Something Fishy in This Tea

The other night on Rachel Maddow, Gov. Ed Rendell of PA made an important point about media coverage of the Tea Party:

"...the conservatives have won this argument and they‘ve certainly won it over the last 16, 17 months—in the fact that the tea party gets tremendous—the tea parties get tremendous coverage. And think about it—week before the health care vote, they had a rally in Washington, got 1,000 people, maybe not even that. The tax day rally, the big rally to protest federal taxes got less than 1,500 people showing up, according to their own organizer. Other people thought it was in the 400 or 500 range.

Gosh, if I had a rally in Washington to have stronger laws to protect puppies, we‘d have 100,000 people without blinking. And yet, the media, including the so-called liberal and progressive media, have given the tea party-ites elevation in terms of the impact they‘re having on the national debate and discussion—way above what they deserve."

Earlier in the program, Rachel highlighted some other rallies, involving thousands of people protesting cuts in government services. Rendell added that it would be hard to find any coverage of those, let alone the kind of major coverage the Tea Partiers get.

It's even worse than that. There have been several major demos in Washington which involved many times the numbers the T.P.s get, that were completely ignored.

This Sunday there's going to be a major Earth Day event in Washington. There will be stars like Sting singing, so that part will probably pop up on the cable stations. But will it be taken seriously politically? As a statement about national and international priorities? Especially when there's this report that the climate and energy bill is going to drop off the Democrat's agenda.

On the other hand, if this report is true, and the Senate "bill would remove the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, and the states’ authority to set tougher emissions standards than the federal government," then it isn't a bill worth passing.

If this event falls flat, it's partly the fault of enviro groups, who have kept this event a virtual secret, except for the Earth Day committee that is running it. And part of it is the familiarity--nobody is really wondering, what are these people so angry about? But a lot of it is the media refusing to cover anything that is politically to the left of the Tea Party in a politically significant way. We'll see what they do with this event on Sunday.

Not Worried

I'm worried about a lot, like the future of civilization, President Obama going to West Virginia, paying the dentist. But I am not worried about the 2010 elections. Democrats will do fine.

It's not even May. Absent big surprises--and we do get those--this is apt to be the GOPers high point. The U.S. economy is improving, and unless stuff like the volcano in Iceland force the global economy into the tank, it will be better in the fall. Recovery Act funding of visible projects was backloaded--they'll be kicking in by the fall.


The last U.S. combat soldier could well be switching out the lights behind him in Iraq by summer's end. Afghanistan may even be winding down by fall.

The Rabid Right is dangerous in various ways, but not so much in major elections across the country. The Tea Party is hot media air, not enough to sway elections when other voters are paying attention (says E.J. Dionne, among others.) There are already signs that, contra opinion polls, being against health care is not going to be rewarded by voters--especially independents.

And in case anybody has forgotten 2008, we've got a pretty good campaigner now in the White House. Check out this speech for Barbara Boxer and see if President Obama isn't already sounding resonant themes.

The Democrats will likely lose some seats, especially where they have not very good candidates, and there is enough craziness out there to take away some others. But just as the death of the Republican party announced last year by the media bobbleheads proved a little premature, so today's doom and gloom over Democrats is out of proportion. Dems have a lot of work to do just to stay pretty even, but it's doable. And things for them might look a lot better by fall.

The morning after the April 15 Tea Party, a few facts:

Percentage of Americans whose federal taxes are lower this year: 98

Number of years out of the eight years GW Bush was President that taxes for most Americans were higher than now: 8

The Stealth Public Option?

A Kos diarist examining a Kaiser Foundation summary of the health insurance reform law found a provision concerning the health insurance Exchanges that will "Require the Office of Personnel Management to contract with insurers to offer at least two multi-state plans in each Exchange. At least one plan must be offered by a non-profit entity." The "non-profit entity" suggests a kind of stealth public option, though some of the big players--and current abusers--are technically non-profits. However, it probably further ensures that the individual mandate challenge won't be found unconstitutional, if it doesn't require that citizens buy a product from a profit-making company.

Another Kos poster points to several provisions that encourage insurers and the health care system generally to lower costs, and makes health care more affordable.

At the same time, the fact that GOPers smell the possibility of gains in November, plus the one-party vote that passed the bill, is obviously encouraging a continuing opposition by means of lies and extreme rhetoric, and probably emboldens insurance companies to do what they can to subvert the law.

