From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

Pat Buchanan today defended Brit Hume’s comments that Tiger Woods should abandon Buddhism and become a Christian if he wants true “forgiveness.” Buchanan said that Hume gave an “uninformed opinion,” but that it doesn’t necessarily matter that he was denigrating Buddhism, because “there are not a lot of Buddhists watching Fox.”

Original CD cover

Today on MSNBC, Pat Buchanan defended the remarks, which have since generated some controversy.

Buchanan began by admitting “I don’t know what the Buddhist religion is, but there’s no doubt that Christianity is a religion of mercy and forgiveness.”

He continued: “I’m not bothered by Brit Hume doing that. I think he means well.”

Host David Shuster pushed back, pointing out that he was “denigrating Buddhism in the process.”

Buchanan responded: “Well, there are not a lot of Buddhists watching Fox.”

Shuster then read a post from a Buddhist blogger, who commented that Hume could not get away with saying the same thing about Judaism or Islam.

Buchanan fired back by … saying the same thing about Islam: “I don’t agree. Let me say, suppose you said things about the Muslim faith and that it tends to be in a lot of areas very intolerant of other religions. And it does.”

He went on: “I don’t know the Buddhist faith as I said, but I think this is Brit Hume’s view of it. I don’t know if he’s right or wrong about it.”

Tamron Hall then interjected that since Buchanan admittedly doesn’t know anything about Buddhism, and Brit Hume indicated that he too does not know anything about Buddhism, then perhaps neither of them should offer their opinions on the subject.

Buchanan responded: “That’s his opinion! OK, you say it’s an uninformed opinion. OK! it’s an uninformed opinion.”

From TALKING POINTS MEMO:

Reactions to Hume’s comments have been unsurprisingly shocked, with The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan commenting that “the pure sectarianism of this comment – its adoption of the once-secular stage of political journalism to insert a call for apostasy – is striking.”

The Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen was also appalled:

It’s hard to even know where to start with something like this. How many high-profile Christians have had damaging sex scandals of late? Why is Buddhism deemed inadequate for those with family problems? Why is a senior political analyst for a so-called “news” network proselytizing, on the air, during one of the network’s “news” programs?

The folks on Morning Joe took a more jovial tone about the comments, with Mika Brzezinski snarking: “So find a religion that forgives you for your idiotic behavior. Change your religion and you’ll be OK!”

Andy Serwer piped in: “It’s also interesting that Brit Hume is an expert on Buddhism,. I mean that surprises me.”

Gettin’ back at ‘em: Wall Street’s 10 Greatest Lies of 2009 and 10 Ways to Screw Over the Corporate Jackals Who’ve Been Screwing You. For informational purposes only; no endorsement implied. IANAL. Void where prohibited. Etc.

Waykewl pitchers: Time’s “The Year in Pictures 2009,” National Geographic’s “Top Ten Space Pictures of 2009.”

Denzel in the house: Denzel Washington came to the Davidson-Penn game last night to watch his son’s team lose to the Wildcats. (Malcolm Washington converted a 3-point play for the Quakers’ final points of the game.)

Connecting the dots: Fecund Stench does an excellent, if scary, job of it.

I’m sure the Right-Wing Noise Machine will apologize to the Dixie Chicks right after it excoriates Ted Nugent.

Following in the footsteps of the other death merchants: Like the tobacco industry before them, the health-care industry, not satisfied to mess things up at the national level, is now also messing things up at the state level.

Attention, deficit hawks: Despite what you may have learned in Right-Wing Math Class, a $900 billion health-care program that’s paid for is NOT as big a problem as a $9 trillion unfunded liability.

Chase and Citibank are dropping out of the FDIC 4K program. Uh, what does that mean, you ask? Basically, they’ve found a way to do more gambling with your money.

Two Panthers are going to the Pro Bowl, RB DeAngelo Williams and DE Julius Peppers. RB Jonathan Stewart’s final stats may outshine Williams’s. Peppers, on the other hand, is tied for 305th in the league in tackles through Week 16, with 39; ranks tenth overall, and sixth among defensive ends (fifth among DEs in the NFC), in sacks; tied for 177th in passes defended (eighth among DEs), with five. In his defense, he is tied for third in the league with five forced fumbles and is among only four DEs in the league who have returned an interception for a touchdown.

Carbon gap: All the blather about a carbon/environment/clean-energy bill is overshadowing an ominous fact: China is going to eat our lunch in this arena … if we let it.

Quote of the day, from Bruce Schneier: “Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” So let’s 1) stop wasting hundreds of millions of dollars a year on equipment and people that don’t do what they’re supposed to do and 2) stop making flying commercial any more of a miserable experience than it absolutely has to be. Thank you.

Another quote of the day, from Osama bin Laden, which we really ought to look at again before rushing off to start new wars in Yemen and Somalia: “All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies.”

John Dugan owes us trillions, and if he can’t pay, I say we have the Mafia (who pay sales taxes, if nothing else) break his legs.

Pat Buchanan: Still crazy.

Speaking of crazy: It’s time to stop giving Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., air time. He handles it worse than I handled Jell-O shots, which is pretty bad.

I wouldn’t call it a “fix,” but it’d definitely be an improvement: NYU online-journalism guru Jay Rosen suggests the Sunday talk shows start fact-checking their guests. Unlike Jay, however, I wouldn’t wait ’til Wednesday to post the corrections. That ought to be happening in real time, online and with live screen crawls.

Speaking of fixes, if we want to fix the terrorism problem, we have to start with the engineers. They’re dangerous, I tell you. Including my brother.

