RAND PAUL IS GOING ABOUT THIS PRESS-BASHING THING ALL WRONG (updated)

Rand Paul got into it with the Today show's Savannah Guthrie this morning, as you may know:

“You have had views on foreign policy in the past that were somewhat unorthodox, but you seem to have changed over the years,” Guthrie told the Kentucky Republican, who was appearing via satellite from Nashua, New Hampshire. “You once said Iran was not a threat, now you say it is. You once proposed ending foreign aid to Israel, now you support it, at least for the time being, and you once offered to drastically cut ... defense spending.”

Paul attempted to speak as Guthrie continued.

“Why don’t we let me explain instead of talking over me, OK?” Paul interjected. “Before we go through a litany of things you say I’ve changed on, why don’t you ask me a question, ‘Have I changed my opinion?’ That would sort of a better way to approach an interview.”

“Is Iran still not a threat?” Guthrie asked in the cross-talk.

“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, you’ve editorialized,” Paul said. “Let me answer a question. You ask a question, and you say, ‘Have your views changed?’ instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed.”

Paul is being accused of mansplaining because he's telling Guthrie how to do her job. That's a valid criticism, though, strictly with regard to GOP primary-season politics, I don't think the apparent gender condescension will hurt Paul -- right-wing women (and men) think feminism means supporting right-wing women exclusively (defending Sarah Palin, yes; defending Sandra Fluke, no), and they think sexism is something only liberals engage in (just as liberals, in their eyes, are America's only racists). So attacking Guthrie is not a near-term problem for Paul.

What is a problem for Paul is what he was saying as he attacked Guthrie. He'd actually be cheered by the right if he lashed out at a female "liberal media" journalist while passionately defending boilerplate conservative positions. But Paul was defending his past assertions that it would be good to phase out all foreign aid, including aid to Israel. (This at a time when the right is absolutely smitten with Israel.) He does say, in the Guthrie interview, that he doesn't want to phase out aid to Israel right away, and he'd rather phase out aid to other, more hostile countries first, and he does point out that Benjamin Netanyahu, in a 1996 speech to Congress, proposed a gradual phaseout of U.S. aid to Israel. But it's nearly twenty years after that speech, and it sure doesn't look as if Netanyahu wants to revisit that idea anytime soon. In the meantime, Rand Paul is still talking favorably about zeroing out aid to Israel. If you're getting into beefs with reporters as part of a campaign to win Republican primaries, this is not what you want to be fighting about.

Nor do you want to be defending the assertion you made a few years ago that Iran wasn't a significant threat to the United States. True conservatives think post-Shah Iran has always been a threat to the United States. (Pay no attention to that Iran-contra action in the Reagan years.) If you're going to draw attention to yourself by getting into a spat, you don't want to do it saying that.



And this is not the only issue on which Paul is critiquing the way reporters are interviewing him. There's also abortion -- and he's getting that wrong, too:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, a newly declared Republican presidential candidate, is dodging a central question about abortion: What exceptions, if any, should be made if the procedure were to be banned?

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Paul would not say where, in his view, a pregnant woman's rights begin and those of the fetus end.

"The thing is about abortion -- and about a lot of things -- is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you're this or this or that, or you're hard and fast (on) one thing or the other," Paul said.

In the past, Paul has supported legislation that would ban abortion except in cases of rape or incest or to save the mother's life. At other times, he has backed bills seeking a broader abortion ban without those exceptions.

Paul gets testy again, this time with a male reporter (the author of this AP story is Philip Elliott):

Paul grew testy when pressed in the interview on the question of exceptions. "I gave you about a five-minute answer. Put in my five-minute answer," he said....

He added, "I've supported both bills with and without (exceptions), you know. In general, I am pro-life. So I will support legislation that advances and shows that life is special and deserves protection."

For a lot of voters -- especially in the deeply evangelical Iowa and South Carolina Republican parties -- that's the wrong answer:

In Iowa, where Paul will campaign Friday, Rev. Terry Amann of Walnut Creek Community Church near Des Moines said he saw no place for equivocation on the issue.

"I'm interested in finding a presidential candidate who is ready to die on the hill of pro-life," said Amann, whose endorsement is sought by presidential candidates in the state's opening caucuses. "No exceptions. No ambiguity."

Again, senator: You want to fight with reporters? If your fights highlight your deviations from conservative correct thinking, you're doing it wrong.

****

UPDATE: Okay, he's righted (and I do mean righted) the ship. This is Dave Weigel reporting on an early-afternoon Rand Paul appearance in New Hampshire, in which he was asked again about abortion:

"Should there be any exemptions or not?" asked NH1 reporter Paul Steinhauser, citing the DNC attack.

"What's the DNC say?" asked Paul. That landed like a joke—the room holding the press conference also contained some Paul supporters waiting for photos—but he was serious.

"Here's the deal -- we always seen to have the debate waaaaay over here on what are the exact details of exemptions, or when it starts," said Paul, waving his hands to the left. "Why don’t we ask the DNC: Is it okay to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus? You go back and you ask Debbie Wasserman Schultz if she's OK with killing a seven-pound baby that is not born yet. Ask her when life begins, and you ask Debbie when it's okay to protect life. When you get an answer from Debbie, get back to me."

It was the answer social conservatives would have preferred Paul give all along....

And that is exactly what the wingers want to hear on this issue. (Headline at the Right Scoop: "RAND PAUL SCHOOLING THE MEDIA ON ABORTION DEBATE.") Still, he's snappish when he's delivering tailored-to-please right-wing talking points and he's snappish when he isn't. The latter is going to continue to cause him problems.

SO WILL RAND PAUL TALK ABOUT THE WALTER SCOTT SHOOTING? (updated)

As you probably know, over the weekend in North Charleston, South Carolina, a black man named Walter Scott was stopped by police for a broken taillight. The stop ended with Scott running away from a white officer, at which point he was killed with with eight shots to the back, after which the officer planted a Taser near his body so that he could subsequently report that Scott had taken it from him. The officer, Michael Slager, has been charged with murder, after a cellphone video revealed that the officer's account of this story was a lie.

I hear there's one candidate in the upcoming presidential race who cares a lot about matters like this:

Rand Paul has made criminal justice reform an important bullet on his political to-do list. He was one of the few white political leaders to speak out forcefully during last summer’s contentious debates around the subject after several unarmed black men and boys were killed during encounters with police officers. He has co-sponsored legislation in Congress to reform mandatory sentencing laws and to change policies that permanently stigmatize nonviolent juvenile offenders, which have disproportionately affected African Americans.

During his announcement speech on Tuesday, Paul again raised the issue of fairness in the criminal justice system. Video elements and speaker intros ahead of his address zeroed in on his efforts to reach out to voters in urban areas and communities of color.

Yes, Paul wrote a couple of op-eds about Ferguson, Missouri, one in which he called for the demilitarization of police forces and one in which he blamed the War on Poverty (and poor people themselves) as well as a flawed criminal justice system for the kinds of problems that led to the shooting of Michael Brown. (But hey, he said something, right?) And yes, he subsequently said that the unindicted cop who choked Eric Garner to death on Staten Island should be removed from the force.

But I wonder if he'll say anything this time. Missouri isn't a key early primary state. Neither is New York. But the Walter Scott shooting happened in South Carolina. Will he keep silent for that reason?

It may not be a concern because even some conservatives seem to be condemning Officer Slager (see, for instance, this Free Republic thread). He may think it's safe to speak. If he's the crusader for justices that much of the political world, including the liberal media, thinks he is, he'll talk about this a lot. But I expect one statement or op-ed, with plenty of on-the-other-hands, and that's it. We'll see.

