency"
"a rick santorum presidency"
"a newt gingrich presidency"

no true scotsman

if conservative republicans worry that they may have come out smelling less like roses and more like cavemen after three closely-watched debates in the national spotlight, they shouldn't be: those weren't real republicans™ we were watching after all:

i don't know what small group in the crowd did it — but conservatives DON'T boo soldiers. booing soldiers is a progressive thing, not ours. i don't give a damn what sexual orientation he is. it was a horrible demonstration, that will be used against our side in worse ways than the cheering at ron pauls "let him die" reply from the 2nd debate or the jerry springer audience that snuck in and loudly cheered executions ...

by navyCanDo

for all we know the booing could have been done by [democratic national committee] plants because the leftmedia is using it to validate their vicious lie that 'republicans hate gays' (and, as they often add, anyone not white, heterosexual and christian). since i doubt the election will turn on who gets the homosexual vote this is not terribly important but it demonstrates the abject fear the left has of the tea party. they are pulling out all the stops to defame the tea party folks and convince americans they are a bunch of KKK-style haters that want to shove christianity down the throats of americans. that is insane and a palpable lie but the left is getting desperate as they see the nation slowly turning on obama and threatening to dismantle the socialist structure the left has carefully built over the past 70 years. look for lots of this 'republicans hate...(fill in the minority group) rhetoric in the weeks to come.

by jim scott

maybe so ... maybe real republicans™ don't really hate anybody (at least not "KKK-style") ... but unfortunately "navyCanDo" and "jim scott" seem to be two of the few true scotsmen on that page:

i was booing the policy and the question.

by buddhaBrown

he is doing [nothing?] but causing problems for the real Men that are serving My Country.

by easternsky

he didn't need to say he was gay,
he sure didn't.

it was quite obvious that he was a poofer.

by retired greyhound

the soldier had to make the point that he was a fag. why?
i wish there had been a candidate who told him off for wearing his perversion on his sleeve.

by buccaneer81

... he didn't have to mention that he was gay. he could have just asked the question. if you want the audience to shut up and not react, perhaps he should have shut up and not announced it. that works both ways ...

by netizen

... the question had no purpose other than to be another homosexual "in your face" moment. the boo was justified.

by throwback

"throwback" ... heh.

gays in the military is an incremental step in destroying the family, and implementing state control of how children are raised. read the communist manifesto ...

by clock king

"the soldier had to make the point that he was a fag. why?"

because exhibitionism and recruiting and brainwashing the youngsters are the top goal of all homosexuals.

by geronL

persoanlly, i could care less if people want to boo an activist faggot soldier.

by lancey howard

kind of a dilemma, a soldier defending america who is hellbent on destroying it.

by upsdriver

a dilemma for morons, yes.

it's irrelevant what the fag said. let him throw out his san [fran] lib BS and let the candidate handle it. i don't see the need for the audience to react like we are all in harlem watching a movie in the theater ...

by lazlo in PA

hmm ... i can't tell if that last one was a scotsman.

---

bonus quote, via talkingpointsmemo:

back in orlando, TPM asked gary johnson — who scored his first slot on a debate stage in quite a while thursday — if the crowds at the GOP debates were meaner than he's seen before. past audiences have given raucous applause to the concept of 234 executions and praised the idea of letting the uninsured die.

johnson, who is not a social conservative, opposes the death penalty and supports the repeal of don't ask, don't tell, said that the angrier members of the audiences at the debates are not the whole of the GOP.

"in my opinion, when you have booing this is not indicative of republicans," he said. "this is not the republican party that i belong to."

(h/t john cole @ balloon juice)

today's punchline

sheriff joe arpaio inquiring into president obama's birth certificate
by crystal cruz
posted on september 19, 2011 at 9:20 pm

PHOENIX — on one of the latest covers of globe magazine the headline read, 'cops probe obama'. also on the cover, front and center was a picture of sheriff joe arpaio.

"he should focus on something that matters," said julie german.

german said the authenticity of president barack obama's birth certificate was already proven.

"i believe that he was born in the united states," said german.

in april, the white house released obama's original long-form birth certificate.

even so, sheriff arpaio said nearly 300 people have asked him to do some digging.

"i'm listening to my constituents; they asked me to look at it. when i get complaints on anybody whether politicians or anyone else, i don't throw it in the waste basket," said the sheriff.

arpaio said his cold case posse of volunteers are not investigating, but inquiring.

