Funnin’ Rachel Maddow: Rachel’s Secret Ties to Art Robinson UNVEILED!

Long before Rachel Maddow became the infamous “Madam Maddow, Sarcastic Political Analyst,” her secret connection to political neophyte Art Robinson was a carefully guarded secret. That is, until their daringly staged faux adversary interview (below) ripped apart the “Lost in Space” veil of  a shared past, our forensic journalist investigation revealed.

The secret began to unravel when an individual, identified only as “Will,” tipped us off to Rachel’s participation in a popular sci-fi reality TV series, based on a 60s cult classic, with a real family Robinson and a mysterious scientist using the common alias, “Smith,” Zachary Smith. According to Will, a precocious Rachel muscled him aside for the brain child-genius role because “I’m gonna be a Rhodes Scholar, and you’re not!”

THE SECRET IS FINALLY OUT: PROFESSOR ZACHARY SMITH IS ART ROBINSON!

The show was abruptly cancelled when the mysterious Professor “Smith” began peddling bizarre ideas about the healing powers of radiation with a controversial method known as Radiation-Hormesis. First, he tried to peddle jewelry stones on Rachel and the Robinsons. Rachel declined — “I don’t do bling,” she said diffidently — but Mrs. Robinson took the bait, only to freak out on-camera when she learned the stones were radioactive. Art Robinson, a.k.a Zachary Smith, was unable to quell her hysterics with arch explanations that “it excretes microtoxins” as Mrs. Robinson registered low-level radiation on a Geiger counter.

At this point Rachel decided to bolt the set. She borrowed some fare money from Art, whom she’d taken to calling her “fake uncle.” The enigmatic Art Robinson said, “Don’t worry about paying me back; when I need a favor I’ll look you up.” So when he got in touch with Rachel asking her to boost his campaign, her only question was: “You’re a Republican, right … No Tea Party or something weird like the Hormesis Party?”

ART: “I’m a Republican.”

RACHEL: “you’re in! I’m soooo excited!”

It didn’t go so well for Art Robinson. Minutes into the interview his tone turned frosty toward Rachel, calling her “Madam” and “sarcastic.” Later, Rachel explained with a shrug: “I made no representations about what questions I’d ask. You WOULDN’T BELIEVE  how many Republicans only agree to come on our show if I give them my questions in advance!”

Madam, Hands Down THE BEST Political Interview of The 2010 Campaign Season

Who is Art Robinson …?

Madam Rachel: “I am sorry, Professor Robinson, I am afraid I goofed. That does not compute. Does not compute. Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!” 

And what is HORMESIS?!?

"YOU" Responds to Christine O'Donnell

A BLOW-UP of the WHITE BRAIN

SOURCES OF WHITE STRESS ( courtesy Village Voice):

 

Republicans Trot Out Three Scary-Looking “Dark” Dudes to Terrorize White America

What Took The TEA (Republican) PARTY So Long to Play the RACE CARD?

Maybe they’ve been “playing” it all along for so long that Washington GOP operatives running the  campaigns figured showing racist images in political ads would have little electoral impact on  racist Tea Party voters. Maybe with less than a month to go and nonpartisan women breaking for the Democrats, Republicans felt it was time to scare the bejeezus out of them. So they run ads meant to conjure up one of those subliminal visceral images ingrained in the minds of racist white America:

Three dark guys walking your way on a sidewalk. Terrified white woman clutches purse and thinks, “do I cross the street, or do I act casual. Oh Lord, what do I do …” Too late. The dudes are almost upon her. They’re speaking in tongues. Spanish. She holds her breath. They walk past her, voices receding in the yawning distance between them. She releases her breath and gulps for air. Her hands can’t stop shaking. Her knees are trembling. They buckle under her. She leans against a building for support …

Maybe white America has gone totally over the edge, as this Village Voice article posits:

 There is no substance to the ads. The ads say “BENEFITS FOR ILLEGALS.” That is a lie. A rehash of  Joe Wilson’s “YOU LIE!” outburst at the President before the public and an assembled Congress. An unprecedented act of disrespect against a sitting president of the United States. When pressed on this issue, they make the same argument: If an illegal shows up with a medical emergency at a clinic or emergency room no one checks their citizenship status before treatment. Pure sophistry, considering that is the status quo NOW, absent healthcare reform. The law has enforcement mechanisms to detect fraud, e.g. in billing for services. So it’s a straw man argument; a LIE.

