the party's over

tulsa was shaping up to be a horror show masquerading as the largest human trial in the history of medicine masquerading as a hate rally masquerading as a campaign opener:

sadly, trump's running low on guinea pigs:

bubble boy

"aw c'mon, it was just a routine inspection!"

[wonkette] bill barr says trump just regular bunker baby, not inspector bunker baby :(

bill barr is basically calling donald trump a liar right now.

remember when trump claimed hilariously to fox news's brian kilmeade that he didn't go in the bunker and hide because he was scared of the american people outside, but rather because it was time for a BUNKER INSPECTION, because of how he's the official white house INSPECTOR BUNKER BABY?

yeah, bill barr says that is not it, in a monday interview with fox news's bret baier.

... "things were so bad that the secret service recommended the president go down to the bunker," mr. barr said in an interview with fox news. "we can't have that in our country."

... bill barr's lies are conflicting with donald trump's lies right now, oh how sad.

... he needs the lie narrative out there that there was some major violence happening in the streets, when all impartial accounts say otherwise.

... meanwhile, donald trump is scared of looking like a weenus, so he needs it to be true that he was simply performing his normal daytime INSPECTOR BUNKER BABY duties, instead of being rushed down to the bunker by the secret service for his own protection.

... two men. two different stories they are telling themselves. both stories bullshit.

commies from mars

we know now that in the early years of the twenty-first century this world was being watched closely by socialists browner than we real americans and far less moral than our own. terrorists lusty, stoned and sociopathic, regarded the land of the free and the suburbs of the brave with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. in the twentieth year of the twenty-first century came the great awakening.

it was near the end of may. stocks were better. the covid scare was over. more men were back at work. cities were re-opening. on this particular evening, may 31, internet world stats estimated that 4.65 billion people were cruising the internet ...

donald j. trump @realDonaldTrump, may 31

the united states of america will be designating ANTIFA as a terrorist organization.

anonymous, may 31

i am not one to spread false information, i have been informed by numerous realizable resources. the protest planned for tonight at 8:30 in downtown klamath falls, IS GOING TO BE DANGEROUS. there are two buses heading this way from portland, full of ANTIFA members and loaded with bricks. their intentions are to come to klamath falls, destroy it, and murder police officers. there have been rumors of the ANTIFA going into residential areas to 'fuck up the white hoods'.

do not get me wrong. i am all for peaceful protesting. infact i was going to attend the protest tonight believing it was going to be peaceful.

the real 3%ers idaho, may 31

ATTN ada county BUSINESS OWNERS in boise and surrounding areas:

we have credible intel tonight that antifa and other groups are planning a riot tonight in the boise area. their plan is to destroy private property in the city and continue to residential areas. we are calling on all business owners to contact us if you are concerned for your business and your private property immediately. we are here to protect you, your private business, and have teams on the ground standing by.

ghost 117 @ThomasMerrick16, jun 1

Antifa is now in klamath falls Oregon my home town we the people of klamath falls #Patriotsforlife let's get these terrorists out of our town

cory johnson @cjohnsondubai, jun 1

time to lock and load to protect our home. two buses of antifa showed up in klamath falls and with in an hour the citizens were on the street heavily armed.

pacificriver @pacificedge541, jun 1

3 buses of BLM/antifa dropped off in klamath falls oregon. residents out too protect thier town.

i climbed a small hill above the pond at sixtieth street. i looked in vain for the monsters or the buses that reportedly had brought them.

it was later found that they were killed by the disinfecting agents against which their systems were unprepared. slain, after all man's defenses had failed, by the two humblest things that god in his wisdom put upon this earth: time ... and the cold hard light of reality.

(apologies to h.g. wells)

[nbc news]
in klamath falls, oregon, victory declared over antifa, which never showed up

...still others remain convinced that antifa had been there that night, run off by the sight of hundreds of armed patriots.

and that’s the story spreading online.

"antifa retreats from suburb after business owner and neighborhood show up with guns," stated the headline on the website newspunch, one of the internet’s most notorious fake news destinations. the article quotes a facebook post by dan kline, the owner of a local billiards bar.

"i have never felt a threat to my business as i did last night," kline wrote in his post. "antifa didn’t make it to the courthouse and my bar had no incidents. antifa walked into a hornet’s nest. it was like a sixth grade football team walking into the oakland coliseum to take on the raiders."

the golden age of antifa comics

who can forget these four-color classics from a time when no one declared that anti-fascists were "terrorists" or that tiki-torch-waving nazis were "very fine people" ...

fast forward ...

