THE LYING? IT'S STRICTLY BUSINESS.

Via Rumproast and Atrios, I see from Media Matters that World Net Daily is lying about Nidal Hasan to tar the Obama administration (in an article written by Swift Boat liar and birther Jerome Corsi) -- but Media Matters leaves out one key detail, without which you don't know how deeply cynical WND's lie is:

WorldNetDaily falsely claimed that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan "advised Obama transition" in the headline of an article by Jerome Corsi highlighting his listing as a "participant" in a report for the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University's Presidential Transition Task Force. However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that "the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition" -- indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008. Moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 "Task Force Event Participants" in the report's appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a "member" of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP'd for several of the group's open events.

Here's the WND article. Now, why is WND all over this non-story? Scroll to the end:

According to an explosive new book, "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," Hasan is just the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the U.S. military -- which is too blinded by political correctness to see the threat.

... Quoting from a classified military briefing, "Muslim Mafia" reveals that this Fifth Column has penetrated "every branch of the U.S. military." The Islamist enemy has even infiltrated the al-Qaida detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Special offer:

Get "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America," autographed, from WND's Superstore.

This isn't just a book WND is promoting and selling, it's a book WND published just last month. WND has been promoting the crap out of it ever since -- as have the likes of Pajamas Media and (in a Denver Post op-ed) congressman and former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo. WND got up to #16 at Amazon -- but it's currently down to #211, so some serious hype is obviously called for.

And if the administration is the victim of a vicious McCarthyite smear? Well, it's strictly business.

FUNNY THING ABOUT RIGHT WINGERS

So far, I haven't heard anyone on the right saying that the authorities shouldn't charge Malik Nidal Hassan with a hate crime because doing so would be a totalitarian, Orwellian criminalization of a thoughtcrime. But surely they'll want to make that point firmly and decisively in the days to come ... right?

****

And I'm confused. Right-wingers (NewsBusters in particular) have told us for years that the "liberal media" doesn't like to acknowledge certain demographic information about certain suspects in horrible crimes ... but right now CNN is prominently highlighting a convenience-store surveillance video showing Hasan in a traditional Middle Eastern robe and skullcap (the story is headlined "Fort Hood Suspect Seemed 'Cool, Calm, Religious'"), while the front pages of Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post prominently feature stories that claim Nidal shouted "Allahu akbar!" before shooting (a claim made by Fort Hood's commanding officer in an interview on the allegedly arch-liberal NBC). How can this be? Where's the liberal cover-up? And if there's no cover-up, gosh, why isn't NewsBusters heaping these news outlets with praise?

(The same right-wingers, of course, went to great pains to make the case that James von Brunn, the man charged with shooting up the Holocaust Museum, was a liberal. But our side, naturally, is the guilty side.)

JOSHUA GOLDBERG RESPONDS

I found this response in comments to my Joshua Goldberg post (click to enlarge):



OK, fair enough. But right after that, I found these comments:



Guess what, Josh? I know they came from you. I checked my Haloscan account -- they came from the same IP address as your comment.

Very mature, Josh.

MASS SHOOTING AT FORT HOOD

I'm speechless.

The cries of "JIHAD!" have already started on the right, of course, based on the name of now-dead shooter Major Malik Nadal Hasan.

And I wonder who'll be the first prominent right-winger to say nothing like this could have happened on Bush's watch, even though something, y'know, a couple hundred times more deadly actually did.

*****

LATER: There's a good chance you already know this, but AP is reporting that Hasan came under investigation by the military six months ago, for Web postings "that discussed suicide bombings and other threats," including this one, which seems to defend suicide bombing. England's Telegraph quotes a retired colonel, Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan and says he "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," claims Lee also made in this interview with Shepard Smith of Fox News (in which I have to say he sounds sincere and believable, though I'm not really qualified to judge):



In the interview, Lee also says Hasan was disappointed at the fact that President Obama hasn't withdrawn troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

And The New York Times quotes a cousin who says Hasan has resented anti-Muslim harassment in the military for years and retained a lawyer a while back to help him leave the service.

The response to all this on much of the right, of course, will be "Kill 'em all." And so the vicious cycle continues.

NO GOP FIRST LADY WOULD EVER BE THAT GAUCHE ... OOPS!

From Britain's Daily Mail:

Michelle Obama is to be the first presidential wife to appear on a reality TV series.

The First Lady will make a guest appearance on 'Iron Chef America' ...

Many of the ingredients for the meals prepared in the show were chosen from the recently planted White House vegetable garden....

It is the first time a First Lady, or even a member of the White House staff, has featured in a TV reality show....

The move is likely to open up the White House to more criticism over its increasing links to Hollywood.

... an editorial in Esquire magazine today called Mr Obama 'the Megan Fox of the White House', slamming him for governing by image instead of policy, and lamenting pop culture's takeover of politics....

Yeah! How dare these people! Why can't they be more like the Bushes? Laura Bush wouldn't have dreamed of doing something like this!

Oops:

Laura Bush Guest Stars on Extreme Makeover

By Stephen M. Silverman

Originally posted Wednesday September 28, 2005 08:00 AM EDT

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition got a special guest star during a taping Tuesday: First Lady Laura Bush.

"It's going to take all of these (volunteers) working together to help people rebuild their lives," Bush said in the hot and crowded Biloxi (Miss.) Community Center, where a mountain of donated clothes covered a stage in preparation to be handed out.

The first lady -- with Preston Sharp, a designer on the ABC reality show, at her side -- greeted storm victims and dispensed the donated items from large plastic bins, the Associated Press reports.

While her husband's administration has been criticized for initially appearing detached from the relief effort ... Mrs. Bush said she was encouraged by the way governments, private organizations, faith-based groups and individuals were helping ease the suffering caused by the Aug. 29 hurricane....

Governing by image instead of policy? Thank God the Bushes were above all that, hunh?

****

UPDATE: Oh hell, I forgot about this. (H/T: Roger Ailes in comments.)

UP, DOWN, AND ALL AROUND THE BLOGGOSPHERE

First, read Roy here.

SHORTER ROD DREHER. The Mad Men in my head, where they all get AIDS and die, is so much better than the real one, don't you think? Too bad liberals don't get it -- they see it smugly, whereas conservatives see the [deep, quavering voice] traaagedy. [brightly] Did I ever tell you I met a color -- er, black gentlemen who said segregation wasn't so bad?

OK, don't forget to read the comments too. Then hop on over and read Amanda here.

Dreher’s main thrust as a conservative is to be a religious conservative, i.e. invested in the idea of shoving women into the kitchen while being open to the idea that teaching women to read was a mistake. So I’ll bet that he dislikes watching Betty onscreen. She’s what conservatives fantasize about---a woman that’s completely and uncomplainingly absorbed the idea that her job is to live for her husband, to obey his every wish, to be sexually available and ready with a drink and dinner when you get home, no matter what hour it is---and here the writers are asking you to care about her feelings. That’s beside the point! The whole point of having women in that role is so that you don’t have to care or worry about how they’re doing. The whole point of constructing that role for women is so they chirpily make like they love their lot in life, so you the man can feel satisfied about your magnanimity while your slippers are being fetched for you. Don and Betty’s marriage is exactly what the Rod Dreher’s of the world want for all of us, including the way that Don allows Betty to have control over little things so he can feel like they have some kind of partnership. (She gets to decorate! And, as we learn, she really wishes that responsibilities at home were a shared thing.) How dare the show suggest that this arrangement makes people unhappy, and women especially so?