Mashup du jour: This is genius.

Attention, police: You can’t Taser people just because they don’t do what you want them to do anymore. Not that all that many of you were doing that to begin with, just as almost none of you hit people over the head with your batons just for the hell of it. But those few of you who have been doing this are now on legal notice that you need to stop.

Elections have consequences, and the biggest consequence of the 2008 election so far is that the people who worked hardest to elect Barack Obama president have been serially and collectively screwed.

Reasons to freak out: Number of Americans who’ve died this year for lack of health insurance: about 45,000. Number who’ve died from salmonella: about 600. Number who’ve died from terrorism, including all those at Fort Hood: 16. Let’s keep this in mind before we soil ourselves, shall we?

Parker Griffith didn’t just take a congressional seat with him, he also took some of the Alabama Democratic Party’s voter-registration data. His primary is June 1, so get your popcorn early.

And I’ll bet you thought the story of Orly Taitz and the birthers couldn’t get any weirder: BZZZT! Wrong!

OK, maybe the world really WILL end in 2012, because it sure can’t keep going like this: DougJ at Balloon Juice for the win: “Let’s be frank: at this point, there is no real difference between Michelle Malkin and the Washington Post editorial page, none between Marc Ambinder and Matt Drudge, none between the Republican Congressional delegation and RedState. We have Jim DeMint holding up the confirmation of the head of the TSA while simultaneously acting as the point man for Republican criticism of the TSA … and he’s getting a lot of traction in the very liberal media. Maybe there is no value in saying this over and over again, but our public dialog really, really sucks.”

And, finally, just because it’s cool and you deserve a reward for reading this far:

…Right Wingers seeking to blame Obama for the failed underwear bomber are hypocrites who voted against funding for the TSA, blocked appointment of a new head for the TSA, and were apparently just fine with the Bush Administration turning over al Qaeda leaders to Saudi Arabia for “art therapy.”  And, as expected, Right Wing bedwetters are taking to the mediasphere to bewail the fact that America’s court system is evidently now incapable of handling cases that Spanish, British and Indonesian courts have repeatedly handled.

P

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34484553

Some great quotes!

‘It is every country for itself.” Pat Buchanan.

“That won’t work when the sea levels rise pat.” Bob Shrum

“I would tell Brazil stop burning down the rainforest, I wouldn’t have to bribe them!”

“You mean they’re gonna come and get my tax dollars?”

Chris Matthews makes a good anology about Central Park New York, and asks how long it’d take for that land to be developed if the City gave them permission. “not long was the answer.” Chris calls him on that argues that proves Pat isn’t for the free market.

“I believe in zoning, that’s not the free market”

Pat calls Global warming a fraud and hoax, Chris says Pat wants to see the end of time, and equates cap and trade to fire insurance.

“The hottest decade in history” Chris (I really don’t think that’s true. Maybe for the past several hundred years.)

Just watch it, it was a very good debate, very lively. Pat Buchanan never backed down for a moment despite the clear tag teaming of the two democrats. The Democrat, Bob Shrum, keeps insisting no respected scientist disagrees with global warming, I had to wonder if that was a self-fulfilling promise. Pat though had a ready defense to that and counter with the Heidelberg Appeal. This intrigued me when he gave that appeals a number of 4000 scientists and 72 nobel prize winners all agreeing that Global Warming science is bunk. I found that defense to be false. In which case, Bob Shrums argument that scientists all agree stands pretty firm.

Writing about Sarah Palin in Newsweek last month, I pointed out the crude way in which she tried to Teflon-ize herself when allegations of weird political extremism were made against her.

Thus, she had once gone to a Pat Buchanan rally wearing a pro-Buchan

Source:
http://www.slate.com/id/2237638

In the news the other day, Pat Buchanan announced that, since there’s no actual proof of climate change, and yet we’re talking about remaking our entire infrastructure and economy based on its presumed existence, we should also transform our country into a theocracy despite there being no known proof of the existence of God.

That’s absolutely ridic – wait a second.  I’m getting an update.

Uhm… I’m sorry, it seems I got that totally mixed up.  The only part of that statement which was accurate was that Pat Buchanan was actually there when the stupid statement that follows was made.  And he didn’t make it (which, honestly… pains me.)

In response to the statement that there’s no known proof that climate change is being caused by mankind, by Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift:

“There’s no known proof of the existence of God either!  How much proof do you need, Pat?”

Let me get this straight.  You’re equating the fact that people believe in God based on pure faith, with no known proof, with the fact that people are insisting we need to completely overhaul the infrastructure of the world and its economy because of anthropogenic climate change?

Do you realize that you’re also stating that AGW is an issue of faith, not of proof?  Because that’s basically what you’re saying.

You see… we aren’t a theocracy.  We don’t allow what is perceived as God’s word to dictate how we run our economy.  If we did, we would ban lobster fishing, and allow people to capture Mexicans and Canadians as slave labor.  We would also make homosexuality punishable by death.  Because that, apparently, is God’s law, and if we disobey we’re in for major punishments.  We would be making those decisions based purely on faith, because we believe that the invisible man in the sky is telling us that we should.

Instead, because we aren’t a theocracy, we make our laws based (at least somewhat) based on things we do have proof of, or believe for reasons beyond the “invisible man in the sky” argument.  Because there’s no reason to believe that homosexuality is actually equivalent to murder, we don’t execute gays.  Because there’s no reason to believe that we have a divine mandate to conquer the world, we don’t legalize taking foreign nationals as slaves.  Because we know that shellfish actually can be eaten safely, we don’t make them illegal to harvest and consume.

