Of all the recent conservative fantasies, the idea of Joe the Plumber as the voice of conservative American media is the least surprising. That's because it is a persistent belief among many on the Right that training is unnecessary, that education is for elitists, and that wishing hard enough for something can supersede those things.
Salaam writes: Brandon Friedman reports on some of the many exhibits that the US rightwing is departing reality into fake journalism, pro-torture television plots, and fake military units - rather than face up to the failure of their movement. I'm excerpting one of his examples. Follow the link after excerpt for the whole piece.
Brandon Friedman writes: Whereas most of America sees a largely incoherent plumber from Ohio wandering cluelessly around Israel with a microphone, conservatives are witnessing the reincarnation of Ernie Pyle before their very eyes. Of course, if you've heard the guy open his mouth, you know this is, indeed, fantasy. But it had to be done. When the bad news delivered by the likes of Nic Robertson, Michael Ware, and Christiane Amanpour reached a crescendo for conservatives toward the end of October, they decided to invent their own reporter. In their own minds, they pined for one who wouldn't challenge their long-held beliefs that Arabs are Muslims and Muslims are bad, that Saddam did 9/11, and that there was no way a man named Barack Hussein Obama could ever be elected as President of the United States.
That trailblazing, fearless reporter for truth became Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher--a man who, as soon as he got there, proclaimed "the media should be abolished from reporting."
I have to say, though, that of all the recent conservative fantasies, the idea of Joe the Plumber as the voice of conservative American media is the least surprising. That's because it is a persistent belief among many on the Right that training is unnecessary, that education is for elitists, and that wishing hard enough for something can supersede those things.
And I'm okay with all this. To me, it's evolution. By retreating so deeply into this fantasy world of strike forces, pro-torture heroes, and swashbuckling, allied journalists, we're witnessing a self-induced thinning of the herd by conservatives. They're actively choosing not to participate in the reality that is present-day America, instead opting to fall back on the comforting, familiar images of handymen and handsome actors on their television sets.
So much the better for the country. We'll tackle real problems head on--with real solutions starting next Tuesday. And we will progress without them.
Conservatives frequently look to 24 as a justification for hawkish policies such as torture.
Actor Kiefer Sutherland plays Jack Bauer on the Fox series "24."
From Media Matters: Fox & Friends' Brian Kilmeade falsely suggested that only "people at the U.N." want to close Guantánamo, while co-hosts Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson, as well as Glenn Beck, used TV drama 24 as a justification for the use of torture. In fact, Sen. John McCain, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and five former secretaries of state are among those who have said that Guantánamo should be closed.
Beck and the Fox & Friends hosts also invoked 24 as a justification for the use of torture. Referring to the show's recent season premiere, in which protagonist Jack Bauer, a former member of the fictional "Counter Terrorist Unit," defends his use of torture during a hearing before Congress, Beck said: "[I]t's going to take somebody who sits in front of Congress who is not afraid of them anymore and does what Jack Bauer did. And that is, 'Yes, I did torture, and I'm proud of it.' And it's time for these things to come out of the closet." Introducing an excerpt from 24, in which Bauer is seen answering questions from a congressional committee about torture, Kilmeade stated: "Let's listen to what happened in the fictional series 24 and see if this helps build your argument."
After the clip, co-host Steve Doocy said: "In particular, in that clip, you know, the guy [fictional Sen. Blaine Mayer] goes, 'You tortured them.' And he [Bauer] goes, 'Well, it probably was torture under your definition. But ask the people whose lives I saved whether or not it was worth me going over the edge' -- they would probably -- you ask the average person, 'Is it OK to do something, rough somebody up, to save lives?' You ask the person on the street, they'd say, 'Yeah, why not?' "
During the segment, on-screen text read: "What Americans Need to Hear; Beck Applauds Jack Bauer's Honesty."
Media Matters for America has noted that conservatives -- including Beck -- frequently look to 24 as a justification for hawkish policies such as torture.
Faced with economic turmoil, media conservatives turn to class warfare.
Conservatives have been largely successful in expunging all discussion of class in America over the last three decades while waging an unrelenting effort to mine the wealth and resource of the middle, working and poor classes. There was once a movement (above) to push back against economic tyranny, but in modern times the Democratic party has largely been co-opted. Inshallah, the nascent Progressive Movement will be able to do better.
Salaam writes: Jeff Jacoby was a "message force multiplier" as the military would say for the failed campaign to prevent the construction of a mosque in Boston. I conclude from this article that when Jacoby isn't targeting Muslims he is targeting minorities and the poor.
