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What hath Republicans wrought?

Sure, they believed, as John noted the other day, that when they were unleashing what Bill Kristol likes to call "guided populism", they were in fact opening the gates for right-wing populism. And now they're looking not only at a a phenomenon much more popular than the standard Republican brand, but a movement that is about to swallow them whole.

And the Tea Party organizers -- notably the Astroturf outfits that originated the Parties, such as FreedomWorks and Americans For Prosperity -- are making that perfectly clear. Two spokesmen for those groups -- Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks and the AFP's Tim Phillips, went on Hardball yesterday and made this explicit:

MATTHEWS: Matt, how about third party? What about the Tea Party? Sarah Palin is kind of hard to read. She is fascinating. Let‘s face it, we‘re all fascinated with her, because she‘s exciting as a political figure right now. But she‘s talking third party. I mean, she answered the question of Lars Larson. Maybe it just came to mind, but she said, yeah, I might go third party, something like that. Would you guys knock off an incumbent Republican by going third party? You know how the vote splits. Split the right, the Dem wins.

KIBBE: The better way to do it is to take over the Republican party. Frankly, that‘s what our goal is. We need to replace the Republican establishment with fiscal conservatives that are actually willing to cut spending.

All this talk about a "third party" is just so much smokescreen. What's actually happening is that the GOP is fast becoming a full-fledged right-wing-populist entity. Which means that the latent extremism lurking out on the right's fringes for so many years is becoming its new lifeblood, such as it is.

Funny thing is, as Matthews managed to point out early in the segment, not even the Tea Partiers' supposed hero -- Ronald Reagan -- can live up to their standards:

MATTHEWS: Has there ever been a strong conservative president, for example, in your lifetime or anybody—your grandfather‘s lifetime? Who do you look to as a good role model for the tea party people?

KIBBE: Well, obviously, Ronald Reagan is the closest thing we have.

MATTHEWS: What did he do in terms of fiscal policy?

KIBBE: Oh, he—he said that we shouldn't spend money we don‘t have, and he said that the government shouldn't get involved in things that it‘s not very good at doing.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Yes. Have you ever checked the numbers with Reagan?

KIBBE: Well, I understand. I understand...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: The national debt went from under $1 trillion to $3 trillion. He did more to increase exponentially the size of the debt of any president in history.

And he's your role model.

KIBBE: Well, President Obama is...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I'm asking you. I have asked you one president that you can look up to who was good at tea party politics and ideology.

KIBBE: Right. Right.

MATTHEWS: If it's not Reagan, because he clearly didn't do it, who do you look to? Coolidge? How far do you have to look back?

KIBBE: I think we need to find somebody that can meet that standard.

MATTHEWS: So, nobody has recently?

KIBBE: No, certainly not.

Ah well. Blowing off cognitive dissonance is a special teabagger trait. It just adds to their "insane" mystique.

Republicans may have thought these guys had their backs. But now they're looking with increasing worry back over their shoulders. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind, dudes.

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The latest Rasmussen Poll has disastrous news for Republicans -- and disquieting news for for the rest of us too:

In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.

The look on Eric Bolling's face, filling in for Neil Cavuto yesterday on Fox News, contemplating this news said it all: He thought the Tea Party and Republicans were one and the same thing! In fact, he spills as much:

Bolling: Isn't the tea party just another wing of the Republican Party? ... Aren't we just splitting the party?

Well, not exactly. Like Republicans, the Tea Party folks are fervently anti-Obama. But as Republicans like Lindsey Graham are discovering, the Tea Partiers are so arch-conservative they hate BOTH parties, and consider Republicans to be sellouts of their true-blue conservative ideals.

Now, this may appear to be good news for Democrats, since it means the Right is splitting its vote. And over the short term, as we saw in the NY-23 race, it may well be. But there is an ominous quality to this that should be disturbing to everyone.

The GOP thought it could unleash this tide of right-wing populism and prosper -- but are discovering that it's not such an easy thing to control.

And what they're unleashing is a flood of right-wing extremism in the process. Because as the "Tea Party" gathering we saw this past weekend in Spokane made crystal-clear, the "Tea Parties" are one of the most massive conduits for mainstreaming extremist beliefs in our history:

More than 1,000 people, including local sheriffs, state representatives, lawyers, families and blue-collar workers, gathered in Post Falls last month to hear a former Arizona sheriff blast the federal government. About 500 met last week in another event organized by the Campaign for Liberty – a coalition of about 10 Inland Northwest groups hoping to create a forum to share ideas and create a louder voice in politics.

Some aren’t afraid to use the word militia.

“We need to rob that word back from the people who villainize it,” said Schaeffer Cox, a 25-year-old from Fairbanks, Alaska, eliciting a roar of approval from the crowd in Post Falls Wednesday night.