Similarly, because we are supposed to be making laws based on common sense and scientific evidence, rather than proof, we don’t make laws mandating that we completely overhaul our economy based on what are, basically, faith-based claims that our current economy is causing the Earth to warm to unsafe levels.

“But hey!”  You might be saying.  “We *do* have scientific evidence!”

And yet… we also have evidence (not scientific, but even better – actual documentation) that the “scientific evidence” was developed using potentially inaccurate numbers, and with a concerted effort to conceal the raw data and silence dissenters.  You don’t believe it?  They’ve got emails from the CRU – the go-to people for climate change information – stating that journals that allowed articles dissenting with the majority view of climate change should be “reviewed” as to whether or not they’re legitimate journals.

We’ve got statements that the researchers would rather dump their raw data than have it made available to people outside their circle.

We’ve got statements that it’s a “travesty” that their models can’t explain the current temperature trends.

We’ve got statements that data needs to be edited in order to get the results they’re publicizing.

Now – I’m in a field that does some public reporting.  And yes, adjustments do sometimes have to be made in order to accurately portray the information.  However, we can explain Every.  Single.  Adjustment.  If we couldn’t, we could lose our jobs, or even end up in prison.  We can’t just arbitrarily say “these numbers look too low – add arbitrary number X to make it fit the trend.”  If we try doing that, we get screamed at from every level of the process, and the media would be having a field day with us.

But this?  Clear evidence and obvious statements that the scientists who’ve been using millions of dollars to fund their research, who are proposing that we make changes that could have billions or even trillions of dollars of economic impact?  We have clear evidence and unambiguous statements that call all of their information into question.

And the mainstream media is being very, very quiet about it.  Why?  Because they’ve drunk the Kool-aid.  After all – there’s no known proof of God, but plenty of people believe in him.  How’s this any difference?

Maybe because we’re actually moving away from the point of considering theocratic dictatorships a legitimate government.  You’d think they’d get with the 21st Century.

Pat Buchanan, crusty conservative commentator (pardon the alliteration), wrote a piece on whether the niceness of our President is a detriment to his conduct of foreign affairs. Our enemies are not intimidated by a leader who is too nice, says Mr. Buchanan. The issue is yet another “nice” way of criticizing President Obama. It does raise an interesting question though as to whether a party who chooses mediation will be harmed by an appearance of niceness. This concern is especially relevant where a party suggests mediation and is then rebuffed by a her/his spouse, partner, etc.

In some aspects of life, being nice cannot be a detriment. The point of mediation is getting to Win-Win; a state where everybody gets something and sacrifices something. The fact that a party is enlightened will not harm their ultimate position if they indeed need to litigate. Judges seem to favor the process whereby the parties try to amicably work out their issues. It is always easy to fight and to get a “hired gun” to do battle. That should be the lat step though, not the first one. Niceness in the hopes of attaining agreement is not a sign of weakness. Reaching a settlement is not the same as international dealing. Try mediation first. You cannot lose in the attempt to get to Win-Win. Nice guys do not always finish last.

From THINK PROGRESS:

During a debate on the House floor today over designating 21 miles of the Molalla River as “wild and scenic,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who opposes the legislation, tried to claim a progressive environmental record for her party. “Actually, the GOP has been the leader in starting good environmental programs in this country,” said Foxx.

Foxx then extended her claims of the GOP’s progressive history to the issue of civil rights. “Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle,” said Fox. “They love to engage in revisionist history.”

Original DVD cover

When Foxx finally yielded her time on the floor, Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA) passionately rebuked her:

CARDOZA: Today, what I’m hearing on the floor really takes the cake. The gentlelady from North Carolina, in her statement just now, indicated that the Republican GOP had passed the Civil Rights Act legislation with almost no help from the Democrats. I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that civil rights legislation. John Lewis…

FOXX: Would, would the gentleman yield?

CARDOZA: No, I will not yield. John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.

When she was given a chance to respond, Foxx could only say that Jesse Helms wasn’t elected to the Senate until 1972.

(Video at THINK PROGRESS link)

Virginia So-not-a Foxx is not only a liar, but she’s apparently deaf as well. Cardoza never said Jesse Helms voted against civil rights, just that he objected to it.

From Steve Benen at AlterNet:

Matt Corley [of Think Progress] added, “To support the claim that Republicans were actually the architects of civil rights, conservatives often point out that a ‘higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the civil-rights bill.’ But this ignores the ‘distinct split between Northern and Southern politicians’ on the issue.”

This comes up from time to time, and since some confused people like Virginia Foxx have trouble remembering the details, it’s worth the occasional refresher.

The Democratic Party, in the first half of the 20th century, was home to competing constituencies — southern whites with abhorrent views on race, and white progressives and African Americans in the north, who sought to advance the cause of civil rights. The party struggled, ultimately siding with an inclusive, liberal agenda.

As the party shifted, the Democratic mainstream embraced its new role. Republicans, meanwhile, also changed. In the wake of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act, the Republican Party welcomed the racists who no longer felt comfortable in the Democratic Party. Indeed, in 1964, Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater boasted of his opposition to the Civil Rights Act, and made it part of his platform. It was right around this time when figures like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond made the transition — leaving the Democratic Party for the GOP.