From Media Matters: Summary: Even though the crises facing the financial and automotive industries were born primarily of the actions (or inaction) of those in positions of power in private industry and in government, many conservative media figures have assigned blame to specific groups of less wealthy or less influential people -- the poor, minorities, undocumented immigrants, and union members, among others -- disregarding the facts that belie such assignments of blame.
...
In a September 28 Boston Globe column, Jeff Jacoby wrote: "The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to 'meet the credit needs' of 'low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods.' Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans."
Responding to the chorus of conservatives targeting CRA and minorities, Marc H. Morial, head of the National Urban League, reportedly sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson asking him to refute such claims, writing: "It's an effort to shift the climate away from deregulation and the lack of oversight. ... The numbers are becoming clearer each day that a large number of people who ended up with a subprime loan could have qualified for a prime loan. That's the abuse that's inherent here."
In a November 19 speech in Baltimore, United States Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan criticized efforts to blame CRA for the mortgage crisis, saying, "CRA is not the culprit behind the subprime mortgage lending abuses, or the broader credit quality issues in the marketplace." Dugan added, "Indeed, the lenders most prominently associated with subprime mortgage lending abuses and high rates of foreclosure are lenders not subject to CRA."
The surge is working: Hunter claimed that strolling around Baghdad is less "dangerous" than in Tijuana - the same week that Baghdad witnessed a devastating suicide attack, a rocket fired into the Green Zone, and a bomb attack on an NPR journalist's car.
Freshman Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-CA), son of former GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, recently was elected to Congress after campaigning on a staunch anti-immigration platform.
During an interview with MSNBC's Luke Russert today, Hunter defended his campaign pledge to end citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, arguing immigration increases domestic crime. As his evidence, Hunter made the outlandish and grossly inaccurate claim that Tijuana, Mexico has more crime than "Iraq and Afghanistan":
HUNTER: In San Diego, we face a lot of crime. ... There's been more murders in Tijuana, Mexico than there have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's more dangerous to go to Mexico from San Diego than it is to fly over and stroll around a Baghdad market.
Continuing his tirade against immigration, Hunter claimed undocumented immigration "drives wages down, hurts hospitals, hurts education here in San Diego, and it's doing this throughout the entire country."
Hunter is unfortunately correct that violence in Mexico has ballooned in recent years, in part due to the ongoing drug wars. At least 4,000 have died this year in drug-related violence, according to the AP. Tijuana has also seen a surge in violence.
But to claim that there are more murders in the city of Tijuana than there are in "Iraq and Afghanistan" is absurd. In Tijuana, "at least 200 people have been killed in drug violence this year," the Washington Post reported in June. But in the month of July 2008 alone, there were approximately 500 civilian fatalities in Iraq. There have been roughly 700 deaths this year in Afghanistan.
Hunter also claimed that strolling around in Baghdad is less "dangerous" than in Tijuana - the same week that Baghdad witnessed a devastating suicide attack, a rocket fired into the Green Zone, and a bomb attack on an NPR journalist's car.
The economy is a game of music chairs, and the chairs are disappearing. When the music stops for each of us, and our chair is gone, for a time we will rely primarily on the resources we've built up now. Those of us left holding the big screen tvs and the designer handbags will have them - or whatever their resale value is. And those who have ties - biological or chosen - will have those. The truth is that our consumer culture needs us to be isolated, fragmented, alone, empty - or advertising wouldn't work, the nonsensical reasoning that we have to have this year's big thing wouldn't work. The primary project of consumer culture is to drive us apart, to make sure we do not share, we do not combine resources, or even consult on how ridiculous the things we are being told are. And it has worked magnificently.
The music is hectic, the chairs are disappearing, we're going faster and faster. And pretty soon it stops. What will you have when it just...STOPS?
Rod adds:
John Taylor Gatto, a lapsed Catholic and education reformer, wrote that one good thing religion has going for it is that it gives you a point of resistance against the manipulators. A spiritually content person, he said, is a lot harder to manipulate.
If spiritual contentedness and strong family ties are threats to the culture of consumerism -- and I think they are -- what does that say about the basic nature of institutions like the Federal Reserve and about broader economic policy during the past eight years? Robert McTeer, then head of the Dallas Fed, said in 2001, "If we all join hands and go buy a new SUV, everything will be all right...Just go out and buy something - maybe a Navigator." Richard Fisher, his successor, said in 2005:
Where would the world be if Americans did not live out their proclivity to consume everything that looks good, feels good, sounds good, tastes good? We provide a service for the rest of the world. If we were running a current account surplus or trade surplus, what would happen to economic growth worldwide and what would be the economic consequences? So I think we are doing our duty there.
