Arizona Law Knifes GOP in the Back: THANK YOU, Governor Brewer and Gramps McCain!

It’s already starting: The Nazi anti-immigration law passed in Arizona threatens to rip the Republican Party to shreds months before the November election. A law that most astute political observers (with the cynical focus lacking in the public at large) recognize as the mother of all voter suppression statutes may, if it stands, artificially boost Republican turnout by intimidating non-white Democratic voters from showing up at the polls. Any law that compels voters of a certain caste to produce proof of citizenship will surely have a dampening effect on turnout for Democratic (non-white) constituencies.

Here’s the political context. Politics, as they say, is local, until it becomes nationalized. Here, the interests of Arizona’s right wing Republican extremists stands to heap disaster on the national party. Governor Jan Brewer, Arizona’s former secretary of state, ascended to the state’s highest office after it was vacated by Janet Napolitano, President Obama’s current Homeland Security Secretary. Brewer is locked in a tight election for governor with Arizona’s Democratic Attorney General, Terry Goddard. It was a tight race, that is, until the Wicked Witch of the West unleashed her Flying Monkey Right police to terrorize Arizona citizens.

Since Arizona’s Nazi bill was signed into law, Goddard jumped ahead of Brewer, 47 to 44 percent. Latino voters are flocking to Goddard. His support among Latinos more than doubled since September. Goddard now leads Brewer among Latinos by 71 to 25 percent. Even among party-identified voters, Brewer trails Goddard: 73 percent of Republicans favor Brewer to 88 percent of Democrats for Goddard.

Arizona is turning into a pariah state that is increasingly toxic to the rest of the nation:

• In New York, Mayor Mike Bloomberg said: “[M]any people from around the world may think twice before visiting Arizona and subjecting themselves to potential run-ins with the police. As a city, New York may well benefit from another state undermining its own international competitiveness -– we’re happy to have those businesses and tourists come here.”

• Colorado Congressman Jared Polis, who is Jewish, said the law is reminiscent of Nazi Germany: “I think it’s a very fair comparison and I hope that we’re not headed on the same trajectory that Nazi Germany was. But this was a very recent experience for Jewish Americans and Jews worldwide and it’s something that when we see similarities we start ringing alarm bells.”

• In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom announced a moratorium on official travel to Arizona. A measure was introduced in the city assembly condemning the Arizona law as an “affront” to our Constitution.

These examples from each coast and the middle of the country are emblematic of the growing outrage and opposition to what is occurring in Arizona. Others include truckers hauling produce who agreed to bypass Arizona. Nationwide protests are gearing up, and multiple lawsuits to block the law from ever taking effect are in the works. Attorney General Eric Holder is questioning the legality of the law.

Welcome to “Jaime” Crow, 2010. If Jim Crow laws in the 50s and 60s were all about making African Americans jump though hoops to exercise their right to vote, Arizona’s anti-immigration law is a tacit recognition of the growing influence and importance of Latino voters, particularly to the Democratic Party. With this Arizona law –- which was drafted by an out-of-state Birther, Chris Kobach, who is running for secretary of state in Kansas -– the extremist controlling right wing of the Republican Party has written off the Latino vote and will focus instead on suppressing Latino turnout in November.

This calculation spells doom for Republican hopes of retaking the House or Senate. Most objective political observers, in either party, recognize this strategy as a train wreck of immense proportions for the Republican Party. In fact, many Republicans are running for the tall grass and away from the Arizona law as fast as they can. Marco Rubio, darling of the Teabaggers, is compelled to protect his Latino flank as the son of Cuban immigrants and oppose the Arizona law in a pretzel-like twist that also criticizes President Obama. Rubio can only pray that the Teabaggers who saw him as “such a nice young man” before SB 1070 won’t now turn on him as the ultimate Beckista mole, secret friend to invading hordes south of our borders. Jeb Bush, whose brother’s single progressive domestic initiative was a sincere effort to enact comprehensive immigration reform, has come out against the Arizona law. As has the despicable political sharpie Karl Rove.

Illustrating just how serious a political mine field this Nazi law is for Republicans, even former Colorado Congressman and presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, who ran on an anti-immigration plank and was a featured speaker at the Tea Party Convention, worries the Arizona law has gone too far. Meanwhile, Gramps McCain is deciding on yet another political facial to make it look as if he’s for the law at the same time that he’s against it. Blaming the President after you introduced the immigration reform bill you’re now running away from won’t cut it, Gramps.

Which brings us to the Teabaggers. This rabble of scared, angry, low-information white voters has caused mini-electoral convulsions within GOP ranks throughout the country. In Florida they backed Rubio and threaten to force moderate Governor Charlie Crist to run for the Senate as an independent. In Utah, distinguished conservative Senator Bob Bennett is threatened with political decapitation by a know-nothing Teabagger insurgency supporting nonentity candidates. Senator Bennett’s crime? Apart from not being a wingnut, his length of service and seniority in Washington -- a tradition dating back to the first days of the Republic -- is suddenly a career-ending political liability. In Idaho Teabaggers endorsed a Democrat, giving Republicans there conniptions.

The Republican Party does not handle chaos and disorganization well. Indeed, the Democrats hold the advantage in this area. But when Will Rogers famously said, “I don’t belong to an organized political party. I’m a Democrat,” he could not have anticipated the state of disarray the Republican Party finds itself in today.

RACIST ARIZONA

Here’s an eye-opener for those of you who may be fence-sitters, or misinformed, about Arizona’s anti-immigration law, SB 1070. The individuals who drafted and introduced this heinous Nazi legislation present the profile of the most despicable racists (not proto-racists or bigots) populating the dark, filthy underbelly of this country. Russell Pearce, who introduced the bill, is a declared Holocaust denier and palled around with a neo-Nazi. Chris Kobach, who authored the bill, is a Birther linked to the hideously anti-American organization with the oh-so benign acronym “FAIR” (Federation for American Immigration Reform).

Founded by opthalmologist (M.D.) John Tanton in 1979, FAIR traces his racist ideology to Nazi eugenics monsters like Dr. Joseph Mengele. FAIR has received more than $1 million in contributions from a group called the Pioneer Fund that was formed “in the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition and the eugenics movement” to fund research that shows the “superiority” of white people and promotes genes of people “deemed to be descended predominantly from white persons who settled in the original thirteen states prior to the adoption of the Constitution.”