"they're looking into it to see if there is any smoke there," he said. "once they're done i'll look at it and see if there's any jurisdiction that i have, as a county sheriff. if i feel there isn't, maybe i'll give it to other authorities in the state."

3TV asked the sheriff if he believes the president's birth certificate is fraudulent.

"i don't know because i haven't looked at it," arpaio said. "i'm not going to spend hours and hours looking at volumes of information. give it to them, they're not being paid, they're doing it for nothing."

german said arpaio should find better ways to use his volunteer posse.

"have them picking up the trash is more productive than the birth certificate issue," said german.

arpaio didn't have a specific date the inquiry would wrap up.

ok ...

ok ...

wait for it ...

the sheriff said the inquiry could take up to five years to complete.

that rimshot you just heard was the sound of "an inquiry" hitting the circular file.

heh ... good one, joe!

---

y'know, the more i think about it, that punchline's quite a tell all by itself:

shurf joe, "america's sheriff" and darling of right-wing extremists, thinks obama's going to be reelected.

orange alert

with election day 2012 just around the corner, america's enemies just seem to grow bolder:

'credible threats' made to US government
homeland security studying two-hour video from wednesday night

WASHINGTON (the borowitz report) — the department of homeland security said today that it was studying several "credible threats" made to the united states government in a two-hour broadcast wednesday night from a location believed to be the reagan library in simi valley, california.

homeland security spokesman harland dorinson said that the department did not want to alarm the american people, "but whenever you have a group of individuals threatening to dismantle the US government piece by piece, it has to be taken seriously."

in reviewing the two-hour tape, homeland security officials said they found threats to some of the most essential functions of the US government, from social security to the federal reserve.

while stopping short of saying that the speakers were engaged in some sort of jihad, mr. dorinson did note that a tone of religious extremism dominated the video.

"one speaker in particular, seemed bent on rolling back the advances of science and plunging america back into the dark ages," he said.

but the most terrifying moment in the tape came when that same speaker received thunderous applause from the audience after threatening to execute people.

"we're posting pictures of this individual on our website," mr. dorinson said. "hopefully he will be captured before he can carry out any of his plans."

the eternal triangle

one of america's earliest and most respected newspaper strips (b. 1913), faithfully and lovingly realized in 3d:

considering the distinct and surreal draftsmanship of the strip's creator george herriman, i'd say director derek mogford hit this one on the head. (pun intended.)

jonah and the beast

jonah escapes the belly of the beast, with a message for cap'n ahab ...

goodbye to all that:
reflections of a GOP operative who left the cult
by mike lofgren, retired GOP congressional staffer

barbara stanwyck:		we're both rotten!
fred macmurray:		yeah — only you're a little more rotten.
"double indemnity" (1944)

those lines of dialogue from a classic film noir sum up the state of the two political parties in contemporary america. both parties are rotten — how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? both parties are captives to corporate loot. the main reason the democrats' health care bill will be a budget buster once it fully phases in is the democrats' rank capitulation to corporate interests — no single-payer system, in order to mollify the insurers; and no negotiation of drug prices, a craven surrender to big pharma.

but both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. the democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

to those millions of americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the republican party is so full of lunatics. to be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots, like robert k. dornan or william e. dannemeyer. but the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: steve king, michele bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), paul broun, patrick mchenry, virginia foxx, louie gohmert, allen west. the congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

it was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on capitol hill. a couple of months ago, i retired; but i could see as early as last november that the republican party would use the debt limit vote, an otherwise routine legislative procedure that has been used 87 times since the end of world war II, in order to concoct an entirely artificial fiscal crisis. then, they would use that fiscal crisis to get what they wanted, by literally holding the US and global economies as hostages.

the debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 federal aviation administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel — how prudent is that? — in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care. this fact, which ought to be obvious, has nevertheless caused confusion among the professional pundit class, which is mostly still stuck in the bob dole era in terms of its orientation. for instance, ezra klein wrote of his puzzlement over the fact that while house republicans essentially won the debt ceiling fight, enough of them were sufficiently dissatisfied that they might still scuttle the deal. of course they might — the attitude of many freshman republicans to national default was "bring it on!"