In the ensuing years, Democrats embraced its role as the party of diversity, inclusion, and civil rights. Republicans became the party of the “Southern Strategy,” opposition to affirmative action, campaigns based on race-baiting, vote-caging, discriminatory voter-ID laws, and politicians like Helms, Thurmond, Pat Buchanan, and Virginia Foxx.

Tuesday’s episode of The Ed Show on MSNBC gives NewsRealblog a chance to show how we are different than some “media analysts” on the Left. Tuesday, Rep. Gary Peters, D-MI, taunted 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain to come to Michigan, insisting the U.S. auto industry would recover just fine. Peters insisted: “He campaigned on ‘America First.’ That was his slogan.”

No, that was the campaign slogan of Pat Buchanan. McCain campaigned on “Country First.” Were we Media Matters, Peters’ statement would be a federal case. We would send out a mass e-mail noting his “error,” perhaps writing that Peters had spread “disinformation”!

But this is an innocent mistake. We won’t pounce. We wish others on the Left had such a sense of proportion and human frailty.

I don’t always agree with Buchanan’s viewpoints, but I agree with this one.  Is America at war, or not?.

I guess you could say it’s been leading up to this…Last year, following the election of Barack Obama as President and a prominent spot on the Drudge Report, Fox News, a mention on Chuck Baldwin’s blog, a shout out on Glenn Beck, and a mention by Pat Buchanan, as well as being the subject of articles in the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, the newest darling of the crazy right wing loon Tea Party circuit isn’t Sarah Palin, although I’m sure she can wave at him from her front porch.

It’s the former Soviet Union’s KGB-honcho-turned-Russian-talk-radio-show-host Igor Panarin, and the right wing has once again became enthralled with his latest doomsday predictions.

Panarin visited the United States last week. Specifically, he visited Texas, land of the secessionist Governor Perry and more right wing tea party kooks than you can shake a stick at. At an event hosted by the Houston Tea Party Patriots, Panarin repeated his predictions of the downfall of the United States thanks to lax immigration laws and so-called impure moral standards.

Of course this got the Tea Baggers all excited with spectulation! Not the type to let common sense take over, said spectulation ran rampant over the map Panarin presented describing the future look of our country:

Before you pass all this off as the craziness of another loon, read what the so-called respectable Wall Street Journal said:

“Prof. Panarin, 50 years old, is not a fringe figure. A former KGB analyst, he is dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s academy for future diplomats. He is invited to Kremlin receptions, lectures students, publishes books, and appears in the media as an expert on U.S.-Russian relations.”

Huh. To think that just a little less than a year ago if a Democrat had paid this much attention to a Russian they’d be run out of town on a rail, declared unpatriotic, a traitor, and the subject of every single news story on Fox!

But then…if  Fox News and the WSJ say’s he’s not a kook, who are we to argue?

The GOP is in a tangled mess with the ultra-conservative fringe lead by Sarah Palin battling the more moderate centerists for control of the Republican Party.

Barack Obama’s most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

The governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia were once billed as the marquee events of Election Day 2009 — a referendum on the Obama presidency and a possible Republican “comeback.” But preposterous as it sounds, the real action migrated to New York’s 23rd, a rural Congressional district abutting Canada. That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.

The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom has what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.

The New York fracas was ignited by the routine decision of 11 local Republican county chairmen to anoint an assemblywoman, Dede Scozzafava, as their party’s nominee for the vacant seat. The 23rd is in safe Republican territory that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Congress in decades. And Scozzafava is a mainstream conservative by New York standards; one statistical measure found her voting record slightly to the right of her fellow Republicans in the Assembly. But she has occasionally strayed from orthodoxy on social issues (abortion, same-sex marriage) and endorsed the Obama stimulus package. To the right’s Jacobins, that’s cause to send her to the guillotine.

Sure enough, bloggers trashed her as a radical leftist and ditched her for a third-party candidate they deem a “true” conservative, an accountant and businessman named Doug Hoffman. When Gingrich dared endorse Scozzafava anyway — as did other party potentates like John Boehner and Michael Steele — he too was slimed. Mocking Newt’s presumed 2012 presidential ambitions, Michelle Malkin imagined him appointing Al Sharpton as secretary of education and Al Gore as “global warming czar.” She’s quite the wit.

The wrecking crew of Kristol, Fred Thompson, Dick Armey, Michele Bachmann, The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the government-bashing Club for Growth all joined the Hoffman putsch. Then came the big enchilada: a Hoffman endorsement from Palin on her Facebook page. Such is Palin’s clout that Steve Forbes, Rick Santorum and Tim Pawlenty, the Minnesota governor (and presidential aspirant), promptly fell over one another in their Pavlovian rush to second her motion. They were joined by far-flung Republican congressmen from Kansas, Georgia, Oklahoma and California, not to mention a gaggle of state legislators from Colorado. On Fox News, Beck took up the charge, insinuating that Hoffman’s Republican opponent might be a fan of Karl Marx. Some $3 million has now been dumped into this race by outside groups.

Who exactly is the third-party maverick arousing such ardor? Hoffman doesn’t even live in the district. When he appeared before the editorial board of The Watertown Daily Times 10 days ago, he “showed no grasp” of local issues, as the subsequent editorial put it. Hoffman complained that he should have received the questions in advance — blissfully unaware that they had been asked by the paper in an editorial on the morning of his visit.

Last week it turned out that Hoffman’s prime attribute to the radical right — as a take-no-prisoners fiscal conservative — was bogus. In fact he’s on the finance committee of a hospital that happily helped itself to a $479,000 federal earmark. Then again, without the federal government largess that the tea party crowd so deplores, New York’s 23rd would be a Siberia of joblessness. The biggest local employer is the pork-dependent military base, Fort Drum.