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Tanton frames the immigration issue in survivalist terms for whites: “to govern is to populate … Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

Decades before Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” an obscure gem of a film about President Kennedy’s assassination opened in 1973 to substantial controversy. “Executive Action” was told entirely from the conspirators’ perspective, postulating a military-industrial complex conspiracy by transnational capitalist tycoons with ties to black ops CIA operatives. “Executive action” is a term used by the CIA at the time. The amoral, unemotional tone of the narrative enhances the chilling impact of the film. In his last role as a Texas oil baron (lead conspirator Robert Foster), Robert Ryan delivers a sinister monologue, one whose words seem lifted straight out of Tanton’s sick writings: “I’ve come to the point of view that for European-American society and culture to persist requires a European-American majority and a clear one at that.”



Needless to say, Foster’s insane racist nightmare never came to pass, but Vietnam cost the lives of 58,000 Americans. The film is a cautionary tale of speculative nonfiction about the tragic consequences of extremist ideology driving government policy.

The Olbermann Chronicles: UFO Conspiracy & Coverup

In an intriguing statement concerning the possibility of contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, distinguished British astrophysicist Stephen Hawking said it is likely alien life exists, but a visit by an advanced alien civilization might be hazardous to our existence. “If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans. We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.”

Dr. Hawking, whose position has “evolved” on this topic, warned in a Discovery Channel special: “I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced ... nomads [would look to] conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.” Conspiracy theorists would knowingly point out that DSC Channel is linked to ABC, which broadcasts “V” –- a show about nomadic reptilian extraterrestrials in massive ships looking to conquer and colonize Earth. Hmm . . . But “V” producers are surely delighted by the seemingly coincidental shoutout from the world’s most famous scientist.

Reporting Dr. Hawking’s provocative statements about the risks to Earthlings of encountering extraterrestrial life, Countdown’s Keith Olbermann called upon Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, for some perspective. Unfortunately, the segment devolved into the usual snickering about aliens eating us (famous Twilight Zone episode, “To Serve Man”), to which Dr. Pitts replied, “I really think, Keith, we have several hundred million years before we really need to worry about that. But just in case, I think we need to get rid of all of the ketchup on the planet.” It’s almost a reflexive reaction that any serious consideration of this issue, even when it’s raised by the world’s pre-eminent scientist, becomes a mirth fest lacking factual context.

Certainly, Dr. Pitts’s rote reply to the question about possible alien contact is safe, solid, and unimaginative: “The fact of the matter is we have no documentation whatsoever of any kind of contact. There‘s so much speculation, Keith, it‘s enough to keep the movie industry and the book industry and science fiction going for a very long time. It‘s sort of great to play around with this idea, but the only problem is that whenever you make these extraordinary claims, as you heard Dr. Sagan say, you need extraordinary proof. We have none of that whatsoever.”

But Keith also asked the question: “Has anybody ever, to your knowledge, either scientifically or in some semi-governmental way, contemplated the defense plan, other than the old duck-and-cover thing, bend over, head between your knees and kiss your planet good-bye?”

Dr. Pitts: “As much as we know about aliens somewhere else in the galaxy or the universe, we are much more concerned with the immediate problems we have from some country across the border, rather than worrying about some aliens coming here to eat us. We figure that at least we‘ll have a few million years‘ warning, so there‘s no need for us to become concerned about that. So I don‘t think there‘s any plan around, other than, you know, I‘ll set up my insurance company, let me know what you need, I‘ll provide it.”

Either Dr. Pitts was genuinely unaware of their existence, or he was being artfully dodgy about this 1960 Brookings Institution Report for NASA entitled “Implications of a Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life;” or a 1968 RAND Corporation internal paper entitled “UFOs: What to Do?” Not to speak of a very recent 1999 French “COMETA” report by the Institute of Advanced Studies for National Defense, entitled “UFOs and Defense: What must we be prepared for?”, which was sent to then-President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin before its public release.

The 190-page Brookings report states, “The consequences for attitudes and values are unpredictable, but would vary profoundly in different cultures and between groups within complex societies; a crucial factor would be the nature of the communication between us and the other beings.” The report continues: “Societies sure of their own place have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society. (This is an interesting source of agreement with Dr. Hawking’s statement 50 years later) Others have survived even though changed. Clearly, the better we can come to understand the factors involved in responding to such crises the better prepared we may be.” Although the research group did not expect any immediate contact with extraterrestrial beings, the discovery of intelligent space races “could nevertheless happen at any time.” The report strongly suggests that contact with extraterrestrials could be disruptive to humanity, and raises the possibility that such contact be withheld from the public.

What was that again, about “has anybody ever, either scientifically or in some semi-governmental way, contemplated the defense plan” . . . “So I don’t think there’s any plan around” thing? In 1999, Dr. Hawking stated on C-Span: “Of course it is possible that UFOs really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the government is hushing it up. I wouldn't like to comment on that.” Hmm . . . Perhaps Dr. Hawking (who is actively discouraging contact with extraterrestrials) and Dr. Pitts (who is artfully debunking it) know more about this than they’re authorized to disclose.

Ha! Keith Olbermann, Derrick Pitts, and Stephen Hawking are now officially part of the Vast UFO Conspiracy & Coverup.

Quotable: Community of Faith Stands Ready to Defy Arizona Law

“The law signed by Arizona Gov. Brewer is a social and racial sin, and should be denounced as such by people of faith and conscience across the nation. It is not just about Arizona, but about all of us, and about what kind of country we want to be. It is not only mean-spirited –- it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. Enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. This law will make it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona, and will force us to disobey Jesus and his gospel. WE WILL NOT COMPLY.”

Reverend Jim Wallis, President Sojourners

Passage of Arizona’s “Sieg Heil” Law, AZ SB 1070, Does Not Come Without Consequences

Only days after unelected Governor Jan Brewer wielded the zealot’s pen, fallout from the signing of Arizona’s draconian “let me see your papers” anti-immigration law, AZ SB 1070, has begun. “I firmly believe that God has placed me in this powerful position of Arizona’s governor to help guide our state through the difficulties that we are currently facing,” she told a religious gathering last year. In light of Arizona’s dire financial straits, and the likelihood the law will further exacerbate the state’s economy, straining its already burdened law enforcement resources to the breaking point, the Governor may be seeking a lot more divine intervention in the days ahead.

In remarks that veered from the strange to the bizarre, Governor Brewer said she will “not tolerate racial profiling or racial discrimination in Arizona” while signing a law that does just that. The central provisions of the law make it a misdemeanor to lack immigration paperwork and compels police officers to determine immigration status if they form a “reasonable suspicion” that a person is in the U.S. illegally. As legal experts have noted, the constitutionality of “reasonable searches and seizures” has engendered mountains of case law and precedent.

Recognizing the glaring unconstitutionality question, the Governor has issued an executive order “to develop training to appropriately implement SB 1070” including “what DOES –- and DOES NOT –- constitute “reasonable suspicion” that a person is not legally present in the United States.” (Emphasis mine, CAPS the Governor’s. Blogging is one thing, but capping words in an official document makes one wonder about the competence of the (un)elected official.)