On the other hand, the first congressional electoral test--in which a GOPer tried to inflame and incite Florida seniors on the law, as well as generally insulting the President--didn't work: the Democrat who was supposed to win, did win, with more than 60% of the vote.

The Legal Challenge to Healthcare Reform

There are a number of challenges by politically motivated attorneys-general and governors, playing to larger reactionary forces. None of them have legal merit, let alone real Constitutional challenge. However, the "individual mandate" provision has always been troublesome. If it is the federal government directing every citizen to buy the product sold by a private sector corporation, absent a public option, then it is unprecedented. The closest to it would be state governments requiring automobile insurance, but that is for people who own cars, and citizens are not required to own cars, so they have some choice.

However, this is not how the so-called individual mandate provision was written. As explained by Lawrence O'Donnell, whose expertise is precisely in the area of financial regulations in Congressional legislation, what the mandate basically says is that if you don't buy health insurance, you won't get the tax break that people who do buy the insurance will get. That is clearly within the law and within accepted practice.

Moreover, the IRS will not investigate compliance, but respond to what is on the tax return. I imagine if non-compliance arises in a tax audit, that might be a different story. The IRS has denied the latest Rabid Right scare story, that it is hiring thousands of new agents to monitor compliance.

I still think that an option to buy public plan insurance from the government would more definitively solve this troublesome problem of people feeling they must buy insurance from the same corporate entities who inflate prices, cut coverage whenever possible, and use their money to influence politicians and advertise to drive out competition. But given the compromises in this bill overall, this is an acceptable price at this time for the reforms it includes.

Although I have to admit I say that knowing that it will never apply to me. I look forward to Medicare.

Update: Here's a more detailed explanation of both the insidious Rabid Right lies about this, and the facts.

Uglier in Our Time

With the top racial slur hurled at a Civil Rights hero and Representative, an anti-gay slur and many threats of violence, the latest Tea Party rally in Washington set a new low in ugliness, hated and incitement.

Here's one report, here's another. Clearly the health insurance reform vote tomorrow is driving the frenzy, but I've given up believing this sort of thing will die down anytime soon. It's uglier, but probably not the ugliest. What remains most alarming is the feedback system that is feeding this frenzy--the hate radio stars whipping up their listeners, the empowered bigots pushing every limit, and the connivance of GOPers in Congress, who are hitching their sinking wagons to this dark star. The question being whether this all ends in self-destruction before it destroys a lot more.

How Big Is It? With Update

It's not a Leno (really, a Carson) joke line--it's a question with profound implications for the United States at this delicate moment in human history.

How big is the group of American voters who support the the reactionary-beyond-belief politics, the violently angry far far right?

We know how loud they are. We know that their most extreme views are increasingly embraced by Republican office-holders and aspirants, right up to the leadership in the U.S. Senate.

The latest manifestation is Senator Jim Bunning's ongoing filibuster which is holding up extension of unemployment benefits, affecting millions. As well as other projects that affect the poor and working people. Here's TIME's Joe Klein today:

As this comment from the Number 2 Senate Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, makes clear, the Republicans are turning toward a form of reactionary radicalism that is well to the right not only of traditional conservatism, but also of post-Victorian concepts of government and--not to put too fine a point on it--of common decency as well:

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, the Republican whip, argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting "because people are being paid even though they're not working." Unemployment insurance "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,"

The idea that those who have lost their jobs in this Wall Street/mortgage-scam recession are simply deadbeats, choosing to stay on unemployment rather than look for work, seems more appropriate to Scrooge's London than the 21st century. But Kyl has spoken his version of the truth, and we should be grateful for that: this is what the Republican Party is now all about. The America they--and the Tea Partiers--want would have no Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security (just ask the rising Republican star, Paul Ryan, who would privatize them all), no social safety net, no environmental or workplace regulations, no highway or infrastructure building."

Before this spectacle, there was another, that Frank Rich wrote about over the weekend: the sudden embracing by right wing media mouths and politicians of the guy who flew his plane into a building containing IRS offices, calling him a hero. Referring to Times reporter David Barstow's investigation into the Tea Party movement, Rich writes:

Barstow confirmed what the Southern Poverty Law Center had found in its report last year: the unhinged and sometimes armed anti-government right that was thought to have vaporized after its Oklahoma apotheosis is making a comeback. And now it is finding common cause with some elements of the diverse, far-flung and still inchoate Tea Party movement. All it takes is a few self-styled “patriots” to sow havoc.