it should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the republican party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century europe. this trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

in his "manual of parliamentary practice," thomas jefferson wrote that it is less important that every rule and custom of a legislature be absolutely justifiable in a theoretical sense, than that they should be generally acknowledged and honored by all parties. these include unwritten rules, customs and courtesies that lubricate the legislative machinery and keep governance a relatively civilized procedure. the US senate has more complex procedural rules than any other legislative body in the world; many of these rules are contradictory, and on any given day, the senate parliamentarian may issue a ruling that contradicts earlier rulings on analogous cases.

the only thing that can keep the senate functioning is collegiality and good faith. during periods of political consensus, for instance, the world war II and early post-war eras, the senate was a "high functioning" institution: filibusters were rare and the body was legislatively productive. now, one can no more picture the current senate producing the original medicare act than the old supreme soviet having legislated the bill of rights.

far from being a rarity, virtually every bill, every nominee for senate confirmation and every routine procedural motion is now subject to a republican filibuster. under the circumstances, it is no wonder that washington is gridlocked: legislating has now become war minus the shooting, something one could have observed 80 years ago in the reichstag of the weimar republic. as hannah arendt observed, a disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.

john p. judis sums up the modern GOP this way:

over the last four decades, the republican party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. it is the party of watergate and iran-contra, but also of the government shutdown in 1995 and the impeachment trial of 1999. if there is an earlier american precedent for today's republican party, it is the antebellum southern democrats of john calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

a couple of years ago, a republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. should republicans succeed in obstructing the senate from doing its job, it would further lower congress's generic favorability rating among the american people. by sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

a deeply cynical tactic, to be sure, but a psychologically insightful one that plays on the weaknesses both of the voting public and the news media. there are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. these voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." this ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s — a distrust that has been stoked by republican rhetoric at every turn ("government is the problem," declared ronald reagan in 1980).

the media are also complicit in this phenomenon. ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness. paul krugman has skewered this tactic as being the "centrist cop-out." "i joked long ago," he says, "that if one party declared that the earth was flat, the headlines would read 'views differ on shape of planet.'"

inside-the-beltway wise guy chris cillizza merely proves krugman right in his washington post analysis of "winners and losers" in the debt ceiling impasse. he wrote that the institution of congress was a big loser in the fracas, which is, of course, correct, but then he opined: "lawmakers — bless their hearts — seem entirely unaware of just how bad they looked during this fight and will almost certainly spend the next few weeks (or months) congratulating themselves on their tremendous magnanimity." note how the pundit's ironic deprecation falls like the rain on the just and unjust alike, on those who precipitated the needless crisis and those who despaired of it. he seems oblivious that one side — or a sizable faction of one side — has deliberately attempted to damage the reputation of congress to achieve its political objectives.

this constant drizzle of "there the two parties go again!" stories out of the news bureaus, combined with the hazy confusion of low-information voters, means that the long-term republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends. the united states has nearly the lowest voter participation among western democracies; this, again, is a consequence of the decline of trust in government institutions — if government is a racket and both parties are the same, why vote? and if the uninvolved middle declines to vote, it increases the electoral clout of a minority that is constantly being whipped into a lather by three hours daily of rush limbaugh or fox news. there were only 44 million republican voters in the 2010 mid-term elections, but they effectively canceled the political results of the election of president obama by 69 million voters.

this tactic of inducing public distrust of government is not only cynical, it is schizophrenic. for people who profess to revere the constitution, it is strange that they so caustically denigrate the very federal government that is the material expression of the principles embodied in that document. this is not to say that there is not some theoretical limit to the size or intrusiveness of government; i would be the first to say there are such limits, both fiscal and constitutional. but most republican officeholders seem strangely uninterested in the effective repeal of fourth amendment protections by the patriot act, the weakening of habeas corpus and self-incrimination protections in the public hysteria following 9/11 or the unpalatable fact that the united states has the largest incarcerated population of any country on earth. if anything, they would probably opt for more incarcerated persons, as imprisonment is a profit center for the prison privatization industry, which is itself a growth center for political contributions to these same politicians.[1] instead, they prefer to rail against those government programs that actually help people. and when a program is too popular to attack directly, like medicare or social security, they prefer to undermine it by feigning an agonized concern about the deficit. that concern, as we shall see, is largely fictitious.