That Brewer should deem it necessary to issue an executive order to clarify the law only begs the question as to its constitutionality, noted Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva. Mr. Grijalva added that he would be a prime target of this law if he were to be stopped without proper identification papers. Evidently, the state’s top Republican has already instructed law enforcement on what to look for:

“Illegals are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway,” said Senator McCain. Presumably, if someone who “looks” and “talks” a certain way (i.e., like an illegal) is rear-ended on the freeway by a Caucasian who claims the accident victim “caused” the accident by driving slowly, the victim with the illegal “look” must prove legal residence or be arrested. And the accident victim with likely be charged with causing the accident, because Arizona’s senior senator said so, for driving while looking “reasonably” illegal. Congressman Brian Bilbray of California, elaborates: “trained professionals” will “look at the kind of dress you wear, there is different type of attire, there is different type of -- right down to the shoes, right down to the clothes.” Apparently, Bibray’s powers of discernment can tell Rep. Grijalva is in this country legally, simply by looking at his clothes and shoes. Or is it because Rep. Grijalva is an elected United States Congressman from Arizona?

In a sharply worded rebuke to proponents of the law, LA’s Cardinal Archbishop Roger Mahoney called it the “country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited, and useless anti-immigrant law,” based on the “flawed reasoning” that immigrants come to our country “to rob, plunder, and consume public resources.” This law, he continued, cries out for comprehensive immigration reform. “We have built a huge wall along our southern border, and have posted in effect two signs next to each other. One reads, ‘No Trespassing,’ and the other reads ‘Help Wanted.’ The ill-conceived Arizona law does nothing to balance our labor needs.”

Archbishop Mahoney said, “I can't imagine Arizonans now reverting to German Nazi and Russian Communist techniques whereby people are required to turn one another in to the authorities on any suspicion of documentation. Are children supposed to call 911 because one parent does not have proper papers? Are family members and neighbors now supposed to spy on one another, create total distrust across neighborhoods and communities, and report people because of suspicions based upon appearance?”

Think again, Father. To be sure, most Arizonans will not behave like Nazis, perhaps, but history also teaches us that once fear of the “other” and authoritarianism take hold, Nazi-like behavior is not restricted to a certain people or culture; it is universal. The Teabagger rabbles are prime examples of proto-fascism impelled by xenophobia, racism, and Beckista-fed paranoid fear. Currently, there are some 1,000 similar statutes introduced in other state legislatures, most by Republicans. Immigrant-bashing is well underway. In a recent poll, 82 percent of self-identified Tea Party supporters said illegal immigration was a “very serious” problem. That poll also found that Teabaggers constitute about 18 percent of the voting public, are primarily white, older, more affluent males who vote overwhelmingly Republican.

Can the Democratic Party do without this rabble? The answer is YES, principally because the vast majority of Teabaggers never supported the President and Democratic candidates in the first place. Can the Democratic Party dismiss its Latino constituency? The answer is a resounding NO. As the fastest-growing demographic in this nation, Latinos wield increasing political and economic influence, Arizona notwithstanding.

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The Republican Party has largely made its bed on the immigration issue; now it must suffer the consequences of sleeping on its bed of thorns. With erstwhile pro-immigration reform candidate Gramps McCain leading his Republican colleagues down the lily-white brick road, the question for Democrats is to make them pay for it, with their votes against immigration reform, and their sharp tack to the right as the party of older, ultra right wing, mostly white males. If Republicans believe that an immigrant-bashing message and lies about our economic recovery will deliver them the House or the Senate in November, they are sorely mistaken.

When the face of the Republican Party is represented by an aging hypocrite with multiple political facials, an Arizona state senator (once photographed with a neo-Nazi) considered “an eccentric firebrand” and “politically incorrect embarrassment” by more moderate members of his party, one of whom lamented Arizona is “going to look like Alabama in the ’60s,” not to speak of Teabagger darlings Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann -– Democrats have reason to be optimistic about retaining their majorities in Congress come November.

On the question of immigration reform, Democrats plan to reintroduce the bipartisan legislation sponsored by John McCain (before his reincarnation as a non-maverick, goose-stepping wingnut) and the late Senator Ted Kennedy, with support from George W. Bush. Then they will dare Republicans to vote against it. That bill, introduced in 2005, would implement guest-worker programs and a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

The largest arrow in the quiver of the U.S. Latino population, aside from the moral one, is economic. Nowhere have such laws succeeded in this country after the heavy economic cost on the community was realized. The lessons of 60s Alabama, for the Republican who mentioned it, for all the violence and confrontation, is that civil rights defeated apartheid in the United States. Such will be the fate of Arizona, as it tumbles down the rabbit hole of history, 1930s Nazi Germany style.

This grotesque law granting the police extra-constitutional authority to trample the Fourth Amendment rights of U.S. citizens, will not stand.

Bill Maher's Challenge to Teabaggers: Cut Defense Spending

Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican does so, in his platform . . .

What Taxation Without Representation REALLY Means to the Teabaggers

AT LAST! Republicans Release Viable Healthcare Plan

Calculate how much your medical procedure will cost in fowl here:




Sue Lowden's plan to pay for health care: Bring a chicken to
Uploaded by MrTemperatureable. - News videos hot off the press.

TEABONICS: Caint No Bodee Speek Teh Englis Langague Aroun Hear?

Memo to Virginia Governor Bob McConnell: You might want to rethink your literacy test for voting by extending it to the entire voting public of your state. It's only fair, Governor. No, wait! You'll end up disenfranchising your Virginia Teabagger and militia constituency. Oops.

Happy Earth Day! With Beautiful Time Lapse Photography of Terra by Tom Lowe

Shoutout to Telemann for this. There's plenty more gorgeous videos at Tom Lowe's site.

Death is the Road to Awe

Learning to Fly



5D Mark II Test Shoot at Beach



Day to Night at Joshua Tree

Best Anti-Teabagger Sign: “Can’t We All Just Agree That It’s Because He’s Black?”

Messing with the Teabaggers’ ID: “In Freudian theory, the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs.”

Teabaggers: In Their Own Words

This jaw-dropper needs no commentary. None.

Kudos to New Left Media for an illuminating report.

Hey Doc, How Many Chickens Will it Take to Pay for My Open Heart Surgery?

This is simply unbelievable. Apparently the frontrunner for the Republican Senate nomination in Nevada, Sue Lowden, has proposed a barter system to pay for healthcare: Chickens, paint the doctor’s house?!? Hey Sue, have you gotten your ASS OUT OF THE 19TH CENTURY YET? Hello, this IS THE 21TH CENTURY!