While Rich cautions that the Tea Partiers and the Republican officeholders have little in common, the officeholders are falling all over themselves to adopt extremist--and violent--rhetoric.

I've seen a lot of explanations of this "anger," not many of them very convincing. The latest is Michael Lind in Salon, who says that the movement is the last cry of a declining demographic group, the white working class, and that groups in decline tend to want to obstruct the change that is overwhelming them and their world. That's more or less been my working theory (though the rest of Lind's piece makes pretty doubtful conclusions and offers impractical solutions.) What makes absolute sense is that there is a lot of racism involved, and not just black and white, but towards everyone who isn't white. President Obama is the obvious center of projection.

Those emotions are being exploited, fueled and guided with their usual subterranean skill, by reactionary corporate interests, while shameless GOPer politicians are all too obviously trying to ride the wave.

I get all that. I still don't know though how big it is. It's a declining minority (racist whites) of a declining soon-to-be minority (whites). But if you listen to Hardball or CNN, you get the impression that this unhinged anger at Obama and Washington is very big. CNN in particular is promoting the idea, citing its poll that claims that 56% of Americans believe the federal government threatens their freedom.

Here's what I do know: an awful lot is being deduced from one election in MA, which some folks up there think was due largely to state politics. And poll questions of such a general nature bring together people who are never going to actually vote the same way. There are lots of ways to interpret "broken government." Maybe it's Obama to some, maybe it's Republican obstructionism in the Senate to others.

I do think a certain unhinged quality, a mindless lashing out, a feeling of helplessness and general anger, is probably real, and rooted in fear. But all kinds of fear, by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons.

How big is it? is in the end a political question, that elections will settle (without necessarily addressing the question directly.) It may be that Jim Bunning is leading the political equivalent of the Terry Shiavo moment, that was followed by hefty GOPer defeats. We just don't know yet. But if healthcare doesn't pass, this is going to grow.

But there's another important question: how dangerous is it? That doesn't always depend on size. Given the right circumstances, you'd have to say that right now: dangerous. Maybe very dangerous.

Update: The Southern Poverty Law Center issued a new report on Tuesday that quantified growth of right wing extremist groups--at 244% rise in the number of these groups in 2009.

The Politics of Health Care

President Obama outlined the process for health insurance reform at a Democratic National Committee function on Thursday, and it's pretty interesting, pretty shrewd. It also illuminates for me what conclusions he's drawn from the debacle in MA.

Immediately after the unthinkable (and unthinkably embarrassing) loss of the 60th Senate seat in a solidly Democratic state--the seat held by John and Edward Kennedy for a half century--Obama announced that he wasn't going to try to rush the healthcare bill out of conference and through the House and Senate before the Dems lost their filibuster-proof 60 (which coincidentally happened officially on Thursday.) This upset some people, because it seemed a kind of surrender. He also seemed to step back from the process, letting congressional leaders hash out how to accomplish the final bill, and some feared he was abandoning health care completely.

But in his State of the Union and in every forum since, he's made clear that he's still committed to healthcare reform. But why he backed off a bit became
clearer today. Apart from the complacency that allowed the Senate seat to slip away (and Obama addressed that immediately by bringing David Plouffe back to ride herd over all the congressional races this year), Obama clearly saw that the GOPers had succeeded in distorting the healthcare package enough so it didn't have the support it should. And the lack of public support was showing up in declining support among Democrats in Congress.

So his plan is to organize a meeting of legislators--Dems and GOPers--along with the relevant experts, make it public--televise it--and hash out the plans that were passed, and what should go into the final bill. Then put it to a vote. The process, he indicated, should take only a few weeks, and might be the next order of business after the jobs bill he says is his first priority right now.

“What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I am sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts and let’s just go through these bills,” Mr. Obama said. “Their ideas, our ideas. Let’s walk through them in a methodical way, so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense. And then I think that we have got to move forward on a vote. We have got to move forward on a vote.”

Part of what Obama clearly wants to do is clear the air of distortions, and focus public attention on what the bill will really do, and what it won't.