(see also: "those were the days")

the political circus

those were the days

this is the song of cliven bundy

cliven bundy
deadbeat on monday
rebel on tuesday
fox news hero on wednesday
racist on thursday
doubled down on friday
cast out on saturday
forgotten by sunday
and here ends the song
of cliven bundy

GOP gotta lotta splainin' to do

remember november 2012? (and who doesn't!) back when the new buzzword in republican punditry was "outreach"? if the last two presidential elections taught them nothing else, conservatives learned that they need to channel the coming demographic tide in their direction or be swept by a horde of icky brown people into irrelevance. to that end, frustrated red-staters, sick of slogans and spin, think they can woo hard-to-get traditionally democratic voters with blunt and honest "straight talk" — that is, by "splainin'" to people (whom they'd prefer to keep ignoring) just how dense and gullible they are for not believing the grand old party has their better interests at heart. all it takes is the right message to penetrate the fog. i mean, what else could account for the inexplicable blindness of women and minorities to the grade-A 100% all-american awesomeness of the "right" wing?

1) manSplainin':

i'm no dummy. i see what i see EVERY election cycle, and what i see is the same OL' SH!T. the democrats HYPNOTIZE the females against the 'traditional old white guy' party republican candidate and IT WORKS.

i feel like this is the TOP ISSUE which republican candidates must confront, and that will require OPENLY DISCUSSING THE MANIPULATION OF FEMALES BY DEMOCRATS. [VA governor candidate ken] cuccinelli needs to proclaim "you females are smarter than subjecting yourself to being USED by the PROVEN LIAR democrats!.. DON'T FALL FOR IT. YOU FELL FOR OBAMACARE, HOOK LINE AND SINKER. YOU WERE LIED TO, LADIES, AND THEY'RE LYING TO YOU AGAIN!! THEY AREN'T WHO OR WHAT THEY SAY THEY ARE."

i'm F'ing SICK AND TIRED of watching females huddle together with marxists, totally clueless that they've put their children's futures in jeopardy in exchange for a totally bogus emotional catharsis of the moment. i cannot stand this anymore. i'm SICK of it.

2) whiteSplainin':

3) gringoSplainin':

latinos need to be taught that the democrats have been lying to them, and bankrupting the country, since before most of them were born. somebody has to pay for those free school breakfasts, and even the white billionaires don't have that much money; the money is either borrowed (and your children and grandchildren will pay it back), or it's taxed out of the pockets of working men and women. they need to be taught that the GOP way gives the workers more money because they keeps more of their wages, rather than paying more in taxes; and that the GOP way creates more jobs, and better jobs for everyone.

most of all, they need to be taught that as reagan said, the best welfare program anyone ever invented is a job. get a good job and you can buy all the education, health care, and housing you and your family will ever need. and the way to get good jobs is to get the democratic party's enormous government out of the way, and let entrepreneurs create the jobs.

[democrats] pander to them with the same lame promises they dupe the african americans with.... hope that we can get enough votes to redistribute all the advantages your way.

the flood gates were left open and now we must deal. i agree the black vote will not leave obama so the latin vote looms a bigger prize. as conservatives we MUST start to court the ideas of family and religion to this voting block. when the latinos wake up to the fact that the liberal mind wants to crush their spirituality they will revolt. i say just run some bill maher episodes on secularism as your ad campaign....

republicans need to quit playing defense. they need to find a couple of good telegenic spanish speakers who will go on telemundo and univision look straight into the camera and ask — "we're just wondering ... are latins the new blacks?"

4) gentileSplainin':

when asked how the [messianic jewish bible institute] managed to secure [former president george w.] bush to keynote its fundraiser, [alisa] stephenson [MJBI director of events and partner relations] cited its track record of drawing influential speakers, pointing to the appearance by [right wing ideologue glenn] beck.

at last year's event, members of the MJBI's board of directors explained the organization's mission of converting jews to an audience of hundreds who were seated on a professional football field, wearing formal clothes, and eating pork barbecue. rabbi jonathan bernis, a leading messianic jew and televangelist who chairs MJBI's board of directors, maintained that "our numbers are growing and growing," because "the bible predicted that the day would come when the blindness would come off the eyes of the people it all began with." he was referring to jews.

