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Mother Jones: Chart of the Day

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: Babbling Brooks...Sensible centrism...Michael Savage has to apologize!...D.C. Conventional Wisdom...Say any-damn-thing...Unarmed, this time...Nevermind public opinion...Rock bottom...Ink shortage...Our Miss Brooks...Douthanasia...Schizoid in Barbieland...Graphic evidence...Terrified Dems & Media...

I apparently missed the largest flash mob in American history today, and it took place just a few blocks from my house. Michelle Malkin and the redstaters have been abuzz about how there were more than two million people marching on Washington today, (that would make it bigger than even the inauguration) but all anyone who wasn't a right-winger saw today was 30,000 to 60,000 right-wingers bused in from around the country.

Here's what the organizers themselves told us to expect. Dick Armey told the right-wing Newsmax that they're generating hundreds of responses in interest to the 9/12 March. The tea party patriots told us that they were expecting as many as one million to turn out and that they had permits for a one million man march on Washington.

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Our friend Max Blumenthal has a great new book out titled Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party that explores the toxic effects that the religious right has had not just on the national discourse, but on movement conservatism itself.

Max discussed some of this in New York Times op-ed. Juan Gonzales of Democracy Now! has a terrific interview with Max that explores the matter in some depth:

Blumenthal: [James] Dobson is a fascinating figure, because although he’s leading what is widely considered a religious movement, he’s not a religious leader. He has no theological credentials. He’s not a preacher. What is he? He’s a child psychologist. And the way that he’s won so many followers is by, you know, doing radio shows about common, mundane problems, like bedwetting, for example, or dealing with a child that has, you know, issues with their sexuality, something like that. And he has a correspondence department in Focus on the Family that’s so large it occupies an entire zip code in Colorado Springs. People write in with their personal problems. He sends them—his workers send them Dobson-approved advice. After they get into the database that Dobson maintains, he bombards them with political mailings and slowly cultivates them into Republican shock troops. So Dobson has, you know, turned personal crisis into political resentment.

Where did Dobson’s fortune come from? How did he erect this empire? It came mainly from one book, which I quote from extensively in my book, Republican Gomorrah—Dare to Discipline, which is essentially a manual for corporal punishment, for beating your child. In this book, he says pain is a marvelous purifier that a child should be—that pain goes a long way with a child, that pain should be dispensed sufficiently enough to make a child cry, but then the child will crumple to your breast, and you should welcome the child with warm, open arms. This is a recipe for sadomasochism. And sadomasochism, as I discovered in—

JUAN GONZALEZ: And he saw himself originally as the antithesis to Benjamin—Dr. Benjamin Spock.

MAX BLUMENTHAL: Dr. Benjamin Spock, who tells you to basically pick your child up and cradle it. And, you know, I mean, I was—you know, for whatever it’s worth, I was raised along those guidelines. When your child’s crying, you pick up the child.

By creating a belt-wielding army of millions, Dobson created the next generation of Republican shock troops, who are more radical than before. And sadomasochism—I know this sounds a little strange—is what defines the essential character, you know, that—this is what—at least what I’ve discovered—of the Republican follower of today. They’re sadistic in that they want to lash out at deviants, at people who are weaker than them, homosexuals, immigrants, foreigners, socialists. At the same time, they’re masochistic. They are followers of a higher cause, of a strong leader, a magic helper like Dobson or George W. Bush or the macho Jesus archetype that they worship. And this is what defines this movement.

So many of the people that Dobson has been able to get close to and work with in the Republican Congress and in American culture have been viciously abused as children. And he understood that by advocating violence against children, deliberate violence, he was creating this sensibility, which would produce a radical generation of political followers.

Be sure to get your copy. It's a fascinating and enlightening read.

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(H.L. Hunt - Richest Man in America . .and the furthest right - Booga-Booga!)

For people who think the wave of extreme right wing media is a new phenomenon, it's been with us forever. Going back to the 1930's with the likes of Father Coughlin, there have been a steady stream of pundits, alarmists, hate advocates and wingnuts ever since.

During the 1950's and 1960's one of the biggest practitioners of right wing alarmist radio and TV came in the person of H.L. Hunt.

Rings no bells? Probably not. H.L. Hunt maintained a very low profile in his funding of weekly radio and TV broadcasts that fed a steady stream of fear, hate and paranoia for many years. So low in fact, that funding for his programs came out of his advertising Agency.

It also didn't hurt that he was the richest man in America, with a vast fortune starting with oil. By all accounts, he was eccentric at best. Leading a somewhat monastic life (except for the mass of illegitimate children he was reported to have fathered), even to the point of carrying his own brown-bag lunch to work every day.

Something about extreme wealth fostering extreme strange. J. Paul Getty had his phone booth - H.L. Hunt had his brown bag lunch.

Question: "You run a pretty large network of communications that carry forward your own political ideas, starting way back with programs such as “Facts Forum” and “Answers For Americans” I believe was another. Why did you turn to radio and television with your great wealth to put across these ideas? What made you do that?"