Read the whole thing but then go here and dive a little deeper into the psycho-drama that is Christian thought on the whole question of the "sufferings of others"--in this case, we can look at how Christians legitimize torture (and here)

The outcome of the study was intriguing. Specifically, subjects who where told that the story above came from the bible were more aggressive than those told the story came from an extra-biblical scroll. Apparently, if violence is in the bible this seems to sanction the use of violence. This trend was confirmed in that those who read that God sanctioned the violence in the story (i.e., read the inserted text) were more aggressive than those who did not read about God commanding the retaliatory violence.

And then go over and laugh yourself silly reading Fred Clark's piece on the "inaction heroes" of the Left Behind Series.

Buck Williams is sitting just outside of the Antichrist's office.

He imagines he can feel the supernatural evil emanating from the next room. He desperately prays for divine protection, for deliverance, because he knows he's in extreme danger. Nicolae Carpathia has power over the minds of men and unless Buck is somehow able to convince him that he, too, is under his spell, that office may be the last room that Buck ever sees.

Buck has taken a terrible chance coming here, accepting this invitation to New York for a rendezvous with pure evil. But he had to come. For Hattie.

She had come to him for help and in return he had, unwittingly, put her immortal soul in danger. Buck had introduced her to Nicolae Carpathia, the Antichrist himself. He may as well have sold her into slavery.

Buck feels responsible for Hattie. He is responsible for the perilous new life she has begun. He talked about this endlessly with Rayford Steele and with Bruce Barnes, agonizing over how "every day" it gnaws at him that he put Hattie into harm's way and then just left her behind. In several long and repetitive conversations, both Bruce and Rayford warned him of the dangers of coming here, but he knew this was his only chance -- the only way he might perhaps reach Hattie, find some way to take her to somewhere it was safe to talk so that he could tell her about the truth he had found and that truth could set her free.

That was the reason he was here, the only reason. He was here in New York, in the dragon's lair, to rescue the damsel in distress. He was here to save Hattie Durham.

Hattie Durham approached Buck and Chaim Rosenzweig, and they both stood. "Mr. Williams!" she said, embracing him. "I haven't seen you since I took this job."

Yes you have, Buck thought, you just don't remember.

"The secretary-general and Mr. Plank will see you now," she told Buck.

And that's it.

That is the entire extent of Buck's conversation with Hattie Durham during this trip to New York. She greets him warmly and he responds, as he did when greeted by Rosenzweig, without saying anything, absorbed in thoughts of how cool it is that they've been deceived and he hasn't. (He does the same thing yet again when Steve greets him on the next page.)

Hattie leads Buck down a long hall, but he doesn't say a word to her, taking the opportunity instead to check out her outfit:

... he realized he had never seen her out of uniform. Today she wore a tailored suit that made her look like a classy, wealthy, sophisticated woman. The look only enhanced her stunning beauty. Even her speech seemed more cultured than he remembered. Her exposure to Nicolae Carpathia seemed to have improved her presence.

Buck spends the rest of the afternoon there in the same set of offices as Hattie, but he never speaks to her again before flying back to Chicago. He never even tries to speak to her.

Take a moment to savor this marvelously weird fumble here by Jerry Jenkins. He spent several chapters setting this up, with three separate conversations in which Buck agonized over whether or not to make this trip, weighing the immense danger against his overriding sense of obligation to undo the damage he had done to Hattie.

And then, abruptly, Buck and Jenkins both just forget all about it. Once Mr. McGillicuddy gets on the plane for New York, he abandons every thought of trying to save Hattie Durham.

Again, the comments section is well worth reading as the commenters explore the idea of the "inaction hero" who is witness to, but powerless to affect, the great struggle between God and the Anti-Christ, or God and fallen humanity, that the "Real True Christians" describe in the Left Behind books.

The more you read this stuff the more you see that Rod Dreher has to dislike Betty Draper--Betty is a loser, an unbeliever, a listless, miserable, atheist in the Rod's imaginary, religiously suffused world of kinder, kuche, kirche. When the end times come and Rod's big daddy returning Jesus comes back Betty is going to be left behind. And probably anyone who sympathizes with her. And that's probably just as true for black people! They wanted all that political freedom--as messy as sexual freedom and probably caused by the same lack of control--and look what they did with it! When daddy comes back he's going to be mad--mad with all the liberals and the women and the lazy black people. They'll just long for those anti-deluvian days then. The Garden of Eden that was the fifties. Even if they have rejected its scripture: Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and etc...


Conclusion: American Evangelical Christianism is the most immoral, soul destroying, form of passive aggressive, kiss up-kick down, hate-thy-neighbor ever constructed.

DEMS, THE PROBLEM IS NOT WHAT'S ON YOUR PRIORITY LIST. IT'S WHAT ISN'T.

Democrats seem to have divided themselves into two camps in the wake of Tuesday's elections. Unfortunately, neither camp seems to understand the meaning of what the public is telling them.

One camp is going wobbly. (Yes, Democrats! Going wobbly! Imagine my surprise!)

McClatchy reports "already-skittish moderate Democrats" now have "fresh reasons ... to worry." The Washington Post reports that Democrats are "nervous" and "moderate and conservative Democrats took a clear signal from Tuesday's voting, warning that the results prove that independent voters are wary of Obama's far-reaching proposals and mounting spending, as well as the growing federal debt." Politico reports that Democratic incumbents "from red states and Republican-leaning districts" are "worried." The LA Times reports that Dems on the Hill are "anxious," and will now resist the White House's ambitious policy agenda.

The other camp thinks the only way forward to press on with the Obama agenda exactly as written:

As they assessed the results, Democratic lawmakers and party strategists said their judgment was that voters remained very uneasy about the economy and did not see Democrats producing on the health, energy and national security changes they promised when voters swept them to power only a year ago.

"Most of us ran on that," said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, Democrat of Virginia and president of the party's freshman class. "We must deliver. I need to give Democrats something to be excited about."

..."I think the issues of health care and energy independence are important issues the president has outlined early on, and those are issues we ought to focus on," said Representative Allen Boyd, a centrist Florida Democrat.

Are these the only two choices? Ditch everything or change nothing?

I have an idea: why not keep eyes on the prizes in the Obama agenda -- but push the economy to the top of the list? Isn't that what voters are howling for? Some sense that somebody in government understands their desperation and has some help to offer? And understands their anger about how well the fat cats are doing?

Once again, I'll quote Nick Baumann of Mother Jones:

... liberals' biggest priority should be restoring people's faith in government. Part of that requires actually solving people's problems. That means fixing the economy. It would also help to if Democrats avoided bailing out any more widely reviled industries, and maybe regulated some stuff.

I know, I know: to us wonky types, health care reform is addressing the nation's economic problems. An energy overhaul is addressing the nation's economic problems. I understand that, you understand that -- but ordinary Americans don't. They want jobs, now. They want Wall Street taken to the woodshed, now, and for real. At the very least, they want a sign that the administration feels their pain and gets it.

If I'd been Barack Obama, I'd have used as much political capital as he's using now on health care to get as big a stimulus as I could right off the bat, and to seriously re-regulate Wall Street. I'd have put a much larger percentage of the stimulus into the visible creation of work -- shovel-ready projects that literally involve shovels, or something similar. I'd have wanted people to see jobs being created. Then, if we needed a second stimulus, there might have been real popular support for it. And I'd have been trying to reach out to governors and mayors even before I was inaugurated, to say, You damn well better make sure these projects are ready to roll, because I need them up and running right away -- and so do you. If the job creation is obvious to people when they watch or read the news, they'll support it. And then I can keep helping you.

I'd have fought to keep cash-for-clunkers going, and I'd have unleashed holy hell on the people running it until it ran smoothly. Same for the stimulus -- why the hell am I reading that many of the government's claims of job creation by the stimulus aren't credible? Dude, if you can't get the trains to run on time, maybe you should get a real job instead of running for president as a Keynesian during a deep recession.