The right’s embrace of Hoffman is a double-barreled suicide for the G.O.P. On Saturday, the battered Scozzafava suspended her campaign, further scrambling the race. It’s still conceivable that the Democratic candidate could capture a seat the Republicans should own. But it’s even better for Democrats if Hoffman wins. Punch-drunk with this triumph, the right will redouble its support of primary challengers to 2010 G.O.P. candidates they regard as impure. That’s bad news for even a Republican as conservative as Kay Bailey Hutchison, whose primary opponent in the Texas governor’s race, the incumbent Rick Perry, floated the possibility of secession at a teabagger rally in April and hastily endorsed Hoffman on Thursday.

The more rightists who win G.O.P. primaries, the greater the Democrats’ prospects next year. But the electoral math is less interesting than the pathology of this movement. Its antecedent can be found in the early 1960s, when radical-right hysteria carried some of the same traits we’re seeing now: seething rage, fear of minorities, maniacal contempt for government, and a Freudian tendency to mimic the excesses of political foes. Writing in 1964 of that era’s equivalent to today’s tea party cells, the historian Richard Hofstadter observed that the John Birch Society’s “ruthless prosecution” of its own ideological war often mimicked the tactics of its Communist enemies.

The same could be said of Beck, Palin and their acolytes. Though they constantly liken the president to various totalitarian dictators, it is they who are re-enacting Stalinism in full purge mode. They drove out Arlen Specter, and now want to “melt Snowe” (as the blog Red State put it). The same Republicans who once deplored Democrats for refusing to let an anti-abortion dissident, Gov. Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, speak at the 1992 Clinton convention now routinely banish any dissenters in their own camp.

These conservatives’ whiny cries of victimization also parrot a tic they once condemned in liberals. After Rush Limbaugh was booted from an ownership group bidding on the St. Louis Rams, he moaned about being done in by the “race card.” What actually did him in, of course, was the free-market American capitalism he claims to champion. Limbaugh didn’t understand that in an increasingly diverse nation, profit-seeking N.F.L. franchises actually want to court black ticket buyers, not drive them away.

This same note of self-martyrdom was sounded in a much-noticed recent column by the former Nixon hand Pat Buchanan. Ol’ Pat sounded like the dispossessed antebellum grandees in “Gone With the Wind” when lamenting the plight of white working-class voters. “America was once their country,” he wrote. “They sense they are losing it. And they are right.”

They are right. That America was lost years ago, and no national political party can thrive if it lives in denial of that truth. The right still may want to believe, as Palin said during the campaign, that Alaska, with its small black and Hispanic populations, is a “microcosm of America.” (New York’s 23rd also has few blacks or Hispanics.) But most Americans like their country’s 21st-century profile.

That changing complexion is part of why the McCain-Palin ticket lost every demographic group by large margins in 2008 except white senior citizens and the dwindling fifth of America that’s still rural. It’s also why the G.O.P. has been in a nosedive since the inauguration, whatever Obama’s ups and downs. In the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll, only 17 percent of Americans identify themselves as Republicans (as opposed to 30 percent for the Democrats, and 44 for independents).

No wonder even the very conservative Republican contenders in the two big gubernatorial contests this week have frantically tried to disguise their own convictions. The candidate in Virginia, Bob McDonnell, is a graduate of Pat Robertson’s university whose career has been devoted to curbing abortion rights, gay civil rights and even birth control. But in this campaign he ditched those issues, disinvited Palin for a campaign appearance, praised Obama’s Nobel Prize, and ran a closing campaign ad trumpeting “Hope.” Chris Christie, McDonnell’s counterpart in New Jersey, posted a campaign video celebrating “Change” in which Obama’s face and most stirring campaign sound bites so dominate you’d think the president had endorsed the Republican over his Democratic opponent, Jon Corzine.

Only in the alternative universe of the far right is Obama a pariah and Palin the great white hope. It’s become a Beltway truism that the White House’s (mild) spat with Fox News is counterproductive because it drives up the network’s numbers. But if curious moderate and independent voters are now tempted to surf there and encounter Beck’s histrionics for the first time, the president’s numbers will benefit as well. To the uninitiated, the tea party crowd comes across like the barflies in “Star Wars.”

There is only one political opponent whom Obama really has to worry about at this moment: Hamid Karzai. It’s Afghanistan and joblessness, not the Stalinists of the right, that have the power to bring this president down.

This column has been updated from the version that appears in print to reflect the fact that Ms. Scozzafava suspended her campaign on Saturday morning.

Frank Rich
The New York Times

Talk radio host Sean Hannity always likes to describe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a Holocaust denier, but it doesn’t seem to bother him that his good friend Pat Buchanan is a Holocaust denier. Sean has interviewed Pat several times on his show and this issue has not come up.
Here are some articles about Pat Buchanan’s views on the Holocaust:

Pat Buchanan and the Holocaust
http://www.holocaust-history.org/~jamie/buchanan/

Pat Buchanan, Antisemitism and the Holocaust
http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/buchanan.html

Sean criticizes President Obama’s willingness to talk to Ahmadinejad, but he leaves out a discussion of U.S. past actions in Iran. Such as when in 1953 the US toppled the democratically elected government in Iran, for oil in and he also leaves out how the US had given false strategic advice and sold weapons to both sided of the Iran-Iraq War. (See review of the book All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/hrj/iss17/booknotes-All.shtml and the article Fueling the Iran-Iraq Slaughter By Larry Everest http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11715 )

This is not to say that we shouldn’t be careful and question what the Iranian President says, but considering US past actions in Iran, the Iranian leadership has a lot of reason to be suspicious of US intentions, as well.