Hunt: “Well that was a means of communication. Now . . .public opinion is a powerful factor and public opinion could save our nation if our nation is in danger. But the communication media is owned and controlled by 80 or 85% of the opposition to the constructive philosophy."

Hunt: "I think the line should be drawn between people that love liberty and are for the freedom system. And the society that has made America great. And the newspapers, radio, TV stations and networks are in the hands of, we shall say, the enemy of that system."

Hunt was a huge supporter and board member of the John Birch Society and was convinced Washington was a cesspool of communism. He pops up in all sorts of conspiracy theories. And even though he's been dead since 1974 and there has been ongoing legal battles regarding family members, the Hunt legacy is still shrouded in mystery.

And so it was quite unusual that in 1970, a documentary on Hunt would surface. The recordings I have give no trace as to who did it, who conducted the interviews (there is a lengthy one with Hunt) and how they gained such access.

One suspects, since this was done in 1970 and Nixon was President, a lot of former closeted extreme right wingers came out of the closet and made their presences known.

In any case, it's interesting listening and further evidence the roots of the extreme right wing are many and deep and go back a long way.

Dr. George Tiller of Women's Health Care Services clinic in Wichita, Kansas was gunned down outside his church yesterday. Tiller had long been a top target of the anti-abortion movement because he performed medically necessary late-term abortions.

He faced down decades of harassment, threats and vandalism and went back to work after being shot in both arms by a radical “pro-life” activist in 1993. Just last month his clinic was severely damaged by vandals. Tiller probably suffered more than anyone else in recent decades to defend reproductive rights.

After news of the shooting broke, his antagonists came out to dance on his grave: Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue, led protests against George Tiller's late-term abortion clinic in Wichita in 1991. Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue states,

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder.

"Those men and women who slaughter the unborn are murderers according to the Law of God. We must continue to expose them in our communities and peacefully protest them at their offices and homes, and yes, even their churches."

Other radical “pro-lifers” took to Twitter to gloat:

UPDATE... Doctor George Tiller was aborted today in his 204th trimester - aren't paybacks a bitch - Punch

oh HAPPY DAY! Tiller the baby killer is DEAD! - Samantha Pelch

George Tiller the baby killer was shot dead this morning. God bless the gunmen who hopefully won't be caught. - readnwatchchris, Creedmor. NC

And Frank Pavone of the so-called Priests for Life tried to muddy the waters and deflect blame for the killing:

I am saddened to hear of the killing of George Tiller. At this point, we do not know the motives of this act, or who is behind it, whether an angry post-abortive man or woman, or a misguided activist, or an enemy within the abortion industry, or a political enemy frustrated with the way Tiller has escaped prosecution. We should not jump to conclusions or rush to judgment.

Let us all remember that this tragedy comes just one month after O’Reilly, Beck, Limbaugh, and gang went ballistic over a Homeland Security report concerning the potential for violence by right-wing extremists.

I never really know what to do with stories about messed-up white-supremacist parents who force their kids into their lifestyle and all that it contains, like the "Prussian Blue" Gaede twins. My first impulse is to keep the kids out of the discussion, even though their parents have dragged them into it.

But damn. This is just sad:

HOLLAND TWP. | In a living room decorated with war books, German combat knives and swastikas, a 2-year-old boy, blond and blue-eyed, played with a plastic dinner set.

The boy, asked his name, put down a tiny plate and ran behind his father's leg. He flashed a shy smile but wouldn't answer. Heath Campbell, 35, the boy's father, encouraged him.

"Say Adolf," said Campbell, a Holocaust denier who has three children named for Nazism.

Again, the boy wouldn't answer. It wasn't the first time the name caused hesitation.

Adolf Hitler Campbell -- it's indeed the name on his birth certificate -- turns 3 today, and the Campbell family believes the boy has been mistreated. A local supermarket refused to make a birthday cake with "Adolf Hitler" on it.

Yes, the Campbells are raising a stink because the local Shop Rite won't make a birthday cake with little Adolph's name on it. And to be honest, I'm not sure the store's rationale is viable. But on the other hand, you have to wonder about any parent who would do this to their kids -- not only name them "Adolf Hitler" and "Aryan Nations" but then make public political causes celebre of them.

Especially a mother who can rationalize it to herself thus:

"I just figured that they're just names," Deborah Campbell said. "They're just kids. They're not going to hurt anybody."

Heath Campbell said some people like the names but others are shocked to hear them. "They say, 'He (Hitler) killed all those people.' I say, 'You're living in the wrong decade. That Hitler's gone,'" he said.

"They're just names, you know," he said. "Yeah, they (Nazis) were bad people back then. But my kids are little. They're not going to grow up like that."

Sorry, lady, but "Adolf Hitler" is not just a name. It's the name of the man directly responsible for the murders of 6 million Jews and millions more in other liquidations and his wars. It's a name that signifies real, living evil to many millions of people still living. And you pay homage to him by naming a child after him.

And don't get me started on "Aryan Nations".

I just hope young Adolf and Aryan have the inner strength to grow up normal, which some of these kids actually manage to do. And that's probably the sweetest comeuppance for their parents of all.

[H/t to Susie.]