Oh, and spanking Wall Street should have been one of the first items on the to-do list. It hasn't happened. It probably won't. That's a disaster.

Many of the people who are disgruntled now would have responded well to all this -- yes, including people who are now teabaggers. A lot of them don't know from ideology. They hear that the answer is deficit hawkishness and limited government, but many of them would have responded well to an approach that's very much the opposite.

The public does want what Obama wants -- at least the public says so when asked. But the public really wants economic justice and help with basic, immediate money issues -- and it's not waiting to be asked about that. The public is screaming that.

And the Democrats aren't paying attention.

DOES RUSH LIMBAUGH EVER ACTUALLY VOTE?

So I was on Limbaugh's Web site reading what he said on the radio about the NY-23 race, and this jumped out at me:

...this is what happened, [Dede Scozzafava] remained on the ballot. In fact, she was on the ballot twice. This is screwiest looking ballot. I just got this.

Here's the ballot: Democrat Owens, Republican Scozzafava, Independence Scozzafava, Conservative Hoffman, Working Families Owens. There were five parties on the ballot. Two of them endorsed Owens -- the Democrat Party and the Working Families Party -- and two of them endorsed Scozzafava, the Republican Party and the independents party. Only one of them endorsed Hoffman....

"This is [the] screwiest looking ballot." Really? Does Limbaugh really think it's that odd? Does he think it's odd that a candidate might appear on multiple ballot lines?

I ask because Limbaugh moved to New York City in 1988. He stopped being a New York resident in 1997 (though he continued to do some broadcasts from here). But that means he presumably voted in a city where multiple ballot lines are routine -- if he actually did vote.

Here's a sample ballot the Hoffman campaign was passing out in NY-23 (click to enlarge). It's really fairly simple, but, yeah, Scozzafava and Owens do appear on two ballot lines each.



But that's routine in Limbaugh's former residence, New York City. Here's a 2008 presidential ballot from the city (Staten Island, to be specific; click to enlarge):



Several candidates have multiple ballot lines, and it's actually more complex-looking. That's what ballots around here have looked like for years and years.

Did Limbaugh -- the most important Republican in America for the past twenty years -- actually never see one of these in the decade he lived here? Did he ever vote?

(If he voted absentee, the absentee ballots look pretty much the same.)

Limbaugh can't let it go. Later he says again:

Scozzafava's name was on the ballot twice! Owens' name was on the ballot twice! She got 5% of the vote.

But that happens all the time in this state. We allow candidates to run on multiple lines. And voters cope. We're used to it.

Does the nation's most important Republican over the past generation not know what a ballot looks like in a state he lived in for nearly a decade?

*****

UPDATE: I'm embarrassed to say I missed this, but teahouse, in comments, didn't:

the hypocrisy here is stunning though. remember how bush supporters/enablers scoffed at the idea that the 'butterfly ballots' in florida may have confused some people and caused al gore to lose votes? ...

limbaugh claimed that anybody who couldn't figure out the butterfly ballot had to be either retarded or a liar.

That's true. He did.

Crazy? You're Soaking In It

We've spent the day trying to get a handle on just what Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has in mind with her boffo Capitol Hill Tea Party event tomorrow, whether she's going to get the crowd riled up and just send them in or actually lead the protestors into the offices. On a conference call a few moments ago, though, she said she'd personally lead Tea Partiers to the office of Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR).

TPM is reporting that Bachmann is planning to walk her teabaggers over to Blanche Lincoln's office in the Senate? This is a level of sheer, hysterical, hate that is not going to go over well with the proud Senate. Not that I think Blanche's Republican Senatorial Buddies will lift a finger to stop this. But its really, really, really, going to piss off a lot of other people and harden a lot of attitudes. Not least of which are Lincolns. Senators don't take shit from Congresswomen.

Frankly, I doubt it will happen at all. But if this is what Bachmann and Fox thinks gets influence, or even makes for good TV, I think they are about to be rudely surprised. Either Lincoln won't be there to be cornered, or its going to go over as well as the moment Rick diFazio stepped up to Hillary Clinton and looked like a boorish wife beater.

aimai

CONFIRMED: BACHMANN WANTS A RIOT

Michelle Bachmann's "house call" protest -- which is officially endorsed by House Republicans -- is still on for tomorrow, and if you have any doubt that she's actively hoping for unrest, here's your answer, from Politico:

Asked Tuesday whether House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) supports the idea of having conservative activists confronting Democrats in the halls of House office buildings, spokesman Michael Steel would say only that "every American has the right to visit the Capitol and speak to members of Congress."

... When asked if her boss was really calling for in-the-hall confrontations, Bachmann spokeswoman Debbee Keller said: "It's clear that e-mails and phone calls are being ignored by the majority, so Congresswoman Bachmann is asking anyone who can come to Washington to speak with their representative to do so. Perhaps a reminder of the face-to-face discussions they had at town hall meetings over the summer will help them realize that their constituents need them to vote no on this really bad health care reform bill."

(Emphasis added.)

In other words? Riot: it's on.

*****

Aimai asked me in comments:

Steve, how does Hoffman losing in the 23rd affect your sense that there's never any blowback on the Republicans for this teabagger stuff?

I'd say it's a sign that there's some blowback -- clearly, the folks in NY-23 didn't let Beck and Palin and their pals just stroll in and tell them how to vote, and I imagine there was a fair amount of resentment of the outsiders.

But it's not full-scale disgust. It's analogous to the national reaction to the town meetings: support for the public option plunged, then went back up, but it's not as if the public was so disgusted by town hall thuggery that serious health care reform suddenly had a much smoother road to passage. The public option developed a pulse again, but it's still in critical condition and once more in danger of flatlining. If there'd been a real town hall backlash, the public option would have a strong, vigorous pulse by now -- it would be sailing toward passage.

So I still think tomorrow's riot, if it happens, won't do serious harm to Republicans. It won't truly outrage the public. It won't stiffen Democrats' spines. (What does? Ever?) But, on the other hand, it won't really help Republicans much, except in keeping the base fired up.

****

OH, AND: Fox is doing PR for Bachmann, as if you couldn't guess.



****

UPDATE: I said above that "I imagine there was a fair amount of resentment of the outsiders" in NY-23. Barbara at the Mahablog confirms that, citing two writers for the Watertown Daily Times -- Bob Gorman, who rails against "Republicans around the country" who faiiled to "understand the dance in Northern New York -- pro-union, pro-NRA, pro-choice, pro-military, etc." and "somehow got it in their heads that to save a village you have to destroy it"; and Jeffrey Savitskie, who castigated "folks who know so little about the north country that they would likely believe it if you told them Alexandria Bay was an exotic dancer.... Hoffman and his moneybaggers might be pro-life, but they sure aren't pro-north country life." Ouch.

****

UPDATE: Carpetbagging in NY_23? Even Megan McArdle gets it.

Read It and Weep

Also known as "What Can Happen When You Actually Put Good Policy Ahead of the Political Process."

Hoffman is Howard Dean?

Thus spake Ross Douthat today on Tom Ashbrook's show on NPR. I think Douthat's store of Christmas miracles has already been exhausted by the fact that Ashbrook didn't introduce him as "The New York Times' Most Noted Sex Advice Columnist (After David Brooks...)" but be that as it may. Douthat had time to make only one point before I shot my car radio: Hoffman's loss is like Howard Dean's loss in Iowa. Why? Because in both cases outside agitators tried to nationalize a local referendum and their preferred candidate lost. I mean, sure, if you are one eyed and you squint a whole lot. But the fact of the matter is that a national party primary is, definitionally, national in scope. That it takes place in Iowa doesn't make it any the less national. And since one of the things that the local base is evaluating is the national appeal of the candidate, well, national attention and excitement are generally considered to be necessary factors in winning the local contest. Sure, Dean lost Iowa--but he didn't lose it to noted Iowa home boy Kerry. He lost it to Kerry's better ground organization and to the fact that Dean was roundly attacked by the party and by the mass media--exactly the opposite of Hoffman's situation. Hoffman was supported by his own party and its fringe elements.