****

UPDATE: I see that we'll hear from him soon:

.@RandPaul joins us live on @CNN from North Charleston; we'll ask him about the controversial killing of #WalterScott pic.twitter.com/SMmXUpN5rk

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) April 8, 2015

HOW'S THAT NEW-KIND-OF-REPUBLICAN THING WORKING OUT FOR YOU, RAND?

Rand Paul, as the press regularly reminds us, says non-troglodytic things about the criminal justice system at times. Even Think Progress is impressed:

While the Republican senator follows his party’s beliefs and generally supports conservative social and economic policies, his position on criminal justice is surprisingly progressive. Paul has invoked his positions to try to reach out to African American voters, who typically vote for Democrats.

So here's the guy who's going to introduce Paul at a campaign rally in New Hampshire tomorrow:

One day after announcing his presidential bid, Paul will be introduced by a New Hampshire lawmaker so eccentric that the state GOP tried to gerrymander him out of politics.

Andy Sanborn, a state senator who was the co-chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 New Hampshire campaign, is an infamous character in New Hampshire politics....

To some extent, Sanborn is the standard "politically incorrect" obnoxious right-wing snarkmeister: He's compared Obamacare to a plane crash that killed several people in California a few years ago, and he's referred to governor Maggie Hassan as "Haggie." But then there's this flyer, which Sanborn distributed in his campaign last year:



Wait, it gets worse:

Democrats discovered that the image came from a Getty image search for "Menacing Hoodie."

Senator Paul, your thoughts?

And your thoughts about this moment, from Sanborn's 2008 campaign against Harold Janeway?

At one point, citing Janeway’s call for reviewing sentencing guidelines, Sanborn accused Janeway of being soft on crime.

“I guess my question to Harold is: How many people does he feel he needs to let out of prison to balance the budget?” asked Sanborn, who has called for greater sentences for violent offenders.

“This is sort of the Willie Horton kind of attack,” Janeway said quietly....

Janeway said a significant number of nonviolent offenders who are in prison for offenses like bad checks or parole violations could potentially be penalized with GPS bracelets, allowing the state to save money and better target its prison budget.

No, Harold Janeway isn't introducing Rand Paul tomorrow. The guy who baited him on sentencing reform is introducing Rand Paul tomorrow. The guy who put out an Evil Black Guy With Hoodie flyer will introduce him. Maybe Senator Paul will explain that choice next time he's telling us how enlightened he is on crime.

REPUBLICAN GANG WARFARE

Rand Paul announced today that he's running for president, and a hawkish outside group plans to attack him immediately:

As Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is set to announce his presidential campaign on Tuesday, a television ad tethers him to President Obama’s policy on Iran as part of a $1 million advertising buy painting him as “dangerous.”

The ad is a 30-second spot that will run on broadcast networks and on Fox News this week in the first four early primary states....

It is unusual for an outside group to try to swamp a candidate’s announcement day, but Mr. Paul has been viewed with deep concern by foreign policy hawks for his noninterventionist views. The ad is being run by a 501(c)4 group, the Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America, that doesn’t have to disclose its donors and is led by Rick Reed, a strategist involved in the “Swiftboat Veterans for Truth” against John Kerry in the 2004 presidential campaign.

But Daniel Larison notes this:

While reports have emphasized Reed’s role in the attacks on Kerry during the 2004 election, the group has its roots in pro-McCain advocacy from the 2008 election cycle and Reed has been a longtime McCain supporter.

And as a pro-McCain group from 2008 gears up to attack Rand Paul, McCain himself has revealed that he plans to run for reelection in 2016 -- and he's going to be faced with immediate right-wing opposition:

The Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) has launched an effort to defeat Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), bashing him for failing to uphold the principles of a “true conservative” just hours after he announced his intention to run for reelection.

“There are few Republicans who have betrayed our conservative principles more than John McCain,” SCF President Ken Cuccinelli said in an email to supporters Tuesday of the party's 2008 nominee for president.

Cuccinelli heads SCF now, but it was founded in 2008 by Jim DeMint, and the group endorsed Rand Paul over establishment candidate Trey Grayson in the 2010 GOP Senate primary in Kentucky.

So a group that endorsed Rand Paul is attacking John McCain and a group founded to back McCain is attacking Paul.

Root for injuries?

WHY IS RAND PAUL CALLING HIMSELF "DR." NOW?

Senator Rand Paul is now officially a candidate for president. Before he announced, he changed his handle on Twitter:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is now going by “doctor” on Twitter and has a new handle entirely....

Until yesterday ... [Paul's] account was “Senator Rand Paul” and the handle was “@SenRandPaul.”

... Paul is now just @RandPaul and going by “Dr. Rand Paul.”

He's "Dr." on his campaign site:



And this bit of campaign swag really wants you to think of him as a doctor:



What's going on? I think he's really planning to work the charity-eye-doctor angle in his campaign. His trip to Guatemala last summer to do operations for the poor got great press, even from news outlets, such as The Washington Post, that made note of the obvious publicity angle:

The doctor and his patients greeted each other beneath the gaze of three television cameras, three photographers, six reporters, a political aide, two press secretaries, [and] conservative activist David Bossie....

Bossie’s presence cast aside any doubt that the trip was merely an opportunity for the senator to reconnect with his medical roots. Bossie is the founder of Citizens United, the group whose lawsuit led the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that corporations and labor unions can spend unlimited funds on direct advocacy for or against political candidates. A documentary filmmaker who has shadowed Paul before, he traveled here with his daughter and a film crew equipped with lights, cameras and an unmanned aerial drone for overhead shots. Bossie said little about his plans, other than that his footage would appear in a film either about Paul or an issue of importance to him.

I think that film is going to show up on Iowa television soon -- or maybe it will be held until just before the caucuses. But it'll see the light of day.

Yeah, yeah, I know -- to us snarky lefties, "Dr." before Rand Paul's name is a reminder that his board certification is from a group he organized himself, and also that a medical organization to which he belongs, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, has "expressed doubts about the connection between HIV and AIDS and suggested that President Barack Obama may have been elected because he was able to hypnotize voters." But to the good churchgoing folk of Iowa, South Carolina, and other states, what "Dr." Paul is doing will be regarded as saintly soon -- if this plan works.

MICHAEL SAVAGE: JUST A MISUNDERSTOOD HIPSTER WHO'S ROOTING FOR A RACE WAR

No one who's paid attention to Michael Savage's political pronouncements over the years, on radio and in several bestselling books, will be surprised at this:

On the Friday edition of “Savage Nation,” right-wing talk show host Michael Savage said that President Obama is trying to destroy America by bringing “Third World haters” into the country and provoking white people to revolt against the government.

“The white man is a quiet man and a peaceful man,” Savage said, “and right now the white man is very, very quiet, and very, very peaceful, and like many dictators before him, Barack Obama thinks the white man will remain quiet and subdued forever. Hitler made that mistake; Hitler boasted that his supermen, his Hitler Youth, would easily wipe the floor with the GI Joes that were being sent over.... But it was the white man who defeated Superman in World War II. Let me tell you something else, you push the white man only so far, you’re going to have a reaction like you’ve never seen.”

But whenever I'm reminded of the ugliness of Savage's soul, I think back to the appalling profile of Savage that appeared in The New Yorker in 2009. That profile, by Kelefa Sanneh, portrayed Savage as an existential hipster and wildly inventive word-jazz artist cruelly deprived of the bien-piensant cult audience he richly deserves:

Even in this world of born-again refuseniks, Michael Savage is an anomaly: a heretic among heretics....

What he gives those listeners is one of the most addictive programs on radio, and one of the least predictable.... he delivers his analysis and his anecdotes in a vinegary New York accent, occasionally seasoned with Yiddish, and this voice alone conveys something of the nostalgia he feels for his boyhood in the Bronx and Queens, in the forties and fifties.