Whatever Nevadans may feel about Harry Reid, folks, to place this woman ahead of Harry in the polls is to have your collective heads up your arses!

GEICO Fires Voiceover Man for Insulting Freedomworks, Teabaggers

Lance Baxter, a.k.a. D.C. Douglas, was fired by GEICO for insulting Astrotruf Teabagger group Freedomworks in a voicemail (why am I always reminded of the Nazi concentration slogan “Work Makes Freedom” when Dick Armey's group comes up? Hmm . . .). Douglas asked, “What percentage of people that are mentally retarded who are working for FreedomWorks and who are following it.” He also questioned how the Teabaggers will “spin it when one of your members does actually kill somebody, wondering if you've got a PR spinning routine planned for that or are you just gonna take it when it happens.”
Douglas recognized his impulsiveness with the first comment and expressed his regrets:

“. . . Yeah, I know -- STUPID! And certainly not constructive. But venting calmly with a twist of humor soothes my liberal soul. Plus, homophobia and racism are my Achilles heal. Unfortunately, in my haste, I used the phrase “mentally retarded” which, ultimately, drags me down to their level.

My first question was an unfortunate choice of words and I regret it. But my second question was the more pertinent one.”

He is right about the second statement. It was made in response to the homophobic and racial slurs hurled at Reps. Barney Frank and John Lewis, and the numerous threats made to any member of Congress who voted for healthcare reform. Douglas continued: “Now, my calling them, my choice of words, and leaving my number were all mistakes, and I accept responsibility for them. But what happened next was way beyond an appropriate response. It was downright sleazy, unethical and most likely illegal.”

After discovering his association with GEICO, Freedomworks President and CEO Matt Kibbe posted Douglas’ cell (home) number in the right wing blog biggovernment.com instructing readers to “Feel free to contact Lance. He was so kind to provide his number in the voicemail. Call his employer too… Let them know that you, in fact, are not a mentally retarded killer, but that you are now in the market for car insurance.” The result was a flood of phone calls with GEICO making a “quick corporate decision to drop” Douglas ten hours after Kibbe’s blog post appeared. Douglas said, “I did not post my views in a large public forum. I did not publicly campaign against them. I left a calm (albeit impulsive) phone message ONCE. FreedomWorks responded with napalm.”

And so, D.C. Douglas prepared “A Dedication: Matt Kibbe Can Kiss My Pimply Ass” for Matt Kibbe and Freedomworks Chairman Dick Armey --

“To celebrate my LOVE of ALL ethnicities, sexualities, genders; my belief in a woman’s right to choose, a gay/lesbian/transgender couple’s right to marry, an Atheists right to seek office; an impetuous actor/voice over guy’s right to leave a voicemail message – I give you my Tea Bagger Boogie Video, constructed from FreedomWorks followers who left me voice mails (though I will not identify anyone nor list their phone numbers – that would be kinda sleazy and illegal):”

And here's Dick Armey reacting to a woman, Joan Walsh, who has the audacity to talk back at him:

Arizona Is One Step Closer to Becoming a Police State. Literally.

All that is required for this to happen is the governor’s signature. She has roughly four days to affix her “John Hancock” (shoutout to the Teabaggers) to a law criminalizing all Latinos who live, or traverse, in the state of Arizona and anyone who looks Latino, which means, as Joan Walsh pointed out, she might get pulled over for driving while having a tan. The bill that cleared the Republican-controlled Arizona Senate and awaits the governor’s signature would expand police authority to arrest individuals who may “look” or “sound” like an “illegal” (however that is defined) and cannot provide ample proof of citizenship or legal residence. In one more display of ‘suck it up and follow the wave’ Arizona Senator John McCain, instead of providing leadership on behalf of Latinos, blamed federal government inaction for this bill and said illegal aliens are driving people off the road on Arizona’s highways!

Such draconian measures are what police states, totalitarian/authoritarian governments, and fascist regimes do, not democracies. Republican state Senator Russell Pearce, who authored the bill, said “We're going to take the handcuffs off of law enforcement, we're going to put them on the bad guy. Illegal is not a race, it's a crime.” Estimates are that between 400,000 and 500,000 undocumented workers are currently in Arizona. Does Mr. Pearce intend to arrest all of them? That is, after they strip the roughly 1.3 million Arizona citizens and legal residents of Hispanic origin of their due process rights under the U.S. Constitution –- an 88% growth since the 2000 Census. As it is, the laws already on the books aren’t being enforced by companies that employ undocumented workers, the lettuce and fruit pickers, because it would devastate their economies. These economies, by the way, that are the vestiges and heirs of the slavery-based economy of the United States, in the South, West and territories, before it was outlawed. But not eradicated.


To listen to the Caucasian callers to hate radio as Noam Chomsky has, in his disturbing assessment that our country is going the way of the pre-Nazi Weimar Republic -- “I don’t want to hear Rush Limbaugh. I want to hear the people calling in. They are like [suicide pilot] Joe Stack. What is happening to me? I have done all the right things. I am a God-fearing Christian. I work hard for my family. I have a gun. I believe in the values of the country and my life is collapsing” -– is to get a flavor for the pervasive anger waiting for release, for lashing out, that these right wing white people who gravitate to militias and the Tea Party feel. It runs much deeper than illegal immigration. They look at Latinos –- whom they call “spicks” and “wetbacks” –- and they feel threatened and angry.

Said Chomsky:

“What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants and the blacks. We will be told that white males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves and the honor of the nation. Military force will be exalted. People will be beaten up. This could become an overwhelming force. And if it happens it will be more dangerous than Germany. The United States is the world power. Germany was powerful but had more powerful antagonists. I don’t think all this is very far away. If the polls are accurate it is not the Republicans but the right-wing Republicans, the crazed Republicans, who will sweep the next election.”

With demographic change comes uncertainty for whites who feel squeezed and threatened. With economic collapse comes despair and anger. With anger comes violence. Chomsky’s vision may be more lucid, but many commentators have said that the climate today is eerily similar to that preceding the domestic terrorist bombing of the Murrah Building at Oklahoma City. This nation may be at a crossroads. The time has come to push back. This means first, that Latino groups, not only in Arizona but throughout the country, must mobilize and unite to oppose Arizona’s assault on our basic freedoms and civil liberties. They must be joined by a nationwide coalition of progressive groups to speak with one voice against the institutional scapegoating of one class and race of people. At the same time, vigilanteism and violence-prone militia activity should be called out and discouraged. Mobilizing for a strong turnout in November is a must.