Still, it was pretty good political analysis for a guy whose real passion is saved for lecturing women on sex and procreation.

Myopia of the Masses.

I, personally, am enthralled with NY 23 and the fact that Michael Steele is "juiced." But can anyone tell me why this breaking news story is a sidebar on TPM and nowhere anywhere else in the left bloggosphere at this point?

MILAN -- An Italian court on Wednesday convicted 22 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force colonel of orchestrating the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he said he was later tortured.

The judge in the case, Oscar Magi, said three other Americans, including the former Rome station chief for the CIA, were covered by diplomatic immunity.

The Americans were all tried in abstentia. A Milan prosecutor said his office would seek to have them extradited from the Untied States, but a formal decision will be made later by the Italian Justice Ministry...

Among the Americans charged in the case were Jeffrey Castelli, the former CIA station chief in Rome who allegedly oversaw the plot, and Robert Seldon Lady, the spy agency's chief in Milan, who was accused of orchestrating the kidnapping. Prosecutors sought a 13-year prison term for Castelli and a 12-year sentence for Lady.

Armando Spataro, the deputy public prosecutor in Milan, said in his closing argument Wednesday that it was "unthinkable" that the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition should trump Italian law, which forbids kidnapping.

"Here, Italian law rules, not American law or any other law," he said.

Spataro also rejected arguments by defense lawyers that at least some of the U.S. defendants should be protected by diplomatic immunity because they were based at the U.S. consulate in Milan and the U.S. embassy in Rome.

Its not that I'm surprised by the silence on this point. I've just spent several months explaining to my anxious, enraged, Obama supporting parental unit that no one who gets elected to our imperial presidency--neither democrat, nor republican, will ever roll back the tide of illegal and immoral actions that were taken in defense of our imperial way of life. Especially not internationally. But I'd like to see more discussion of this and its implication for our country going forward. Its not, to me, a question of supporting Obama or being disappointed in him. Its just a question of whether our country will ever voluntarily stop raping, torturing, looting, and kidnapping for international gain and advantage. Or whether we will simply, like other once great powers, stop using our privileged position only once we've lost the privilege to other, stronger, powers.

I Think He Means Placental Barrier, But its a Really Nice Turn of Phrase Anyway.

"Maybe Anthony Weiner should have manned-up and run against Michael Bloomberg," shot back a White House official, who attributed the night’s results across the board to anti-incumbent fervor.

A White House official who is too cowardly even to attach his own name to his comments -- who has to hide behind Politico's permanently extended fetal wall of anonymity in order to criticize a member of Congress -- simultaneously accuses Anthony Weiner of being a coward and failing to "man-up."

Atrios, as usual, nails it. Ultimately the pundits and the White House prefer a stable, muzzled, populace to real, messy, democracy.

After the Dog Catches the Car.

Can anyone tell me just how long after Christie is sworn in before he screws up, well...massively? Christie's history is replete with examples of the most naked, and stupid, fraud, malfeasance, and corruption. I'm sure New Jersey is no stranger to all those things--and look at what Giuliani and Kerik got away with for years--but those two loveable rogues had a lot more going for them than Christie does. Christie is going to make some giant, public, errors and he isn't going to have Bush's DOJ to cover for him. How long before he's caught shtupping an employee, ordering the State Troopers to cover for him, looting the treasury or otherwise committing some extremely obvious illegality? Oh, and look for him to consider running for President in 2012--no one really wants to be Governor of New Jersey.

aimai

ERICKSON AND MALKIN: THE PEOPLE'S FRONT OF JUDEA



AS FMguru in comments and a lot of other people have noted, Erick Erickson of RedState has issued a declaration of victory even more ridiculous than the Michelle Malkin boast I quoted in my last post. Erickson:

In NY-23, Conservatives Win

The race has now been called for Democrat Bill Owens.

This is a huge win for conservatives.

"Whaaaa. . . ?" you say.

There are two big victories at work in New York’s 23rd Congressional District.

First, the GOP now must recognize it will either lose without conservatives or will win with conservatives....

Secondly, and just as importantly, there has all of a sudden been a huge movement among some activists to go the third party route. We see in NY-23 that this is not possible as third parties are not viable....

For all intents and purposes, NY-23 is a trial run for Florida. And in Florida, the conservative candidate is operating inside the GOP. If John Cornyn and the NRSC do not want to see Florida go the way of NY-23, they better stand down.

Combine this with what Malkin said --

A humble accountant from upstate New York exposed the hypocrisy of GOP leaders.... The GOP leadership knows it cannot afford to rest on its laurels, continue business as usual, and bask in yesterday's electoral victories without confronting its abysmal abdication of principled conservative leadership in NY-23.

-- and you realize that the real enemy for these guys is starting to be their fellow Republicans, not us.

I suppose I'm the last guy to realize this. I thought the crazies were going to seize the party bus and swerve it to the right, but the party was just going to sigh and position itself on the bus rather than under it, then everyone was going to kiss and make up afterward, bonding over their shared hatred of fascist Marxist Kenyan ACORN gay-married Hollyweird hippie America-hating Nancy Pelosi Rosie O'Donnell fat Michael Moores. And if a few winnable elections got lost, well, as long as there were at least forty Republicans-plus-Lieberman-plus-Blue-Dogs in the Senate, and as long as Richard Cohen and David Broder still loathed Obama more than any Republican, it's all good.

But I get the feeling from this that these folks are going to paint targets on the backs of even primary winners they don't like. Then, hey, maybe there'll be a battle within this movement -- some will want to start the Tea Party Party and run Rubio against Crist and the Democrat if Crist survives Rubio's primary challenge, while Erickson will angrily reject that course of action ("third parties are not viable"), calling instead for a huge expenditure on purely negative anti-Crist ads, but no endorsement of a candidate. To me it looks more and more as if Democrats are the hated Romans, but the GOP establishment is the Judean People's Front, and the teabaggers are the People's Front of Judea.

DEMOCRATS SWEEP HOUSE RACES!

Hey, that's no sillier a headline than Politico's "GOP Sweeps Gubernatorial Races," is it? There were a whopping two of each. And each party got a sweep. So who won the night?

Politico's right-wing spin extends to the lead sentence of its story. Emphasis mine:

Republican gubernatorial candidates racked up major wins for the GOP in Virginia and New Jersey Tuesday night as Democrats scored a single victory in a special congressional election in upstate New York.

No -- Democrats scored two victories. John Garamendi won a House seat in California and Bill Owens beat Doug Hoffman in NY-23.

Later in the Politico article we're told:

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told McDonnell supporters in Richmond that they had sent a message to national politicians: "Enough with the incredible reach of government into our lives."

Interesting, because in the two races that actually involved the national government, the government-is-the-enemy party lost.

****

Look, there's egg on my face. I ignored that California contest in my recent posts, and I really blew it on NY-23. The lesson I take from the New York race is that there's a limit to how much BS Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin and the other wingnuts can shovel before reasonable citizens say "Enough."

Beyond that, NY-23 disproves one of the wingnut right's core beliefs, articulated by Rush Limbaugh for years: that (as he told us in 2007) "It is when Republicans do not campaign as conservatives that they lose," that (as Limbaugh fan Dick Cheney said in spring '09) "We win elections when we have good solid conservative principles to run upon."