the first step towards solving any problem is, of course, admitting that the problem exists. as far as the GOP's concerned, the problem isn't that the party's constructed a series of strawmen, scapegoats and bogeymen to serve as red meat and chew toys for its shrinking reactionary base. no, the real problem is getting all those icky strawmen, scapegoats and bogeymen to agree that they're idiots for not voting republican. but something tells me, however, that their hearts just aren't into it — or you.

u.s. v. g.o.p.

atul gawande @ the new yorker:

this kind of obstructionism has been seen before. after the supreme court’s ruling in brown v. board of education, in 1954, virginia shut down schools in charlottesville, norfolk, and warren county rather than accept black children in white schools. when the courts forced the schools to open, the governor followed a number of other southern states in instituting hurdles such as “pupil placement” reviews, “freedom of choice” plans that provided nothing of the sort, and incessant legal delays. while in some states meaningful progress occurred rapidly, in others it took many years. we face a similar situation with health-care reform.

the venn of birthers

rotting away in jail for fraud? well, this could be your lucky day! birthers are once again fishing for clients and anyone convicted under any laws enacted under an illegal president can apply for a get-out-of-jail-free card — at least according to their latest sure-fire usurper-slaying scheme, passed along by birther debunker blog obama conspiracy theories:

dcist.com reports the story that sibley has created a motion template for people convicted under the 2009 fraud enforcement and recovery act (the act makes it easier to prosecute cases of mortgage fraud and predatory lending). they can petition the court to have their convictions overturned because obama isn’t really president, forcing, sibley believes, the courts to adjudicate the president’s eligibility.

wherein i made the following offhand remark:

finding plaintiffs should be rather straightforward since, as with tax protestors and sovereign citizens, one cannot toss a birfer across a citizen grand jury without hitting a convicted fraudster.

which prompted the reply:

someone should make a birther/lowlife venn diagram.

which got me thinking ...

this first one requires a bit of nuance since one can argue that many if not most birthers fall into all three categories.

in the wingnuttosphere, even those that reject birthers (breitbart, beck) still feed into their mania.

odd duck birther martyr and former army surgeon terry lakin doesn't fit into my standard model but i came up with this just for him and his fellow high stakes losers.

not a fluke

not reg'lar folks

comment of the day from "yellowdog" @ ed kilgore's blog "political animal":

the attacks on obama's religion, on his birth certificate, on his purported lack of patriotism, and on his associations with folks like ayers all draw water from the same poisoned well. calling obama an affirmative action president is just one more way of taking away his legitimacy as a candidate and as a leader.

if anything, obama and his team should be very familiar with these sorts of attacks by now. all of them are rehashed and reheated from 2008 — and they will need to dent obama's credibility with people now who were not bothered by them four years ago. in tandem with the false welfare attacks, they might sway some voters. romney likes the welfare lies because they are 'new information' about obama.

problem is, though, romney's basic approval ratings are not budging — and he is not an easy person to cast as a savior of ordinary working people, of any race. taking cruises on yachts registered in the caymans tends to undercut the regular-guy appeal ... ann romney is supposed to help — but it is not an easy or natural message for her either. these are not regular folk — and their attempts to play regular folk fall flat because they are not convincing at it.

the rich are different — isn't that what randians believe after all? the air of natural superiority bleeds through. in rand-world, the wealthy and industrious are superior because their place in the capitalist order has proven them superior. they built it ... they proved their worth, in dollars and cents. the market is a perfect moral arbiter. it's not lake wobegone — every child in rand-world is not above average. the successful are inherently better than the non-successful. if there are winners, there have to be losers. and, wow, what losers now populate our society. what better way to make the case for this moral vision of the world than to point to the distortions of the 'natural' order of things represented in affirmative action? obama stands for all the losers, those who corrupt the natural hierarchy of society. obama is out of his place. he has gotten uppity in the words of one congressman (my own, i regret to say). he has gotten above himself. he is mingling with his betters.

this is the GOP vision right now. we are not all created equal. the capitalist system will sort us out efficiently as to rights and to basic human worth. if you are worthy, you can vote and join the club. if you are not worthy, ashes will be heaped on your head. if you are poor, it is because you deserve to be poor. you did not build it. you did not try. ipso facto — you are a loser. further, you will always be a loser. (and you will try to steal elections, join unions for benefits you did not earn or deserve, and you will always ask government to subsidize your sorriness.)