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...why do Americans care if taxes are raised at all? And why should Americans care about tax cuts also?

As you guys know, I watch the mind numbingly sophomoric Fox Saturday block of Stock Shows that goes by the name of "The Cost of Freedom." They consist of four 30-minute shows, and every single week there's an idiot on who says the only people that pay taxes are the richest members of our society.

OK, let's say I agree. Then why should 290,000,000 Americans more or less give a rip about the ramifications of raising taxes? They make the argument for us that taxes should be raised since only the very rich pay them.

Dave Neiwert wrote about this in one of his earlier posts: Populism: It's all the right-wing rage these days

The Tea Parties, in every incarnation -- from the Tax Day protests to the health-care town halls to the "Tea Party Express" and the "912 March on Washington" to Michele Bachmann's lame "Super Bowl of Freedom" -- has been all about populism, and it is distinctly right-wing populism.

A giveaway moment came during Sean Hannity's April 15 evening "Tea Party" broadcast from Atlanta, when he brought in a live feed from the Rick and Bubba Tea Tantrum in Alabama:

Hannity: And I'm going to tell you one other thing: When did we ever get to a point in America where, we're nearly at the point where fifty percent of Americans don't pay anything in taxes! Nothing!

[Crowd boos]

Rick: The numbers out are just astounding that, that, how much that the very top taxpayers actually pay. I feel like these taxpayers are disenfranchised. I want them to have a share of the burden just like they have a share of the vote.

That's right -- it's the wealthy top percentage of the country that needs a tax break. After all, they are the one Obama's targeting, right? So at least they're being upfront about just who "the taxpayers" are whose interests they're out marching to defend...read on

Don't you feel sorry for these poor rich bastards? If this is their argument, then I say President Obama should impose immediate tax increases like a war tax, a health-insurance tax and a jobs creation tax on the top tier of Americans. Make it a payroll tax and take it right out of their checks every pay period. That would immediately satisfy the deficit scolds.

After all, who will care if it's only the Fox Noise demographic? In the end all conservative policies do is destroy the least of us. They treat the American worker like trained seals, whose only function in life is to fuel their wealth.

Digby has more:

I think they tend to make their judgments about the upper and lower classes based as much on tribalism as anything else. (Recall that the populist hero Ross Perot was a billionaire who made his fortune from government contracts -- but he sounded like a good old boy.) These things never play themselves out exactly the same ways but the fundamental appeals remain the same. The upper levels of society usually find a way to pull the strings and control these people, but the more vulnerable often suffer quite a bit at their hands. Neiwert's piece is a very important primer for those of us who are trying to understand where this Palin-Beck teabag phenomenon comes from and how it relates to other right0wing philosophies like Randism and militias. At the end of the day it all translates into ugly know-nothingism that lashes out at everyone but the adherents themselves, who see themselves as the defenders of the Real America.

I get the impulse and I feel the same frustrations. But their solutions are always worse than the problems they seek to solve.

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Glenn Beck's shows have become so full of wingnuttery these days that it's really becoming hard to keep up (though Media Matters does a great job of that anyway). It's such a constant barrage of right-wing extremism that the bigger picture gets lost in the onslaught.

The kind of wingnuttery Beck is embracing -- and promoting -- is a product of the kind of politics that now has conservative America in its thrall: right-wing populism. And it's not just Beck -- it's Sarah Palin, the Tea Parties, and the broad mainstream of the American Right who are careering down this path.

Take this prime moment in yesterday's Beck show as an example. Beck -- being our Fearmonger in Chief, as usual, with handy chalkboard in hand -- told the audience that we have three potential economic outcomes facing the USA: Recession, Depression, or Collapse. In other words, Disaster, Doom, or Total Annihilation. It was, as always, an uplifting scenario. He also described how we normal folks respond at each step. Paying off our debts, building fruit cellars, that sort of thing.

Then he got to the third one:

Beck: The third one is Collapse. That's 'Get out of debt and save,' plus, 'Have a fruit cellar,' plus -- I like to call the "three G system" here for this -- it's, uh, God, Gold, and Guns.

Now personally, you might take God and put him as an umbrella over the whole thing. And then you got your gun and your gold down here too. But that's your choice.

"God, Gold and Guns" has quite the ring to it, doesn't it? And the thing about it is, it could stand in all three aspects as the Battle Cry of Right-Wing Populism -- not just now, but as we've known it for most of the past thirty years and more. Before Beck, there was the Posse Comitatus, and the militias, and the Ron Paul wing of the GOP -- all right-wing populists, and all focused largely on the mythology of right-wing "constitutionalism", whose three great appeals to the masses have revolved around embracing the notion of a "Christian nation," returning the U.S. to the gold standard, and defending gun rights.