undermining americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. but if this technique falls short of producing karl rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's new jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. ever since republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last november, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in wisconsin, republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting department of motor vehicles (DMV) offices in democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

this legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of american history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the middle east was a signature policy of the bush administration. but domestically, they don't want those people voting.

you can probably guess who those people are. above all, anyone not likely to vote republican. as sarah palin would imply, the people who are not real americans. racial minorities. immigrants. muslims. gays. intellectuals. basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. this must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of president obama. i have joked in the past that the main administration policy that republicans object to is obama's policy of being black.[2] among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the good, the true and the beautiful: subversives. commies. socialists. ragheads. secular humanists. blacks. fags. feminazis. the list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

it is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. i would bet that most do not. but they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. during the disgraceful circus of the "birther" issue, republican politicians subtly stoked the fires of paranoia by being suggestively equivocal — "i take the president at his word" — while never unambiguously slapping down the myth. john huntsman was the first major GOP figure forthrightly to refute the birther calumny — albeit after release of the birth certificate.

i do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. while it surely exists, it is also a fact that republicans think that no democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. republicans also regarded bill clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do i remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that republicans traded among themselves). had it been hillary clinton, rather than barack obama, who had been elected in 2008, i am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about vince foster's alleged murder.

the reader may think that i am attributing svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. it is more complicated than that. historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of america since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class — without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.

what do the democrats offer these people? essentially nothing. democratic leadership council-style "centrist" democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, world trade organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for china. at the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the democratic party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.[3]

while democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, republicans went to work. to be sure, the business wing of the republican party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. but the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). instead of predatory bankers, it's evil muslims. or evil gays. or evil abortionists.

how do they manage to do this? because democrats ceded the field. above all, they do not understand language. their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the patient protection and affordable care act. the what? — can anyone even remember it? no wonder the pejorative "obamacare" won out. contrast that with the republicans' patriot act. you're a patriot, aren't you? does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a stimulus bill is supposed to be? why didn't the white house call it the jobs bill and keep pounding on that theme?

you know that social security and medicare are in jeopardy when even democrats refer to them as entitlements. "entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial english: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? that would never occur to the democrats. republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." heaven forbid that the walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. all of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of wal-mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.

it was not always thus. it would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. an unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the rockefellers or the mellons. but that is not the case in the present economic crisis. after a riot of unbridled greed such as the world has not seen since the conquistadors' looting expeditions and after an unprecedented broad and rapid transfer of wealth upward by wall street and its corporate satellites, where is the popular anger directed, at least as depicted in the media? at "washington spending" — which has increased primarily to provide unemployment compensation, food stamps and medicaid to those economically damaged by the previous decade's corporate saturnalia. or the popular rage is harmlessly diverted against pseudo-issues: death panels, birtherism, gay marriage, abortion, and so on, none of which stands to dent the corporate bottom line in the slightest.

thus far, i have concentrated on republican tactics, rather than republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (karl rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

as for what they really believe, the republican party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets i have laid out below. the rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. the GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. the party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of america's plutocracy. their caterwauling about deficit and debt is so much eyewash to con the public. whatever else president obama has accomplished (and many of his purported accomplishments are highly suspect), his $4-trillion deficit reduction package did perform the useful service of smoking out republican hypocrisy. the GOP refused, because it could not abide so much as a one-tenth of one percent increase on the tax rates of the walton family or the koch brothers, much less a repeal of the carried interest rule that permits billionaire hedge fund managers to pay income tax at a lower effective rate than cops or nurses. republicans finally settled on a deal that had far less deficit reduction — and even less spending reduction! — than obama's offer, because of their iron resolution to protect at all costs our society's overclass.

republicans have attempted to camouflage their amorous solicitude for billionaires with a fog of misleading rhetoric. john boehner is fond of saying, "we won't raise anyone's taxes," as if the take-home pay of an olive garden waitress were inextricably bound up with whether warren buffett pays his capital gains as ordinary income or at a lower rate. another chestnut is that millionaires and billionaires are "job creators." US corporations have just had their most profitable quarters in history; apple, for one, is sitting on $76 billion in cash, more than the GDP of most countries. so, where are the jobs?