just think, though, of what this moral view makes of the struggling middle class — what a bleak vision this is for them, for people who are trying harder than ever. is their failure because they are unworthy? is their worth at issue? rand would say yes. of course romney and co. want to blame the problems of the middle class on welfare and affirmative action. if the middle class got a whiff of what the rand-reading yacht-riding class really thinks of them — in randian clarity — it would be pitchforks for mitt. in randworld, you are measured by what you earn. your net worth is your moral worth. if you are not earning enough, it is because you are unworthy. you lack something. your economic problems are your own damn fault.

no wonder mitt wants to talk about welfare ...

dreams from my birthers

i guess i am just dreaming, but i am starting to hear a lot of (new) rumors that barry is going to be arrested within a matter of days.

let us pray they are true!!!

by bob1943 [jun 2, 2011]

most america wrote off birthers in june 2008, when candidate barack obama released his birth certificate to dispel charges that his name was really "mohammed". just like most america wrote off birthers in november 2008 when obama won the election. just like in january 2009 when he was sworn in by chief justice roberts. just like in april 2011 when the president released his long-form birth certificate — while signing the death certificates of osama bin laden and donald trump's political ambitions.

or so america foolishly thought. again. to quote george will, both donald trump and birtherism are "redundant evidence" that "your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into american politics." perhaps the blame lies in the egalitarian nature of the american dream.

dreams die hard. so too conspiracy theories. you could probably write a book about them ...

my dream is that barack obama ... won't be able to go to any city, any town, any hamlet in america without seeing signs that ask, 'where is the birth certificate?'

by joe farah, worldnetdaily.com [feb 2010]

i am so confident about the eventual outcome now that i am increasingly persuaded that barack obama will not even seek re-election.

that will be the tipoff that our suspicions about obama's eligibility and/or life story were correct all along.

by joe farah, [feb 2011]

we will have him out of office in 30 days.

by orly taitz [sep 13 2009]

noone has done more to bring the marxist/muslim down than dr. orly taitz.

she may not succeed this time, but one day she will.

by patriot08 [jan 23 2012]

i just got off the phone with my brother who's a police detective in tucson. you know that lucas smith is in jail there?

my brother says he wasn't arrested for a crime, he's in protective custady to keep obozo's thugs from murdering him. ive never heard my brother so excited. he says he's working with the FBI and obozo will definitely be arrested by monday morning! smith will be the main witness at his trial, becasue of the kenya birth certificate he got in mombasa.

i think its finally happening! the end of the usurper on monday morning!

by dolores moody [jun 2 2011]

i want to witness obooboo’s first day in leavenworth with his new cellmate bubba.

by georgia girl 2 [jun 2 2012]

my dream... one day a judge awards terry lakin every penny that soebarka has ever made.

we are one day closer.

by pa-river [mar 22 2012]

someone, some person or persons out there know what's going on. come forward boldly and publicly with evidence and provide it to sheriff joe. hussein and crew wouldn't dare touch you. cash in your story for 7 or 8 figures. be a hero, or be taken down as an accomplice. i am sure there are people out there that could, and should, do this.

meanwhile, we'll just keep plugging away, asking the tough questions like why there are so many contradictory statements being made by people who should know; why different versions of a single document keep springing up; why the latest one is so obviously a fake; why so much of the MSM seems to be an accomplice to the coverup; etc. i'll just keep hoping and praying that the truth comes out. i will take the day off from work and celebrate when i see hussein perp-walked out of the white house.

by thunderSleeps [may 30 2012]

eventually the damn will break. it may be when obama is well out of office where he could be stripped of his presidential retirement perks like salary and secret service protection.

by red steel [mar 24 2012]

let the neighbors of corrupt puppets like judge land, judge malihi, judge wright know, that they are corrupt and dirty. let their spouse feel embarrassed, that they are married to such dirty and corrupt individuals". we need people on the public sidewalks in front of the houses of the dirty sold out traitors, who sit on the election boards and allowed the usurper obama on the ballot and in the white house. let the family of this corrupt commissioner dumezich be embarrassed to be related to him, let his children be embarrassed to have such a corrupt scum for a father. we need the children of these corrupt commissioners in NH know, that they should be ashamed of their parents. same with all the other corrupt commissioners, corrupt congressmen, corrupt judges, secretaries of state and so on. until know there was no consequence for treason. now there is a consequence: a scarlet "T" for traitor.