... Savage’s regular listeners ... know him to be, more days than not, a marvellous storyteller, a quirky thinker, and an incorrigible free-associater. He sometimes sounds less like a political commentator than like the star of a riveting and unusually vivid one-man play (he frequently dumps callers, even sympathetic ones, after about a sentence and a half), or a fugitive character out of a Philip Roth novel. Savage seems resigned to the fact that the majority of Americans, including many of his own listeners, just don’t get it -- just don’t get him -- and never will. He is a permanent resident of the political wilderness, sending daily dispatches back to the diseased civilization that the rest of us call home....

On his radio show that afternoon, Savage had played tracks by Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, and he sought to draw a line connecting the music he loved as a boy, the herbal medicine he practiced as a young man, and the political philosophy he advocates now: in each case, he said, he was after a kind of freedom....

The only people for Savage are the mad ones! Savage saw the best minds of his generation destroyed by madness! ... Or, um, Obamacare. I forget which.

This is your "liberal media" -- always willing to give a vicious ideologue the benefit of the doubt, always operating on the assumption that it's rude to take one's own side in an argument, even when (or especially when) the person on the other side is an unreconstructed hatemonger. You go to the "liberal" press and read puff pieces on Megyn Kelly and tongue baths for Tom Cotton, and you think, Well, those two are within the pale, more or less. There are limits, right? Well, yes, there are limits. If you actually don a sheet and declare yourself a Klansman, as David Duke did, yes, the liberal media will allow as how you're really rather de trop. But short of that, any frothing hater can be an underappreciated genius in the eyes of the coastal media.

YEAH, THAT'S ALL WE NEED: ANOTHER REASON FOR RIGHT-WINGERS TO FEEL PUT UPON

At The New Republic, Brian Beutler proposes this:

... April 9 is the 150th anniversary of the Union’s victory in the Civil War.... the federal government should make two modest changes: It should make April 9 a federal holiday; and it should commit to disavowing or renaming monuments to the Confederacy, and its leaders, that receive direct federal support.

... the Union’s victory, and the abolition of slavery, both merit celebration as exemplars of American improvement and renewal... These twin accomplishments are as worthy of a federal holiday as any holiday we already celebrate. So let's name April 9 New Birth of Freedom Day.

In a better country, I'd agree with this. In a better country, by now, a majority of Southerners would reject the Confederacy, some because they had no familial ties to it, others because they're descended from its victims, still others because they recognize the wrongness of the Cause.

But that's not how things are. In the real America, Southern whites have persuaded themselves that the flag of the Confederacy is about "heritage" rather than slavery or treason, and the defense of "heritage" in the modern world is part of a noble resistance to anti-white racism, which manifests itself in affirmative action and excessive social spending on Those People. I'm not arguing that this a valid way of looking at America -- I'm just saying that a large percentage of Americans see the country this way, and not just in the South. They feel put upon. They feel victimized. And they dig in their heels in resistance to all kinds of reasonable change, some having nothing to do with race, out of this sense of self-righteous outrage.

To them, it's not about racism, or even about race. They see everything as a culture war in which their culture is not accorded respect, as Mike Huckabee puts it in his most recent book:

In Huckabee’s world, America’s political divide isn’t red versus blue. It’s “Bubba-ville” versus “Bubble-ville.” Huckabee makes it crystal clear that Bubble-ville’s inhabitants are America’s self-aggrandizing, out-of-touch coastal elitists who share President Obama’s notion that those who inhabit Bubba-ville are to be viewed as little more than “bitter clingers” for daring to enjoy their guns and their God as well as a down-home, family-oriented lifestyle that includes fried foods (gasp!) and the sharing of simple truths that more often than not elude the highly educated Ivy League types Huckabee takes exception with.

According to Huckabee, the principal divide between the two groups is the difference between a secular and religion-based approach to the world. “But as much as there is a great divide in this country between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots,’ there is also a great chasm between the ‘believes and the believe- nots,’” Huckabee writes. “And increasingly the ‘believes’ in America have come to feel like cultural lepers --untouchable and undesirable -- and an embarrassment to their fellow Americans who equate the holding of traditional views on marriage, religion, family, patriotism, and even the rule of law and the Constitution with ignorance and superstition.” He further posits the “snobbery and bold bigotry” of the believe-nots is further amplified by their self-designation as ‘mainstream.’”

To white Southerners, there's no clear point where this "Bubba" culture ends and Southern "heritage" begins -- it's all part of the same "traditional" worldview, which, they believe "elitists" hold in contempt.

If there were a lot more of us than there were of them, I wouldn't care about this -- I'd say they have to suck it up and accept a world that needs to change, and that should have changed a lot faster. But their numbers are too big, and their level of resentment is too high already. This resentment already drives our politics -- what good will it do to inflame it even more?

So, yes, Beutler's idea is a good one -- but we're not ready for it. In the near term, it would only make things worse.

HOW FOX IS MAKING PEOPLE STUPIDER TODAY (updated)

According to Fox, a "Dem" is in cahoots with ... them:

Dem Flies Communist Flag at State Capitol Until Patriots Come Take It Down @ffweekend http://t.co/YBMaWJEYvm pic.twitter.com/Icyf2jHGp2

— FoxNewsInsider (@FoxNewsInsider) April 6, 2015

See? A commie flag at a state capitol! Your Fox-watching uncle is emailing you at this very minute to say he told you there's no difference between the philosophy of the Democrat Party and full-blown Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Stalist revolutionary communism -- but you wouldn't listen!

So, um, what's the story here? Well, here it is:

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee decided to fly a Communist China flag right next to the American flag at the Washington State capitol to honor a visiting Chinese ambassador.

Inslee, a Democrat, ordered the Chinese flag be raised right between Old Glory and the state flag outside the capitol building in Olympia.

Some local patriots, however, were not pleased and took matters into their own hands.

With the help of a Washington State Trooper, several activists lowered the Chinese flag.

They said that flying the flag of Communist China at the same height as the stars and stripes was disrespectful....

It's disrespectful to fly the flag of China at the same height as the U.S. flag? You mean like this?



That's a photo from Chinese president Hu Jintao's visit to the White House in April 2006. Here's another photo, from the archived Bush-era whitehouse.gov:



FactCheck.org posted the first photo in 2009, when President Hu was about to visit the White House again, this time to see the newly inaugurated President Obama; at that time, plans to fly the Chinese flag were making wingnuts flip out. (Some flipped out even when Bush did it.)

The flag display in Washington State (which, by the way, does a massive amount of trade with China) stirred up the usual idiots (hello, Jim Hoft) -- and, as noted above, it led a crew of self-styled patriots to demand that the Chinese flag be taken down, which actually happened:



I see from the video that flying the damn Tea Party flag at the same height as the U.S. flag is just fine with these guys.

Early in the video, one of the True Patriots looks at the state trooper who's overseeing the flag's removal and says, "Now, that's an oath keeper there." I don't think he's saying that the trooper is literally an Oath Keeper -- i.e., a member of the group of law enforcement officers who pledge never to enforce an "unconstitutional" order, "unconstitutional" being defined strictly by the group itself -- but he's admiring the guy for taking the law into his own hands, which is something all True Patriots feel entitled to do. They're Americans, see. You're not. The governor of Washington State is not. You haver to understand that the Constitution mystically speaks to these guys and tells them who counts as a citizen and who doesn't.

****

UPDATE: Wonkette's Doktor Zoom learns that the flag removal had nothing to do with the protest:

... as we confirmed with a call to Jaime Smith, Director of Media Relations for Gov. Inslee, the Chinese flag had been flying to honor the ambassador’s visit. She noted that it’s common protocol for national flags of visiting diplomatic and trade delegations to fly at the Capitol during official visits, as a routine show of goodwill. When the visit is over, the flag comes down. Totally normal, and the “patriots” had nothing to do with it.

So these guys are even more delusional than I thought they were.