The third segment of Sarah Palin's interview with Bill O'Reilly also aired last night, and the subject, indeed, was right-wing populism:

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Palin: If there is a threat at all that perhaps I represent, it is that the average, everyday, hard-working American, that their voice is going to be heard, and their -- what our voice is saying right now is, we're telling the federal government, and we're telling the elites who think that they are -- can and should call all the shots for all the rest of us. Trust us in that we know what our federal government's role is supposed to be in our lives, it's supposed to be minimal.

O'Reilly: But that sounds logical. That doesn't offend me.

Palin: That's why it's perplexing as to why I would be, you know, kinda clobbered left and right --

O'Reilly: You don't know -- really. You're sincere about you don't know why you're the lightning rod, you don't know why?

Palin: Only if it is because I'm representing a normal American who is --

O'Reilly: Well, why don't they like normal Americans? Why don't the New York Times like normal Americans, or NBC News? Why should they have disdain for the regular folks?

Palin: Because I think that, obviously they wanting so much control over our lives, I think perhaps there is a little bit of threat there, that the average American is gonna rise up and our voice is going to be louder and louder, and we're going to tell our government, 'No, we expect you to work for us, we're not going to work for you, we expect things to turn around here quite quickly,' even if that means the elites are not gonna be in control anymore.

I'm talking about the media, I'm talking about those that are in bureaucracy that are calling the shots for us -- I -- that's why the Tea Party movement, I think is beautiful. And I think that it is, it is empowering for so many of us to be watching what's going on with the Tea Party movement where we saying -- 'That's -- that's me!' I think it's beautiful what's going on right now. And perhaps that is threatening to some who don't want to cede any control.

O'Reilly: I think that's a good analysis, but what I get from talking to you for the past hour is that you, Sarah Palin, want to lead that movement. You want to lead it.

Palin: I do not need a title, and I do not necessarily be the one to lead it, I don't -- need to --

O'Reilly: You -- no spin. You want to lead that populist movement. I can see it in your eyes. You want it.

Palin: I'm willing to assist. I know in my heart and soul that the experiences that I have gone through -- I believe that's all been kind of put together in my life -- can benefit the average, everyday, hard-working American because I have been where they are. I'm experiencing what they're experiencing. And I'm willing to assist, but again, I don't have to be the top dog.

This is all fitting, of course, because the the April 15 Tea Parties really signaled the takeover of the American Right by its populist wing. And Palin, of course, had established herself as a right-wing populist well before the parties began, during the 2008 campaign.

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Yes, they're perfectly serious. The film's pitch line: "Liberty's march has a new generation of patriots."

Here's the cast of characters, including:

NATE: Nate, a young black man from Detroit, Michigan, voted for Barack Obama in 2008 from an upbringing that taught him to mistrust America because of the color of his skin. As a Libertarian with a paradigm shift and a newfound understanding of the nation he loves, he is risking the anger of family and friends by joining the march against a President’s policies that would victimize the very people he loves the most.

Translation: Nate, the only relatively sane-seeming black person we could find for the film, whose key role is to help blunt the image of tea parties as an almost purely all-white phenomenon featuring angry white nationalists who have no compunction about carrying racist signs and calling the president a racist.

JACK: Jack is a father of two young children, a little league baseball coach and a health insurance agent. He risks losing his job under current healthcare reform. He is a Democrat turned Constitutionalist and the younger brother of a Vietnam veteran who is marching for his children and the future of the America he believes in.

Translation: Even though Jack has a fairly obvious motive for opposing health-care reform, he was included because the filmmakers couldn't find a health-insurance lobbyist who could convincingly portray himself as a moderately sympathetic figure.

JENNY BETH: In 2008, she and her husband lost a multi-million dollar business, were forced into bankruptcy and home foreclosure. Nine months later, she is working as a national leader in the grassroots tea party movement, organizing events and taking her message to the steps of the National Mall with the company of millions behind her.

Translation: Beth helps provide a portrait of America's most benighted victims of the Bush administration: Whole-hog ideological conservatives who made lots of money relying on conservative values (i.e., the cutthroat pursuit of profits at the expense of everything else) and who suddenly lost everything when Bush popped the housing bubble. The resulting cognitive dissonance -- "OMFG we lost our entire fortune because "conservative values" like a mania for deregulation and cutting taxes for the wealthy caused a near-collapse of the entire economic system! And now we have to rely on a liberal black man to fix the problem!!!!" -- drove them completely insane, so that now of course they think the solution is to go back and embrace the very policies that destroyed their wealth in the first place.

WILLIAM: William is a patriot renaissance man, a pastor, colonial re-enactor, painter, poet, Vietnam veteran, former Pentagon and Secret Service employee and a man of the march. He can be outrageous and funny or somber and reflective, full of antics and unpredictability. He marched for the Vietnam Memorial during the Reagan Era and this time, his journey back to Washington, DC leads him to the front lines of the march down Pennsylvania Avenue on September 12.