another smokescreen is the "small business" meme, since standing up for mom's and pop's corner store is politically more attractive than to be seen shilling for a megacorporation. raising taxes on the wealthy will kill small business' ability to hire; that is the GOP dirge every time bernie sanders or some democrat offers an amendment to increase taxes on incomes above $1 million. but the number of small businesses that have a net annual income over a million dollars is de minimis, if not by definition impossible (as they would no longer be small businesses). and as data from the center for economic and policy research have shown, small businesses account for only 7.2 percent of total US employment, a significantly smaller share of total employment than in most organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) countries.

likewise, republicans have assiduously spread the myth that americans are conspicuously overtaxed. but compared to other OECD countries, the effective rates of US taxation are among the lowest. in particular, they point to the top corporate income rate of 35 percent as being confiscatory bolshevism. but again, the effective rate is much lower. did GE pay 35 percent on 2010 profits of $14 billion? no, it paid zero.

when pressed, republicans make up misleading statistics to "prove" that the america's fiscal burden is being borne by the rich and the rest of us are just freeloaders who don't appreciate that fact. "half of americans don't pay taxes" is a perennial meme. but what they leave out is that that statement refers to federal income taxes. there are millions of people who don't pay income taxes, but do contribute payroll taxes — among the most regressive forms of taxation. but according to GOP fiscal theology, payroll taxes don't count. somehow, they have convinced themselves that since payroll taxes go into trust funds, they're not real taxes. likewise, state and local sales taxes apparently don't count, although their effect on a poor person buying necessities like foodstuffs is far more regressive than on a millionaire.

all of these half truths and outright lies have seeped into popular culture via the corporate-owned business press. just listen to CNBC for a few hours and you will hear most of them in one form or another. more important politically, republicans' myths about taxation have been internalized by millions of economically downscale "values voters," who may have been attracted to the GOP for other reasons (which i will explain later), but who now accept this misinformation as dogma.

and when misinformation isn't enough to sustain popular support for the GOP's agenda, concealment is needed. one fairly innocuous provision in the dodd-frank financial reform bill requires public companies to make a more transparent disclosure of CEO compensation, including bonuses. note that it would not limit the compensation, only require full disclosure. republicans are hell-bent on repealing this provision. of course; it would not serve wall street interests if the public took an unhealthy interest in the disparity of their own incomes as against that of a bank CEO. as spencer bachus, the republican chairman of the house financial services committee, says, "in washington, the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is that washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks."

2. they worship at the altar of mars. while the me-too democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as john mccain or lindsey graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries. mccain wanted to mix it up with russia — a nuclear-armed state — during the latter's conflict with georgia in 2008 (remember? — "we are all georgians now," a slogan that did not, fortunately, catch on), while graham has been persistently agitating for attacks on iran and intervention in syria. and these are not fringe elements of the party; they are the leading "defense experts," who always get tapped for the sunday talk shows. about a month before republicans began holding a gun to the head of the credit markets to get trillions of dollars of cuts, these same republicans passed a defense appropriations bill that increased spending by $17 billion over the prior year's defense appropriation. to borrow chris hedges' formulation, war is the force that gives meaning to their lives.

a cynic might conclude that this militaristic enthusiasm is no more complicated than the fact that pentagon contractors spread a lot of bribery money around capitol hill. that is true, but there is more to it than that. it is not necessarily even the fact that members of congress feel they are protecting constituents' jobs. the wildly uneven concentration of defense contracts and military bases nationally means that some areas, like washington, DC, and san diego, are heavily dependent on department of defense (DOD) spending. but there are many more areas of the country whose net balance is negative: the citizenry pays more in taxes to support the pentagon than it receives back in local contracts.

and the economic justification for pentagon spending is even more fallacious when one considers that the $700 billion annual DOD budget creates comparatively few jobs. the days of rosie the riveter are long gone; most weapons projects now require very little touch labor. instead, a disproportionate share is siphoned off into high-cost research and development (from which the civilian economy benefits little); exorbitant management expenditures, overhead and out-and-out padding; and, of course, the money that flows back into the coffers of political campaigns. a million dollars appropriated for highway construction would create two to three times as many jobs as a million dollars appropriated for pentagon weapons procurement, so the jobs argument is ultimately specious.

take away the cash nexus and there still remains a psychological predisposition toward war and militarism on the part of the GOP. this undoubtedly arises from a neurotic need to demonstrate toughness and dovetails perfectly with the belligerent tough-guy pose one constantly hears on right-wing talk radio. militarism springs from the same psychological deficit that requires an endless series of enemies, both foreign and domestic.

the results of the last decade of unbridled militarism and the democrats' cowardly refusal to reverse it[4], have been disastrous both strategically and fiscally. it has made the united states less prosperous, less secure and less free. unfortunately, the militarism and the promiscuous intervention it gives rise to are only likely to abate when the treasury is exhausted, just as it happened to the dutch republic and the british empire.