Finally, the fact is that today Latinos command substantial financial and political clout in this nation. It’s time to exercise it in creative ways. Year after year we see more and more Latino athletes fill the rosters of Major League Baseball. Where are their voices in all of this? I would rather see less piety by athletes, e.g., from evangelical members of ‘Athletes for Christ’, who stage proselytizing demonstrations for Jesus in front of the cameras, than to see all the Latino members of the Arizona Diamondbacks take the field and stand side-by-side in front of the camera box wearing headbands that say, “REPEAL AZ SB 1070 NOW!”

Noam Chomsky’s dystopian vision need not become reality. It is not too late to turn back the dark forces of right wing reaction and creeping fascism.

Notes From the Fringe

Madness at the Mall. The armed insurrectionist militias or as Fox would call them, 2nd Amendment “enthusiasts” among the Teabaggers (most of them), rallied at the Washington D.C. Mall to demand their “freedoms” and “gun rights” on the 15th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Which tells me these people have little sense of decorum, history, much less irony, and taste . . . that goes without saying (to quote a Confederate secessionist governor). Here they are, in bizarro pictures, with captions!

The Company You Keep. In his ironically titled Hardball commentary, “Let Me Finish,” Chris Matthews said, “Some of the Tea Party people support loosening up on gun controls, but two-thirds have no problem with store owners telling people they can‘t walk into their stores openly carrying a gun. No, they‘re not crazy.”

Um, Chris. Let me put it this way: Let’s say you belong to a social club that purports to be against high taxation (a LIE, but let it be), in which fully one-third are “crazies,” 2nd Amendment nuts who hold the views of unbridled gun use you’ve described, carry crazy signs, and scream nasty, crazy, racist things. At this point your two-thirds have two options:

(1) PURGE the crazies from your club whose beliefs are anathema to your club’s charter; or

(2) Silently ACCEPT the crazies, or at most give them the option to moderate their expressions –- pretty, pretty pleeease? (See wringing hands!) If you accept such views in your club through intimidation, or perhaps because you don’t find them so objectionable after all, you will become INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM THE CRAZIES.

This reminds me of an exchange from “Judgment at Nuremberg” (for the movie buff, Chris):

Enrst Janning (Burt Lancaster): “I… Judge Haywood... the reason I asked you to come: Those people, those millions of people... I never knew it would come to that. You must believe it, you must believe it!”

Judge Haywood (Spencer Tracy): “It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to die you knew to be innocent.”

Comrade Teabaggers. Ah, this is SO rich! If this were a Hollywood script it wouldn’t pass muster -- too unbelievable! The Teabaggers’ chief financial backers, secretive billionaires Charles and David Koch, inherited a Koch family fortune made working for Stalin’s Bolsheviks in the 20s and 30s. No wonder Teabaggers in their rallies are high on bad Trotsky (rhymes with Alinsky), but hardly carry any signage of the biggest Soviet Communist monster of all, genocidal murderer of millions, Joseph Stalin. What gives? I know, I know, I’m giving these idiots who don’t know their own history, let alone 20th century world history, too much credit. But it’s not inconceivable that word trickled down from the Koch family that Stalin signs are strictly VERBOTEN! Hitler Sí, Stalin No!

Teabagger Family Values. Not only are the Tebaggers dumb, their choice of candidates for November is not so discriminating. Just fill out a form saying Obama’s a socialist from Kenya who’ll take your guns away and you’re in the money with the Tebagger endorsement. Racism (manageable), but porn and bestiality? Teabaggers, you have a problem. One of many.

Quotable: Bill Clinton on the Lessons From Oklahoma City

“What we learned from Oklahoma City is not that we should gag each other or that we should reduce our passion for the positions we hold -- but that the words we use really do matter, because there's this vast echo chamber, and they go across space and they fall on the serious and the delirious alike. They fall on the connected and the unhinged alike. One of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have.

But remember, words have consequences as much as actions do, and what we advocate, commensurate with our position and responsibility, we have to take responsibility for. We owe that to Oklahoma City.”

President Bill Clinton - Oklahoma City Bombing 15th Anniversary

Frank Luntz Goes VIRAL as GOP Lemmings Follow Him Over the Cliff

Don't you just love it when a plan comes together! For teetering Republicans who promised to stand with Mitch McConnell in lockstep opposition to financial reform, that tall grass, those hills . . . look pretty inviting. Their timing is impeccable, too, promising to shore up the Wall Street bankers on the very day Goldman Sachs is charged by the SEC with defrauding investors, including Main Street pension funds. The Democrats, for once, were quick to produce an ad connecting the dots between Mitch McConnell, propagandist Frank Luntz, and Wall Street banks that are fiercely opposing financial regulation. And the taxpayers have yet to be made whole for the TARP bailout. These people are shameless.



How long did the lying punk with the bad complexion think he’d get a free pass for his self-promotion for corporate dollars, doing GOP business on the side? The Frank Luntz memos from his group, the (lyin') “Word Doctors,” have finally come back to bite him in the ass. Keep in mind, this little punk with rosacea makes a living telling politicians how to LIE on a grand scale. First it was the LIES about healthcare (hundreds of them), next Luntz is at it again with financial regulatory reform. And the punk is arrogant enough in his perceived ability to manipulate public opinion with lies that he outlines it all in informative memos (look them up -- they're in PDF format.)

This time, the Democrats pushed back against the punk’s toxic games. Republicans are nothing if not robotic. When it comes to repeating the Luntz talking points they march in lockstep. By putting words/LIES in Mitch McConnell’s mouth, Luntz incensed not only Democrats who have been working all year toward regulating derivatives and establishing a financial consumer protection agency, but also Mitch McConnell’s hometown newspaper. It exposed the Republican leader’s dalliances with Wall Street bankers with (for a red state paper) unusual but welcome ferocity:

“McConnell's statements are perfectly calibrated to inflame the public. He insists the bill would “allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts for big Wall Street banks.” Their resemblance to the truth is another matter.

We have read that the Republicans have a plan for financial reform, but McConnell isn't talking up any solutions, just trashing the other side's ideas with no respect for the truth.

The provision to which McConnell particularly objects creates an orderly process for letting “too big to fail” banks fail, at the industry's expense, without taking down the entire economy.

The losers would be the management and shareholders, not the taxpayers. So onerous would this process be for failing financial institutions, says (Va. Sen.) Warner, that it would serve as a deterrent to reckless decision-making.

The high-stakes gamblers on Wall Street, luxuriating again in big bonuses, don't want any new oversight or regulation. Why would they, knowing that the government would have to bail them out again if their trading of worthless financial instruments goes bust and threatens to bring on the next Great Depression?

McConnell, unabashedly courting Wall Street bankers for political money, is happy to scratch their backs if they'll scratch his.”