I'M STILL NOT SURE JANN WENNER COMPLETELY GETS IT

Rolling Stone asked the Columbia School of Journalism to investigate what went wrong with its story, written by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, about a reported rape at the University of Virginia; the magazine has now published the damning report.

Good for Rolling Stone -- though a New York Times story suggests that Jann Wenner still doesn't really get it:

In an interview discussing Columbia’s findings, Jann S. Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, acknowledged the piece’s flaws but said that it represented an isolated and unusual episode and that Ms. Erdely would continue to write for the magazine. The problems with the article started with its source, Mr. Wenner said. He described her as “a really expert fabulist storyteller” who managed to manipulate the magazine’s journalism process. When asked to clarify, he said that he was not trying to blame Jackie, “but obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep.”

Really? Wenner's not trying to blame "Jackie," the main (and practically sole) source Erdely spoke to for her story? He could have fooled me.

Does this statement remind you of anything? Does Wenner seem to be saying, "Jackie led us on, so we couldn't help ourselves"?

*****

As the report makes clear, Erdely did a godawful job of nailing down the facts of this story, and her editors did nothing to encourage greater srupulousness. And yet:

Mr. Wenner said Will Dana, the magazine’s managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs.

But give Rolling Stone this much: The failures were thoroughly investigated, and the results of that investigation are now public. This is significant. It will make a difference in future reporting, on this subject and others.

Yet Power Line's John Hinderaker thinks none of this matters, because the evil liberals in the evil liberal media will always be evil and liberal:

So don’t be surprised next time Rolling Stone, or any other liberal publication, gets a story wrong. These journalists’ biases are set in stone. We and many others have revealed them countless times, and liberal bias has led to countless errors and embarrassments. But such setbacks don’t faze the social justice warriors who went into journalism to further the left-wing narrative. They are mere temporary checks.

I just want to remind Hinderaker that the report excoriating Rolling Stone for this story was prepared by an institution he and his fellow right-wingers consider part of the liberal media -- the Columbia School of Journalism. The first prominent debunking of the story appeared in The Washington Post, which Hinderaker and his fellow rightists also regard as part of the conspiratorial liberal media.

Where are the conservative media institutions that have the skill and standing to identify failures of proper journalistic practice? For that matter, where are the conservative media institutions capable of doing this kind of investigative journalism in the first place, and doing it right?

And, finally, when has a right-wing institution ever policed a conservative media outlet in this way?

The right-wing press simply doesn't tolerate self-criticism -- or any other kind of criticism. Brian Williams lies about his time in a military aircraft and the mainstream press pounces; his employer removes him from the air, and he may never return. Bill O'Reilly lies about his reporting from conflict zones -- and the right circles the wagons. There's no self-examination. There's no accountability.

Yes, heads should roll at Rolling Stone. But at least heads are hung in shame -- and it's a very public shaming. In the right-wing media, nothing like this can ever happen. The right-wing media is, quite literally, shameless.

DOUTHAT LOVES RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY MORE THAN HE HATES GAY MARRIAGE

In Ross Douthat's latest column, he's "interviewed" by a fictional secular journalist. From this pseudo-interview we learn that Douthat thinks it's fine not to want to bake a cake for a gay wedding, because it's not the same as refusing service to gay people across the board:

Seriously? Shouldn’t businesses have to serve all comers?

I think they should be able to decline service for various reasons, religious scruples included. A liberal printer shouldn’t be forced to print tracts for a right-wing cause. A Jewish deli shouldn’t be required to cater events for the Nation of Islam.

But those are issues of belief, not identity. Denying service to gays is like denying service to blacks under Jim Crow.

None of the businesses facing sanctions are saying they wouldn’t serve gay people as a class; they just don’t want to work at nuptials. This isn’t a structural system of oppression, a society-wide conspiracy like Jim Crow; we’re talking about a handful of shops across the country. It seems possible, and reasonable, to live and let live.

We then learn about Douthat's own belief system -- and here's where I find myself puzzled:

I think discrimination is discrimination. What about you? Would you bake the cake?

Honestly, since so many of my friends aren’t religious or conservative, I’ve always taken for granted that being part of their lives meant accompanying them through life choices that belong to a different worldview than my own. (And I’m very grateful that they’ve accompanied and tolerated me.) My family has its share of divorces and second marriages; my friends’ romantic paths are varied; my closest friend from high school just exchanged vows with his longtime boyfriend. I’m going to a party celebrating them next month. If they asked me, I’d bring a cake.

So why can’t other believers do the same?

First, these issues are difficult and personal, and I don’t presume that my approach is always right. Second, details matter. My closest gay friends are fairly secular. But I would be uncomfortable attending same-sex vows in the style of a Catholic mass -- or being hired to photograph such a ceremony.

So Douthat is going to a celebration of his best high school friend's same-sex wedding, for which he'd happily bake a cake, but if his best friend had a wedding "in the style of a Catholic mass," he wouldn't want to show up, or even be the photographer?

The obvious first point to be made about this is that Douthat is a terrible friend -- he's going to attend this party, but he wouldn't attend a wedding. I'd actually regard it as more understandable if he rejected his friend's marriage under either circumstance -- at least then he'd be acting on a principle, that homosexuality is always immoral and should never be endorsed or encouraged. I'd absolutely disagree with him, but his notion of what's sexually tolerable and intolerable would at least be consistent.

But this suggests that what upsets him is not so much homosexuality as the sullying of his precious church -- or, more precisely, the sullying of any church that practices the sort of moral scolding of which he approves. He'd reject a church wedding even if the denomination is one that's now embraced same-sex marriage, because Christian churches simply shouldn't do that -- they should punish or banish sexual transgressors. He wants churches to have the power to wag fingers and bully, and we wants them not to give up that power.

I suppose Douthat isn't very different from (as he notes) other selectively gay-averse business owners, or the family that owns Memories Pizza:

The O'Connor family told ABC 57 news that if a gay couple or a couple belonging to another religion came in to the restaurant to eat, they would never deny them service.

The O'Connors say they just don't agree with gay marriages and wouldn't cater them if asked to.

The O'Connors aren't caterers or flower arrangers arguing that their work is personal and handcrafted and thus invested with meaning for them in a way that a sandwich at a Southern lunch counter in the civil rights era wasn't for its preparers and servers. A pizza is a pizza. The people who own Memories will make you one if you're gay and walk in the door, but they won't make exactly the same pizza for your wedding, because weddings are the turf of moral authorities -- God and religious leaders -- and you're sullying it.

I don't get this. If you believe in your God and your moral code, if you think there's one consistent moral law that applies everywhere, why is it OK to be gay before a civil clerk but not a minister? Why is it OK to be gay in a booth at a pizzeria but not at a wedding? Are you sticking up for your morality, or just defending what you think of as God's territory? And if it's the latter, what means more to you -- leading a moral life as you define it, or being part of God's gang?

OBAMA IS EVIL, SAYS CREEPY GUY

I'm familiar with many varieties of right-wing craziness, but until this week I wasn't aware of Bill Whittle, who's primarily known on the right for videos he posts at PJ Media. His best-known video, I learn from Wikipedia, is one from the fall of 2011 in which he oh-so-originally denounces the members of Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of spoiled brats unable to cope with the fact that their "bad education" didn't make them instantly rich. I was out of the country when this one dropped, so I'm not sure why it collected two and a half million views on YouTube, but I suspect it's because corporate-funded right-wing group were genuinely scared by Occupy and were thrilled at the opportunity to promote any pushback. The video's not very good -- Whittle fantasizes about forcing everyone in America between the ages of ten and sixty to endure three and a half days surviving in the woods, though what the hell this has to do with youth joblessness or corporate lack of accountability is never adequately explained. (Isn't an urban version of this pretty much what Occupy was? And for a lot longer than half a week?)