Translation: Plain ol' nuts.

Anyway, after the movie gets its only scheduled theatrical appearance at the FreedomWorks-sponsored D.C. debut, it's straight to DVD.

Oh, we can hardly wait.

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[Video from BlueStemPrairie, at their YouTube page.]

The teabaggers are getting ready for the next round of wingnuttery against the Obama administration. It sure looks like they lost on health-care reform, but they have already been organized for a long time around the issue of immigration, so they are ready and rarin' to go careening off the far-right cliff.

This weekend, the nativist right-wingers at ALIPAC and the National Policy Institute organized a series of "Tea Parties Against Amnesty.

However, at the rally in Minneapolis, the demonstrators got punk'd by a young man who called himself "Robert Erickson".

"Erickson" got up and delivered a rant against European immigration. At first the crowd was whooping and hollering as he talked about the rights of "real Americans" -- but then it gradually tapered off as he went on and they realized they'd been had.

Here's the speech:

Hi, my name is Robert Erickson and I’m really excited to be here. Its people like all of you, and events like this that make our country great! Give yourselves a round of applause!

I just want to talk about a couple themes this afternoon because I love this country and I want to see America be the best place it can be.

Mr. Gutierrez is getting ready to propose an immigration bill in just a few short days, and we have to make sure he knows that we want a bill that's tough on immigration. Now is the time for us to stand up and make our voices heard!

In Minneapolis, where I’m from, we have a huge immigrant population that’s been causing a number of problems. With the economy in recession, and so many people getting laid off, and unable to find work, immigrants should not be competing for the few jobs that are out there. It's just not fair to the folks who have a claim to this land and the right to be here. All across America, they are contributing to the flooding of our job markets making it hard for Americans to find jobs. Well, I'm fed up, and it's time to let our politicians know that enough is enough, and we're not gonna take it any more!

We need to secure our borders to protect our country. We need to restore order and put an end to the anarchy that's sweeping the nation. We need tougher immigration laws to make sure that we send these people back where they came from. We need to protect the sovereignty of the real Americans. We need to hold our politicians accountable.

It's no secret that with an invasion of immigrants comes waves of crime. We see them involved in massive theft, in murder, and bringing diseases like smallpox, which is responsible for the death of millions of Americans. These aren't new problems, though -- they have been going on for hundreds of years, and continue to this day.

I say it's time for us to say enough is enough! Are you with me? Are you with me? Let's send these European immigrants back where they came from! I don't care if they are Polish, Irish, English, Italian, or Norwegian! European immigrants are responsible for the most violent and heinous crimes in the history of the world, including genocide and slavery! It's time to restore the sovereignty of people native to this land!

I want more workplace raids, starting with the big banks downtown. There are thousands of illegals working in those buildings, hiding in their offices, and taking Dakota jobs. Let's round them up and ship them out. Then we need to hit them at home where they sleep. I don’t care if we separate families, they should have known better when they came here illegally!

If we aren't able to stand up to these European immigrants, who can we stand up to? We need to send every one of them back home, right now.

Thank you very much, and we'll see you in the streets!

Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home! Columbus Go Home!

Not surprisingly, the organizers were pissed. Sally Jo Sorensen at BlueStemPrairie was there to watch, and she reported that some of the nativists started getting violent:

Most of the MINN-SIR supporters were slow to catch the satire, and so the cheering from that side of the crowd took a while to subside. As they realized they'd been punked, they stood in a cold, stunned silence, while the 30 or so counter-protesters urged Columbus to go home.

Unfortunately, some of the pro-MINN-SIR audience made up for what they lacked in humor through the use of violence. Both Danielson and I saw middle-aged men attack young protesters, knocking one off a bike before he started throwing punches at the young man.

Just as shocking was the reaction of the state police working the rally, who pushed back those being attacked, rather than those attacking the counter protesters.

Neither of us have ever witnessed violence at rallies and events we've attended in the past. The attacks formed a sharp counterpoint to Hendrycks' shrieked claims from the podium that MINN-SIR "patriots" had "respect" while the young protesters were rude.

I've been warning for awhile that there is a violent element already involved in the immigration debate, and when they become empowered by the "tea party" types, it's going to get ugly. Looks like the debate hasn't even started yet, and it already is.

If you thought the town-hall teabaggers went nuts over health-care reform, just wait.

[H/t Matt Ortega.]

The title alone might make you think this is some feel-good fairy tale. Well the feel-good part is right, but the fairy-tale part isn’t.

Southwestern Ohio has become something of a Mecca for Tea Parties. On Labor Day weekend of this year a Tea Party was held at Voice of America Park in West Chester, Ohio in which an estimated 18,000 tea baggers showed up. In the lead up to last week’s NY-23 race, John Boehner even brought up this event while talking to John King, which was held within walking distance of his home.