Ironically, it should be noted that illegal immigration in the U.S. has declined by almost one million from its peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009. In California the number of illegals as a percentage of the total U.S. population has had an even more precipitous decline, from 42% to 23%. Which also gives the lie to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s fearmongering, that illegals are in this country to spread crime. No, they are in this country seeking work. When the jobs dry up, they don’t cross the border.

So Republicans trot out three scary-looking DARK dudes to stoke white America’s visceral racist fears with a veneer of lies about illegal immigration. The ads are even more reprehensible because they expose the lie that Arizona’s SB 1070 law isn’t racial profiling. How can anyone tell these three dudes are “illegal”? From the backward tilt of  a hat? (Glenn Beck wears his caps backwards.) From the defiant looks in their eyes? Or from their features and the chocolate color of their skins?

 

 Apparently, these three “ILLEGALS” are busily crisscrossing the country in search of “BENEFITS” because they show up in Louisiana and Nevada airwaves, two predominantly red states that do not border Mexico. Fascinating. In Louisiana, the ads are being run by David Vitter, the Republican “values” senator with a history of wearing diapers and seeking out the services of dominatrix prostitutes. In Nevada, the ads are being run by Tea Party darling Sharron Angle, who inveighed against people with autism in HER government-run healthcare, called for 2nd Amemdment “remedies” (guns, for the uninitiated) against a “tyrannical” government, and offered her “JUICE” to the other Tea Party candidate in a backroom deal to get him to drop out of the race.

It would be nice if these three semi-anonymous actors could be tracked down and made an appearance on GMA or MSNBC to opine about their faces being used to spread fear and racism. The trade-off would be, they could no longer make racist ads but would likely get a career boost in TV or the movies. And they’d vote for the Democrat in their state and electoral district. I see the possible outlines of a Democratic counter-ad with devastating national impact.

Bill Maher Tells It Like It Is

Who was it that said, “The choice is not between US and the Almighty, it’s between US and the ALTERNATIVE.” Here some things to reflect on when voting this November:

“The frenzy on the right is pure fear of stepping out of line with the Republican politburo and getting shipped to Siberia. This lockstep mentality is rare in American history. Here is a grand old party frozen, suspended, mesmerized, in thrall to a gaggle of showboats and radio entertainers and small mobs of fist-shakers standing staunch for unreality, and no Republican elected official dares say, "Let us not be nuts." There will be books written about this in years to come, and they will not be kind to the likes of Rep. Boehner and Sen. McConnell.

GARRISON KEILLOR, "The Old America is Fading," Salon.com, Mar. 30, 2010”

“I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends ... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.

ADLAI STEVENSON, speech, Sep. 10, 1952”

“To the cheater, there is no such thing as honesty, and to Republicans the idea of serving the public good is counterfeit on the face of it — they never felt such an urge, and therefore it must not exist.

GARRISON KEILLOR, Homegrown Democrat”

TEA PARTY America: Homeowner Forgets To Pay $75 Fee, House Burns Down

From the Huff Post:

“A smoldering rage may be all that remains after Gene Cranick's home burned to the ground last week in Obion County, Tennessee.

Firefighters are usually the bold "veni, vidi, vici" sort, but those from neighboring South Fulton could only say "veni, vidi." They came. They watched. That's it.

Cranick lives outside of the city limits and he admits that he forgot to pay a $75 annual service fee that would have provided him with fire protection. Firefighters wouldn't lift a finger, much less the hoses that might have saved the house.”

Or as KO’s Countdown dubbed it, “Pay to Spray: A Preview of Tea Party America:”

How Patriotic Are The Teabaggers? Not Much.

An explosive and exclusive investigation by Think Progress reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been pouring millions into ads to help Tea Party/Republican candidates defeat Democrats in the midterm elections, is receiving political campaign funds from foreign entities. That’s right, Teabaggers. Your candidates may be funded by foreigners.