When even Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan agree, then the debate is over.

The New York Times actually prints something worth reading. Here’s a great article by an economics professor from George Mason University http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/health/policy/25view.html?_r=1

Pat Buchanan writes an article arguing that the Republican must be the “conservative” party to remain relevant. Something that’s not always the case, and why we find ourselves in the minority today. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34142

Having a large over-reaching government means that anyone who may be able to gain any advantage will always appeal to the State for redress. Here’s an example of an industry begging the Dept. of Justice to intervene to protect them from market completion. All too typical. (It’s obvious we need Adam Smith as much today as in the 18th century). http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6703525.html

From a site which is well know by car buyers and sellers, Edmonds.com, comes some shocking numbers on the “cash for clunkers” program (and it’s a lot of cash per clunker). Needless to say the White House is unhappy with this report. http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/159446/article.html
….speaking of cost, what did the stimulus plan cost and how many jobs were created? You do the math.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33522856/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/

A great article entitled “Economic Justice and Economic Growth.” http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2009/10/29/economic_justice_and_economic_growth_97476.html

The cost: $2.2 million a word? http://townhall.com/columnists/DavidHarsanyi/2009/10/30/masterfleece_theater

Next thing in the sights of global warming advocated: meat? http://www.thedailybell.com/569/Give-up-meat.html

Joke of the Day.    Witch Hunt!  Get out the pitchforks. The torches are lit.  The brew is brewing.

A new website has been launched called Stop the Witch Hunt.  Isn’t it interesting how they turn things around. They are the ones who are on a witch hunt. They have named names – made a list.   So very clever.   And the so called witches they are hunting, are named in the press release below (excerpt):

“”This Halloween, take action against the lies and hate speech that Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Paul Brown, and Pat Buchanan have been spewing in a
nationwide witch hunt.”"

On their web site it says:

“”Scary. That’s what this mob of right wing ideologues are to most of us. Scarier still, they have a national platform to use code words and race baiting to spread fear and mistrust. It would be sad, even funny, if so many people weren’t hurt by them. Hate crimes are up. False accusations and outright lies have cost good people their jobs and their reputations. And we don’t know who will be next.”"

Ah, yes, it is certainly scary – this mob of right wing ideoloques. Especially with all the scary code words and the race baiting that spread fear and mistrust. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid!!

(This song is first released by Bobby (Boris) Pickett in 1962, #1 hit Monster Mash on the original Garpax label. This is a good video – much later, of course.)

Oh, the games people play, the psychological games they play.  They start a black list, go on a witch hunt, and present themselves as if they are the good guys.

I haven’t researched this to a great degree but it was fairly easy to find out who is  behind the website.  An organization called Center for Media Justice. They are basically a community organizing group, and they have on the Board of Directors, such as, an activist and lawyer who is a 2001 Soros Justice Fellow for her work with Grassroots Leadership; another who is connected with the New Orleans Parents Organizing Network, ColorofChange.org  (a Van Jones organization) and is a cofounder of the League of Pissed Off/Young Voters; another who is a hip hop journalist….

(See RBO for some more details on the origin of this “Witch Hunt” campaign designed to stop freedom of speech and expression.)

It seems they will stop at nothing to stop and stifle freedom of speech. I sure do hope the “dots” don’t connect back to ACORN, or worse, someone in the White House.

And yet I just read that it is Lou Dobbs who has had his house shot at several times. So while these people are trying to demonize those who oppose their agenda, I guess the peaceful and loving left wing are the ones who are actually, in fact, demonstrating the violence.

It’s a good thing they slipped that hate crime legislation in the defense bill, huh?  I think it’s pretty hateful to shoot at someone or their home, but I’m just not sure what the elements of a hate crime would be.

H/T goes to Newsbusters and also Here.

Posted:  10.29.09

An obscure first time governor when Richard Nixon chose him as his running mate, Spiro Agnew was one of America’s ‘Most Admired Men’ less than a year later. His role was that as the voice of the so-called “silent majority” and boy, he delivered one scathing one criticism after another on political opponents, especially journalists and anti-war activists. His unusual, often alliterative epithets (joint products of Angrew and two White House speechwriters William Safire and Pat Buchanan) included such gems as “pusillanimous pussyfooters”, “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history” and “an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”

The last was directed towards the press corps. Another phrase, also directed towards the media, ”nattering nabobs of negativism” was especially enduring. First used during Agnew’s address to the California Republican state convention in San Diego on September 11, 1970, the phrase was coined by William Safire, who died earlier this month at the age of 79 after a legendary career at the New York Times.

There Safire was the first regular conservative commentator for the liberal newspaper, and was beloved even by liberals for his witty “On Language” column where he playfully skewered language fumblers from across the political spectrum. Safire, a college dropout, was a longtime Republican operative; he set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev ‘kitchen debate’ in Moscow, won the Pulitzer Prize for his columns, and never quailed from voicing strong opinions; one of his last controversial columns called Hillary Clinton a “congenital liar.”

In the end, William Safire may be remembered for “nattering nabobs of negativism”, and his “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid clichés like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

(Above, Agnew, Safire, Buchanan, and other members of the Nixon speechwriting team on a flight to a campaign stop in 1972).