That's what these guys always say: the right didn't lose in 2006 in 2008; Republicans -- sellout liberal Republicans (like, y'know, John McCain) -- lost.

Well, the right lost in NY-23 yesterday.

****

But wait -- no! The right won! Just ask Michelle Malkin!

As I've repeated many times over the last several weeks:

One thing is guaranteed at the conclusion of the NY-23 special congressional election: The Beltway Republicans who endorsed radical leftist Dede Scozzafava are going to have indelible egg stains on their faces....

... Hoffman may have lost narrowly, but NY-23 is a much broader victory for conservatives....

... NY-23 is a victory for conservatives who refuse to be marginalized in the public square by either the unhinged left or the establishment right. A humble accountant from upstate New York exposed the hypocrisy of GOP leaders....

The GOP leadership knows it cannot afford to rest on its laurels, continue business as usual, and bask in yesterday's electoral victories without confronting its abysmal abdication of principled conservative leadership in NY-23.

As Hoffman said in his concession speech, "This is only one fight in the battle."

Onward. Upward. Rightward.

All emphasis in the original.

Translation: the GOP establishment won two elections, therefore it lost. We suffered a humiliating defeat in the election we made into a showcase of our principles and our muscle -- therefore we won.

Onward? Hey, Michelle, don't let me stop you.

I GUESS JONAH GOLDBERG IS THE SMART, ACCOMPLISHED BROTHER

I'm still pondering the results of the high-profile races today, but in the New York City Council race in District 6, the people have spoken:



Joshua Goldberg -- Lucianne's son and Jonah's brother -- has been trounced. Trounced.



Now, it's not true that -- as Wonkette said a couple of months ago -- that Joshua "has been unemployed for a full 42 years." He's had jobs -- a fishmonger, a tour guide for two different companies, a couple of jobs working for his mother (including his current job) -- and he lists every single one on his campaign Web site, all the way back to high school. Did I mention that he's 42 years old?

But Goldberg was a real candidate who made real campaign videos and gave real speeches with his mom in the audience. He put a real goofy graphic on his site:



And he stood for things. Enacting a freight charge for people carrying bicycles and other large bulky items on the subway. Placing kiosks at various street corners where bills may be legally posted. Banning dogs from sidewalk tree planters. (Oddly, he supported putting recycling bins outside subway stations. A Goldberg? In favor of recycling? And subways? Don't tell Glenn Beck!)

His brother and mother hyped his candidacy, but it was to no avail -- he lost. Badly.

Jonah is the golden boy in that family.

BOURGEOIS RIOT
(proletarian edition)

I see that Steve Benen thinks the Michelle Bachmann-led shindig on Thursday is going to be the same-old-same-old:

It's tempting to think we've seen enough far-right gatherings in recent months, between various Tea Party rallies and the event in Washington in mid-September.

But apparently there's another one scheduled for Thursday.

... Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) revealed that, next week in Washington, D.C., the right wing is trying to galvanize yet another mass protest rally against health reform.

... Bachmann announced, "We're going to have a 'house call' and a big party out on the National Mall [next week], and we're going to tell Congress what they can do with their health care bill."...

It'll be interesting to see what the turnout is like, because there's a real risk of going to the well once too many times here. It's one thing to keep the base motivated, but even the most committed Teabagger, after having been told it's time to take time off from work once more to wave some placards around, is likely to ask, "Again?"...

I hope he's right. But I'm afraid that the part Talking Points Memo has focused on is the key to the whole thing:

Bachmann ... told Sean Hannity: "I'd love to have every one of your viewers to join me so we can go up and down through the halls, find members of Congress, look at the whites of their eyes and say, 'Don't take away my healthcare.'"

Does the GOP think having citizens streaming into the Congressional buildings amounts to harassment and disruption of Congress, or is it a legitimate exercise of the right to petition the government?

I'll tell you what they think: (a) they think it will convey the message that "real Americans" oppose reform (yeah, again) and (b) they think that even if it gets rowdy -- in the halls of Congress -- they'll get away with it.

And they will. This is what I've been trying to tell you lately: short of blowing up a federal building, there's apparently nothing right-wingers can do that will make the general public say, "These people have gone too far." I think the crazies are hoping for a sans-culotte version of the 2000 Florida "bourgeois riot" in the Capitol, and I think they're correct when they say the upside of inciting that kind of disturbance would be much greater than the downside, because we're still not ready in this country to think right-wingers are dangerous -- as in '60s-radical dangerous.

I may be wrong. But I think it's going to get ugly on Thursday. And I think it'll help the GOP if it does.

ANGRY OLD WHITE PEOPLE ... AND REAGAN YOUTH?

I haven't made a habit of checking the Daily Kos/Research 2000 polls, but this one jumped out at me.

Oliver Willis and AlterNet's Joshua Holland flagged it because it shows that Barack Obama's personal favorability is 60-84% in every region of the country except the South ... where it's, um, 28%. (Gee, wonder why that is....)

But I'm struck by some other discrepancies in the poll -- age discrepancies. In virtually every part of the poll (this part is no real surprise), people 60 and over are less supportive of Obama and the Democrats (Obama had trouble with older voters in last year's election, and they have good health care, so they're not comfortable with change on that score). But the other group that has soured on Obama and the Dems is the 30-44 group.

Broken down by age group, here's what people think of the Democratic Party (reading across: favorable, unfavorable, no opinion):



And the Republican Party:



And Obama:



And Nancy Pelosi:



The 30-44-year-olds are much more right-leaning than the group just younger and the group just older.

This is evident in virtually every question. And if you go to the poll page and keep clicking "Previous," and you'll see this has been true for months.

This defies the conventional wisdom, which says that Obama is very popular except in Dixie and among the Caucasian elderly.

I see the 30-44-year-olds as Reagan youth. They were impressionable schoolkids when Bonzo roamed the earth, cheerfully castigating government. They sat in class and watched him eulogize the Challenger astronauts. The Kos poll suggests they're still Reaganites.

It might be that, or possibly it's that they're in the prime age group to feel thoroughly betrayed by the economic downturn -- twentysomethings didn't have much to lose before the collapse, while many of the middle-aged have more resources to fall back on. But I'm not sure it would work that way. As a middle-aged guy myself, I feel I have further to fall -- if I lose my job while the fat cats get fatter, I'm going to feel very, very betrayed.

I think the Reaganism these kids imbibed with their school-lunch ketchup really took. I think the guy who made government America's #1 scapegoat -- the Goldstein in our national Two Minutes' Hates -- is still whispering to these now-grown children from beyond the grave.

Reading Between the Lines:

The Sun Sentinel tells the sad tale of a politically powerful and well connected lawyer who is now on the lam for mass theft and fraud. What's missing? Well, oddly enough, there's no reporting on his political affiliation. Elsewhere:

Rothstein has been a major fundraiser for Republican candidates, including former President George W. Bush, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist and 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain. He's also a major contributor to Florida charities and nonprofit groups.

LOONEY LIKE A FOX? (Or a Foxx?)

I've simply stopped believing the conventional wisdom regarding the looney right's "primary the GOP moderates" strategy -- under present circumstances, I think it absolutely can work. And yes, I believe that's true even if it means that highly electable Republicans are replaced by pitchfork-wielders who have nutball ideas most voters don't share.

Politico has the 8000th cautionary article about this subject:

In what could be a nightmare scenario for Republican Party officials, conservative activists are gearing up to challenge leading GOP candidates in more than a dozen key House and Senate races in 2010.

Conservatives and tea party activists had already set their sights on some of the GOP's top Senate recruits -- a list that includes Gov. Charlie Crist in Florida, former Rep. Rob Simmons in Connecticut and Rep. Mark Kirk in Illinois, among others....