And of course Bush's various exhortations to "go shopping" are well-known.
I wonder how many on the Religious Right understand the irony in supporting an administration that unabashedly promotes an almost demonic obsession with the material world on display in incidents like this. Or is it really all about "the fags"?
Security at US federal buildings breaking down as conservatives - acting out their ideological hatred of government - contract out security responsibilities to liability-adverse private companies that shrink from challenging suspicious people.
Remember this picture from the deadliest terror attack in the history of the country before 9/11? A fire rescuer carries a victim of white extremist bomber Timothy McVeigh out of the rubble of the Alfred P Murrah federal building in Oklahoma. Obviously, there are many non-Muslim groups out there who would like to attack the US government, but if deviants with the sophistication of the Mumbai attackers put their collective efforts to it, I would be very worried that current security might be insufficient to stop them, based on the report below.
Salaam writes: This report is alarming as it shows that America is again at risk of an attack which could provoke yet another unrestrained vengeful Bush-like response that will land on US Muslims as it undermines efforts of civil libertarians to roll back the damage inflicted on the constitution by the Bush administration. Sometimes I wonder if ideological conservatives let the country drop its guard on purpose to practice their own version of crisis capitalism and crisis government reform. The article below cites budget constraints as the reason for privatizing federal building security but I'm convinced that is just a pretense.
From Government Executive.com:
After the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building 13 years ago, things changed for federal employees, especially in Oklahoma City. On April 19, 1995, just after 9 a.m., a truck rented by Timothy McVeigh and packed with more than 6,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane and diesel fuel detonated on the north side of the Murrah building. The blast - which killed 168 people, including 15 children in the federal day care center, and left more than 800 injured - destroyed one-third of the nine-story federal building and shattered glass in 258 buildings in a 16-block radius. It was, at the time, the deadliest terrorist attack ever on U.S. soil.
Within two weeks of the attack, one building just four blocks away - occupied by the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and other agencies - installed X-ray machines, magnetometers and glass security walls, and posted security guards in the lobby. Every person entering the building was scanned and their credentials verified.
Tightened security soon became a familiar sight at federal buildings throughout the nation, with policies quickly implemented to prevent similar attacks. Facilities in major cities were ordered to immediately erect Jersey walls to restrict the proximity of vehicles, and construction standards for new federal buildings were changed to require car bomb-resistant barriers and setbacks from surrounding streets.
But what a difference a decade makes. That post-bombing ramp- up has been almost completely rolled back, says Lauri Goff, president of the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 45 and an employee in that Oklahoma City building. And security faded even more after the Federal Protective Service's post-Sept. 11 transition to the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, she says.
The 10-story, 400,000-square-foot building where Goff works houses hundreds of federal employees. Nonetheless, she says, it has almost no security. There are no guards in the lobby, no one patrols the vacant floors and the cameras work intermittently."People talk all the time about being uncomfortable with the security situation," Goff says. "I'm willing to concede the fact that the people in Oklahoma City who were here, such as me, during the Murrah building bombing might be a little antsier than others, but even those who weren't talk about it."Her concern is echoed by federal employees across the country, who have told Government Executive they do not feel safe, and by the Government Accountability Office, which has sounded the alarm on federal building security.
It's worth recalling that Bush climbed up onto the national stage under the banner of "compassionate conservatism," a tacit - if unintended - admission that conservatism normally is mean-spirited, if not downright cruel. Only thing was, the same turned out to be true of "compassionate conservatism" as well.
Salaam writes: I find it interesting to consider what Paul has to say about US conservatives and apply it to conservative Muslim deviants. The similarity between US Republicans, US conservatives and conservative Muslim deviants is remarkable.
Paul Rosenberg at Open Left writes: David Sirota's diary Cato Echoes Kristol's Point on Health Care is a stark reminder that conservative politics is intimately related to spreading human suffering, and yes, even death. It's not just that conservatives are warmongers, moreso than liberals. And it's not just that they care about money, and don't care who dies so they can get more of it. Both those are quite true, of course, but they are only secondary manifestations. One can turn from one form of conservatism to another, over and over again, and repeatedly come up against this is one form or another: Conservative policies hurt people. Conservative policies kill people. And conservative policies tend to look worse to people as their lives become better.
The basic reason for this is quite simple, as George Lakoff, for one, has pointed out: empathy is a core liberal value, and because of it liberals don't believe in hurting people. While this is true of many individual conservatives as well, it is true of them in spite of their conservative beliefs, not because of them. Now that Bush is on the verge of leaving the national stage, it's worth recalling that he climbed up onto it under the banner of "compassionate conservatism," a tacit--if unintended--admission that conservatism normally is mean-spirited, if not downright cruel. Only thing was, the same turned out to be true of "compassionate conservatism" as well.