So knowing this, you would expect that any tea party-style candidate would be a shoo-in for local office in this area, wouldn’t you? Well, don’t be so sure:

The reign of the anti-school tax activists on area school boards was a short one

[SNIP]

Fairfield School Board incumbent Arnie Engel, who tried four times to get elected to Fairfield Schools governing board before finally winning in fall 2005, this time finished a distant fourth in the race for three open seats.

In Warren County's Mason School Board race, self-proclaimed "Christian conservative" incumbent Jennifer Miller ended up fifth out of eight candidates vying for three seats.

In the Monroe school board race, fiscal conservative Mike Irwin lost his re-election bid, finishing dead last among five candidates.

All three of the school districts mentioned above surround the district where the big Labor Day Tea Party was held, and they are all represented by John Boehner and Jean Schmidt. They are also parts of the reddest corner of Ohio.

So while Republicans are celebrating their wins in New Jersey and Virginia last week, we need to remember that all politics are local. And you can’t get much more local than a race for school board. Results like these show that when push comes to shove, people really aren’t ready to give the conservatives any more chances.

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Michele Bachmann was on Glenn Beck's show yesterday -- with Judge Andrew Napolitano sitting in for Beck, who came down with appendicitis after his candidate, Doug Hoffmann, lost in the NY-23 race -- plumping her big Tea Party protest of the House health-care reform bill today on Capitol Hill -- which she calls "Super Bowl of Freedom".

According to ThinkProgress, Bachmann is calling on protesters to “scare” members of Congress into killing health-care reform. “Republican organizers are planning for activists to go into the House office buildings and the U.S. Capitol and confront members directly.”

You have to be a little concerned about the kinds of nutcases she's calling upon to visit their Congresscritters. After all, Bachmann herself is a promoter of far-flung "constitutionalist" conspiracy theories about replacing the American currency, youth re-education camps and Obama-ordered "concentration camps." Napolitano opened the segment with a clip of Bachmann grilling Tim Geithner with her otherworldly questions about the "constitutionality" of the stimulus package.

So of course, they couldn't help but indulge in a fresh round of paranoia about security for today's 'Tea Party':

Napolitano: I have to give you a little bit of a warning. I have a friend in the American intelligence community who lives and works around Washington, D.C., who told me: 'Watch out for Mrs. Pelosi making the security requirements almost impossible to get to this rally.' You guys have to watch out for that, that she doesn't do something to make it very difficult for the folks to come to this gathering at noon tomorrow.

Bachmann: Well, she controls the Capitol. She's a very powerful individual. And she controls ingress and egress, and so, I think it would be a big mistake for Speaker Pelosi to prevent the American people from coming to their House. This is their House, after all. This is why we need to make this emergency 'House Call' on Congress tomorrow.

One can only imagine some of these doofus teabaggers getting lost on the Metro and then blaming Nancy Pelosi for it.

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Glenn Beck must have been feeling the pressure from Virginia Foxx yesterday in the Absurd Wingnuttery Championships. So, after Foxx compared the liberal health-care reform package working its way through Congress to terrorism, Beck went on his Fox News show and compared the package to the 9/11 attacks:

Beck: On 9/11, we experienced a feeling we had never had before -- when the buildings and our markets and the economy came falling down around our ears, we realized -- 'Oh my gosh. Our country isn't unsinkable.'

We came, on that day, to the understanding that this Republic is fragile. Here we are now, a decade later. I'm on the air again, warning you that our government cannot sustain our massive spending. The system will collapse if we continue down this progressive path.

Ten years ago, I could have shouted every single day about Osama bin Laden and his wacky, crazy threats to kill Americans in New York. And no one would have been willing to stand in line two hours while some security officers made grandma take her shoes off. No one would have done it.

But don't you see -- while the government is still not willing to do these things, today, America is different. America has changed. Washington, we're not going to let you get away with it anymore.

Look, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Conservatives are awake. 912ers are willing to do the hard things. We know what this means. We're taking time out of our busy lives, taking time away from their families, they're attending town-hall meetings -- you think they wanna do that? They are calling their representatives -- how many times do we have to be yelled at by your people in Washington? to work against the enactment of health care reform.

They are reading 2,000-page health-care bills on the weekend. They 912ers are willing to stand in line and take our shoes off before the plane actually hits the tower.

Glenn Beck has a long history of exploiting the 9/11 tragedy for the sake of ratings and rantings. (Who could forget his encomium to the widows? "It took me about a year to start hating the 9/11 victims' families.")

Indeed, you could make the case that his current stellar rise was built on such exploitation. Beck was a nobody until he started making incendiary remarks about Muslims on air and attacking liberals for their insufficient patriotism after 9/11 and cheerleading the Iraq invasion as a post-9/11 necessity. It's what made him famous in the first place.