Mr. Obama said that Americans were apprehensive about the health care legislation because there was too much misinformation that he would now work to clear up.
“They are certain that they would have to go onto a government plan, which isn’t true,” the president said. “But that’s still a perception a lot of people have. They are still pretty sure that they would have to give up their doctor. They are still pretty sure that if they are happy with their health care plan, that it’s bad for them. They are still positive that this is going to add to the deficit. So there is a lot of information out there that people understandably are concerned about.”

He presented the rest of the process in a matter-of-fact manner: He continued, “That’s why I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks and then let’s go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that if Congress decides, if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that’s how democracy works, and there will be elections coming up and they will be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or another during election time.”

But there was a more aggressive message under the calm. Because clearly he believes this is an argument he can win, and once the actual undistorted plan is clarified for the public, there will be a political price to pay for not passing it.

It's a gamble, but you have to like his chances. GOPers are still reeling from his dismantling of them and their arguments at the Republican House caucus. The other very powerful element in his favor is the fact that both the House and Senate have already passed comprehensive health care bills, 90% of them (the President says) the same. So all the painful months of this process so far may not have been wasted. It still will take some heavy lifting, but the process that Obama outlined is both rational and politically shrewd. GOPers have been crying that nobody is listening to their ideas, and they've criticized Obama for not conducting a more public--and televised--process. After the televised caucus Q&A, they may not be as eager for that--but if it's handled right, they're going to get it.

If it works, the process will be persuasive, polls will reflect increasing public support for reform, and legislators will have to decide which side of history to be on, and what they want to face the voters having done or not done.

At one point, as the president insisted that he would continue to fight for the health care bill, the crowd chanted, “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!”

Predictions After the Fact

I had my election and World Series predictions, which I never got around to posting. I was two of three on elections--I had the Dem in NY 23 but also Corzine in a New Jersey squeaker. Virginia was a gimme.

World Series: obviously if the other team has three wins, you have to win every game, but I felt that if Philly could get through game 6, they had a good chance of winning it all. But I didn't really think Pedro was going to do it, and so far he hasn't--it's still early innings, but Pedro was knocked around for 4 runs. The Phillies have to score in the middle innings before they get to the Yankees short relievers, and even then, with their short relievers it's a drama. So my prediction was either Yankees in 6 or tossup in 7.

As for the NFL, there were more interesting games this week than last, with the Baltimore Ravens dismantling of the Denver Broncos the most interesting. Pittsburgh sportswriters are crowing about the Denver weaknesses it exposed, but it's also possible it was just an off week, a bad game. I still think the Steelers have their hands full Monday night at Denver, though I'm a bit more optimistic about a victory there. Denver is going to be determined, and the Steelers should also feel they need this game, because if the Ravens catch fire, they'll have to worry about getting into the playoffs.

The only games I saw much of were the Saints v. Atlanta (I have to say the Saints look like they're for real) and Minnesota v. Green Bay. I came away from that one with more admiration for the Vikings--I expect them to be in the title game.

How the Republicans Lost the Olympics

When Chicago lost out in its bid for the Olympics, Republicans crowed. They had loudly complained of President Obama's trip to Copenhagen to speak on behalf of Chicago, and were overjoyed that the U.S. lost.

But among the factors against the U.S. was the continuing xenophobic restrictions on visas and passports into the U.S., instituted by the Bush administration and sanctioned by his Republican Congress:

"However, the triumphant Chicago presentation--the culmination of a $48 million package--had cold water thrown onto it when Pakistani IOC member Syed Shahid Ali correctly noted the significant difficulties facing foreigners seeking entry into the United States... America's visa processing issues have been well-publicized throughout much of the world, with some tourists waiting six months or more to have a 10 minute appointment with a visa examiner in an embassy or consulate to visit America on a vacation. Business visas or those for cultural ambassadors, like artists and athletes, are similarly problematic. "

Or maybe civilized people just aren't interested in taking off their belts and shoes, and surrendering their nail clippers and plastic bottles, just to get on a damn airplane.

The Republicans continue to manipulate the media, but the media is becoming an echo chamber audible mostly to itself. Someone on cable noted today that indeed the Rs are opposing absolutely everything that President Obama or the Democrats propose, say or do, including those areas that used to be nonpartisan. This voice added that it seems to be working for them. But outside the echo chamber, it actually isn't. A Pollster.com analyst concludes that "the Republican brand" is the lowest in popularity in history. A CBS poll R's favorables were a minus 30.