3. give me that old time religion. pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the republican rank and file. pat robertson's strong showing in the 1988 iowa caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. the results are all around us: if the american people poll more like iranians or nigerians than europeans or canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the republican party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" — or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

the constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency: major candidates are encouraged (or coerced) to "share their feelings" about their "faith" in a revelatory speech; or, some televangelist like rick warren dragoons the candidates (as he did with obama and mccain in 2008) to debate the finer points of christology, with warren himself, of course, as the arbiter. politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. but how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs — economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism — come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized eisenhower republicanism?

it is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in america) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the republican party. for politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes — at least in the minds of followers — all three of the GOP's main tenets.

televangelists have long espoused the health-and-wealth/name-it-and-claim it gospel. if you are wealthy, it is a sign of god's favor. if not, too bad! but don't forget to tithe in any case. this rationale may explain why some economically downscale whites defend the prerogatives of billionaires.

the GOP's fascination with war is also connected with the fundamentalist mindset. the old testament abounds in tales of slaughter — god ordering the killing of the midianite male infants and enslavement of the balance of the population, the divinely-inspired genocide of the canaanites, the slaying of various miscreants with the jawbone of an ass — and since american religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the old testament to the new (particularly that portion of the new testament known as the sermon on the mount), it is but a short step to approving war as a divinely inspired mission. this sort of thinking has led, inexorably, to such phenomena as jerry falwell once writing that god is pro-war.

it is the apocalyptic frame of reference of fundamentalists, their belief in an imminent armageddon, that psychologically conditions them to steer this country into conflict, not only on foreign fields (some evangelicals thought saddam was the antichrist and therefore a suitable target for cruise missiles), but also in the realm of domestic political controversy. it is hardly surprising that the most adamant proponent of the view that there was no debt ceiling problem was michele bachmann, the darling of the fundamentalist right. what does it matter, anyway, if the country defaults? — we shall presently abide in the bosom of the lord.

some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. i am not so sure. there is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. the plutocrats would drag us back to the gilded age, the theocrats to the salem witch trials. in any case, those consummate plutocrats, the koch brothers, are pumping large sums of money into michele bachman's presidential campaign, so one ought not make too much of a potential plutocrat-theocrat split.

thus, the modern GOP; it hardly seems conceivable that a republican could have written the following:

should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. there is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. among them are h.l. hunt (you possibly know his background), a few other texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. their number is negligible and they are stupid.

(that was president eisenhower, writing to his brother edgar in 1954.)

it is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional republicanism of an eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a michele bachmann that impelled my departure from capitol hill. it is not in my pragmatic nature to make a heroic gesture of self-immolation, or to make lurid revelations of personal martyrdom in the manner of david brock. and i will leave a more detailed dissection of failed republican economic policies to my fellow apostate bruce bartlett.

i left because i was appalled at the headlong rush of republicans, like gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. and, in truth, i left as an act of rational self-interest. having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and "shareholder value," the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one.

if you think paul ryan and his ayn rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your social security and medicare, i am here to disabuse you of your naiveté.[5] they will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be "forced" to make "hard choices" — and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked.

during the week that this piece was written, the debt ceiling fiasco reached its conclusion. the economy was already weak, but the GOP's disgraceful game of chicken roiled the markets even further. foreigners could hardly believe it: americans' own crazy political actions were destabilizing the safe-haven status of the dollar. accordingly, during that same week, over one trillion dollars worth of assets evaporated on financial markets. russia and china have stepped up their advocating that the dollar be replaced as the global reserve currency — a move as consequential and disastrous for US interests as any that can be imagined.

if republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and america's status as the world's leading power.

