Return of the Terror Babies!!!

(Terror babies among us! Stare into the eyes of a hardened killer.)

You thought that no elected official could out-crazy and out-bigot Texas' Debbie Riddle (as "Terror Babies Comin' for White Wimmin!") but Texas' own Louis Gohmert was up to the challenge! Unfortunately for him, so was Anderson Cooper. This really is a performance for the ages:




On the one hand, it's sorta funny, but on the other, it's really pretty disturbing. This man is actually a U.S. Congressman. This doesn't seem like just an act. And while Gohmert has said some crazy things in the past, this is the ugliest incident I know of from him. It should be career-ending or career-imperiling, but probably won't be in Texas and in the GOP. While Congress has some real nutjobs (James Inhofe), Gohmert seems to go beyond demagoguery here, bad enough as that is. Maybe his performance is just a bullying tactic, and he's unused to being challenged. But near the end of the clip, I began to wonder if he was drunk or honestly needed psychiatric help.

Anderson Cooper was very impressive, almost laughing once, but keeping his cool and keeping focused otherwise. Cutting off someone like Gohmert has its merits, but I think Cooper was wise to let him just keep ranting, giving him enough rope to hang himself with.

This is the modern Republican Party – angry, hateful, bullying McCarthyites, but more dim-witted. (Plus a ton of plutocrats.)

The Daily Show also tackled this general subject, although I hope they cover Gohmert as well later:

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Meanwhile, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan started this past Wednesday, and as did Bush before him, Obama made a speech celebrating it. Obama's was quite good, and focused on religious freedom, including the building of the Cordoba House/Park 51 in Manhattan (what the far right is calling the "Ground Zero Mosque.") Predictably, Obama pointing out that "our nation is strengthened by millions of Muslim Americans" has led neocon zealots like Commentary's Jennifer Rubin to attack Obama as un-American. Never mind that religious freedom and the First Amendment is one of the defining characteristics of America. As Digby notes, after quoting Bush's last Ramadan speech, "it's a sad comment on this country that two years after Bush spoke those words and almost nine years after 9/11 that the president reaffirming religious tolerance is suddenly considered controversial."

Digby also asks, why now? I wonder, too. On the one hand, it's not as if it's been absent. Bigotry, fear and ignorance played significant, toxic roles in many of the abuses of the Bush administration since 9/11, from selling the war in Iraq, to the incompetence of running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to the torture, abuse, murder or indefinite detention of prisoners, to the massive ramp-up of the surveillance state, to the presidential elections of 2004 and 2008. Right-wingers have been raging bigots and Islamophobes since 9/11 if not before, and the theocrats have declared holy war all during that time. However, the dynamics have changed. I used the photo above in a post called "Lock Up the Womenfolk, the Muslims are Comin'!" way back in April 2007, when a right-wing group was trying to chart and spy on all the mosques in the United States. Back then, bigotry, paranoia and demagoguery that extreme were more fringe. Now, as The Daily Show segment shows, outright bigotry is more widespread. Religious conservative Bryan Fischer of the "American Family Association" has called for a national ban on building any more mosques at all. Add in the immigration mania in Arizona, and it's not a pretty picture. The "terror baby" plot helpfully combines fear of Mexicans with fear of Muslims for them. I'm concerned about where this is going.

And why is it happening now? Granted, the bigotry tours of Newt Gingrich and his ilk is repulsive opportunism, not true paranoia. But people are shitting their pants almost nine years after 9/11 – and despite public opposition to staying in Afghanistan and Iraq? Why now? The most obvious reasons are that a black man was elected president, and a democrat no less. Many conservatives think Obama, who's openly and sometimes unabashedly Christian, is really a secret Muslim. And economic woes always bring out the craziness, fear and spite. I think for the far right, they've just been unleashed. But others are increasingly following their cue. Mainstream conservatives continue to stoke the flames – Palin has been stirring up paranoia and spite since 2008, and is far from alone, but now more conservatives are doing this. And the entire congressional GOP is obstructing economic recovery, screwing over the entire country for what they believe will be political gain. Sadly, our press corps is so lousy they may be right.

Still, while the far right and conservative leaders continue to be major problems, I'm most concerned about the Americans in the middle, the supposed moderates. As Americans, we should all know better. Religious freedom is a bedrock value in America. Joe McCarthy's paranoia campaign is not a secret. And the dishonest campaign to go to war, and its horrible results, are recent memory. The attacks on mosques and a Muslim cultural center in Manhattan, on religious freedom itself, is the same mentality of torture proponents – we're not safe because we haven't been savage and intolerant enough. It's completely wrong, antithetical to American values, nihilistic and suicidal – we simply can't protect our "civilization" from others by destroying it ourselves.