The Death Party

On 60 Minutes President Obama again lamented that thanks in part to 24 hour cable news (which isn't strictly accurate, unless you include infomercials and prison documentaries) that the loudest voices dominate the political dialogue.

The loudest voice lately was Joe Wilson shouting at him during his speech to Congress, and the louts who are now loudly supporting the shouter. In a way it was inevitable, especially after the Daily Kos brigades, perhaps appropriately but certainly predictably, expressed their umbrage by raising money for Wilson's electoral opponent. Then the Rabid Right screamed forth to raise money for Wilson. There may not be a causal link, but it's happened before.

It was the talk of Rabid Right talk radio, and also (reportedly) of black talk radio, where the first outburst calling a President a liar in such an official setting was made by a white southern male to the first American American President were judged not coincidental. Before long, white commentators were voicing that same suspicion. Maureen Dowd did so in the Sunday NY Times, and E. J. Dionne in Monday's Washington Post. Meanwhile, Wilson, seeing which side his bread is buttered on, has more or less withdrawn his apology, and looks upon the imminent possibility of a House motion to disapprove or censure him as more grist for the fundraising mill.

The Saturday gathering of teabaggers in Washington was a signal event, in the ugliness and racism of signs and remarks, and in the baldfaced lying involved in bragging of a crowd of between one and one and a half million, when reputable sources estimated it in the tens of thousands, well under the size of the crowd in Ohio that watched the Buckeyes fall to USC.

But what these folks lack in numbers they can make up in violence, such as the fourfold increase in threats to the President that the Secret Service is reportedly receiving. Or the hatespeech uttered by a preacher in Phoenix a day before the President's visit in which he expressed from his Christian pulpit his desire for the President's death, which was heard by a man who showed up at that speech carrying a gun.

I'm beginning to wonder just how far this racism extends. Because I can't believe that this incident would have gone by with so little official notice or consequence, had the President been George W. Bush.

What this rising tide of ugliness portends has many facets. One is the shameless use of baseless lies--the Big Lie comes to America bigtime--which is related to another that I intend to get into at proper length, the elevation of ignorance to supreme virtue. But for the moment, I give you E. J. Dionne's emphasis on what this says about the American character--something that President Obama spoke about the other night.

Dionne quotes Rush. "This administration is not your average presidential administration," Limbaugh declared. "This is not a garden party. This is not a lecture at Harvard or any other university. We are in the process, we are in the midst of an administration that is trying to totally tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great."

Dionne then asks: And what evidence is there that Obama is tearing down our "institutions and traditions"? There is none, unless you see it as an affront to our traditions that we have our first president whose father was born in Kenya, or that the American people decided to elect someone other than a conservative as our commander in chief. The far right has decided that extremism in assailing Obama is no vice.

But Dionne's main point is about what made Joe Wilson so angry--the President said it was not true that "our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants." But Wilson and his ilk are maddened by even the phantom possibility of some bleeding illegal getting free stitches or emergency surgery, or some sick illegal child getting treated for flu. Dionne mentions the practical consideration of public health that affects everyone, but he focuses on the character issue: " But I am not at all at peace with the fact that the one issue about which a member of Congress chose to rise up and accuse our president of being a liar related to the charge that our chief executive wasn't doing enough to build walls between illegal immigrants and health coverage. "

So with the White Supremacist Party, who needs Death Panels? Just let them all die. It's the Death Party now. That's all they're about.

The Nonsense of August

Two days before President Obama's address to Congress signals the final push for a health care reform, the Political Wire says this:

As everyone gets back to work on Capitol Hill, it's increasingly clear that President Obama survived a brutal August and that even under a worst case scenario he'll be able to sign a meaningful health care reform bill.

Marc Ambinder : "After August, conservatives have exhausted their repertoire of arguments and many of their demagogic tricks. Public support for significant health care reform as something worth doing remains high. Support for Obama's plan remains unchanged -- didn't grow, certainly, but didn't decline. Support among Democrats remains at 90%. Obama's message tomorrow night will be one that dovetails with what the American people believe: it's important to get health care reform done."