... corrupt judges like nishimura, corrupt attorney general luie, corrupt deputy attorney general nagamine, director of health fuddy, registrar onaka are simply corrupt and treasonous and belong on the gallows for treason.

... now a corrupt fulton county judge cyntia wright ... this woman should be hanging from the gallows for high treason against the united states of america. same goes for corrupt judges clay d. land, royce lamberth, corrupt commissioners from the ballot law commission in new hampshire, corrupt commissioners of the elections law commission in indiana, corrupt attorney general eric holder, corrupt director of homeland security janet napolitano, corrupt congressmen, corrupt directors of news networks, who told their cameramen not to film the proceedings, not to report on high treaon and forgery and fraud in the white house ...

by orly taitz [mar 3 2012]

from hero to zero ... once more with feeling

on january 20 birthers found a savior in georgia deputy administrative judge michael malihi, who rebuffed obama's lawyers' attempt to quash their "subpoenas" and who invited all to make their cases in open court. it was not the first time birthers thought a true liberator had come:

"god willing nobody gets to this judge, as they did with judge carter."
— orly taitz, co-counsel for the plaintiffs (malware alert!)

"LOL. the chances of [obama] showing are nil but i admire this judge."
— paul51

"i think it is turning out that an honest judge is the biggest problem for obama. that, and his hubris."
— pa-river

"pray for him. with god's help, this will cause a tidal wave to sweep obama out."
— pray4liberty

"the good people of GA need to find and fund professional personal security folks to insure this judge does not fall victim to an "accident" or other means of demise...."
— manly warrior

"god bless the great state of georgia! this is one judge that intends to uphold his sworn oath to protect and defend the constitution of the united states of america."
— godebert

"OH *U** YEAH!

oh I LIKE this judge! he is following the LAW!!!! who knew! RIGHT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!! oh it's a good friday now, even if i don't have my chemistry homework done!!! WOOT!!!!!"
— danae

"gingrich/mahili 2012."
— churchillspirit

"i am beginning to wonder if this judge mahili may just go down in history as one of the many people who saved this great republic."
— nesnah

a week later on january 26 birther fortunes only soared higher when obama's team boycotted the hearing; the cowardly usurper had ceded the field, both legally and morally, to america's protectors:

"we have won our case. the judge is going to declare a default judgement against obama."
— david farrar, plaintiff

"now we're merely awaiting the publishing of this judge's ruling which, as previously stated, will be a default judgment.

in other words ... we won."
— carl swensson, witness for the plaintiffs

"the "birthers," who have been ridiculed if not ignored by the media and much of the american public for the past three years, have officially been vindicated today."
— floyd brown

"bring it to 'em, judge malihi!"
— backwoods-engineer

"i grilled steaks tonight and we're getting ready to eat pineapple cream pie and coconut cream pie here at our house — to celebrate that there is still apparently one honest judge in the country.

wish i could treat all my fellow patriots here."
— butterdezillion

"georgia does not play!!!! finally a judge with courage!"
— julie

"not showing up makes the judge's job real easy... facts/evidence is undisputed. bamm! (gavel cracking judge's bench)"
— freepersup

"remember to pray for this judge, he has a lot of eyes looking at him and weighing a judgment in this case is going to be a heavy decision."
— an american!

"lord, give the judge and the SOS the courage to do the right thing and keep this miserable spawn of hate off the georgia ballot."
— enterprise

cruelly, even unfettered and unopposed testimony on the record in open court proved insufficient to keep afloat their savior, who delivered his judgment on february 3:

"this behavior of judge malihi was so outrageous, that not only his advisory opinion needs to be set aside, as not grounded in any fact or law, but state and county grand juries and the attorney general of georgia need to launch a criminal investigation into actions of judge malihi ..."
— orly taitz, co-counsel for the plaintiffs (malware alert!)