School of Seven Bells - "I L U"

Terror Babies Comin' for White Wimmin!

There's no bigoted paranoia on the right, no sirree! Certainly not down in Texas! Via HuffPo:

Texas Republican state legislator Rep. Debbie Riddle was not prepared for Anderson Cooper Tuesday night.

Riddle appeared on "Anderson Cooper 360" to discuss the threat of "terror babies" — a supposed threat in which terrorist organizations send pregnant women to the United States to have their children, who would be US citizens but trained and raised abroad to be terrorists and could enter and leave the US without raising suspicion.

Watch it:



Anderson Cooper gets the big bucks because he doesn't break out laughing and asks Riddle for her evidence. My favorite part is probably when Riddle says this:

Actually, when your folks called me in the preliminary, that was part of the conversation. They did not tell me that you were going to grill me for this specific information that I was not ready to give to you tonight. They did not tell me that, sir.

In other words, It's terribly uncivil of you to challenge any of my unsupported, batshit crazy claims..

My second favorite part is when Cooper asks her why current FBI agents aren’t concerned about this Terror Babies plot. Riddle leaps on this, not as reason to doubt her paranoid fantasy scare tales, but as further reason why we should all be trembling. Your modern GOP, ladies and gentlemen.

This doesn't seem like it's just an act. Riddle might be a bit nuttier – or a bit more open about it – than some of her fellow right-wingers, but not by that much. If you've caught any of ridiculous furor on the "Ground Zero Mosque," you know what I'm talking about.

Riddle's statements about her secret information remind me of claims about 57 card-carrying members of the Communist Party in the Department of Defense and the like. They also remind me of this video, which serves as a rebuttal, of sorts (NSFW):



(Via.)

 

The Social Contract is Broken

Dave Johnson has a new post up at Campaign for America's Future, "Tax Cuts are Theft." In it, he visualizes the Social Contract as a cycle, as seen above:

A beneficial cycle: We invest in infrastructure and public structures that create the conditions for enterprise to form and prosper. We prepare the ground for business to thrive. When enterprise prospers we share the bounty, with good wages and benefits for the people who work in the businesses and taxes that provide for the general welfare and for reinvestment in the infrastructure and public structures that keep the system going.

But as he explains, under Reaganomics, and our current trickle-down system:

... The social contract is broken. Instead of providing good wages and benefits and paying taxes to provide for the general welfare and reinvestment in infrastructure and public structures, the bounty of our democracy is being diverted to a wealthy few.

Head on over to read the whole post, and see his modified graphic for the Social Contract after Reaganomics. (An earlier post of his, "Reagan Revolution Home To Roost - In Charts," is also well worth a look.)

I wrote about these issues fairly recently in "Attack of the Plutocrats" and "The Social Contract," which have their own diagrams, but I like Dave's graphic of the economic social contract as a cycle.

Update: Sara Robinson has a good follow-up post to Dave's.

 

Eat the Rich – the Poor are Tough and Stringy

James Surowiecki has a good article in The New Yorker, "Soak the Very, Very Rich":

Between 2002 and 2007, for instance, the bottom ninety-nine per cent of incomes grew 1.3 per cent a year in real terms—while the incomes of the top one per cent grew ten per cent a year. That one per cent accounted for two-thirds of all income growth in those years. People in the ninety-fifth to the ninety-ninth percentiles of income have represented a fairly constant share of the national income for twenty-five years now. But in that period the top one per cent has seen its share of national income double; in 2007, it captured twenty-three per cent of the nation’s total income. Even within the top one per cent, income is getting more concentrated: the top 0.1 per cent of earners have seen their share of national income triple over the same period. All by themselves, they now earn as much as the bottom hundred and twenty million people. So at the same time that the rich have been pulling away from the middle class, the very rich have been pulling away from the pretty rich, and the very, very rich have been pulling away from the very rich.

The current debate over taxes takes none of this into account. At the moment, we have a system of tax brackets well suited to nineteenth-century New Zealand. Our system sets the top bracket at three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars, with a tax rate of thirty-five per cent. (People in the second-highest bracket, starting at a hundred and seventy-two thousand dollars for individuals, pay thirty-three per cent.) This means that someone making two hundred thousand dollars a year and someone making two hundred million dollars a year pay at similar tax rates. LeBron James and LeBron James’s dentist: same difference.

This makes no sense—there’s a yawning chasm between the professional and the plutocratic classes, and the tax system should reflect that. A better tax system would have more brackets, so that the super-rich pay higher rates. (The most obvious bracket to add would be a higher rate at a million dollars a year, but there’s no reason to stop there.) This would make the system fairer, since it would reflect the real stratification among high-income earners. A few extra brackets at the top could also bring in tens of billions of dollars in additional revenue.