Jonathan Chait: "Despite all of the setbacks and all of the missed opportunities -- despite this train wreck of a month -- the situation remains remarkably similar to what it was before the recess. Significant health care legislation is likely to pass, particularly if Obama manages to give a good speech on Wednesday night. And while the possibilities for what that legislation might accomplish have certainly diminished, mostly for worse, it's not clear how much they have diminished -- and to what extent progressives may yet have the power to change that fact."Most important, Democrats are coming to realize that failing to pass a bill when they control the House and Senate would be political suicide -- just like it was during the 1990s.

The Right To Get Out of a Town Hall Meeting Alive

I lived through the assassinations of the 1960s, barely. I know what gun violence can do to our collective life and to our individual lives, even at a great distance. But we all have seen evidence in just the past week of what one violent person can do with a gun in a crowded space.

So I am utterly astounded at the spectre of people carrying guns to town hall meetings, one outside a meeting with President Obama in New Hampshire, and one actually inside a meeting with a Congressional Rep in Arizona,, where a holstered gun clattered onto the floor. And completely baffled by the apparent fact that in both cases, this gun-toting was legal.

There are two concerns here. First, the safety of the President and of Members of Congress. But second, the safety of the people attending town hall meetings.
How can it be legal to bring a loaded gun to such an event, even in the parking lot? But even more, how can it be legal to bring a gun into a town hall meeting? Does the right to bear arms trump the right to get out of a town hall meeting alive?

Presumably, there are fire codes that would prohibit someone from setting a fire in this crowd. But there is no law covering the clear and present danger of gun violence? In a heated situation, in which tempers are clearly on edge, and when people are being incited to go to these events with the most inflammatory public rhetoric I've heard in decades?

Presumably the Secret Service can prevent guns from getting much nearer than the parking lot outside an event where the President is appearing, but that's too close for me. That gun was loaded, and the man was holding a sign that made clear his advocacy for shedding blood.

But as we've seen in the coverage of other town hall events with Senators and Reps, there is little or no security. So there is no one to prevent guns from entering, and no one to deter their use inside.

This is a threat to participatory democracy and to the public safety. It must be addressed. Do we need video of bleeding bodies and panic to anticipate and correct this? I don't want to see the current insanity become tragedy for the innocent and their families as the result of some "lone gunman" at a town hall somewhere.

While it may be that the extremists showing up at these town hall meetings aren't doing much good for healthcare opponents, I'm afraid that stunned disbelief and ridicule are not sufficient responses. Somebody has to take the clear and present danger seriously.

Josh Horwitz has a column that narrates what's being going on, and how the fomenting of violence is a consistent theme. He concludes:

This year has already been marred by a series of horrific shootings involving individuals who hated our government and believed they had a constitutional right to strike against it: Richard Poplawski in Pittsburgh, James von Brunn in the District of Columbia, Scott Roeder in Wichita, Gilbert Ortez, Jr. in Texas, etc. With tensions escalating at town halls across the country, the overwhelming majority of Americans who wish to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights must speak out against the violent, insurrectionist philosophy that has corrupted the Second Amendment.

I advocate more than that. Somebody important at the White House better be calling somebody important at the FBI who better be alerting law enforcement at the local level. These guys seem pretty good at spying on Quakers. Maybe they ought to be checking groups and individuals who have crossed the line and actually threaten violence, with the means to cause it.

Time Out

The insurance company-promoted violent mobs preventing citizens from hearing their (Democratic) members of Congress on the important pending healthcare legislation, the TV and radio traitors ginning them up, the rapid growth of Rabid Right terrorism--at the same time as headlines suggest a retreat to meaningless reform--is all so upsetting that my dear partner has warned me to stay off the news for awhile. So I will. In a minute.

I don't actually participate much at Daily Kos these days, but the alarm there is palpable and not entirely extreme. While the frontpagers catalog the parade of outright lies and fraud, as well as the accelerating threats and acts of violence, diarists like this one and this one and this one analyze the nasty direction. And I'm not going to let the historical echoes be preempted by the projections of the Rabid Right, because it all does remind me of what I've read about Germany in the 30s, when the Nazis were just starting to make their move.

Paul Krugman got a lot of attention with his column, and he rightly ascribed a lot of the emotion involved to racial paranoia and outright racism:

Many people hoped that last year’s election would mark the end of the “angry white voter” era in America. Indeed, voters who can be swayed by appeals to cultural and racial fear are a declining share of the electorate.