You’ve gone to that well once too often, punk. Despite the Luntzes of this world, eventually, yes eventually . . . the truth will out.

Bill-O The CLOWN Head’s Up His Ass -- Again!

It comes as no surprise that Bill-O “the Clown” O’Really is a consistent LIAR. Lying is an essential prerequisite for hosting ANY program at Fox. The problem Boss Murdoch has with Bill-O is YA GOTTA BE GOOD AT IT! Murdoch has been after O’Really’s ass for some time –- it’s one thing to have too many pea brains with oversized egos bouncing off the padded walls at Fox; but when one tries going rogue . . . Aarghh!

It got so that Keith Olbermann had to come to Bill-O’s defense –- where else could he mine so much clownish material?! (See below.) But first, Bill-O’s caught with his head way up his ass and he’s too skeert to accept the video evidence and admit he’s full of shit. Let’s face it, Bill-O, when Neil Cavuto starts putting on “objective journalist” airs to knock you down a peg or two or three or more, you’ve got to be scraping the humiliation bottom of the barrel.



Hmm . . . I smell a catfight brewing at Fox-y. Look out for the Pigman’s pussy cat, Clown-boy. Meeow.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Teabaggers Rally Today: A Gathering of Bullies and A-Holes

The Teabaggers claim millions will be in attendance. The correct number is thousands. Most mainstream media, including MSNBC, either colluded with the Teabaggers yesterday to inflate their Boston Common Palin rally numbers or were too lazy to check. (Tebaggers claimed 10,000 -– the number was 5,000 at best, even to the untrained eye looking at the overhead crowd shot.) When Bill Maher told Chris Matthews he should stop paying so much attention to an idiot like Sarah Palin, Matthews used the false inflated figure to justify the coverage. Only Keith Olbermann cared enough to correct his colleagues’ sloppy reporting.

There is an interesting New York Times article that says Teabaggers are about 18% of the population and predominantly right wing Republicans. That sounds about right. We all know the type: white, obnoxious, selfish, right wing, schoolyard bully, with a sense of privileged entitlement to their Medicare and Social Security. Education?! Perhaps the Institute for Advanced Eugenics, or home schooling. This finding is particularly hilarious, given the Times’ past reporting of the Teabaggers’ major sources of information, e.g., Fox “News,” and conspiracist demagogues Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. Educated people do not get their news from such sources. Entertainment, perhaps; news and hard information, never.

Teabaggers claim to be against high taxation; “Taxed Enoung Already” -- that’s just a slogan in search of meaning within a gaggle of disorganized groups whose members do not believe they’re overly taxed. Teabaggers are hypocrites. You won’t hear this enough. It’s a truth that needs to be said and repeated over and over again.

Teabaggers are uncomfortable around people of different cultures, lifestyles, and race. They HATE the party that gave them their entitlements, and HATE President Obama for trying to extend it to other Americans who were left out. They don’t seem to care that the Democratic Party has fought tooth and nail over the decades to preserve their benefits from Republican attempts to dismantle them. They’re confident they can buy enough Republican votes to preserve their entitlements while shafting the rest of the country and future generations. Teabaggers are in no mood to share.

Teabaggers cling to a misplaced sense of white upper- to upper-middle-class entitlement –- the poor, African Americans and Latinos, citizens all, do not deserve what they have because, for Teabaggers, being poor is being indigent and lazy in their eyes. Teabaggers brush off the internal contradiction that they get back from the government much more than they paid into the system. Critical thinking is not their forte. Destruction, obstruction, hatred, mindless opposition, is. They are PROUD hypocrites or, as one T-shirt proclaimed, “PROUD RIGHT WING EXTREMIST(s).”

Teabaggers do not care that those who are younger and pay into the system as they did, are just as entitled to future benefits as they are to their benefits NOW. If they profess to care, it’s an abstract rationalization having to do with spiraling deficits. Tough grits for the younger generations, as long as the Teabaggers get to keep theirs untouched by government reform. If anything, the fact that younger generations will get shafted in the Teabaggers’ egocentric paradigm, only validates their back-to-high schoolyard bully rallies.

Teabaggers are selfish, brainwashed by decades of right wing propaganda, brutish, angry and racist by nature. If they believe in God, it must be the evangelical capitalist and avenging variety. Or they must not take religion very seriously. Teabaggers do not believe in climate change. Their role models likely include Massey mine company CEO Don Blankenship, whose rabid anti-government, anti-union right wing Republican views fits right in with the Teabagger profile. Most of all, Teabaggers cannot grasp the concept that Social Security and Medicare are social contracts between American citizens and their government that should be collectively honored and constructively remedied.

Teabaggers are LOATHSOME excuses for carbon-based life forms.

President Cracks Down on Mine Disaster Criminals

President Obama ordered a sweeping review of coal mine safety directing Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and her team to “work with the Justice Department to ensure that every tool in the federal government is available in this investigation” so that such disasters never happen again. “Owners responsible for conditions in the Upper Big Branch mine should be held accountable for decisions they made and preventive measures they failed to take.”

The President emphasized that while the investigation is ongoing, “we do know that this tragedy was triggered by a failure at the Upper Big Branch mine -- a failure first and foremost of management, but also a failure of oversight and a failure of laws so riddled with loopholes that they allow unsafe conditions to continue.” He pledged to hold accountable “safety violators LIKE MASSEY [that] have still been able to find ways to put their bottom line before the safety of their workers -- filing endless appeals instead of paying fines and fixing safety problems.” Noting that for a long time the mine safety agency was stacked with former mine executives and industry players, i.e. cronies of Republican Party donor and Massey CEO Don Blankenship, President Obama added, the agency “is now run, I’m proud to say, by former miners and health safety experts like Joe Main and Kevin Stricklin.”

The President concluded: “we all understand that underground coal mining is, by its very nature, dangerous. Every miner and every mining family understands this. But we know what can cause mine explosions, and we know how to prevent them. I REFUSE TO ACCEPT ANY NUMBER OF MINER DEATHS AS SIMPLY A COST OF BUSINESS.”

YES! Thank you, Mr. President, for listening to the voices clamoring for JUSTICE for coal miners from predator criminal mining CEOs like Don Blankenship. HIS cost of staying employed, let alone staying out of jail, has just gone up exponentially.

Quotable: Bill Maher on Palin and Bachmann

“I’d like to see Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann on Jeopardy. It would be the all-time low score.”