How does this occur? The Chamber of Commerce solicits money from foreign entities and companies that goes into their general fund in Washington, D.C. The general fund is fungible, therefore if would be difficult to distinguish what money is coming from where. Simply taking the Chamber’s vociferous denials (at first they didn’t) that they have a system in place to do this isn’t sufficient.

This is a direct result of the Citizens United decision allowing unlimited funding by corporations in our electoral campaigns. The funding disparity between corporations and what the Democratic Party can raise from unions, small contributors and progressive PACs is of an order of 7-1. Thanks to the radical right wing fascists on the Supreme Court, our electoral system is being skewed in favor of foreign and domestic corporations. Why would foreign entities wish to influence our elections? Listen up, Teabaggers, I can give you at least three very good reasons:

1. Influence. A foreign company that sells its products in our markets has billions riding on the most favorable trade deals possible. The next time you think your Tea Party candidate is working for you, Teabaggers, think again. They are funded by Astroturf groups like the Chamber of Commerce, and when the time comes to cast a vote favorable to foreign companies or blocking Democratic legislation to help American workers or impose fair trading policies, they’ll be there to filibuster. 

2. Blocking pro-American laws. Foreign entities will call in their chips to Teabaggers when the time comes to block legislation like Illinois Senator Dick Durbin’s bill to close tax loopholes for American companies shipping jobs overseas and reward companies that keep those jobs in America. Senator Durbin’s bill was filibustered by Senate Republicans. The Chamber of Commerce called his legislation “bad” for American business. Foreign money (probably Saudi, Indian, Chinese) is used to grease Republicans willing to vote for shipping American jobs overseas. 

3. Dependence on Fossil Fuels.  Maintaining our reliance on foreign fossils fuels, particularly oil from Saudi Arabia and its OPEC partners as well as Venezuela and Brazil, among others, is key for foreign oil-producing countries. It is no accident that a Saudi prince owns a major part of Fox, the Teabaggers’ network of choice. The more we are dependent on foreign countries for our energy needs the less independent we are as a nation.

This, aside from turning America into a third world country by killing Social Security and Medicare and transferring borrowed foreign funds to millionaires and billionaires, saddling our kids with the debt, is the agenda Teabaggers are supporting. Not really a surprise considering 47 percent of Teabaggers belong to the Christian Right, the ultra-conservative group of American mullahs, who want to impose their own Christian brand of Sharia law in the U.S. and completely destroy the social fabric of this country. Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell are two perfect examples of the kinds of wingnut religious radical candidates fielded by the American mullahs.

The Teabaggers do not represent America. In fact, their activites and those “persons” with the deepest pockets in the universe — domestic and foreign corporations — are close to committing treason. It’s a matter of interpretation. “Liberty” my ass. Our democracy is imperiled. By the Teabaggers. Can you spell 'T.O.O.L.S.', Teabaggers? It’s what you are. And if you believe in Heaven and Hell, you’re going down.

My Back Pages: The Anti-Tea Party Anthem

Some 45 years ago, Bob Dylan wrote this song that rejects everything the Teabaggers stand for. It’s not too late, people, to look inside yourselves for that “freedom” and “liberty” your hardened souls deny. Dylan could have been writing about the Tea Party. He wrote of moving on from a protest movement with simplistic notions: “Romantic flanks of musketeers” (Revolutionary War costumes), “foundation deep” (Founding Fathers, Constitution), “Lies that life is black and white,” good and bad, deceived into thinking he had “something to protect,” and fearing he’d become his enemy “in the instant that I preach.” He wrote of transitioning to a poetry that rejected absolutisms, one that embraced the subtle and complex, not only black and white but shades of gray inbetween. He described his transformation from an “older” person set in his ways with ossified fundamentalist views — the Tea Party movement is overwhelmingly 50 and older — to one who is “younger” and open to a world that is ever changing and complicated: “Ahh, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.” This is the Byrds’ classic version:

My Back Pages

By Bob Dylan

Crimson flames tied through my years

Rollin' high and mighty trapped

Countless violent flaming roads

Using ideas as my map

"We'll meet on edges soon," said I

Proud 'neath heated brow

Ahh, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

Half wracked prejudice leaped forth

"Rip down all hate," I screamed

Lies that life is black and white

Spoke from my skull, I dreamed

Romantic flanks of musketeers

Foundation deep, somehow

Ahh, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand

At the mongrel dogs who teach

Fearing not I'd become my enemy

In the instant that I preach

Sisters fled by confusion boats

Mutiny from stern to bow

Ahh, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

Ahh, but I was so much older then

I'm younger than that now

My guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow

Ahh, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now

Idiot Punditocracy Watch: Lawrence O'Donnell Eats Humble Pie

Nice to see Adam Green and Jane Hamscher school the smug and cocky Lawrence O'Donnell in the error of his irrational assertions regarding the process of government. After Green bested him with the sound historical argument that the President was too timid and risk-averse to use his bully pulpit effectivelly, caving without even offering any kind of pushback, O'Donnell tried unsuccessfully to weasel out with a defeated note of agreement. Progressives = 1, O'Donnell = 0.

 Barf Bag Segment: Didn't see the point of inviting the vomit-inducing Luís Dobbs. The irrelevant racist's face time on MSNBC was a baffling offense to thousands of viewers repulsed by that hombre de mierda.

Adventures in TEA PARTY Campaigns: Teabagger Sharron She “Don’t Make Backroom Deals” Angle

Will the REAL Tea Party VALUES candidate stand up!

Sounding like a cross between Tammany Hall Boss Tweed and Karl Rove, the depressingly depraved, atrociously disgusting, and demented Teabagger darling, Sharron Angle, browbeat TEA PARTY candidate for senator from Nevada Scott Ashjian trying to strong-arm him from the race larding out typically disdainful Angle hate rhetoric with a weird enticement thrown in: “JUICE.”

How such a brazenly dessicated wingnut woman could deliver any kind of “JUICE” is one more TEA PARTY mystery/glaring contradiction, but … Hmm … “Politicians who think spending, trading favors, and backroom deals are ways to stay in office” … sounds familiar. Oh right, see fellow Teabagger Christine, below. Sharron, she’s the closest thing to a friend you could have.

My favorite Angle moments in her tawdry, sleazy, filthy, scummy trek through the political Tebagger backrooms:

“[T]hird parties can’t get traction….so I said all right, I’ll work with it. just show me what the rules are and I’ll work with it…the rules are there are Democrats and Republicans…so I moved myself up within the Republican ranks….they have no choice, I’m the only game in town…. There was no one more shocked than they were when I won that primary, when I went back to Washington DC, they were still moaning and groaning and weeping and gnashing teeth over Sue Lowden…And I said I am what ya got, this is it.”

 “[The Tea Party] gives me juice. That’s really all I can offer to you (Ashjian) is whatever juice I have, you have as well…You want to see DeMint, I have juice with him….I go to Washington, DC and want to see Jim DeMint, he’s right there for me. I want to see Tom Coburn, he’s right there for me. I want to see Mitch McConnell, he’s there.”

Then Angle handicaps the REAL Teabaggers in the race versus the one “that’s a stretch for me.” Guess who: The LATINO Cuban guy with the foreign name: Marco Rubio. She loves Joe Miller, the bearded wingnut radical from Alaska who says the minimum wage is unconstitutional; Ken Buck in Colorado is so anti-abortion he makes no exceptions even in rape or incest (these are common views among all Teabagger candidates); Christine O’Donnell, the anti-science religious wingnut, thinks we’re breeding mice with human brains, China has a classified plan to take over America, and so much more; Rand Paul opposes the Civil Rights Act and believes in voodoo economics, such that we won’t have to borrow from China and India to give deficit-busting tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires; and that shaky Latino who wants to DESTROY privatize Social Security. (Attention seniors: they ALL do). Last but not least, Sharron Angle, who wants to DESTROY privatize the VA, Medicare, Social Security, slash unemployment benefits, and force the middle class out on the street, to live in cardboard boxes. Oh yeah, and impose “2nd Amendment remedies” on anyone who opposes her agenda.

Adventures In TEA PARTY Campaigns: "I'm Not a Witch"... I'M A VAMPIRE!