Lakoff provides the most economical way of understanding what's going on here. Conservatism derives from a family model that in turn is premised on a the presumption of a "dangerous world". This does not simply mean a world with dangers in it. No one doubts there are things that can harm one in the world. The question is, are these characteristic of the world as a whole? Do they predominate to such an extent that one should always be focused on them, rather than the benign and beneficent aspects of the world?
Belief in a dangerous world means living with an ever-present underlying attitude of distrust, and this inevitably leads to taking on a greater or lesser degree of indifference, contempt and ultimately hostility towards ones fellow brothers and sisters.
This is why, for example, conservatives are so utterly incompetent in defending against terrorism. Rather than focus on the relatively small group of terrorists who attacked us on 9/11--who could have been brought to justice within a matter of months--conservatives have decided that we had to go to war with the largest possible group of people we could find to pick a fight with. If they have their way, we will ultimately be at war with the entire Moslem world, at the very least.
They claim, of course, that it is liberals who can't be trusted to counter terrorism. Liberals are too weak, too indecisive, too easily bullied into submission by the evildoers out there. It's considered "weak" to not go out and kill the innocent in a blind psychotic rage.
Well, we've tried that way for over seven years now, and it doesn't seem to be too much to ask that we try something different, something saner now, instead.
This is, of course, a "far left" thing to ask: instead of gasoline, let's try putting out the fire with something that doesn't feed it.
I attended a weeknight event in Manhattan's financial district recently. During pre-dinner cocktails, I overheard a loud conversation between two guys standing next to me. Mid-30's, well-dressed. I recognized one as an employee of a large sell-side firm considered to be one of the Street's most prestigious (#1 below); the other guy I didn't recognize (#2 below). Not verbatim obviously, but pretty close:
#1: You ever check out any of these stock message boards?
#2: What do you mean?
#1: People post messages about stocks.
#2: Oh yeah.
#1: I was looking at the messages for our stock. There was one complaining about owning it for something like ten years and not making any money on it and asking where all our profits went. I was like, they went into my pocket, it's called a payout, bitch.
Rexburg: Moral myopia. Can't remember if the 10 commandments say anything about murder.
Madison County, Idaho was once dubbed "the reddest place in America" by Salon, but that didn't make it any less shocking when elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.
Matthew Whoolery told KIKD News he found out about the chanting from his second and third graders, who had no idea what the word "assassinate" meant.
"They just hadn't heard anything like this before," Whoolery stated. "I think the thing that struck us was just like, 'Where did they get the word and why would they put that word and that person together?'"
Whoolery, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University in Rexburg, is not an Obama supporter, but he was shocked that any public official would be threatened in that way. "I don't think that the majority of people in Rexburg have extreme ideas like that, but we were just surprised that it would go that far," Whoolery told KIKD.
The Madison County School District has sent out an email saying that students are to be told this sort of behavior is unacceptable.
Joe Conason writes: There was a time when conservatives lamented the dumbing down of American culture. Preservation of basic standards in schools and workplaces compelled them -- or so they said -- to resist affirmative action for women and minorities. Qualifications mattered; merit mattered; and demagogic appeals for leveling were to be left to the Democrats.
Not anymore.
Actually, the Palin phenomenon is the culmination of a trend that can be traced back to Dan Quayle, the undistinguished Indiana senator whose elevation onto the Republican ticket in 1988 had nothing to do with intellect or experience and everything to do with the youthful appeal of a handsome blond frat boy. (That was how Republican strategists thought they would attract female voters back then, which must be why they believe Palin represents progress.) Quayle too was unable to articulate, let alone defend, the policy positions for which he was supposed to be campaigning. He too had to undergo the surgical stuffing of stock phrases into his head as a minimal substitute for knowledge and thought. And in the same sad way, he too benefited from the drastically reduced expectations applied to anyone whose inadequacy is so obvious.
Quayle deserved more pity than scorn, however, because he seemed to know that he was fighting far above his weight class. Palin evokes no such sympathy, with her jut-jawed, moose-gutting confidence in her own overrated "common sense" and her bullying insistence that only "elitists" would question her expertise.
As Biden showed quite convincingly when he spoke about his modest background and his continuing connection with Main Street, perceptive, intelligent discourse is in no way identical with elitism. Palin's phony populism is as insulting to working- and middle-class Americans as it is to American women. Why are basic diction and intellectual coherence presumed to be out of reach for "real people"?