Gramps McCain Is Embarassing Himself

McCain deserves to lose his easy primary race the way he’s been acting. The once respected war hero is running scared from a challenge by right wing talk radio host nonentity JD Hayworth. Despite being ahead in the polls, having a money advantage, and counting on the Republican star power of Sarah Palin and Scott Brown, Gramps insists, amazingly, he never considered himself a “maverick.” He must think his voters don’t watch Jon Stewart:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Say Anything
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

What’s puzzling is, why would he run away from “maverick”? Isn’t his former independent image an asset with the Teabaggers? One can only speculate that some political consultant trying to earn his or her keep convinced Gramps that “maverick” must be code for “alien” or the “other” as in “not one of us.”

This series of uplifting Hayworth ads must have really messed with McCain’s head:

Notes From the Fringe

Mother Superior Jump the Gun. Forty years after the Beatles’ breakup, the Vatican says “never mind” to its decades-old condemnation of the group. Said the Vatican’s official newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano:

“It's true they took drugs; swept up by their success, they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives. [You must mean pederast priests?] They even said they were more famous than Jesus. But, listening to their songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless. Their beautiful melodies, which changed forever pop music and still gives us emotions, live on like precious jewels.”

Ringo Starr was not impressed:



Waiting for Benedict. The Vatican has issued a directive that requires bishops to report sexual abuse to the police. Wow. There’s a novel concept. Here we are, well into the 21st century, and the Vatican must be dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th.

Teabaggers and Oklahoma Legislators Plot Sedition. They want to “create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.” State senator Randy Brogodon, who is running for governor, said the Teabaggers spoke to him and he believes the Second Amendment authorizes such a militia. I must have missed the part where the Constitution gives citizens the right to take arms against the government.

What are the crazies afraid of? Is it the healthcare law? Is it the President’s birthright? Perhaps they need a refresher in civics –- the Constitution provides for three branches of government, elections, the right to keep and bear arms, etc, etc. To hear Gerhardt describe it, they’re just a law abiding gathering of armed citizens. His idea is to start 20 or 30 such state militias so that there will be no need for action against the feds. In other words, they plan to intimidate the federal government and citizens who do not agree with this lunacy with the threat of armed violence in order to make the feds bend to their demands. In a word: SEDITION.

There is historic precedent for this. A similar thing occurred on the eve of the Civil War when the party in power was accused of diverting improperly obtained federal funds to Southern states “to arm militias for an insurrection against the government over the slavery issue.” (Lincoln for President – Bruce Chadwick) Somehow, healthcare reform, majority vote rule, the stimulus bill, and the financial bailout do not rise to the level of unconstitutional secession. Not for most reasonable people.

The rise of right wing extremism in this country is real. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks these things, says there has been a 240% increase in anti-government groups, militias, and organizations this year alone. To the extent Republicans, at the state and national level, right wing hate radio and Fox “News” encourage the militias and Teabaggers, they should be held responsible for any violence that results.

Can the Teabaggers Be Any More Ignorant? They follow an idiot carney crier who profited off their dwindling funds by $12 million this year. If that’s not an obscene transfer of wealth from the needy to the slothful I don’t know what is. Sister Sarah incites, inflames, and laughs all the way to the bank. They fall prey to cynical Republicans whose hubris and arrogance knows no bounds. Frank “Goebbels” Luntz, the bad-complexioned propagandist who does all the thinking for Republicans is back at it, putting talking points in Mitch McConnell’s mouth. Time Magazine did a great job deconstructing McConnell’s words side-by-side with the Luntz propaganda memo to defeat financial reform on behalf of their corporate puppet masters. Can’t McConnell think for himself? Does he need a little punk of a self-important political consultant with rosacea to tell him what to say? After all, he is the Senate Republican leader.

Mitch McConnell is shameless. After soliciting contributions from Wall Street bankers, McConnell took to the Senate floor to oppose any and all Democratic attempts to impose strict regulatory reforms on financial institutions so that the Bush financial meltdown will not happen again. Paul Krugman called “Orwellian” McConnell’s charge that re-regulation would lead to another “too big to fail” bailout, as the regulation explicitly forbids future bailouts. McConnell was cynically playing to ignorant Teabaggers for support in propping up the Wall Street status quo with the slogan “too big to fail.” The Luntz-McConnell-Wall Street calculation is the Teabaggers are really REALLY stupid corporate tools. They might be right. Cynical, as always -- but right. Polls show that most Teabaggers watch Fox “News.”

Fire and Indict. If corporations are considered “persons” for purposes of buying elections and literally getting away with murder, why can’t CEOs be criminally charged for the corporation’s crimes? Or can he? It seems nervous shareholders are calling for Massey CEO Don Blankenship to be fired. They see bad things (for them) coming in the wake of the worst mining disaster in decades, which claimed 29 deaths and could have been avoided. Those of us who believe in calling a spade a spade call Don Blankenship a murderer. Period.

Not With OUR Tax Dollars! Students at California State University, Stanislaus found a speaker’s contract in a school dumpster detailing Sister Sarah’s demands for speaking at the university: First-class Lear jet; deluxe hotel suite; pre-screened questions; and, of course, bendable straws. The students and a state legislator want full disclosure from the university on who is paying the right wing Diva’s hefty $100,000 speaking fee -- they charge documents have been shredded -- at a time college students are struggling to pay ever-rising tuition costs with draconian state cutbacks in education. Attorney General Jerry Brown (like old wine, he gets better with age) has pledged to investigate.

GOP: Confederate, Secessionist, Racist, Anti-Science [Insert Boehner Rebel Yell Here]

The old Republican slogan “Party of Lincoln” has been a laugher for decades but is so ludicrous today that it’s been retired for all intents and purposes. When Lincoln ran for president, his anti-slavery views were so strong that his handlers urged him to keep quiet about it so he could pick up support in states bordering the South. He was vilified by the Southern press and savaged as a monkey by Southern cartoonists for being a friend to African Americans, much as President Obama is portrayed in racist Teabagger signs and that infamous NY Post (Rupert “Fox” Murdoch) editorial cartoon.

Last week, Virginia governor Bob McDonnell deliberately manufactured a controversy by declaring “Confederate History Month” without mentioning the evils of slavery or the minor detail that Virginia held captive some 500,000 slaves who, former governor Doug Wilder (an African American) noted, were not “happy” campers in McDonnell’s Confederate utopia. McDonnell called on Virginians to “understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War.” This understanding, in his revisionist mind is to portray the Civil War as a war for “independence” that “should not be forgotten” but “understood and remembered, both in the context of the time in which it took place, but also in the context of the time in which we live.” [Emphasis mine.]


This sentence is the piéce de résistance in the governor’s declaration. The word “context” is cited twice in the sentence to underscore its paramount importance. First, is the “context” of “independence” for the Confederate states, which is to suggest that secession is constitutional despite an 1868 Supreme Court ruling outlawing it in the strongest terms: We have “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States.” It also flipped on its head the horrors of slavery for millions of African Americans (free slaves were few and far between) by floating the absurdity that somehow the Southern states were captives of the Union.