Party strategists worry that well-funded, well-organized challenges from the right could ... force moderate candidates to adopt more strident positions early on that could haunt them during the final months of the campaign....

Activists contend that the only way back to majority status is to embrace the conservative principles that the party jettisoned during the past decades once it became too enamored of power....

I think the party strategists may well be wrong and the crazy activists may well be right. But not because America is a wingnut nation that believes in wingnut ideas, which is what the crazy activists believe. No -- the reason this works (or at least it seems to be working in the moderately right-wing New York 23rd district, where a hardcore Beck/Palinite is apparently about to win) is that full-throated wingnuttism is (a) anti-status quo (for now, at least) and (b, and most important) passionate and sure of itself.

Really, that's it: voters don't necessarily agree with the wingnut looneys on the details, but they respond to the fact that they're self-confident. Fellow wingnuts in the rank and file agree on the particulars -- but everyone else just likes (or at least respects) the vigor and forcefulness, particularly given the fact that it's directed against the woeful state of the country today.

And that's true even when what the wingnuts are saying is utterly insane.

This is the important point: there doesn't seem to be any downside to declaring yourself a card-carrying insaniac. We kept waiting all through August for there to be a broad-based backlash in response to the right's town hall excesses -- it never happened. We keep waiting for there to be broad-based revulsion at the idiot McCarthyism and unhinged emotionality of Glenn Beck -- it hasn't happened. We keep waiting for broad-based disgust at remarks like Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's assertion that "we have more to fear from the potential of" health care reform "than we do from any terrorist right now in any country" -- it's not happening, and it's not gonna happen.

Rachel Maddow-watching, Huffington Post-reading smarty-pantses like us know instantly what's wrong with what these people are saying, but the rest of America -- i.e, about 90+ percent of America -- doesn't. They just know they don't like the status quo. Any anti-status-quo rant that seems to have logic and coherence and patriotism, even it's wrong in every particular, seems, to a huge percentage of Americans, sincere and well-meant at least and thoroughly persuasive at most.

That's why we put out stories that say, "Look, Doug Hoffman is a card-carrying Beck groupie" -- and wait for the backlash in vain. It's not coming -- any more than it came in response to the tea parties and town halls.

Most Americans simply don't have a script in their heads that portrays this sort of thing as beyond the pale. They certainly have a script like that in their heads for our side. More than one script, really -- the DFH script, the tax-and-spend-liberal script, the angry-black-militant script, and the angry-bitch script to name a few. (On that last one, seen Nancy Pelosi's approval ratings lately?) It's easy for there to be an instant backlash against a leftist or liberal or Democrat. On our side, though, we wait and wait, and the backlash never happens.

We actually need to explain to the broad public why Glenn Beck is beyond the pale, or why Virginia Foxx is. We need to build a these-people-are-nuts argument from scratch. The general public (except possibly with regard to religious-right types, or Sarah Palin, and her mostly because she seems stupid) just doesn't have a well-cultivated idea of why these people are anything other than what they say they are, namely passionate patriots.

We also need to do a much better job of making the status quo less of a target, as Nick Baumann says in Mother Jones:

As the recent WSJ/NBC poll highlighted, Americans really don't trust government. Much of that, I suspect, is the result of the bank bailouts -- as Neil Barofsky, TARP's inspector general, pointed out last month, the bailouts did immense, lasting damage to the public's faith in their elected officials. "This cannot be seen as just a Wall Street bailout," Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the chair of the House banking committee, famously warned when Hank Paulson came asking for $700 billion last year. But that's exactly what happened.

Even though Paulson and George W. Bush asked for the bailout money, it's liberals who will pay the price in the long run. Liberalism is based on the idea that government offers solutions to people's problems. When you don't trust the government, Doug Hoffman's argument that there should be less of it seems awfully appealing.

This is why liberals' biggest priority should be restoring people's faith in government. Part of that requires actually solving people's problems. That means fixing the economy. It would also help to if Democrats avoided bailing out any more widely reviled industries, and maybe regulated some stuff.

Indeed.

But meanwhile, passion can work for the right, even if it looks like lunacy to politically sophisticated people on the left. The GOP establishment will just embrace the crazies -- and the crazies won't seem crazy to much of the public, and, yes, will have a good chance of winning.

A LITTLE PERSPECTIVE

Let's see:

* A Republican might win by an eyelash in the gubernatorial race in New Jersey -- a state that's had Republican governors for 16 of the past 28 years.

* In Virginia, a Republican will almost certainly win the governor's race -- which means that the Virginia governor will be of the party opposite that of the president who was just elected ... just like the last eight governors of Virginia, each of whom was elected a year after a presidential election and none of whom was of the president's party.

* A Democrat is probably going to lose in New York's 23rd congressional district -- a district that's changed shape over the years, but has mostly not sent a Democrat to Congress since the 19th century.

There's your stinging rebuke to Obama and the Democrats.

LIEBERMAN: A VIRUS IS EITHER WITH US OR WITH THE TERRORISTS

I wish the exact quote were available, but for now we have this from Michael Goldfarb at The Weekly Standard's blog:

... a source who was present at the scene reports:

In the stakeout after Face the Nation, Joe Lieberman excoriated the decision to give the vaccine to GITMO terrorists and not to pregnant women.

Really, Joe? Best you can do?

Yeah, we're giving swine flu vaccine to Guantanamo prisoners. Can't think of a reason why, Joe? I won't even bother bringing up the Geneva Conventions, or our military's long tradition of humane treatment of prisoners -- I know you don't believe in any of that crap, Joe.

Still can't come up with a reason? Here, I'll give you a big fat hint: Who's guarding Gitmo prisoners?

Right: our troops.

I know you think the prisoners are subhuman scum, vile worms who can't be compared to decent human beings on any level whatsoever. But guess what, Joe? Viruses don't give a crap. A virus can easily spread from your scum to our brave youth. Vaccinating these prisoners is a way of protecting our men and women in uniform.

Hey, Joe, why do you hate the troops?

LIMBAUGH AIN'T EXACTLY NIJINSKY

I didn't see Chris Wallace's half-hour chat with Rush Limbaugh on Fox News yesterday and I don't exactly relish the prospect of watching it now -- but I do enjoy watching this clip, in which Limbaugh desperately tries to dance away from the Sarah Palin question. He's not much of a dancer; all he does, really, is squirm. It's not a pretty sight:



If you can't watch the clip, here's a transcript:

WALLACE: Sarah Palin. You say that you admire her backbone. Do you really think she's ready to be president?

LIMBAUGH: (Long pause.) Well, yes. (Extremely nervous pause, wary glance.) I do. (Long pause.) See, I am a... (Nervous half grin.) One thing I do not do is follow conventional wisdom. And the conventional wisdom on Sarah Palin is (parody voice)"She's not smart enough, she needs to bone up on the issues, she's a little unsophisticated, Alaska, where's that?, she doesn't have a pedigree." (Normal voice.) She's the only thing that provided any kind of spark for the Republican Party (said while Fox shows a clip of Palin kissing the cheek of a nerdy guy at a campaign rally). Now, this is not an endorsement, but I do have profound respect for Sarah Palin. Not many politicians have been through what she's through, been put through (long pause), uh, and still able to smile and be ebullient and upbeat. I mean, this woman (nervously scratches face near nose), I think, is pretty tough.

This relates to what I was talking about yesterday. The more cunning wingnut opinion-shapers know that a Palin candidacy in 2012 would be a disaster. They'd love to steer their minions gently away from this electoral suicide leap, but they don't dare reject Palin outright because (a) she's useful right now (and through next November) in turning out the base and (b) they realize they may have created a monster -- she's the most beloved living figure among their fan base. Limbaugh's bobbing and weaving here suggests that he gets all this but can't say what he really thinks because he's terrified of being put on the Unperson list by the new wave of right-wing cultural revolutionaries, who are even angrier and more purist than he is. The best he can do, then, is damn her with faint praise -- and he looks about as comfortable doing that as he would have if his OxyContin dealer had pulled out a badge.