Definitely. Read the rest. Predictably, Megan McArdle feels the wealthy are terribly persecuted (and Roy's comment thread is good, as usual).

John Mayall with Coco Montoya - "I Could Cry"

It always makes me happy to see a left-handed guitarist, although Coco Montoya plays "upside-down right-handed." But the results speak for themselves.

CA Prop 8 Overturned

(AP Photo/Eric Risberg, via Digby.)

Exciting news this Wednesday, as federal district court judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that CA Proposition 8, which outlawed gay marriage in California on a narrow vote, is unconstitutional. Here's the key section:

CONCLUSION
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

REMEDIES
Plaintiffs have demonstrated by overwhelming evidence that Proposition 8 violates their due process and equal protection rights and that they will continue to suffer these constitutional violations until state officials cease enforcement of Proposition 8. California is able to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as it has already issued 18,000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples and has not suffered any demonstrated harm as a result, see FF 64-66; moreover, California officials have chosen not to defend Proposition 8 in these proceedings.

Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8. The clerk is DIRECTED to enter judgment without bond in favor of plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors and against defendants anddefendant-intervenors pursuant to FRCP 58.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

You can read the whole decision (136 pages) here or here (PDF). I haven't read it yet, but have heard some general praise for its detail, thoroughness and persuasiveness. I'm sure more comprehensive analyses will be out shortly.

This is far from over. As David Dayen and karoli at Crooks and Liars note, Judge Walker has issued a temporary stay until Friday while the Prop 8 supporters file a request for a longer stay. They don't want his ruling to go into effect while they appeal Walker's decision to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, although it's likely this one will go all the way to Supreme Court. However, that process will probably take a few years. From what I've read so far, this means new gay marriages will probably remain illegal in California in the interim. (As the LA Times explains, "An estimated 18,000 same-sex couples married in California during the months it was legal, and the state continues to recognize those marriages.") Still, this rulling is an important victory.

The LA Times has much, much more. Here's their main article, one on reactions, a timeline, a good photo gallery, and editorials - one and two.

World O' Crap passes on Truth Wins Out's roundup of initial far right reactions, and also links this fun, satirical piece on the trial:



Roy Edroso also finds some real wingnut gems – and I'm sure many, many more will be coming.

I wrote a couple of fairly extensive posts on Prop. 8 back in 2008: one and two. Oh, and don't forget the Prop. 8 musical! While mild homophobia is one thing, working to deny a minority group essential rights is quite another. And as the posts outline, the Prop. 8 proponents consistently lied. I also think this "No on 8" ad featuring Sam Jackson is worth revisiting:



It really puts it in perspective, doesn't it?

However, now that it's the homophobic Prop. 8 supporters facing the setback, we might as well admit that all their paranoid fantasies were true and their worst fears will now be realized. Don't be fooled by all those sweet photos of loving couples! Gay couples don't just want to live their lives in peace and happiness. They're power-mad, just like Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich, and prone to cackling evilly in trendy bistros and at art shows, mostly because they know that absolutely nothing can stop the spread of dance hall electronica gay cooties. The Great Gay Conspiracy has leaked the memo of their nefarious plans to liberal bloggers everywhere, and given the important victory today, the embargo on revealing this plot has finally been lifted. As noted in Judge Walker's decision (in a footnote missed by Michelle Malkin), effective immediately, all churches in California must now perform this song as a regular hymn:


(The video's out of synch, but it's still, what's the word? Fabulous.)

Of course, to perform the song in the proper style shown here, in some churches, some big hair women will have to tamp down their 'dos, and the preachers will to dress less flamboyantly.

Seriously, congratulations to all the gay couples out there, and here's hoping the appeals process yields swift and wise decisions. This ruling could have a positive ripple effect throughout the nation.


(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Our Dysfunctional Senate

Covering all the problems with our current political mechanisms – or even the Senate alone – would require a longer post, but George Packer's article "The Empty Chamber" gives some useful history and a good overview of how dysfunctional the U.S. Senate currently is.

A 2008 post by Norm Ornstein provides this handy chart, which helps show how unprecedented the current obstructionism is:


Jon Perr has several more charts on the same theme.

Meanwhile, this chart from the Center for American Progress shows the percentage of judicial nominees confirmed under recent presidents:


If that's democracy in action, it sure ain't pretty.

 

Jenny and Johnny - "Scissor Runner"

The Full Nixon(land)

This is pretty cool. Rick Perlstein's epic Nixonland has been released as an enhanced e-book with footage from CBS:


More from The New York Times here.