But his new video (which I spotted via the Right Scoop) is a piece of work:



The first thing you notice is the tone, which combines the self-satisfied condescension of J.K. Simmons's sadist teacher in Whiplash with the skin-crawling creepiness of Christopher Walken in Annie Hall, or maybe Kevin Spacey in Seven. If Whittle began talking to you this way in an elevator, you'd punch every button in order to make your escape.

The subject matter is, of course, the evilness of Obama. How, specifically, is Obama evil, according to Whittle? He's so evil that he's destroying America not by dismantling the military, but by compelling the military to dismantle itself. The fiend!

FrontPage Magazine has a transcript. We start in D'Souza territory and then go from there:

Let’s just assume for a moment that you’re a radical, left-wing zealot, who was raised by actual communists, and who, naturally enough views the United States military as the tool of capitalist exploitation and colonial racism. Now, further assume that through a perfect storm of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, fate, money, power and media bias somehow conspired to make you Commander in Chief of those same armed forces.

What would you do?

You couldn’t very well scuttle 11 carrier strike groups. You can’t just destroy entire air wings, or armored divisions, or any of the rest -- no matter how much you may want to. That would break the spell.

If you hate this country, and you especially hate the military, you simply cannot go around destroying the weapons -- that’s too obvious. But you can do something much more subtle, and in the long run, even more disastrous, if your stated goal is to fundamentally change the country and the military that protects and defends it.

You don’t have to destroy the weapons. You don’t even have to destroy the warriors. All you have to do is create a set of conditions that are so incompatible with the warrior code that the warriors will remove themselves, because these are people who risk death and dismemberment, and whether at the tip or the end of the spear, generally live in appalling conditions, under great emotional hardship, for disgraceful levels of pay.

You have to hear this in Whittle's mostly crazy, half-stagey voice. (Ol' Blood and Guts was actually a theater major in college, and it shows, because he knows literally the first thing about doing effective line readings.)

So what is it that the evil Obama is doing to make the real men of the military leave the service? Um ... boring shore leave! Politically correct monitoring of tattoos! Oh, and, allegedly, a policy that required one (unidentified) major to catalog all the weapons personally kept in his troops'households. Did this really happen? An order that would be a fate worse than death for any True Patriot -- gun monitoring? I don't know -- it seems too perfect as a right-wing horror fantasy -- but it does give the major an opportunity to say (melodramatically, in Whittle's voice): Sir, I will not obey that order.

When Whittle starts talking about the potential for military coups, you'll start thinking of General Jack D. Ripper. And I guess there are years' worth of videos like this. And this is normal on the right.

BONUS: Here's Whittle's greatest hit:

JUDY MILLER: HANS BLIX BEARS MORE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE IRAQ WAR THAN I DO

The Wall Street Journal has published Judith Miller's defense of her Iraq War writings, in which she specifically denies responsibility for helping lead America into that war. There are others far more qualified than I am to pick apart what she's written in the Journal (and what will appear in Miller's book The Story, from which the Journal piece is excerpted). I'll limit myself to this:

Another widespread fallacy is that such neoconservatives as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz strong-armed an inexperienced president into taking the country to war. President Bush, as he himself famously asserted, was the “decider.” One could argue, however, that Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, bears some responsibility. Though he personally opposed an invasion, Mr. Blix told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America’s ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges. In February, he said “many proscribed weapons and items,” including 1,000 tons of chemical agent, were still “not accounted for.”

Did Blix say in January 2003 that Iraq wasn't fully compliant? Yes, he did. You can read the January 27, 2003, report here. Though please note that Blix says that Iraq was largely cooperative with regard to process:

Iraq has on the whole cooperated rather well so far with UNMOVIC in this field. The most important point to make is that access has been provided to all sites we have wanted to inspect and with one exception it has been prompt. We have further had great help in building up the infrastructure of our office in Baghdad and the field office in Mosul. Arrangements and services for our plane and our helicopters have been good. The environment has been workable.

Our inspections have included universities, military bases, presidential sites and private residences. Inspections have also taken place on Fridays, the Muslim day of rest, on Christmas day and New Years day. These inspections have been conducted in the same manner as all other inspections.

But yes, there was some resistance by Iraq up to that point. Blix said so. However, a few days later, he made it abundantly clear, in an interview published in The New York Times, that nothing he'd seen at the time justified war:

Mr. Blix said he continued to endorse disarmament through peaceful means. "I think it would be terrible if this comes to an end by armed force, and I wish for this process of disarmament through the peaceful avenue of inspections," he said.

And he specifically rebutted a large number of allegations advanced by the Bush administration:

Mr. Blix took issue with what he said were Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.

Similarly, he said, he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was sending weapons scientists to Syria, Jordan or any other country to prevent them from being interviewed. Nor had he any reason to believe, as President Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents were posing as scientists.

He further disputed the Bush administration's allegations that his inspection agency might have been penetrated by Iraqi agents, and that sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad, compromising the inspections.

Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to Al Qaeda, which Mr. Bush also mentioned in his speech. "There are other states where there appear to be stronger links," such as Afghanistan, Mr. Blix said, noting that he had no intelligence reports on this issue.

It's good that Miller is at least honest enough to acknowledge Blix's opposition to war, given his debunking of administration claims and his belief that persistence in pursuing inspections was a better path to disarmament.

(Did I mention that Miller was the lead author of the Times interview story?)

In his February report, Blix did say that "many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for." But let's put that quote in context (emphasis added):

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter -- and one of great significance -- is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were "unaccounted for". One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded.

Blix's February report suggested that Iraq was cooperative and the process as working well:

Since we arrived in Iraq, we have conducted more than 400 inspections covering more than 300 sites. All inspections were performed without notice, and access was almost always provided promptly. In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew in advance that the inspectors were coming.

The inspections have taken place throughout Iraq at industrial sites, ammunition depots, research centres, universities, presidential sites, mobile laboratories, private houses, missile production facilities, military camps and agricultural sites.....

Through the inspections conducted so far, we have obtained a good knowledge of the industrial and scientific landscape of Iraq, as well as of its missile capability....

More than 200 chemical and more than 100 biological samples have been collected at different sites. Three-quarters of these have been screened using our own analytical laboratory capabilities at the Baghdad Centre (BOMVIC). The results to date have been consistent with Iraq's declarations.

We have now commenced the process of destroying approximately 50 litres of mustard gas declared by Iraq that was being kept under UNMOVIC seal at the Muthanna site. One-third of the quantity has already been destroyed. The laboratory quantity of thiodiglycol, a mustard gas precursor, which we found at another site, has also been destroyed.

Blix made clear that the process required more time. He wasn't going to get more time, however. The bombing started less than a week later. It wasn't his idea. It wasn't his fault.

****

FYI, here's the jacket design for Miller's book, which will be published on Tuesday:



That might be the ugliest book jacket I've ever seen. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving person.

HOW CAN REPUBLICANS OUTDO THEMSELVES ON IRAN? LET ME THINK...

Ed Kilgore gives us a brain-teaser:

How Can Republicans Out-Do Scott Walker’s “Day One” Pledge on the Iran Nuke Deal?

Here’s a puzzler for you: we all know the next week will feature a competition among the 35 or 52 or however many Republicans are considering a 2016 presidential run as to who can say the most irresponsible things about the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran that just got a big step closer to reality yesterday. But how are they going to outdo Scott Walker’s pledge, initially made last week and then repeated like a terroristic threat, that he’d blow up any such deal on his first day as president? I mean, I guess someone could say they’d shout insults at Tehran during their Election Night victory party, or during their nomination acceptance speech call on the Israelis to launch a unilateral military strike. But in terms of official action, Day One is as good as it gets. If I’m wrong, I shudder to think what might be worse.