Unreconstructed Southerners (that is, white wingnuts who are not moderate to liberal Northern transplants or descendants of slaves) are constantly relitigating the constitutionality of what they call the “War of Northern Aggression” –- historians properly refer to it as the “Civil War” or the “War Between the States.” Governor McDonnell’s “context” gives amateur Southern revisionist historians a blank check and more, Virginia’s official blessing to relitigate their Confederate past.


The first official salvo came from Texas in which Governor Rick Perry openly called for secession and used the anti-government lingo of the Teabaggers (tyranny, takeover) to incite the crazies. Then the right wing revisionists took control of the social studies curriculum in Texas, placing Jefferson Davis on a par with Abraham Lincoln, which is prima facie offensive and an outrageous absurdity. This is one of many outrages committed by the Texas Board of Education and right wing members not trained in history or education.

Second, is the glaring omission of slavery from the governor’s initial declaration, a slap in the face to every African American and a clear signal to regional nativists, for whom the Confederacy symbolizes a principled stand against the Northern industrial elites, that the governor “gets it.” These right wing Southerners have voted for Republicans from the moment Goldwater conservatives purged the party of most moderates allowing for the few remaining Rockefeller liberals to wither on the vine, while the Voting Rights and Civil Rights Acts drove Dixiecrats from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in a mass migration and major realignment of the parties.

“There goes the South,” declared President Lyndon Johnson prophetically. Tricky Dick Nixon banked on his “Southern Strategy” to win the presidency for Republicans four years later. Ronald Reagan consolidated the party’s bond with the unreconstructed South by kicking off his campaign from Philadelphia, Mississippi, site of the murder of three civil rights workers, then welcoming the rise of the Religious (Southern Baptist) Right.

Governor McDonnell’s Reaganesque “wink and a nod” to the new Confederates with his declaration was no innocent mistake. He wanted to highlight what was “most significant” to Virginia and “promote tourism in the state.” Obviously, slavery was not “most significant” to McDonnell and those of his ilk (because he knows full well that a majority of Virginians do not share his sentiment), and promoting tourism for a war that took 600,000 lives and ripped this country apart means no regrets, no excuses. Most important, there is in all of this a cold political calculation on McDonnell’s part. Virginia has no second terms for governor, so the ambitious McDonnell is unfettered by the restraint of actually having to serve his constituents. McDonnell has presidential (or, initially, vice presidential) aspirations and he is speaking to a wider constituency outside Virginia to the south and west of its borders. McDonnell’s fellow wingnut attorney general Kenneth Cuccinelli is angling for the governorship by joining in a frivolous lawsuit of Republican state AGs against the healthcare law. Virginia’s headlong plunge back to our ugly segregationist past continues apace with McDonnell’s requirement to have the state’s estimated 300,000 disenfranchised non-violent convicted felons write an essay in order to get their Constitutionally guaranteed voting rights back.

Unreconstructed Southerners understand this -- on a basic level, at least. Some, such as the Sons of the Confederacy, are old enough to remember separate but equal, perhaps even a lynching or two. They sneer at the “political correctness” of the Northern elites, and resent objections to flying the Confederate flag or celebrating Confederate history as they would have it, in its proper “context,” which omits slavery as insignificant while embracing “independence” from “Northern aggression.” They understand Governor McDonnell’s drippy, insincere apology was a necessity in the current state of the nation. That is, according to their bizarre worldview, an African American non-citizen president from Illinois -- the “Land of Lincoln” -- illegitimately occupies the White House. Significantly, despite the governor’s calculated apology, the original text with the words “independence” and “context” remains unchanged. These are code words for racism and sectionalism. Neo-Confederates understand this.

As the Little Don John Gotti Jr. said on 60 Minutes when asked how he could justify murder: “I can’t justify murder, but I can make a good case for it. Wanna hear it?”

Thanks to Rick Perry, Bob McDonnell, Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann, the Republican Party leadership, Southern state AGs (especially those running for governor), and the Teabaggers, we’re hearing their best case for a new Confederacy. Incidentally, to hear some of these people is to live day in and day out with a cornucopia of hideous accents. Some, like Sarah Palin’s, are truly hideous. Others, but for the hideous people uttering the words, would have been charming in another context. That may not be fair to the idea of a genteel South, but that too is mostly myth, considering its history.

The Southern drawl is the predominant Republican accent. It pours from the mouths of Mitch McConnell, Bob McDonnell, Rick Perry, Eric Cantor, Bill McCollum, George W. Bush (worse because it’s faux), Jim DeMint, and weepy Tom Coburn. It’s enough to drive retiring GOP Senator George Voinovich to exasperation. It has become the soundtrack of reaction, racism, hatred, obstruction, right wing extremism, and sectionalism.

Worst of all, is Sarah Palin’s twang. It grates like nails on a blackboard. Does anybody know what the hell that is? Other Alaskans don’t sound anywhere as grotesque as Palin. (New Rule, Bill Maher: Anyone who pronounces “nuclear” phonetically, NOO-KEE-LAR, should be automatically barred from public speaking.) Couple that with the vomiting nasality, the hard Rs, the mispronunciation of all names foreign – EYE-RAN, EYE-RACK – and we have linguistic genocide. Headlining the GOP’s shindig in Louisiana, Palin used a bunch of meaningless slogans as an excuse to butcher the English language, carrying the GOP’s anti-Science banner. She said America does not need “this snake-oil science stuff” and dismissed climate change as “Gore-Gate.”

Putting it all in context, former RNC Chairman and current governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, who calls himself “an overweight redneck with a funny accent” made it perfectly clear that Neo-Confederates and GOP Teabagger storm troopers understood McDonnell’s message. In a stunning display of retrograde Old South thinking and insensitivity, Barbour reinforced the Bob McDonnell non-apology by dismissing the notion McDonnell was “insensitive” as “just a nit” that is “trying to make a big deal out of something that doesn't matter for diddly” because “it goes without saying” that slavery is a bad thing. No, Mr. Barbour. It does not go withouth saying in any declaration celebrating Confederate history, official or not, when this, the greatest abomination in American history was the cause for the Civil War, our bloodiest conflict. There’s revisionism and then there’s obscenity. What you and McDonnell said and did falls within the latter category.



The time has come for a rebranding of the Republican Party. I have a couple of suggestions. Instead of GOP, why not rename the Republicans’ call letters the NCP (New Confederate Party). Better still, there may yet be purpose to Michael Steele’s castrated reign as RNC Chairman. He should pass a resolution officially changing the name of the Republican Party to the Tea Party.