Wingnuts On Parade

Yesterday was a red-letter day: this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, convened in Washington, D.C. Billed as "the Largest Annual Gathering of Conservative Students, Activists and Policymakers," it is the right's lunatic fringe on full, proud and open display.

By all accounts, it's pretty much the nonsense you'd expect: Conservatives are the real Americans, Obama is taking us to hell in a handcart, science and rationalism are naughty, victimizing the powerless=Good, empowering the powerless=Evil, that sort of thing.

But one bit of reportage really caught my eye, this from Christopher Beam of slate.com:

...the next speaker, John Bolton... recalls the time during the campaign when Obama said Iran was just a "tiny" threat. "Is the loss of one American city picked at random—Chicago—is that a 'tiny' threat?" He delivers this line like Kevin Nealon's Subliminal Man. This brings the house down.

Let's, for the moment, disregard the fact that Bolton has misquoted President Obama on the "tiny threat" reference, and let's also disregard the apparent glee that "real Americans" feel at the thought of Chicago being destroyed, Sodom-and-Gomorrah-style. Instead, because it's been sticking in my craw for a while, let's focus upon the current right-wing monomania concerning Iran.

To the heart of the matter: Even assuming that Iran possessed both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reliably delivering them to any given city in the U.S., why in the world would they launch said attack? It is a certainty that any such attack would result in the total annihilation of Iran, its reduction to a charred radioactive cinder, the deaths of a huge percentage of its populace. I find it hard to believe that this is what the leadership of Iran desires, and I am supremely confident that they are capable of "doing the math," so to speak.

"But, Wade," you say, "their President, Ahmadinejad, is a crazy fundamentalist and says terrible things about destroying Israel!" True enough... and he has about as much power in Iran as does John Bolton in the United States. The Presidency of Iran exists only to provide a certain amount of "democratic" sheen to what is a de facto dictatorship.

No, the real power in Iran resides in the person of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. The military, the press and the judiciary all answer to Khamenei and are dependent upon him for their positions. And, though he is a despot, he is also a rational actor who wishes to retain his power, just as did the many Soviet Premiers who did not launch nuclear attacks upon the U.S. -- and for the same reason: their assured destruction, should they do so.

Though Iran is, indeed, a major regional power -- one that has been further empowered by the ill-advised U.S. invasion of Iraq -- and poses a direct threat to certain aspects of American policy in the Middle East, it is not about to start a nuclear war with the world's sole superpower. Either the right-wing wackos are too stupid to recognize this reality, or they are baselessly fear-mongering concerning Iran.

In either case, why would anyone listen to them?

Prayer (And Hitler Comparison) Is The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel

Yesterday, I spent a good hour and a half listening, as is often my wont, to Crazy Christian radio, this time in the person of Brannon Howse, host of "Worldview Matters." Said program is a show dedicated, it seems, to promoting a "biblical worldview" of all matters, as somehow magically divined by Mister Howse.

Yikes.

What first caught my attention was Howse's laughable, biblically-inspired "list" of parallels between Hitler's Germany and Obama's America. Kinda funny how the insane Nazi comparisons are brought out by wackos on both the far left and far right, depending upon just whom happens to be President at any given moment. Reagan? Nazi comparisons. G.H.W. Bush? The same. And Clinton... and G.W. Bush... and now Obama. The mind fairly boggles at the unoriginality of these idiots.

But that was, really, just your garden-variety wingnuttery; what really gave me pause was a listener phone call that Howse took. The gist of the call was the caller's literal belief that the Second Amendment authorizes citizens, should they see that the government is "doing wrong," to use firearms to shoot government officials.

Let me be crystal-clear: I AM NOT EXAGGERATING, NOR AM I MAKING THIS UP! If anything, I am using far more mild and rational language than the caller used.

Seriously, did someone just say that the Second Amendment tells you to kill the President, should you disagree with him or her?

I sat, mouth agape, speechless.

And what did Brannon Howse say to dissuade the caller from her psychotic belief? Not a damn thing. In fact, he said that it was, verbatim, "a good call."

This is modern Christianity? Jesus must currently be weeping tears of blood.

We Are Forced To Reap What You Have Sown

It was nice yesterday to briefly see the old John McCain, the one I used to like, the one I would've considered voting for. At Friday's town-hall-style rally in Lakeville, Minnesota, the Republican presidential nominee was forced to actually defend Barack Obama against an ugly mob that seemed about ready to form a lynching party (and doesn't that make me proud to be a Minnesotan!).

"He's a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues," McCain admonished his supporters in reference to Obama. "I admire Senator Obama. I want everyone to be respectful."

The mob's response? Boos and catcalls.

While I am happy that Senator McCain was willing to risk alienating his base in order to tamp the insanity down, this particular brand of madness is a direct result of the McCain campaign's actions over the past several weeks -- actions that seemed specifically designed to elicit just such a response.

Running mate Sarah Palin has been telling the GOP faithful that Obama sees America as "imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country." During her introductions at these events, it has been common practice to emphasize that Obama's middle name is "Hussein" in order to underscore his supposed otherness.