Watch for more of this in the future.

(Video via TBogg.)

Don't Click the Link, Just Savor the Beauty:

This is the Worm Orouborous of scams, the Joe Isuzu as trusted informant of con games.

Teeth Whitening SCAM

94.7% of Teeth Whiteners failed our test. Which one passed?

www.HealthTipsWeekly.com

Tell me this doesn't make you think of the logic behind Glenn Beck?

In the Land of "Might Have Been" McCain Would Have Already Gotten Us Health Care Reform!

Turns out that McCain's Economic Brain Trust is Flat Busted:

Holtz-Eakin said he's been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain's campaign through the government's COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. "I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do," he said. But although Holtz-Eakin dresses the part -- on this day he wore a gray pinstripe suit, white shirt with cuff links and a powder-blue tie -- he is in no hurry to find full-time work. He said he'll get a job when he's ready, even if it means buying an individual health insurance plan at an exorbitant premium.

"Let's not whine too much about me," he said. "I'm a wealthy, affluent American in the big picture."

Despite his personal trials, however, Holtz-Eakin said his conviction on the hot-button issue of health care is unchanged. He believes that reform is needed, but that President Obama and congressional Democrats are going about it the wrong way. The system is "broken," he said, but the bills now before Congress do not cut costs enough. On the campaign trail, Holtz-Eakin promoted McCain's plan to eliminate the tax exemption for employer-sponsored health insurance and give tax credits to individuals to buy their own coverage.

Of the bills moving through Congress, Holtz-Eakin said: "I wish the policies were different, and I wish I could've somehow gotten us to a bipartisan place. I think McCain had the capacity to do that.

"But the reality is what it is," he continued. "You can't live your life in the land of what might have been."

What I find astonishing about this article is that it comes right up to the water's edge of the reality of most Americans, dips its toe in, and then runs back for cover. If Mr. Holtz-Eakin is the divorced father of two children who is paying for his children's health care coverage? How would his suggested "fixes" for Health Care affect his wife's premiums, or her employer's liklihood of continuing family coverage for her? Who pays for his mother's health care coverage if it isn't Medicare--and if it is Medicare why does the article (and Holtz-Eakin) ignore that fact and ignore the historic attacks on Medicare levied by McCain and the entire Republican party?

How can a presumably intelligent man look at all the data and imagine for one minute that McCain--a notoriously unpleasant and difficult egomaniac with little insight into economic issues could have "gotten us to a bipartisan place?" But I suppose its all of a piece with the fact that he still believes that taxing employer health care benefits and subsidizing the purchase of junk health insurance would solve his personal medical insurance issues, let alone make a dent in those of the rest of the country.

On the Other Side of the Wall

When I'm not here I'm often reading on the Christianist side of the bloggosphere. I've been snooping over there for a long time because I love to talk and argue theology and because I'm interested in the peculiar role of America's brand of Christianities in America's brand of democracy. While over there I've encountered some stunningly scary blogs--Above Rubies and Cedar Generation (No link out of respect for her peculiar brand of crazy) , but also some profoundly powerful and illuminating ones. Among those I'd put Slacktivist Experimental Theology, Adventures in Mercy and No Longer Q(u)ivering.

No Longer Qivering (There is no You in Quivering) is the brainchild of a woman named Vyckie who is, as it were, a recovering survivor of the natalist/quiverfull movement described by Kathyrn Joyce and lauded by David Brooks when he thought, if that's the right word, that white natalism meant more Republican voters. The Quiverfull movement is one of many typical American responses to the tidal flow of societal and economic dysfunction. Basically the Quiverfull movement is a supra-denominational movement that pushes patriarchal family structure, reproductive vigor, ecological dominion, home schooling, withdrawal from the world, chastity, modesty, anti science attitudes, and paranoia on its adherents. It promises its adherents, alternately, future post death benefits (heaven) or pre death benefits (happiness, blessings, good family life).

Generally speaking the individual women and men in the movement are reacting against the perceived dangers of the modern world and the centrifugal forces that have operated (as they see it) on their own families and the Christian communities they live in. The modern world, feminism, science, public school, medicine, democracy, the economy, drugs, sex, pornography, adolescence, poor etiquette training--these are all things that are seen as splitting families apart and forcing Christian communities apart. These men and women know whereof they speak. They are not the descendants of our Puritan forebears--though they style themselves that way--nor are they Amish or Mennonite pursuing an authentic cultural tradition. Rather, if you scratch the surface of the family testimonies of the men and women who expose themselves on blogs you invariably find people who experienced such massive economic and social trauma that being "saved by Jesus" is, for them, literal not figurative. Those beautiful christian marriages? Often post divorce, or post a fornicating past, for one or both of the newlyweds. And the first child of these huge families? Quite often the result of an unintended teen pregnancy by the now eternally chaste mother. Examine their own family stories and you will find that the grandparent generation and the siblings of the husband and wife are routinely described as non Christian, Pagan, Homosexual, Porn addicted, Drug addicted, etc...etc...etc... The enemy of "this world" from which these families are withdrawing is often their own immiediate family. The new, godly, family of happy mother, father, and steps and stairs children is a replacement family for the one that doesn't really exist and never did.

When you read blog testimonies and histories carefully you come to see that the entire panoply of Christianist and Patriarchal behaviors are, in a sense, constructed against modernity. Patriarchal family styles, antique modes of dress and hair, imitation of (imagined) pre-capitalist or at least pre-industrial ways of cooking, cleaning, and child rearing aren't authentic expressions of local cultural traditions--they are magical incantations, learned and adopted behaviors, a kind of relgio/cultural "ghost dance" or "cargo cult" that is thought to produce a magical result: biblical, happy, holy, families.

The Quiverfull movement is the farthest most fringe of a generic movement within modern American Christianity--it promotes "headship" from the husband and "followership" or "submission" from the wife in all things in this world, and sometimes in the next. This is also called "complementarianism" and there are whole blogs and blog wars devoted to the war between the "comps" and the "egals"--where "egals" are Christians who believe that the roles of men and women within the family and before god are or should be "egalitarian." I don't want to go down the rabbit hole of this eternal and internecine struggle. I do want to say that the more you study the lives of the men and women who find themselves struggling to live fully "complementarian" and patriarchal lifetstyles the more you see something truly American--the flight from reality and the urge to create new social forms however obviously dysfunctional and irrational they are. These people, like other Utopians and, indeed, our own Pilgrim forebears, throw themselves onto a rocky and inhospitable shore (America, Marriage, many Children), often without the proper tools or specific talents to make it work.

I owe these insights to the courageous and illuminating work of two women who are recovering from years in the Quiverfull movement--Vyckie at No Longer Qivering and Molly at Adventures in Mercy. Both of these women are extremely talented writers, thinkers and organizers. I have no hesitation in saying that if they hadn't been sidetracked by Quiverfull and retrograde, anti-feminist Christian dogma they would both be running large corporations, doing science, curing the sick or teaching at Universities. They are both world beaters: women of drive, imagination, energy and brilliance. But along the way to discovering those qualities in themselves both of them detoured through a religious and cultural movement that insisted that they submit to the authority and leadership of men who were both, sadly, incapable of fulfilling the role. Both Vyckie and Molly have used the internet and the blog format to leap out of the constriction of their carbon world communities. Vyckie has gone farther and is trying to organize an online community to support other women, like herself, who are emerging from Quiverfull or other like movements often with immense burdens, and who need both emotional and social support. Hop over and see what these amazing women are doing.