And why don't we expect more from American conservatives? Indeed, why don't they demand more from their own movement? Aren't they disgusted that their party would again nominate a person devoid of qualifications for one of the nation's highest offices? Some, like Michael Gerson and Kathleen Parker, have expressed discomfort with this farce -- and been subjected, in Parker's case, to abuse from many of the same numbskulls whom Palin undoubtedly delights.
Remember when so many conservative Muslims voted for George Bush in 2000, probably partially out of contempt for the sexual exploits of Bill Clinton? In what they are calling a "hypocrisy bombshell", today SiriusXM radio host Michelangelo Signorile and DC-based LGBT activist Mike Rogers jointly revealed that Mark Buse, John McCain's chief of staff, is a gay man. Video above is from a former boyfriend of Mark Buse.
COLORADO SPRINGS - Acknowledging that 20 years and millions of dollars spent loudly and bitterly attacking the liberal leanings of American campuses have failed to make much of a dent in the way undergraduates are educated, some conservatives have decided to try a new strategy.
They are finding like-minded tenured professors and helping them establish academic beachheads for their ideas.
These initiatives, like the Program in Western Civilization and American Institutions at the University of Texas, Austin, or a project at the University of Colorado here in Colorado Springs, to publish a book of classic texts, are mostly financed by conservative organizations and donors, run by conservative professors. But they have a decidedly nonpartisan and nonideological face.
Their goal is to restore what conservative and other critics see as leading casualties of the campus culture wars of the 1980s and '90s: the teaching of Western culture and a triumphal interpretation of American history.
In recent days, conservatives have renewed a long-running campaign to convince the American people that they live in a conservative nation and support conservative policies. Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge, but he's been joined by a chorus of right-wingers as well.
....
The truth is, however, that the so-called "conservative majority" does not exist. While many American's may call themselves conservative, the overwhelming majority of Americans support progressive policies. Indeed, a majority of Americans...
- Want universal health care.
- Want to expand environmental protections.
- Support increasing the minimum wage.
- Want abortion to remain safe and legal.
- Want federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
- Want to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for national priorities.
- Want same-sex couples to be legally recognized.
- Oppose the Iraq war.
Further, the Drum Major Institute found in their recent survey of the American middle class that a majority of both Democrats and Republicans favor similar policies. And after 8 years of conservative rule, a record 81 percent of Americans believe the country is on the "wrong track."
As Media Matters explained last summer, "the movement of public opinion, particularly on social issues, seems to be in one direction: to the left."
Think Progress reports: Conservatives have been trying to frighten investors about the prospects of a Barack Obama presidency. Larry Kudlow wrote, "Wall Street, beware," while The Street's Richard Moore suggested "that the market seems to do better when Barack Obama is having problems." Michael Pento of Delta Global Advisers claimed another Depression is "where we're headed" if Obama's economic plans are adopted.
....
Wall Street however, disagrees, and is donating more to Obama's campaign than to the campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
Bloomberg reports that Obama "has captured $9.6 million in donations from employees working for securities, mortgage and drug companies, compared with McCain's $6.6 million." From "brokers, bankers and traders in the securities industry" Obama has gathered $8.9 million to McCain's $6.3 million, and "their support comes even as Obama seeks higher taxes for wealthy Americans." Workers in the mortgage industry, meanwhile, "gave $278,937 to Obama and $133,475 to McCain."
In 2004, all of these industries donated more to President Bush than they did to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Yet by rejecting McCain, Wall Street is showing its dissatisfaction with the past eight years of Bush's presidency, which saw skyrocketing deficits and financial crises. Perhaps they also want to make sure that benefits are dispersed throughout the economy, rather than given to just the wealthiest Americans.
From Think Progress: Recently, Tyson Foods said it would drop Labor Day as a paid vacation day and substitute the Muslim holiday Eid as part of a new five-year contract, in order to accommodate Muslim workers. In response, right-wing bloggers were enraged. Mark Krikorian of the National Review, for example, called it a "war on Labor Day." Today, the company backtracked:
[M]any antiimmigrant groups and right-wing bloggers called for a boycott of Tyson, saying the contract betrayed an important American holiday and was an improper concession to Islam.
In a news release on Friday, Tyson said it had asked the union to revise the plant's contract and restore Labor Day as a paid holiday because some Shelbyville employees had expressed concern about the contract's provisions.
The revised contract again makes Labor Day a paid holiday but also keeps Id al-Fitr (pronounced eed-al-FIT-tr) - which marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting - as a paid holiday for those who want it.