He also alluded to Yeats' scary apocalyptic poem:

But right now Mr. Obama’s backers seem to lack all conviction, perhaps because the prosaic reality of his administration isn’t living up to their dreams of transformation. Meanwhile, the angry right is filled with a passionate intensity.

And he concluded:

And if Mr. Obama can’t recapture some of the passion of 2008, can’t inspire his supporters to stand up and be heard, health care reform may well fail."

I have been getting emails from the Organizing for America organization that grew out of the Obama campaign, but they don't seem to be as creative and on top of stuff as they were then, or so it seems to me. Still, I've called my congressman as they requested (he's also had a town meeting disrupted, though that was far from here--this district is spread over an enormous area. Interesting that they shouted What's wrong with profit? which doesn't sound very populist, but goes pretty much to the heart of what's wrong with healthcare.) And yes, I've even contributed some money again, to pro-healthcare reform ads. But none of it seems like enough so far.

But I'm hoping to take the weekend off, for my mental health. And I'll give the last word to Bill Maher in his cogent column: New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country.

Thursday's Notes

Caught on TV: "I like the organic industrialism of this piece." Organic industrialism? Is that like industrial farming?

Electronic media seems to turn everything into a circus. The Beer Summit. The woman who called police, the black officer who witnessed the arrest of Skip Gates, relentlessly and unfairly vilified, both sound hurt and both look like they've been run over by a steamroller.

Trenchant commentary on the subject by the Brown professor Rachel Maddow had on first. But the comment that will stay with me was made yesterday by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist (and black man) Eugene Robinson, after host Howard Dean tried to make it sound like all this was just a mistake all around. Robinson said that he did not know a black man who doesn't believe race was a factor in Professor Gates' arrest.

On the circus: Chris Matthews, while decrying such loud liars and amplified morons as the Birther people, also complained that Obama's press conferences were too dull. He said so to the tune of very loud background music, and it may have been during his "Politics Sideshow" segment. Someday he might put it together: it's news as entertainment that empowers and amplifies the lunatics and liars, and by complaining about substantive news conferences, he's encouraging the media atmosphere that gives the idiocies he decries their aura of legitimacy.


Despite the hoohaw about Obama poll numbers, the Gallup poll headline is Obama Gets High Marks on Leadership and Empathy. And while other numbers are down from the stratosphere, Pres. O and the Democrats still do significantly better than the GOP/ White Supremacist Party.

Tuesday's Notes

If you're looking for a site that is tracking the ins and outs of healthcare legislation in brief summaries, you're looking for TMP/DC.

TG's Political Wire notes a lovely bit of theatre at the Sotomayor hearings. When GOPer windbag Sen. Sessions sententiously quoted the philosophy of another woman jurist to counter the caricature of S's approach he was trying to create, S. noted that the jurist he quoted was a friend, and in fact was in the audience at the hearing supporting her. Sessions is not considered the brightest bulb in the Senate, so maybe this one was too easy, but it was a nice piece of one-up-showmanship.

A couple of Kos diarists, Blue Texan and Turkana, have made the point that I've suggested before, but with Sarah Palin as the proof. Here's how Turkana put it, referencing a Peggy Noonan column deriding Palin: "Noonan herself played right along, pretending the ultimate elitist Bush was a man of the people, pretending his lack of intellect or intellectual curiosity was somehow laudable, pretending that she herself gives a whit about anyone living outside her own income bracket or social circle. Had it not become possible for someone as manifestly unqualified and incapable as George W. Bush to become president, it would not now be possible for Sarah Palin to be taken seriously as a national political figure. Had Bush been dismissed as the caricature he was, no one outside of Alaska would know Sarah Palin's name."

It's been a long time since I paid attention to the baseball All-Star game, but I found myself watching both the home run derby and the old timers/celebrity softball game yesterday, so I expect to watch at least the first few innings of the game tonight. I remember watching the home run derby as a kid, although I'm not sure it was associated with the All Star game yet. But those All Star games I watched, black and white images from one camera high above home plate, featured Mantle and Mays, Maris and Musial, and other famous players whose names didn't start with M. The idea of putting young celebrities in with the old timers helped the entertainment value of that game, but at my age the most fun was watching gray-bearded Ozzie Smith playing shortstop with style.