That's a tough one -- and you know it's tough because the best Ted Cruz has come up with so far is the same pledge:

As president, [Cruz] said, he would repudiate the deal “on Day 1″ of his presidency.

But the candidates could top this if they wanted to. Remember, for instance, that the new president will be sworn in on January 20, 2017, but the new Congress will convene on January 3. Couldn't a candidate outdo Walker and Cruz by saying that, if Congress passes a declaration of war against Iran between January 3 and January 20, not only will he (or she) abrogate the deal, he (she) will also sign that declaration of war right there on the podium, immediately after taking the oath of office?

And couldn't someone top that by promising to ask for the nuclear football just after being sworn in and then punching in the Tehran-bound launch codes right there in front of the crowd? (Though even I think that's a bit of a stretch for the GOP candidates, Trump perhaps excepted.)

I'm sure someone will top these suggestions. And hey, we have a lot of senators running for president -- have any of them pledged to shut down the government unless President Obama repudiates the deal?

HERE'S CHRISTIE'S SENATE APPOINTEE, IF HE'S SMART AND SHAMELESS

This NPR story is just silly:

Could Chris Christie Appoint Himself To The U.S. Senate? Yes, He Can

Thought exercise: What if the indictment of Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez ... could once again potentially place an appointment of a U.S. senator in the hands of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie?

To trigger this scenario, Menendez, who was indicted Wednesday on corruption charges, would first have to step down or be convicted. Menendez has given no indication he's going anywhere. Then again, stranger things have happened.

Consider why Christie might want to think about appointing himself IF a Senate seat were to be vacated:

1. He's term-limited as governor. He can't run again after serving two consecutive terms; and

2. His presidential hopes seem bleak at the moment....

But Chris Christie doesn't need a new job. He's going to have new job soon: running for president. Any doubts about that should have been dispelled earlier this week when this happened:

Gov. Chris Christie has granted a pardon to Shaneen Allen, the Pennsylvania mother and gun owner who was arrested in October 2013 for carrying a concealed weapon into New Jersey.

Allen, a single mother of two, was stopped by a New Jersey state trooper in Hamilton Township near Atlantic City for performing an unsafe lane change. During the stop, Allen had informed the officer that she was a resident of Pennsylvania and that her home state had issued her a permit to carry a concealed handgun, which she had with her in her car that day.

But New Jersey's strict gun laws require weapons to be stored unloaded and locked in the trunk, and so Allen was charged with unlawful possession of a firearm and spent 40 days in jail before making bail....

(I went to Free Republic to find out what the reaction to this. They don't like Christie much over there, so the predominant opinion, though favorable, was "WHAT TOOK SO LONG?" That's what I've been thinking as well -- I lurk at FR and other righty sites, and Shaneen Allen's case has been a cause celebre on the right since it first made the news. If Christie had pardoned her immediately -- and angrily -- he might not have spent the last half-year with 2016 primary poll numbers as terrible as they've been. Wingers love gun martyrs.)

Why would Christie want to appoint himself to fill Menendez's seat? So he'll be forced into a lot of awkward votes? I don't think so. Besides, he has a much better option if he wants to reestablish cred with his party's wingnut voter base.

All he has to do is appoint Steve Lonegan to replace Menendez.

Lonegan used to be the New Jersey state director of Americans for Prosperity. He's a perpetual (unsuccessful) candidate for public office -- he lost the 2013 special Senate election to Cory Booker, and lost a House election in 2014 -- but he has famous friends: Sarah Palin endorsed his Senate bid, as did the Tea Party Express and radio talker Mark Levin (Levin is nearly as much of a superstar on the right as Rush Limbaugh these days). Lonegan still doesn't seem wingnutty enough? Last August, Right Wing Watch told us about Lonegan's latest gig:

The Star-Ledger reported earlier this week that Steve Lonegan, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senate in last year’s New Jersey special election, has a new job: leading the anti-gay, anti-choice American Principles Project’s sideline effort to bring back the gold standard....

The American Principles Project was started in 2009 by Robert George, the intellectual leader of the anti-gay movement, to pressure Republican politicians to embrace both fiscal and social conservative policies. APP currently employs Maggie Gallagher, who founded the National Organization for Marriage along with George and served as NOM’s first president.

In his new job, it seems that Lonegan will unite the main political interests of APP’s chairman Sean Fieler, a little-known hedge fund manager who has become a major donor to the Religious Right and to social conservative causes in New York and New Jersey....

That's a lot of crazy -- so it sounds perfect for a Republican presidential aspirant who's seen as too moderate.Hey, governor, name Lonegan and your stock really might rise in Iowa and South Carolina.

WAR IS HELL, AND BY "HELL" I MEAN "AWESOME"

Chris Kyle isn't my hero but, well, this is for a good cause:

Seeking to raise funds for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Nashville-based Gibson Guitars has produced a one-of-a-kind Les Paul inspired by former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle.

The guitar will go up for auction Thursday at www.charitybuzz.com/chriskyleguitar with a starting bid of $3,000. Proceeds from the auction, which closes May 5, will benefit the Guardian for Heroes Foundation, which provides an array of services to in-need veterans with disabilities.

The current bid as I type this is $15,500.

What's odd to me is that this is for those who've been traumatized by war, and the guitar glorifies war:

The guitar's design features the skull logo that Kyle's SEAL Team 3 used during tours in Iraq, and its control knobs were crafted with shells from the same kind of ammunition Kyle used in combat.

Is it me, or is this like making a charity guitar for Alcoholics Anonymous in the shape of a gin bottle?

And it's somewhat ironic that this is a Les Paul in honor of Chris Kyle -- who fought in Iraq and whose PTSD-afflicted killer also fought in Iraq -- because the real Les Paul, who was in his late eighties (and still performing) back in 2004, publicly noted that year that he opposed the president who got us into Iraq.

Remember the "Sorry Everybody" website, where people posted photos apologizing to the world for the fact that the U.S. had just given George W. Bush a second term? Les Paul was there, along with his son:



Les Paul died in 2009. I'm sure he supported the troops. But I don't imagine he thought their war was glorious.

THE NUANCED FOREIGN POLICY THINKING OF MICHELLE MALKIN

#IfIranCheats - Obama won't be around to clean up the mess. Well, actually, nobody will be around the clean up the mess.

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) April 2, 2015

Right, because if Iran gets one nuclear weapon, that weapon will be so powerful it will be able to wipe out the entire planet, because it will be a special Evil Islamic Super Nuke raining hellfire on everyone on earth by means of a planet-encircling delivery system (sort of the way Santa delivers toys on Christmas Eve, except Muslim). America's 7300 nuclear warheads (and France's 300, and the U.K.'s 225, and Israel's 80) will be useless as a deterrent to this lone super-ultra-mega bomb, which will leave nothing but cockroaches in its wake.

Here's the thing: One-liners like this (and the endless right-wing comparisons to Obama to Neville Chamberlain) shape public opinion far more effectively than actual debate of the details. It's fine if people learn the facts and oppose what's been worked out, but the right is opposing something that's being sketched out for them in apocalyptic terms. Do I think they literally believe that this deal could lead to genocide across continents? Yes, I think they literally believe that. At least I think they viscerally believe it. And that's what we'd get have to get past in order to have a ratonal debate on this subject. I can't imagine that it will be possible.

(Malkin tweet via Digby and Luke Brinker at Salon.)

WINGNUTS NO LONGER QUITE SO SURE ABOUT THIS PROSTRATION-BEFORE-CEOs THING

The Reagan revolution and the fall of communism have combined over the past 30-plus years to create a culture in which corporations are more powerful than they've been since the Roaring Twenties, if not the Gilded Age. Right-wingers used to be very, very happy about that, and the vast majority of them still are.

But some of them have suddenly noticed that the monster they've bred won't always do what they expect it to do with all the power they've given it. And they're peeved.