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[1] i am not exaggerating for effect. a law passed in 2010 by the arizona legislature mandating arrest and incarceration of suspected illegal aliens was actually drafted by the american legislative exchange council, a conservative business front group that drafts "model" legislation on behalf of its corporate sponsors. the draft legislation in question was written for the private prison lobby, which sensed a growth opportunity in imprisoning more people.

[2] i am not a supporter of obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies. but when he took office amid the greatest financial collapse in 80 years, i wanted him to succeed, so that the country i served did not fail. but already in 2009, mitch mcconnell, the senate republican leader, declared that his greatest legislative priority was — jobs for americans? rescuing the financial system? solving the housing collapse? — no, none of those things. his top priority was to ensure that obama should be a one-term president. evidently senator mcconnell hates obama more than he loves his country. note that the mainstream media have lately been hailing mcconnell as "the adult in the room," presumably because he is less visibly unstable than the tea party freshmen

[3] this is not a venue for immigrant bashing. it remains a fact that outsourcing jobs overseas, while insourcing sub-minimum wage immigrant labor, will exert downward pressure on US wages. the consequence will be popular anger, and failure to address that anger will result in a downward wage spiral and a breech of the social compact, not to mention a rise in nativism and other reactionary impulses. it does no good to claim that these economic consequences are an inevitable result of globalization; germany has somehow managed to maintain a high-wage economy and a vigorous industrial base.

[4] the cowardice is not merely political. during the past ten years, i have observed that democrats are actually growing afraid of republicans. in a quirky and flawed, but insightful, little book, "democracy and populism: fear and hatred," john lukacs concludes that the left fears, the right hates.

[5] the GOP cult of ayn rand is both revealing and mystifying. on the one hand, rand's tough guy, every-man-for-himself posturing is a natural fit because it puts a philosophical gloss on the latent sociopathy so prevalent among the hard right. on the other, rand exclaimed at every opportunity that she was a militant atheist who felt nothing but contempt for christianity. apparently, the ignorance of most fundamentalist "values voters" means that GOP candidates who enthuse over rand at the same time they thump their bibles never have to explain this stark contradiction. and i imagine a democratic officeholder would have a harder time explaining why he named his offspring "marx" than a GOP incumbent would in rationalizing naming his kid "rand."

help us obi-wan, part trois

i think CNN may be trying to kill us. they have announced who has been invited to their september 12th debate, and it includes, rather inexplicably, two "candidates" who aren't currently even running for the office:

in a statement, CNN announces its line-up for the september 12 tea party express co-sponsored debate in tampa: gov. rick perry, rep. michele bachmann, gov. mitt romney, rep. ron paul, newt gingrich, herman cain, rick santorum, and jon huntsman. the network adds that rudy giuliani and sarah palin were invited: "giuliani declined the debate invitation, while a palin representative has yet to respond to it."

you've got to be kidding me, right? we're still pretending rick santorum is somehow worthy of inclusion over, say, gary johnson or buddy roemer, but somehow CNN is still so hard up for slots that they're inviting two republicans who aren't even running? are we all that hard up for sarah palin news, that CNN is desperate to generate some whether she's running or not?

she loves teaching

while i'm always eager to learn ...

(story and art by vanessa davis)

help us obi-wan, part deux

when we last looked on the GOP's slate for 2012, hope seemed all but completely lost. but what a difference a day makes!

... the man known as "joe the plumber" is back, and may run for congress. "i'm not ruling anything out," wurzelbacher told the ticket in an interview thursday. he added that he thought it was an "interesting idea" and that people have been asking him to run for office since he confronted obama four years ago. he's spent much of his time since then on the speaker's circuit, he said, encouraging others to run for office. "i like the idea of it — just regular americans running. if a regular guy runs, right away the media's going to attack him," wurzelbacher said. "what kind of education does he have? what does he know about this? my answer to that is, regular americans aren't experts, but dammit, look where the experts have gotten us. maybe we need some regular guys in there. that's what i've been doing the past two and a half years, just encouraging regular americans to run. tell the liberal media to go to hell and i don't care what you guys say about me, i'm going to try to fix this country." jon stainbrook, chairman of the lucas county republican party, told the blade he's hoping wurzelbacher jumps in. "he would make a fantastic candidate," stainbrook said.

marco rubio
paul ryan
tim pawlenty
chris christie
mitch daniels
donald trump
mike bloomberg
rudy giuliani
jeb bush
sarah palin
"joe the plumber" wurzelbacher