And now he's springboarding from that to leading an open revolt against the liberal policies Americans just voted to implement, throwing a tantrum because no one believes in disproven and discredited conservative dogma anymore. No one, that is, except Glenn Beck and his hapless followers.

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For the second day in a row (Monday's show being so chockful o'wingnuttery that we didn't have time to post on it) Glenn Beck devoted two whole segments to the subject of net neutrality.

And for the second night in a row, the discussion featured a guy named Phil Kerpen from Americans For Prosperity, which has a long history of shilling for whatever right-wing corporate agenda it can suck out money for: tobacco interests, health-insurance companies, corporate polluters have all pitched in money so that AFP can variously promote tobacco, lobby against health-care reform (it was one of the original promoters of the Tea Parties) and push the idea that global warming isn't really happening.

And now he's out pushing the notion that somehow, regulating Internet providers so that they cannot determine or limit public access is the same thing as communism. Or something like that. When you have Glenn Beck as your No. 1 cheerleader, logic doesn't actually have to enter into it.

Especially not facts. Because Beck appears to have no idea at all what Net Neutrality is actually all about.

As Timothy Karr explained on Democracy Now last month:

And net neutrality is really the fundamental openness principle of the internet. Whenever you connect to the internet, net neutrality makes sure that you can connect to everyone else who’s on the internet. And this has been a tremendous engine for free speech, for economic innovation, for equal opportunity. And we are now fighting with some very prominent internet service providers, very powerful companies, to try to preserve that fundamental openness, so that whenever we go online we can choose, as users, where we go and what we do via the internet.

Somehow, Beck is able to transform this into an attack on "freedom of speech" -- when it obviously is precisely the opposite.

To guys like Beck, you see, the only threat to our liberties is from the government. Giant corporations that control our means of information, not so much.

Indeed, his argument boils down to a simple proposition: "Freedom" means letting powerful business interests control the public's access to the internet.

Hm. That's some kinda freedom.

ThinkProgress has more:

Continue reading »

[Warning: Naked self-promotion ahead.]

My book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right continues to attract a lot of interest, partly because it so clearly anticipated the current descent into madness of mainstream conservatives, currently drowning in a lake of right-wing extremism. I didn't predict tea parties, but I did warn that '90s-style militia wingnuttery was about to swamp the Republican Party, and I do explain how this is happening.

So this week I was the featured interview at Amanda Marcotte's podcast at RH Reality Check. We specifically focused on the way right-wing domestic terrorists have had a profound impact on women's reproductive rights. This is a brief interview; it starts at about the 8-minute mark and continues to the 24-minute mark.

And I was also featured as the live guest on Second Life for this week's episode of Virtually Speaking on BlogTalkRadio.

This is an hourlong session and fairly broad-ranging. It was fun for me because I've known Jay Ackroyd for over 10 years -- online (we useta post at the old Slate forum The Fray back in the day), but we only finally met in person this summer at Netroots Nation. We talk about posting at Crooks and Liars, among other things. I also get to talk about my favorite moment of the past year: Having been the guy who made Sarah Palin crazy enough to try to have McCain lie, thereby cementing her rep as a diva among the McCain campaign.

It's now been a full year since I've been at C&L. I think I'll celebrate by running the video that made Palin crazy, which occurred my first week here:

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Meanwhile, John Amato and I are ensconced in the writing process this weekend for our upcoming book from PoliPoint Press: Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane. (Due out next spring.) We'll have more details as we get closer.

In the meantime, I'd like to say thanks to the community of readers and commenters here at C&L for welcoming me so warmly and making me feel right at home from the start. It's been a blast, with lots more to come.

This is a smart, thoughtful discussion, and Michael Moore is not quite the unquestioning Obama supporter he so often seems to be, as evidenced in this Nation interview with Naomi Klein. He also points out the major flaw in the Obama "Hey Guys, Let's Just Split The Difference" strategy:

Naomi Klein: Meanwhile, we are not seeing too many signs of the hordes storming Wall Street. Personally, I'm hoping that your film is going to be the wake-up call and the catalyst for all of that changing. But I'm just wondering how you're coping with this odd turn of events, these revolts for capitalism led by Glenn Beck.

Michael Moore: I don't know if they're so much revolts in favor of capitalism as they are being fueled by a couple of different agendas, one being the fact that a number of Americans still haven't come to grips with the fact that there's an African-American who is their leader. And I don't think they like that.

NK: Do you see that as the main driving force for the tea parties?

MM: I think it's one of the forces--but I think there's a number of agendas at work here. The other agenda is the corporate agenda. The healthcare companies and other corporate concerns are helping to pull together what seems like a spontaneous outpouring of citizen anger.

But the third part of this is--and this is what I really have always admired about the right wing: they are organized, they are dedicated, they are up at the crack of dawn fighting their fight. And on our side, I don't really see that kind of commitment.