Here's National Review's Kevin Williamson stamping his foot in rage because the two most powerful corporations of the Reagan/post-Reagan era don't hate gays the way he does:

Tim Cook, who in his role as chief executive of the world’s most valuable company personifies precisely the sort of oppression to which gay people in America are subjected, led the hunting party when Indiana’s governor Mike Pence signed into law the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, while Walmart, a company that cannot present its hindquarters enthusiastically enough to the progressives who hate it and everything for which it stands, dispatched its CEO, C. Douglas McMillon, to head off a similar effort in Arkansas, where Governor Asa Hutchison rolled over immediately.

Oh, boo-hoo. You create a political system in which corporate money is all but unlimited, one that effectively turns all politicians into the plutocrats' clerks, then you're upset when the richies' unlimited right to make demands includes marching orders to which you object? Furthermore, you define capitalism as an economic system passed down directly by God on stone tablets, then you're angry when market forces motivate corporate chieftains to be inclusive?

Williamson writes as if he's been reading 1960s left-wing sociology, or at least listening to anti-establishment Classic Rock, and repurposing it to attack both liberals and megacorporations:

The self-styled progressive sets himself in rhetorical opposition to Big Business, but the corporate manager often suffers from the same fatal conceit as the economic étatist -- an unthinking, inhumane preference for uniformity, consistency, regimentation, and conformity. It is no surprise to see Apple and Walmart joining forces here against the private mind. There is a reason that the atmosphere and protocols of the corporate human-resources office are a great deal like those of the junior-high vice-principal’s office: All reeducation facilities have a little something in common.

IF YOU DON'T EAT YOUR MEAT, YOU CAN'T HAVE ANY PUDDING!

Meanwhile, in Sioux City, Iowa, Ted Cruz is also angry at The Man:

"The Fortune 500 is running shamelessly to endorse the radical gay marriage agenda over religious liberty to say: 'We will persecute a Christian pastor, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi,' " he said. "Any person of faith is subject to persecution if they dare disagree, if their religious faith parts way from their political commitment to gay marriage."

Denouncing "the Fortune 500"? Damn, Ted, when did you go all Occupy?

And if you and Kevin hate the big corporations so much now, why don't you join us in trying to tax them? Or regulate them? Or punish their illegal acts in a way that actually has deterrent value?

PLENTY OF PEOPLE ACTUALLY LIKE HILLARY CLINTON, BUT NOBODY LIKES JEB

According to a new Washington Post/ABC poll, Jeb Bush is well ahead of his rivals in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, though, of course, not as far ahead as Hillary Clinton is on the Democratic side:

In the contest for the Republican nomination, Bush tops the field with 20 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents saying they would support him if their primary or caucus were held today. He is followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at 13 percent and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 12 percent. Five other Republicans receive at least 6 percent support, with an additional six candidates at either 2 or 1 percent.

(Clinton's at 66% among Democrats. Joe Biden is in second place at 11%.)

Clinton has double-digit leads -- yes, still -- over the Republicans:

Tested against four possible Republicans in a general election -- Bush, Cruz, Walker and Rubio -- Clinton holds double-digit leads in every case. Bush does marginally better than the others, but trails by 53 to 41 percent among registered voters, while Cruz runs weakest at 54 to 37percent.

But it's early, right? And don't Hillary and Jeb both have the same problem -- that a certain percentage of voters support them in a knee-jerk way, as inevitable nominees, but no one is actually enthusiastic about either of them?

Well, that's not quite true. Between Jeb and Hillary, there's huge enthusiasm gap:



It turns out that 42% of Democrats are "very enthusiastic" about Hillary Clinton. Only 12% of Republicans are very enthusiastic about Jeb Bush. That also means that there'll be enthusiasm for Hillary if she's running against a fresher Republican than Jeb.

Maybe you don't think that's a good thing. I get that -- but I want the next Supreme Court vacancies to be chosen by a Democrat rather than pulled off a list of recommendations from the same folks who gave us Roberts and Alito. I want the next four years of budgets not to reek of Paul Ryan. Hillary Clinton may not be the liberal of anyone's dreams, but she's against Indiana's religious freedom act, and what Republican presidential aspirant can say the same? (Oh, sorry, there's one: George Pataki, who seems serious about running this year, though no one knows why.)

So I'm glad Democratic voters are enthusiastic about Hillary. And I'm very glad that Republicans may be on their way to picking a nominee a lot of them don't like and the public as a whole doesn't like:

Bush ... is viewed favorably by just 33 percent of the public, while 53 percent say they view him unfavorably.

(Hillary's general-public numbers aren't spectacular, but they're above water, at 49%-46%.)

Good job, GOP establishment: few people like the guy you're forcing on your party, and hardly anyone is fired up about him. That's your strategy? Please proceed.

DON'T GIVE MICHELE BACHMANN ALL THE BLAME -- OBAMA-AS-LUBITZ IS A RIGHT-WING MEME (updated)

Michele Bachmann posted this on Facebook on March 31:



Bachmann is being denounced as a uniquely extreme goggle-eyed lunatic. But this isn't even an original idea.

Here's Legal Insurrection cartoonist A.F. Branco on March 30:



And here's HopeNChange Cartoons ("Proudly conservative -- fiercely funny") on March 27:



That one is accompanied by a post whose author goes by the name "Stilton Jarlsberg." It reads in part:

Lubitz, in his single-minded madness, couldn't be stopped because anyone who could change the jet's disastrous course was locked out.

It's hard to imagine the growing feelings of fear and helplessness that the passengers felt as the unforgiving landscape rushed up to meet them. Hard - but not impossible.

Because America is in trouble. We feel the descent in the pits of our stomachs. We hear the shake and rattle of structures stressed beyond their limits. We don't know where we're going anymore, but do know it isn't good. And above all, we feel helpless because Barack Obama has locked us out.

He locked the American people out of his decision to seize the national healthcare system. Locked us out when we wanted to know why the IRS was attacking conservatives. He locked us out of having a say in his decision to tear up our immigration laws, and to give over a trillion dollars in benefits to those who broke those laws.

Obama locked out those who advised against premature troop withdrawals. Locked out the intelligence agencies who issued warnings about the growing threat of ISIS. He locked out anyone who could have interfered with his release of five Taliban terror chiefs in return for one U.S. military deserter.

And of course, Barack Obama has now locked out Congress, the American people, and our allies as he strikes a secret deal with Iran to determine the timeline (not prevention) of their acquisition of nuclear weapons....

It was only near the end of the 8 minute plunge that everyone finally understood what was really happening. Only near the end when they began to scream.

Like those passengers, a growing number of Americans feel a helpless dread as they come to the inescapable conclusion that our nation's decline is an act of choice rather than of chance. The choice of one man who is in full control of our 8 year plunge.

A man who has locked everyone out.

You think someone like Bachmann represents the rightmost point on the bell curve of crazy, and it turns out that she's not alone at the far edge, because of plenty of others are right there with her. At this point, the right is so deranged that she may be closer to the middle of the curve than the far end.

****

UPDATE: Oops, one more -- from right-wing Net-radio talker Teri O'Brien on March 27:

Barack Obama: America’s Andreas Lubitz. Is it too late to keep our great country from slamming into the side of a mountain?

You can pretty much guess the rest.

****

UPDATE: And I also missed this, from Roger L. Simon at PJ Media on March 27:

Obama the Crazy Pilot

... Obama and his minions are huddled wherever they’re huddled, busy destroying the Western World with their bizarre policies and eagerness to make a deal with Iran that is so desperate it makes the word pathetic seem pathetic. The results of this desperation have been wretched, a fascistic new Persian Empire emerging from Libya to Yemen with Obama auditioning for the role of Cyrus the Great – or is it Ahmadinejad Junior? Whatever the case, it’s horrible....