HARWOOD'S RIDICULOUS ANALYSIS

Writing for The New York Times, John Harwood concludes that everyone in cable news is partisan just like Fox, based on an utterly idiotic misreading of statistics:

...amid the Iraq war and President George W. Bush's re-election campaign, ... Fox News viewers had become 51 percent Republican and just 30.8 percent Democratic, while MSNBC viewers leaned Democratic by 41.7 percent to 40.4 percent. Viewers of CNN, Headline News, CNBC and Comedy Central grew slightly more Democratic.

By 2008-9, the network audiences tilted decisively, like Fox's. CNN viewers were more Democratic by 50.4 percent to 28.7 percent; MSNBC viewers were 53.6 percent to 27.3 percent Democratic; Headline News' 47.3 percent to 31.4 percent Democratic; CNBC's 46.9 percent to 32.5 percent Democratic; and Comedy Central's 47.1 to 28.8 percent Democratic.

Those ... trends track deepening partisan passions and decisions by cable news programmers to amplify strong opinions....

What's wrong with this analysis?

Let's say you're a hardcore alcoholic, of the beer-and-a-shot-and-hit-me-again-barkeep variety; you're fond of serious boozing and brawling. And let's say there are only two watering holes in town: an old-school saloon with a full supply of all the standard varieties of hooch and, across town, the All Girly Drink Cafe.

Which one are you going to go to -- all the time? And which one are you going to avoid -- all the time?

Well, John Harwood would interpret the lack of old-fashioned beer-and-a-shot drunks in the All Girly Drink Cafe as evidence that girly drinks don't contain alcohol.

Of course girly drinks contain alcohol -- just the same way CNN (home to Lou Dobbs) and MSNBC (home to Joe Scarborough) and Headline News (home to Glenn Beck until less than a year ago) and CNBC (epicenter of capitalism porn and site of the notorious Rick Santelli rant) contain conservatism.

But real conservatives want to go where they feel completely at home and can get what they want full strength. So they don't even bother with the other channels -- remember how abysmal Glenn Beck's ratings were at Headline News? -- because they'd rather go where everybody knows their name. In other words, viewership of the other channels isn't skewed Democrat because (MSNBC in prime time excepted) they're so damn liberal; it's skewed because Republicans won't watch these channels.

They're too busy puking in the toilet of the beer-and-a-shot bar that is Fox.

ANOTHER VOTE FOR THE F#%*-YOU PARTY

Nate Silver:

The "extreme" conservatives do have a few electoral advantages over the moderates: more capacity to generate high turnouts amongst their base, more differentiation from the establishment, and arguably a "fresher" message (even if it's all in the packaging).

He's talking about the NY-23 congressional race -- where, by the way, Public Policy Polling still shows wingnut Doug Hoffman with a big lead, even after Republican Dede Scozzafava's decision to endorse Democrat Bill Owens, in a district that's long been Republican but supported Barack Obama in 2008.

I'm not surprised at the PPP poll results, and I expect Hoffman to win. And no, that doesn't make me happy -- I'm not cheering the selection of more-wingnutty candidates if those candidates can actually win. I agree with Nate:

... do Democrats really want to be celebrating if an extreme conservative like Hoffman -- who, by the way, is not an especially good candidate -- is able to win a very middle-of-the-road district like NY-23? ... if a Glenn Beck-ian conservative is able to win a district that shares a frontier with Vermont and Canada, ought that not be at least a little bit worrying for Democrats in terms of the mood of the country?

But I think, in many ways, it might be the same mood that elected Obama. Remember: most ordinary schmucks aren't politics junkies. They're not ideologically consistent. They were hurting a year ago and a vote for Barack Obama was a flip of the bird to the status quo; they're still hurting and the most anti-Obama vote possible is seen as exactly the same thing. People just want something to change.

Republicans like Reagan and (at least for a while) George W. Bush dealt with the transition from challenging the establishment to being the establishment by continuing to talk as if they were the besieged speakers of truth to power even though they were in power. It worked -- they prattled on as if Democrats and the media and a bunch of professors had more power than they did, and people fell for it.

The Democrats haven't pulled anything like that off. I'm not sure they can -- the idea that liberals run everything all the time is well ingrained in our thinking, and the opposite isn't.

So some votes for angry Beckista politicians may just be votes for "not the status quo." And that's going to be the case until Obama and the Democrats find a way to define an enemy the public perceives as powerful. And no, even though I like the attacks on Fox News, Fox News is not that enemy.

PRINT THE LEGEND

Matt Bai, in today's New York Times Magazine, writing about Obama and Afghanistan:

Judging from a recent poll by ABC News and The Washington Post, war-weary American voters are divided almost evenly on a course of action. The only thing they agree on is that they want the president to act soon.

That's an interesting act of "judging" on Bai's part, given the fact that the most recent ABC/Post poll didn't have a single question on the timing of Obama's Afghanistan troop-deployment decision. A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll did, and it showed that a clear majority of respondents -- 58% -- approved of waiting until after the Afghan runoff before announcing the decision. When the poll was conducted, that was Obama critics' definition of "dithering" -- but the public was on Obama's side.

I don't want to give Bai too much grief for this -- he actually approves of Obama's approach -- but I can't help wondering if he thinks the public said something like this in the ABC/Post poll because so much of the noise in the Beltway implies public disgust with Obama's deliberateness that doesn't actually exist.

IT'S JUST A (SMALL) JUMP TO THE LEFT...

Following up on my last post: yes, obviously I agree to a great extent with Frank Rich, whose column today on the NY-23 congressional race describes the modern GOP as a "cult" in which moderates are pitilessly purged. But I don't really agree with this:

The right's embrace of [litmus-test wingnut Doug] Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P.... It's still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it's even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure....

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats' prospects next year.

I lumped a lot of people together in my last post -- Michelle Malkin, Fox News -- but I think there are different strategies at work here. Malkin and some others (e.g., the Club for Growth) are going to stay pure in their wingnuttery long past 2010. But I think Fox and some others are going to pivot slightly to ther left after 2010. That's because 2010 and 2012 are going to be very different.

Next year, it's all about having one motivated voting bloc in what will otherwise be a low-turnout off-year election cycle. Tea-partyism is a way to ensure that that bloc is angry old white people. If encouraging purism means that the broadly popular Charlie Crist loses the Florida GOP primary to wingnut favorite Marco Rubio and then Rubio loses to a Democrat, well, so be it -- I think the calculation at Fox high command and other shrewd outposts of the right is that that's a sacrifice well worth making to drive up angry-old-white-people turnout in House races across the country. As in NY-23 -- which, as I noted in the last post, is a GOP district that voted for Obama -- if you get enough angry old white people riled up, wingnuts can probably win even in center-right House districts.

After 2010, I expect the focus to be on striking a balance between stoking anger and winning in a high-turnout cycle. And that, I think, is going to mean subtly steering the wingnut base away from the suicide leap of Palinism without making the shift so obvious that they'll feel deprived of their minimum daily requirement of rage. So the focus will be on viable candidates who sort of talk the pitchfork talk but don't completely alienate moderates -- candidates who are more like New Wave than pure punk, as it were. (Pawlenty? Romney?)

Malkin probably won't be with the program. Limbaugh might not be. But Fox will. While I don't think Glenn Beck would ever completely abandon his looney-right notions, I can easily imagine he'll move that inch to the left, on the assumption that his paycheck is on the line. He can still say all the crazy things he wants about Obama and the Democrats -- he just won't be pushing for the hardest-right candidate imaginable.

I could be wrong about this -- and I could be right, but possibly the looneys will defeat Fox and the other slicksters in the battle for hearts and minds on the right. But I'm sticking by this prediction.