In what arguably could be the most bizarre political ad of all time, coven member, science denier (global warming, evolution), anti-masturbation league leader, job-, home-, and college degree-challenged Tea Party Senate candidate from Delaware Christine O'Donnell launched an ad campaign designed to mainline her by claiming she's like YOU AND I! Oh NOOOOO!!!

Fortunately for us, the ad is so sinisteriously strange that one wonders whether Bill Maher or David Letterman commissioned it. Christine is dressed in Dracula chic — BLACK — pearls no crucifix (uh-oh) with strange lighting rendering her skin x-tra pallid and her eyes ... well, with lilting, somewhat off-key piano background New Age muzak, heightening the impression of girl next door going EEVIL Teabagger coven, like a bad Twilight outtake ... or is it?

Why Robert Redford Needs to Make a Sequel to 'All The President’s Men'

The Dark Side of Bob Woodward His Admirers Would Just as Soon Not Deal With

It would be easy to dismiss some of these astonishing revelations about Bob Woodward were it not for the fact they come from Russ Baker, a respected award-winning investigative journalist with a long and distinguished list of journalistic scoops, often going where establishment media has dared not go, often taking on establishment media. Baker has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice and Esquire among dozens of other major domestic and foreign publications.

The most explosive of Baker’s revelations is that Watergate, the story that brought down President Nixon and put Bob Woodward on the map, was itself a coverup of a coverup or, as the popular AMC show Rubicon advertises, “not every conspiracy is a theory.” Baker explains:

“Believe me, I understand. It sounds like the “conspiracy theory” stuff that we have been trained to dismiss. But I’ve just spent five years on a heavily documented forensic dig into this missing strata of American history, and I myself have had to come to terms with the enormous gap between reality and the “reality” presented by the media and various establishment gatekeepers who tell us what’s what.”

On Watergate, Baker’s revelations about Woodward are the stuff of a necessary sequel to All the President’s Men. I hope Robert Redford is aware of this, because sometimes Hollywood is as good a vehicle as any to get the truth out to a wider audience. (Do you suppose Woodward and Bernstein would sue?) Baker on the hidden story of Watergate:

“Here’s the deal: Bob, top secret Naval officer, gets sent to work in the Nixon White House while still on military duty. Then, with no journalistic credentials to speak of, and with a boost from White House staffers, he lands a job at the Washington Post.  Not long thereafter he starts to take down Richard Nixon. Meanwhile, Woodward’s military bosses are running a spy ring inside the White House that is monitoring Nixon and Kissinger’s secret negotiations with America’s enemies (China, Soviet Union, etc), stealing documents and funneling them back to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They then give what they stole to columnist Jack Anderson and others in the press.

That’s not the iconic Woodward of legend, of course — so it takes a while for this notion to settle in the mind.  But there’s more — and it’s even more troubling. Did you know there was really no Deep Throat, that the Mark Felt story was conjured up as yet another layer of cover in what became a daisy chain of disinformation? Did you know that Richard Nixon was loathed and feared by the military brass, that they and their allies were desperate to get Nixon out and halt his rapprochement with the Communists?  That a bunch of operatives with direct or indirect CIA/military connections, from E. Howard Hunt to Alexander Butterfield to John Dean — wormed their way into key White House posts, and started up the Keystone Kops operations that would be laid at Nixon’s office door?”

Back to the present, Baker “highlights what a crucial aspect of Bob Woodward’s career that has been ignored by most of the media. Simply put, Woodward is the military’s man, and always has been.” Woodward’s sourcing of events are reconstructions from multiple sources, including interviews on background, leaked memos, meeting notes, rather than from the principals involved. As the New York Times pointed out in its critique of Woodward’s latest book, Obama’s Wars, he “acknowledges that attributions of thoughts, conclusions or feelings to a person were in some cases not obtained directly from that person, but from notes or from a colleague whom the person told — a questionable but increasingly popular method, which means the reader should take the reconstructed scenes with a grain of salt.”

Russ Baker’s independent journalism project, WhoWhatWhy, “embodies a form of investigative reporting that is rigorous, relentless and scientific — we call it forensic journalism.” I urge all who are committed to the truth, to journalism’s simple but noble mission of informing the public, to support Russ Baker’s project and bookmark it among your favorites.