~~By InsightAnalytical-GRL

Yesterday morning (Sunday, October 25) I opened the paper to find Parade magazine’s cover graced with a photo of a smiling Hillary Clinton. Reason? A 2-plus page spread entitled “A Day with Madam Secretary.”

Hillary Clinton on the cover of Parade magazine 10/25/09

The timing piqued my interest because just on Friday I had caught a discussion of Clinton on The McLaughlin Group.  Host John McLaughlin had outlined several successful Clinton initiatives that had been completed during the past week and wanted to discuss how important it all was…with a twist.  There have been rumors flying around about how Hillary is planning a 2012 run and how both Clintons are seething over what happened in 2008. While Pat Buchanan, Mort Zuckerman, and Eleanor Clift poo-pooed the idea, Monica Crowley held firm.

Zuckerman and Buchanan basically said that Hillary’s work wasn’t really “big” enough to get all that excited over and Clift brought up how, no matter how popular Teddy Kennedy was, he couldn’t derail the renomination of Jimmy Carter.  But Crowley, was sticking to chatter that she’s been hearing for awhile…that Hillary will resign over a foreign policy issue and launch another Presidential bid.  She won’t wait for 2016, either, when Crowley says she would be too old. No, the bid will come in 2012.

Take a look at the Parade piece. The piece is the work of Les Gelb, described this way:

Leslie H. Gelb is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and has served in senior positions in the Departments of State and Defense. He is the author of the book “Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy.”

What’s omitted from this bio is the fact was a long-time foreign policy writer for the New York Times. Just for the record…

The article is positively glowing, but there a few tidbits which raise one’s “suspicions”…

September 16
8:30 a.m. Daily Small Staff Meeting

The Secretary and six of her closest aides, including Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Deputy Chief Huma Abedin, both of whom worked on her Presidential campaign, review the day’s schedule, looking for trouble and opportunities. They meet in Clinton’s small, personal office just behind her larger, formal quarters. Practically every day begins this way. They touch on various explosive international hot spots: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Israel, North Korea. Though they don’t talk about it, they seem ever aware of President Barack Obama’s iron-handed control of decisions. One worry today: the President’s decision to cancel the U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe—a move bound to displease Poles, Czechs, and Republicans.

8:45 a.m. Daily Senior Staff Meeting

snip

Whatever subject comes up, Clinton calls on her practical instinct: “ We’ve got to do a better job explaining to people around the world what we’re doing.”

She manages to get to the White House to meet with Obama and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada at 11:05; no report on the meeting which is off-limits to Gelb, then is back at State by 12:10 PM for ceremony for Senegalese diplomats.

During their lunch break, Gelb brings up the topic of a resignation directly:

1 p.m. Lunch With Leslie Gelb
We eat in the courtyard adjoining the State Department’s first-floor employee cafeteria. Diners gape as Clinton goes through the line, although she does this—most unusually for the nation’s top diplomat—nearly once a month. Many burst into applause.

We sit at a table away from the crowd. Clinton has a hard edge to her foreign-policy views and generally positions herself to the right of her colleagues in national security. Yet she staunchly defends President Obama and his prerogatives. While she’s “not satisfied that we’re executing as we should” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere, she nonetheless argues for continuing “present directions” in most areas. When I question whether the U.S. really has vital interests in Afghanistan, she shoots back that if we simply leave and allow the Taliban to return, al-Qaeda “would come right back, and we’d be worse off in Pakistan.” She continues: “Despite how hard Afghanistan is, we have to make progress. And what we do and what happens in Afghanistan will affect Pakistan.” Regarding Iran, she says, “We can’t choose negotiating partners in countries like Iran. So we’ve got to look for ways to change the perceptions of those we have to negotiate with.”

And what of the rumors, I venture, that she’s unhappy and may step down to run for governor of New York or her old Senate seat? She guffaws. “What nonsense! I love this job and working for President Obama and trying to do something about the critical problems we face in the world—and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Odd though, that Gelb should ostensibly limit the discussion to being governor of NY or running for the Senate again.  Why even bring these rumors up if they’re just rumors that most people don’t even care about?

Right after lunch, there’s this brief report:

2:15 p.m. U.S.-India Strategy Dialogue
Some 60 Executive Branch officials assemble to discuss strategy toward India—one of the new major powers in the world. Clinton stays briefly to bless the effort.

Seems like there’s really no need for Clinton to “bless” any effort when there are 60 EXECUTIVE BRANCH officials all gathered together, right?  Doesn’t Hillary have a role in this at all?

Winding up the day with a 7:30 PM policy dinner on Iran with some 30 experts from inside and outside the government, Gelb makes these final comments:

I scurry to catch the last flight back to New York. The Secretary, with her unfailing smile, repairs to her office for more calls and reading. It’s hard to read the mind of someone frozen in the public spotlight like Hillary Clinton. She has to be perpetually onstage. But what I think I glimpse beneath the unflagging smile and constant concentration is a very tired person—tense, frustrated, but absolutely determined to make her tenure as Secretary of State a success and to accomplish important things.

While this spread in Parade is flattering, one gets the sense of  how tightly Hillary is controlled by the White House and how she may be getting squelched on larger issues.

Frankly, I view Hillary Clinton as being the “finger in the dyke” for U.S. foreign policy at this point.  Obama’s bowed to the Saudi leader. He’s squandered our prestige over a failed Olympic bid for Chicago, and he’s dithering on Afghanistan. (Note: France announced on October 15, 2009 it won’t be sending any more troops to Afghanistan). China may be drilling for oil in U.S. waters.  And let’s not forget to mention Obama’s prior rebuffed peace offerings toward Iran.   Hillary talks tougher than Obama does, but, unfortunately, she’s not the one in charge.