It’s hard to know why Obama is doing it all. I know it sounds like a rude overstatement but in a way he reminds me of that crazy German pilot flying that plane into that alpine cliff, only the plane is us (America and the West). Does he hate us all that much – or is it just Netanyahu? ...

(Hat tip: nancydrew in comments.)

CONGRATULATIONS, HATERS: TED CRUZ IS NOW A TOP-TIER CANDIDATE AND IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT

Ted Cruz's 2016 poll numbers have been in the doldrums, but a new Public Policy Polling survey says he's made big gains:

PPP's newest Republican national poll finds that Ted Cruz has the big momentum following the official announcement of his candidacy last week. His support has increased from 5% to 16% in just over a month, enough to make him one of three candidates in the top tier of GOP contenders, along with Scott Walker and Jeb Bush....

Cruz has really caught fire with voters identifying themselves as 'very conservative' since his announcement. After polling at only 11% with them a month ago, he now leads the GOP field with 33% to 25% for Walker and 12% for Carson with no one else in double digits. Last month Walker led with that group and almost all of the decline in his overall support over the last month has come within it as those folks have moved toward Cruz.

How do you become a favorite of the wingnut Republican voter base? Regular readers of this blog know my theory: You have to persuade those voters that liberals and Democrats really, really hate and fear you. Cruz's problem in the months leading up to the announcement of his candidacy was that we'd stopped acting as if we were afraid of him. We hardly talked about him anymore, and when we did, all we talked about was how much other Republicans hated him. So he'd become the male Sarah Palin -- yes, a vengeful warrior for True Conservatism, but a warrior who apparently couldn't shoot straight.

But once he'd announced, we lefties - and, yes, I'm as guilty as every other bloviator -- couldn't stop talking about him. We treated him as if he's a conservative force to be feared. Some of us dredged up the old Joe McCarthy comparisons. (An aside: Can we please stop comparing Cruz to Joe McCarthy? Yes, they look somewhat alike. Yes, Cruz also hates communism. But Cruz has no power to destroy reputation or ruin lives -- I'm not saying he wouldn't given the chance, but he can't, and he's not likely ever to have the power, unless, God help us, some GOP president puts him on the Supreme Court, which I wouldn't rule out.)

We all talked so much about Cruz after he announced his candidacy that now he seems powerful. It looks as if we fear him. So of course the voter base has (at least temporarily) forgotten Scott Walker's union-busting and three recent election victories, and has forgotten Ben Carson's National Prayer Breakfast speech:

Ben Carson [has] dropped from 18% to his new 10% standing. There's a lot of overlap between the voters who like Carson and the voters who like Cruz and where previously they'd been naming Carson as their first choice the momentum for Cruz lately seems to have really cut into Carson's support.

The candidates, or at least the non-Jeb candidates, are going to figure this out, if they haven't already. In order to win, they're going to have to anger us and scare us. If we rise (or the GOP voter base thinks we're rising) to some candidate's bait, that candidate will soar in the polls.

So we should probably dispense our outrage carefully -- though, frankly, I'm glad we elevated Cruz, because he might be the least electable Republican apart from Donald Trump. Go Ted!

HILARIOUS RICK SANTORUM SAYS ISIS PROPAGANDA IS BETTER JOURNALISM THAN THE NEW YORK TIMES

Rick Santorum is one of three public figures who've been identified as enemies in a new issue of an ISIS propaganda magazine:

A magazine published by the Islamic State has put Virginia state Sen. Richard H. Black on very short enemies list.

The publication, Dabiq, singles out Black (R-Loudoun) along with two others it describes as “crusaders,” former U.S. senator and presidential hopeful Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and CIA veteran and author Gary Berntsen.

Via PJ Media, here's Dabiq quoting Santorum:



So how did Santorum react to this? He reacted as you might expect: He used what Dabiq published as an excuse to take a swipe at ... um, The New York Times:

WATCH @RickSantorum react to being quoted by ISIS in the latest issue of the terror group's magazine https://t.co/9YEvxefEsu

— FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) April 1, 2015

STEVE DOOCY: You know, it's one thing if The New York Times quotes you, or we quote you on Fox, but when ISIS quotes you, what did you think?

RICK SANTORUM: Well, the difference is ISIS actually quoted me accurately, composed -- compared to The New York Times, which is sort of a remarkable comment on the state of the media today.

Oooh, snap! Ya burnt, New York Slimes!

Seriously, Santorum? When have you been quoted inaccurately in The New York Times? I'm not asking about expressions of opinion in the Times that you don't like, or interpretations of facts you disagree with in straight Times journalism -- when exactly has the Times misquoted you? I want article titles and dates. It's not "a remarkable comment on the state of the media" if it's not based on facts, so give me facts.

Yes, maybe I'm making too much of an offhand quip (although I don't think it was an offhand quip -- the stumble over the word "compared" suggests to me that this exchanged was scripted for Doocy and Santorum and read off prompters, as, I suspect, many of the liberal-baiting jokes in Fox interviews are scripted). But this is how the right thinks. ISIS is bad, but ISIS isn't the main enemy. The main enemy is the right's domestic political opposition (and, in this case, Rupert Murdoch's media competitors, who are all, of course, part of the vast left-wing conspiracy). You'll see this in the rest of the clip. Santorum's ultimate enemy is in the Oval Office:

SANTORUM: ... They did. They accurately quoted -- I described who they were, what they were about, what they wanted to accomplish, and they put it out there because it accurately described who they are, which is, again, a comment on this administration and their unwillingness to deal directly with the truth about who ISIS is, they're a global jihadist movement, they have established a caliphate, they want to expand that caliphate, and I explained what that was about. So I took it as them actually finding an American politician who actually described them as to who they really are.

Did you follow thaT? Santorum is such a truth-teller, and Obama such a prevaricator, that even ISIS admires Santorum for his truth-telling.

Santorum is proud of being quoted by ISIS. He's come to the conclusion that ISIS has somehow pulled the wool over Obama's eyes, which helps ISIS, while his own noble truth-telling exposes ISIS -- yet the members of ISIS actually admire him for exposing them!

In reality, ISIS wants to quote Santorum because his words function as an extremely effective recruiting tool. The Santorum quote in Dabiq comes from a February appearance by Santorum on (of course) Fox News, in which he aggrandizes ISIS almost as effectively as its own propaganda does ("They’re not losing ground. They’re not being discredited in the eyes of the Muslim world. They will get stronger") and suggests that nothing will stop the group short of deploying a large U.S. ground force:

In the caliphate, the reason that we had a thousand-year world with the Muslim world....When I say “we” I mean the West...had a thousand-year war with Islam is that Islam was ever-expanding. When Islam began to contract, it collapsed. The caliphate was eliminated. Now they have established a caliphate. They are dead serious about expanding it. Unless we begin to take back that ground and make this caliphate irrelevant in the eyes of the Muslim world, or the radical Muslim world, we are going to have a bigger and bigger problem. So, the key is to act promptly and to make sure that America is involved. We have to have...I said today in my speech here at CPAC that we could put forth 10,000 troops....

Many right-wingers have quoted Graeme Wood's Atlantic article "What ISIS Really Wants," but Wood thinks it would be a terrible idea for America to rise to ISIS's bait this way, because it's exactly what ISIS wants:

The biggest proponent of an American invasion is the Islamic State itself. The provocative videos, in which a black-hooded executioner addresses President Obama by name, are clearly made to draw America into the fight. An invasion would be a huge propaganda victory for jihadists worldwide: irrespective of whether they have given baya’a [allegiance] to the caliph, they all believe that the United States wants to embark on a modern-day Crusade and kill Muslims. Yet another invasion and occupation would confirm that suspicion, and bolster recruitment.

So Santorum is doing what ISIS wants, and is quite pleased with himself for doing it. Oh, and by the way, Obama and The New York Times still suck!