Terminator Lies

Pushing his suddenly rabid right agenda, the Terminator (who is currently governor of California) is lying about fraud and abuse, demonizing a program to help the elderly and confined by asserting that a quarter of its funding is wasted. His own administration's study says it's more like 1%.

Rabid Right shock doctrinaires are trying to scare investors etc. by claiming that California's businesses are leaving in droves. It's not true. Neither are the rich. And why would they? What is true is that the rich are avoiding any responsibility or payment for the budget crisis, while the poor and the middle class state employees are paying everything, including their health.

The poor can't do anything about it, although some courts are defending them and state employees. But the middle class state employees can at least strike.

The Delusional Enabled

Here are two examples of two trends. The trends are: the Republican congressionals' increasing detachment from reality, and the latest Internet/blogosphere/Twitter/instant messaging technologies tendency to enable and propel their delusional politics, wasting everybody's time, energy and public money.

The two examples are in one dispatch on Tuesday's congressional follies by TPM: first, the GOPer noise machine amping the volume on a Congressional Budget Office report that by the end of the day was proven not to exist, and an equally delusional panic button Twitter-storm on a vote that was never scheduled and never happened.

Palintology

Sarah Palin picked Friday July 3 to announce she's stepping down as governor of Alaska after 2 and a half years of her first term. Her logic was completely bogus: she's not going to run in 2010, so she's a lame duck, and a lame duck governor does nothing but travel a lot. First of all, a lame duck is an officeholder who can't legally run again. She can. And she wouldn't be even perceived as a lame duck unless she announced she wasn't running, which there was absolutely no reason to do. She made herself a lame duck, and then used that as an excuse to quit.

The pundocracy is somewhat divided: she's committed political suicide, or she's freed herself up to build a national base to run for the presidency in 2012. I think she wants a national profile, but as a media celebrity. She's got some sort of deal in her pocket. She made sure she had her $7 million book deal signed before she made this announcement. She can make a lot of money catering to the Rabid Right: book sales, speeches, some sort of Rush Limbaugh type media presence. It became clear, with the Vanity Fair article, that she has no future within the Republican Party. And it's a long time to 2012. Who knows what can happen. This is just the first shoe to drop, though. Another is coming.

Danger Signs

The tax day "tea parties" were easy to ridicule--as I did here. Organized by big lobbying firms and heavily promoted by Fox News and the largest media company in the world, they gathered "grass-roots" demonstrators protesting not only taxes but any of their right wing and lunatic fringe obsessions.

Rachel Maddow made a telling point in her coverage. She noted that tax day often brings out the lunatic fringe, but this time the Republican party embraced them and their causes--and their tone. I think you can go further and say the Republicans adopted their causes and their tone.

That tone is what really worries me. It was not only extreme but violent. Violently inflammatory images--of President Obama as Hitler, as Mao, and in various racist depictions--seemed to be common. President Obama was routinely called a socialist and a fascist--and not just by the rabble, but by Republican politicians and media. What fascists and socialists have in common certainly includes identification as a deadly enemy that Americans have taken arms and killed people to defend against.

Couple these inflammatory, emotionally charged images with another feature of these protests: they included those asserted not just their right to bear arms but their passionate love of guns, and their anger at the perceived threat from President Obama to take those guns away.

This is in a political climate where it is apparently impossible to suggest that assault weapons and automatic weapons that aren't meant to kill people--and in very rapid fashion, do kill people, in Pittsburgh, in Binghamton and elsewhere just in the past week or so--should be controlled.

Some argue whether these demonstrations were politically effective. They probably weren't. Because they were dangerous, and I don't hear this said enough. The Republican party and its media apparatus whipped up violent sentiments aimed at the President. They made common cause with people are may very well include the seriously deluded and unstable.

I watched some of President Obama's speech to delegates at the Latin America conference on Friday. He said what he has said in Europe, to Congress and the American people, on a bewildering range of issues in an amazingly short time: "I am not here to debate the past. I am here to deal with the future."

Despite whatever misgivings I may have about this policy or that decision, the more I see and hear him the more convinced I am of this: the future depends on Barack Obama. There is no one else with his intelligence, breadth, vision and ability to lead. There is no one else.

Those signs at those tea parties are danger signs. I don't know what else to do but pray for the Secret Service.