Meanwhile, some of our allies are less than pleased about Obama. France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, thinks Obama is “incredibly naive and grossly egotistical.”  After Obama’s speech to the U.N. Security Council in late September (spun nicely here by the New York Times), Jack Kelly appeared on Greta Van Susteren’s show, but here’s link to the full piece he wrote on the subject entitled “Sarkozy’s Contempt for Obama“  (anonymous sources, unfortunately).

more about “Sarkozy thinks “Obama is incredibly n…“, posted with vodpod

While most world leaders dutifully praised the Nobel Prize awarded to Obama, the many were unimpressed. And there is some fraying around the edges lately, from both the right and the left. See and Obama the Impotent in the Guardian and Analysis: Why Everyone Is Saying No to Obama in the Jerusalem Post.  Obama is viewed as weak, no doubt about it.

I can’t imagine how Hillary Clinton keeps chugging along in this Administration and can fully understand her “frustration.” As for her desire to accomplish important things, she’s pushing against some forces that really don’t want her to get credit for anything “important.”  Heck, when you are up against 60 Executive Branch officials at a meeting on India and you don’t stay very long, what does that say about your position??

Whether Hillary Clinton is planning to take on Obama in the primaries for 2012 or not, there may just come a point where she really DOES decide to resign rather than to have her reputation ruined if Obama does something really stupid.  We’ll have to see, won’t we?

***

Earlier Related Posts:

The Complicated Diplomatic Life of Hillary Clinton (UPDATE 1X: Clinton on the Defensive in Congo over Bill’s “Presence”; UPDATE 2X: Bill Off the Leash?; UPDATE 3X: Video of Clinton Congo Outburst, Glenn Beck Comments) (August 10, 2009)

Hillary Clinton At It Again in Africa…This Time, Talking about Elections…(August 13, 2009)

Where’s Billy Martin when you need to fire someone?

Yanks to wrap on Saturday night or I’ll spend the rest of the ALCS wearing a bag over my head.

-

MONEY MEMES:

Krugman on the world’s problem with China

Nocera on cutting executive pay [then read some MPR loser hiding behind a posting name extolling the glories of overpaying undertalented executive hacks]

A must see arena seminar that can help you if you’re unemployed (who better to guide you than the guy most responsible for you losing your job?!)

Grinder economics, cont.

Banksters Chicago gathering to feature Roaring ’20s party (for real, not a Yes Men gag) [Terrance Heath on the Showdown in Chicago]

More cable yak in defense of overpay

Dave Trott on how to control CEO greed: fragging

SOCIETAL THEMES:

86-year-old vet for gay marriage (viral video)

Recognizing the whistleblowers

Better care, half the price

Rape is pre-existing, fertility is pre-existing, etc.

Death has its dividends

FURRIN REGIMES:

Judge OKs Blackwater raping kids and murdering families

-

REPUBLICAN EXTREMES:

Breitbart spins, even gullible corporate media not swallowing latest

Personally, I’m anti non-pro-freedoms

Even Pat Buchanan finds Obama-Nixon comparisons absurd

Blue Texan on elected Republicans wigging out over their talk radio freaks

Buyers’ handicap

Which side is Inouye on?

NFL abstinence

Malkinocrisy

Snarking on health (what sane coverage looks like)

Palin endorses the “Conservative Party” candidate in NY

REAMS:

Tasering juveniles in custody is OK

Political prosecutions in Georgia

Gale Norton is going down

Freaking out over . . . what?

Focus on Family perv pleads guilty

-

MEDIA SCHEMES:

Starting next Wednesday, Newsday becomes the newspaper that was

Ken Rudin ripped for Obama=Nixon, then apologizes

Holy @$#*! = %$@#¡ shit!

Niche bitches

Do any non-douche bags write for Time?

-

ONLINE STREAMS:

A curiously rightie, NY-centric list of 25 bloggers who’ve impressed Mediaite (funny, I remember when everyone was wondering why NYC had no blogging scene but more important, after about a month of reading Mediaite I think they take the seriously full-of-shit right waaay too seriously)

Yeah, I remember what a pain the penicillin truthers were

-

MN SCREAMS:

Minnesota, where bong water is illegal [PiPress]

Buried alive in corn, for charity

Iowa about to be buried in corn

Pawlenty on Beck

-

SHAVING CREAM:

Milton Supman, R.I.P.

Here’s hoping Soupy’s already pied God.

-

REDEEM TEAM TIME:

Long time and highly respected blogger Maha has the tin cup out. You may not be so inclined, but if you read her story I think you’ll find a way to scrape up a few coins.

Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City is getting turned into a movie, and Craig Finn of The Hold Steady is helping to write it.

Lit.

• N+1 puts up their essay “The Rise of the Neuronovel“.  It’s available in their most recent issue.

• Has On the Road aged well?

• Unpublished Vonnegut finally gets published.

• Philip Roth is popping up everywhere.  Today in the Wall Street Journal.

Music

• The Low Anthem pay tribute to Charles Darwin.

• Carrie Brownstein picks some of her favorite singers.

Politics.

• Pat Buchanan feels bad for white people.

• Either way, any book on Sarah Palin is going to be terrible.

• Nobody talks about Dan Quayle’s great memoir anymore.

• NIN as torture music?