McCain himself has made his disdain for Obama quite apparent at the two presidential debates, refusing to even look at the Democratic nominee and referring to Obama as "that one." He has attempted to stoke racial fears by calling Obama a "man of the streets." And he has remained tellingly silent at other events, during which supporters have called Obama "a terrorist" and screamed "kill him" and "off with his head."

So, while it is gratifying that you have finally decided to do the right thing, Senator McCain, I think it is more than fair to point out that your supporters have merely followed your lead. We are reaping what you have sown, and the end result is a further poisoning of the American political process.

Why Does John McCain Piss Me Off So Much?

...It's a question I ask myself. What is it about his candidacy that makes me see red?

I guess that it's really about disappointment. A year ago, I could easily have seen myself voting for John McCain. He is, after all, a genuine American war hero; he's a very likable public figure, capable of rare self-deprecation; he had shown an ability to learn from his own mistakes (can you say "Keating Five?") by co-authoring campaign reform legislation; he had refused to pander to the crazy religious right, correctly calling them "agents of intolerance;" he had been more pragmatic than doctrinaire on numerous policy positions, including climate change and progressive taxation.

But, in the last year, much about John McCain has changed for the worse; the man has turned against much of what made him worth believing in. He started taking his economic outlook from the Republican orthodoxy (in the persons of Phil Gramm, et al) rather than from Main Street; he began kowtowing to the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and James Dobson; he abandoned policy for personality, honesty for obfuscation, straight talk for double talk.

As a proud independent, I have been let down by the Senator. Look, I understand the reality that he had to win the Republican nomination, and honesty doesn't fit into that equation. But these seemingly endless inconsistencies make me wonder if John McCain has any beliefs at all.

And that's something I can't waste a precious vote upon.

Hillary Revisited

This is what I heard yesterday on the radio:

"Our philosophy, whenever we publish a book, is that there will be ten to maybe a hundred times as many people who hear about the book, compared to the number of people who actually go out and buy the book."

"Our approach and our goal is always to make sure that we use a book as a platform for an author to get out his or her message. And, by getting out that message on the media, whether it's TV or radio or print or electronic media, um, I think that gives us a sort of multiplier effect on whatever the message of the book is."

Those quotes come directly from Marji Ross, President and Publisher of Regnery Publishing, the house that gave us such hatchet jobs as Unfit For Command and The Case Against Barack Obama. If you don't believe me, you can listen to her speak those words here.

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In the news: Jerome Corsi, coauthor of Unfit For Command, has recently released a new tome, entitled The Obama Nation, that attacks Barack Obama, in part by citing Corsi's own previous works as well as unsubstantiated right-wing blog posts. The Obama Nation has risen to the top of The New York Times Best Seller List, thanks in large part to bulk sales to right-wing groups that wish to draw attention to the book. The dubious work has been dutifully shilled by the Right's many media outlets.

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From June, 2006: The investigation into the misdeeds of right-wing lobbyist Jack Abramoff shows that conservative think tanks, including Americans For Tax Reform and The National Center for Public Policy Research, helped Abramoff launder his dirty money.

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From January, 2007: Republican Senator Rick Santorum, immediately upon leaving office (after suffering defeat in his 2006 re-election bid), joins the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center.


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From October, 2005: Longtime Republican Bruce Bartlett was fired from his position at the conservative think tank, The National Center For Policy Analysis, after daring to criticize George W. Bush in book form, thus showing that no dissension can be allowed in the ranks of Movement Conservatives.

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Fact is, I could go on all day, posting citations that show the interconnectedness of Movement Conservatism's many organs, the rewards that await those who faithfully serve the movement, and the disciplinary actions that will be taken against those who fall off the wagon. But those already cited serve well enough to illustrate my point: Hillary Clinton was right.

Since the then-First Lady talked about a "vast right-wing conspiracy" in 1998, she has been routinely dismissed and ridiculed, but the realities of American politics are impossible to wish away. (Believe me, I tried to discount the idea as mere paranoia, but, ultimately, the links become too obvious to ignore.)

It starts with huge moneyed interests, such as the Koch, Bradley, Olin, and Scaife foundations (to name just a few). That money supports the rest of the movement:

• The conservative think tanks, including The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation, The Cato Institute, etc.
• The magazines of the right-wing intelligentsia: The American Spectator, National Review, The Weekly Standard, et al.
• Daily rightist newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times (which is controlled by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon; in the most enjoyable of ironies, the Christian Right is joined to such apostates as the Moonies!).
• Rightist publishers such as Regnery, cited above.
• Electronic media outlets like The Drudge Report, Fox Noise and the Excrement In Broadcasting Network.
• The plethora of crazy fundamentalist churches across the nation that ignore the IRS' rules about involvement in electoral politics.
• And, of course, the Republican Party itself.

This is the massive network that uses its clout to manipulate many of you into voting for a movement that will do nothing to assuage your numerous cultural anxieties, but will ensure that your children are worse off than you economically. And this is what Movement Conservatism is all about.

I've said it before: If this is what you continue to vote for, it is exactly what you deserve.