When they were showing up at the town-hall meetings in August--those meetings are open to everyone. So where are the people from our side? And then I thought, Wow, it's August. You ever try to organize anything on the left in August?

NK: Wasn't part of it also, though, that the left, or progressives, or whatever you want to call them, have been in something of a state of disarray with regard to the Obama administration--that most people favor universal healthcare, but they couldn't rally behind it because it wasn't on the table?

MM: Yes. And that's why Obama keeps turning around and looking for the millions behind him, supporting him, and there's nobody even standing there, because he chose to take a half measure instead of the full measure that needed to happen. Had he taken the full measure--true single-payer, universal healthcare--I think he'd have millions out there backing him up.

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Sometimes something you see on TV does come as a surprise no matter what the motivation behind it. The Factor highlights Goldberg with a Weekdays With Bernie segment so that FOX can bang the drum on librul bias. Bernie Goldberg has made a living out of trying to uncover and expose all the dirty hippie liberal bias in the media, but as BillO was playing the usual conservative victim card that FOX News lives on, Bernie stunned the loofah man. Oh Bernie, said BillO. Why oh why are we attacked so much? We're the only network that is fair and balanced and ... sniff...sniff ... we pay such a heavy price for it.

Bernie begins by sticking up for Roger Ailes and his right wing propaganda network, but then Bernie took a U-turn into reality. He praised FOX for breaking stories that the MSM won't and they are sooo jealous that they throw spitballs at the battles ship ... BUT ....

Goldberg:...this is what the so called mainstream media do. They get angry at FOX. This is wrong. This is the spitballs at the battleship argument, but sometimes Bill -- and whether you acknowledge it or not I'm going to state it -- sometimes FOX brings on the criticism itself. There are some programs on FOX that are not only NOT fair and balanced, they're commentary shows. They don't have to be, but they brag about how fair and balanced they are. They don't cover rallies and tea parties, they cheerlead rallies and tea parties, and as a journalist I am totally against that.

O'Reilly: All right ...

Goldberg: And to that extent the criticism is legitimate. By and large it's not...

O'Reilly: The problem there though is that all editorial pages cheerlead for their crew so if you read any newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, any newspaper in the country, they'll be cheerleading for the country global warming and they'll be saying, hey get out on Earth Day...

Goldberg: Right.

O'Reilly: Do this, do that, OK, fine and I don't have any problem with that. Wait Bernie. I don't have any problem with get out on Earth Day and be environmentally correct. No problem, they all do it. But if you then take a commentary, clearly label this and then they say, hey you tea party people, go on out there and show them that you don't like this big government intrusion. What's the difference?

Goldberg: the difference...I don't want to get too inside baseball with you.

O'Reilly: Come on, Bernie. What's the difference?

Goldberg: Here's a good answer. Don't pretend that you're being objective. Don't go on the air ... I don't mean you, I mean others on this network. Don't go on the air and say these tea parties are a cross section of America, they are not a cross section of America. Don't pretend to be a journalist if you're not a journalist. If you want to be a commentator and comment then be ...

BillO:...well let's get Glenn Beck do, Glenn beck comes on and he basically says I'm every man, I'm not a journalist, he says he's not a journalist, "I'm every man and I'm worried about the country and this is why I'm worried," and he has the blackboard and he has this and this is who I like, tea party guys and this is who I don't like, whoever Beck doesn't like...I don't see any subterfuge there, Sean Hannity comes on right after the Factor and Hannity says look, I'm a Reagan Republican, that's who I am, Sean Hannity. He's not trying to fool anybody, not trying to say anything like that. he says, "I'm a Reagan Republican so this is how I see the world. I mean, come on Bernie, these are legitimate stances, every man, Reagan Republican. What's the beef.

Goldberg: The commentary part of it is totally legitimate, but to give false information to because you're a commentator is unacceptable.

O'Reilly: If it's false information I agree, but I haven't seen a lot of that.

Goldberg: Wait a minute, are you telling me that you think those people at the tea parties were a cross section of America. There are as many liberal democrats as conservatives, there are as many people who support Obama

O'Reilly:I didn't hear any person say there were as many liberal democrats...

Goldberg: Oh, I did..I did, you want a few names?

O'Reilly: No!

Goldberg: You want a few names? Yea I know you don't...
Those people pretend that they're journalists at the same time I'm not a journalist. Well, if you're not a journalist don't pretend to be one ...

---

Goldberg: They go on the air and give their opinions, which is fine with me. They then state as facts things..

O'Reilly: Facts?

Goldberg:Facts, things that aren't facts at all.