"the question remains, who got to him or was his mind already made up before the hearing. his ruling is NOT written in his usual style and the ankeny case he cited was provided by someone. who, we may never know but FOGBOW and or perkins cole are the prime candidates."
— carl swensson, witness for the plaintiffs

"i guess bath-house barry could walk into this bastard's court, piss in his face and malihi would just apologize for not helping barry lower his pants."
— mortrey

"UNBELIEVABLE! THE VERDICT IS IN! THERE ARE ZERO GOVERNMENT MEMBERS WITH INTEGRITY."
— anonymous

"TRAITORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"
— kenyanBornObamAcorn

"may he die in his sleep tonight, and all other traitors of the USA"
— margie urban

"all of this is not surprising that the "evil ones" would place a muslim judge to again squash any dealings in a court of law. the "evil ones" planted a seed of hope for us folks that possibly, just possibly, there might be a person of character and a noble and honest judge who would find the answers. then they dashed everything, as part of the plan to again destroy any evidence."
— betsy

"i believe the judge was threatened. most of these people in bench positions, have gotten cushy in their lives, and have "strange skeletons" in their closets. some skeletons they would rather sell america up the road than have exposed. ...then remember that 2 of the supremes are o appointed. and of course, roberts is tainted, having sworn the "illegally sitting resident" into our whitehouse. i am praying hard for our military, and hope they will step in."
— true patriots, navy vet

"i suspect this ruling was not written by judge milihi. ... in his final ruling he makes several constructed opinions based on assumptions ... completely contrary to what he wrote several days earlier. i swear this ain't the same person"
— p5151

"that is what happened in the california case with judge carter. remember the bauer law firm in seattle sent a law clerk down to work for carter and then the case went south from there. i wonder who wrote judge malihi's so called decision."
— iontheball

"that really sucks that the judge caved. i guess the chicago muslim mafia convinced him that was the best way to keep himself and his family breathing."
— hm

"it is a significant number of cowards who fear to stand up to power. the fix is in, IMHO. its gonna take some stones to do the right thing. Beyond the every day set of stones that is. we have not seen a judge with a set yet."
— danae

"just saw the ruling from malihi. there is no other rational explanation than the obama thugs got to him or he saw the gravitas of his decision and he HID HIMSELF like a frightened child."
— dr. david earl-graef (malware alert!)

""we" were defeated because a craven judge decided he would like to live to see his children and grandchildren grow up."
— hinckley buzzard

"judges are the most pusillanimous and obsequious of the entire political class. you will not find a courageous judge, it is essentially an oxymoron."
— hinckley buzzard

"he is iranian for sure. i have somewhere a printout of his background info. his parents names, last names, all iranian

god knows, what kind of a deal was done there

... this judge belongs in prison in the best caes scenario, he should be sharing a cell with obama"
— orly taitz, co-counsel for the plaintiffs (malware alert!)

"well, what scares me is what's coming in november. now that we know that judges can't be trusted to support and defend the constitution, i'm betting that we'll see a very strong showing by the republican nominee (probably mitt romney) and that somehow, the courts will deny him the presidency. once that happens, obama will be in complete control and the increasingly rapid strangulation of our once free country will commence. i foresee that this november will probably be our last free election—unless the bravery of real americans waters the tree of tyranny with the blood of traitors. i haven't fired a weapon since 1974—i came back from viet nam sick of violence (hell, i just a medic), but this bullsh*t makes me so angry i'm going out tonight to cabelas to see what they've got in the way of a nice warm rifle. it's clobbering time!"
— ralph swain

"in the interest of public safety i would like to request of all who are aware of this stinking rotten judge's actions, to please refrain from mugging the low down lying cockroach, throwing rocks at this dog's house, slapping this treasonous corrupt scoundrel's children, spitting on this disgusting animal's wife, to just go directly to the whorse's mouth. give him a call or stop in to see him, for a polite civilized discussion, on why he chose to turn his back on the country that provided the means for him to be in the position he is in.

i am sure that he would want to hear from the people who pay his salary, who put food in his family's stomachs and puts clothes on their backs. naturally, he would want to thank you personally.

for conversing, socializing, bonding with his neighbors and undermining the american legal system, he lists his address as: [redacted]

or, people always love a good fax
why not? he faxed us good."
— mark mcgrew

but let's not judge the judge too harshly, folks:

"all through the past three years there have been judicial decisions wrought with errors ... like breadcrumbs along a trail. one suspects the decisions to have been done purposefully in an effort to propel this issue to SCOTUS."
— satinDoll

see? these so-called traitor judges are really just helping birthers — if the lower courts ever let them win a case, the issue would never make it to the supreme court! just a matter of keeping their powder dry for them ...

(photoSnark via verbalobe)

see also:

"from hero to zero"
"certifigate: from hero to zero, in under 60"

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"

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"

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.

---

[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."