Bernie called them liars. Wow, and he got hot and bothered with BillO in this segment -- and when he challenged Bill, The O Dog backed down. Why wasn't Beck worried about the country for eight years under Bush when this country was almost demolished by the conservative movement? Because a Republican was in office -- so his everyman act is a lie, but we know that. The folks here at C&L understand that. Hannity and Beck aren't the only two people making a mockery out of the FOX News brand. I wish Bernie would have gotten mad enough to drop a few names to BillO's audience. He may have gotten fired over it.

It's the whole network that cheers on the tea parties, that attacks almost every position President Obama was elected to legislate and that make up facts to conform to their opinions.

No doubt Goldberg is thinking of scenes like this one from Sean Hannity's show, featuring "reporter" Griff Jenkins positively cheerleading the Tea Party Express crowds.

BillO uses false equivalencies to justify FOX's behavior, which is wrong. FOX bills itself as the only fair and balanced network and even runs ads denouncing other cable news networks ... for their failures to cover the tea parties the way they did.

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One People's Project has the full-length version of this video, taken from the big 912 rally in Washington, D.C., showing a middle-aged white man and his Asian wife chasing after and harassing a trio of black people -- primarily two teenagers and an adult guardian (possibly their mother) who were selling "Don't Tread on Me" flags along the long grassy mall.

As you can see, the man -- who identifies himself as Tim Jones -- shouts after them: "ACORN! These people are ACORN!!! They are frauds!!! ACORN is fraud!!! Obama sucks! This woman sells signs for profit of ACORN!!"

It attracts more harassers, and it verges on the point of an outbreak of violence when the D.C. bicycle police show up and break up the scene.

Now, how does Jones claim to know that they are actually ACORN workers? He says he overheard a police officer ask them if they were selling for ACORN and the young woman -- who appears to be a young teen -- told the cop "yes." The older woman tells him flatly they're not from ACORN, but he keeps shouting it anyway.

Most of all, Jones and his wife are harassing these people based on some shaky presuppositions: that a young teenage girl would answer a cop's question -- particularly the addition of the ACORN element -- accurately is probably the shakiest, but toss in the fact that "off brand" vendors, people who have nothing whatsoever to do with a political entity like ACORN, employing young African Americans often flock to these political events and sell whatever is selling in terms of hats, T-shirts, pins, flags, and whatever gewgaws can be sold. Cops regularly chase them off if they don't have a license.

Which is probably what these people were doing, and why they fled. Well, that and the fear of being lynched by these maniacs.

The bigger question is: Why target African Americans when there are are hundreds of vendors at these things? And why assume that they have anything to do with ACORN?

Because, to the teabaggers, ACORN is synonymous with scary black people. The kind who, in the minds of Glenn Beck and his followers, are lurking, waiting to overthrow America when Obama orders them to. (Even if they later turn out to be a dance troupe.)

As Susie says, ACORN is just the new wingnutspeak code for the 'N' word. It's now become an epithet -- one you can chase black people around with and accuse them angrily. Just what America needs right now.

[H/t Max Blumenthal.]

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Wow. Maybe he was inspired by his earlier session with Max Blumenthal. Or maybe it was the way Glenn Beck dissed Mika by telling her to "shut the hell up." Or maybe he's just as sick of Glenn Beck as the rest of us are.

Whatever it was, Joe Scarborough was relentless and on-point this morning in attacking not just Glenn Beck, but the conservatives who condone and empower him.

He took his cue from Peter Wehner's piece in Commentary, "Glenn Beck: Harmful to the Conservative Movement":

I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now—and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn’t the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on.

Scarborough was even more damning:

Scarborough: But when you preach this kind of hatred, and say that an African American president hates all white people -- stay with me -- hates all white people, you are playing with fire. And bad things can happen. And if they do happen, not only is Glenn Beck responsible, but conservatives who don't -- call -- him -- out -- are responsible.

Incidentally, Mark Levin was just as harsh in knocking down Beck.

This is certainly a good start for conservatives serious about rescuing their movement from the abyss into which it is descending. But again, as with David Brooks, none of them quite grasp the dimensions of what they're up against.

Sure, the things Glenn Beck says are completely nuts and reflect poorly on the American Right generally. That's probably because Beck is in reality a genuine far-right extremist who is gradually coming out of the closet about that -- and as he does, he's lapping up the ratings.

But Beck is far from the only extremist dragging movement conservatism to the right. The bridges between the far right and mainstream conservatives are so numerous and widely trafficked that it's hard to keep up, but they range from the extreme religious right connections that Blumenthal describes in his new book in detail, to the "Patriot" wingnut right like WorldNetDaily, which has multiple ties to the Republican National Committee. And yes, ordinary conservatives do have reason to be concerned.

This is especially the case when it comes to the Tea Parties, which actually reflect the takeover of movement conservatism by right-wing populists. They have become a fundamentally important nexus for the promotion of extremist beliefs and fringe conspiracy theories.

Because that's what Joe Scarborough is up against. Glenn Beck is just the face. There's a much larger beast lurking there alongside him.