Don't Leave Me This Way, Michele!

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I’m in mourning.

Seriously, I’m digging around in my sock drawer for the black armband I wore when Sarah Palin quit the governorship of Alaska after only half a term, because, you know, she found out that governing is really haaaaard, and people are meeeeean to you sometimes.

This time, the female Republican who’s broken my heart is Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Crazytown), who announced this past week that she’s not going to run again for the seat that God himself told her to use as a springboard to the Presidency (Fickle fellow, this God of hers. If my deity was this changeable, we might wake up some day to find that water ran uphill and that Nickelback isn’t a terrible band).

For a guy like me whose sometime profession is mocking the easily mockable, the loss of the Congresswoman with the Charlie Manson eyes is a crushing blow. So I feel like I have to address her directly.

Michele, ma belle, how could you do this to me? Don’t all the good times mean anything to you? Like the time you noted the “interesting coincidence” that swine flu broke out under two Democratic Presidents—Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama? And the way you got that totally wrong, since the first swine flu epidemic broke out under Republican Gerald Ford?

Remember the time you delivered the so-called “Tea Party Response” after the Republican response to the State of the Union address—and did the whole thing staring blankly off camera, as if you couldn’t look us in the eyes? Of course, it turned out, you were looking at a special live feed camera only the Teabaggers could see—which was also the camera with the teleprompter? Only you could create that level of hilarious irony, Michele.

I remember the time when you were the Republican Party’s latest ABR (Anyone But Romney). That was before you crashed and burned your own Presidential campaign by claiming that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine created “dangerous consequences,” including mental retardation, because some unnamed woman outside a campaign rally told you it had.  I remember the times when you called upon your followers to be “armed and dangerous” to stop a cap-and trade bill and to “slit their wrists” to stop health care reform.

 I’d looked forward to a long and happy future making fun of you. And now you’ve gone and thrown all that away. It’s gone, all gone.

Why Michele, why? Why you got to do me like that?

Is it because of the investigations into illegal use ofcampaign funds (fueled by disgruntled staffers who you apparently didn’t pay)? Is it because your Democratic opponent has been making steady early gains in the polls against you, in a district you won by less than 5000 votes last time? Did the Republican leadership get to you? Did they whisper in your ear that “oh, the evil liberals will be pouring money in to defeat Your Right Wing Awesomeness, do this for the Good Of the Party” and tempt you with what every wingnut likes better than almost anything—playing the martyr?

Or maybe you think there’s a big payout in being a professional right winger on Fox News like Mike Huckabee, or as the head of some right wing “think tank” like Jim DeMint. Because as much as the wingnuts love to play the martyr, they like paying the martyr almost as much. I get that. I mean, you can’t live just off the farm subsidies and Medicaid provider payments you rail against even as your family benefits from them.

Well, whatever your motivation, we still have some time together, before you leave the Congressional stage. So, Michele, I’m begging you, baby, do this one thing for me. Make this your last hurrah. You’ve got nothing to lose. Whatever inhibitions you might have had, cast them aside and go full bat-spit right wing crazy.

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones recently claimed that the government had “weather machines” that President Obama used to cause the Oklahoma tornadoes. Honey, you can do better than that standing on your head. Claim that climate change is caused by Obama’s giant sun-reflecting orbital mirrors (funded by ACORN, of course, and administered by the IRS). Insist, on camera, that a woman outside a 7/11 in Duluth personally assured you that the new Playstation 4 and Xbox One have secret embedded mind-control software that compels users to blindly march into FEMA-controlled concentration camps and sign over all their property to gay illegal immigrants.  

Of course, these are just suggestions. I know you can bring the insanity like no one else, and give me column material on into 2014.

Do it, darlin’. Do it for me.  

Life Of Illusion (The Director's Cut)

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[Note: this is the unedited version. The one in the paper eliminates the first paragraphs because the editor was afraid the Party of Love might firebomb the newspaper office.] 

So now, at long last, the election is over, and President Barack Obama will have his second term. Before we get to our discussion of what happened and why, let me just take the time to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Ahem. On to the post-election analysis.

I’ve said before that Mitt Romney was destined to be the John Kerry of the Republican Party. Each man was a rich, entitled Massachusetts moderate trying to convince his party's skeptical base he was one of them, despite having once supported the thing that that base purported to despise most (the Iraq War in Kerry's case, the individual mandate in Romney's). Both Kerry and Romney ran against controversial incumbents, with a central message that amounted to “I’m not him.” And both fell short. But Mitt Romney fell much shorter than Kerry. Why? Perhaps because the “him” Romney was running against didn’t exist.

The imaginary Barack Obama that the Republicans were running against bore little or no resemblance to the actual man in the White House. Imaginary Obama was a scowling, far-left radical, a socialist, a fascist or a communist, depending on who was yelling into the mike at the time. Imaginary Obama was simultaneously an evil schemer who was plotting 24/7 to destroy America and a guy who was too dumb to get into college without affirmative action or to speak without a teleprompter. Imaginary Obama was a divisive, harshly partisan figure, hated by all, even his former supporters. Worst of all, he was an incompetent, a miserable failure at absolutely everything he touched.

The problem with this strategy is that the actual Barack Obama that non-delusional people could see was a smart, calm, moderate with good likability ratings who’d brought the unemployment numbers down at a steady if sometimes maddeningly slow pace, saved the auto industry, and brought Osama bin Laden to justice. People heard the Right dismissing every bit of good news, crying doom and gloom, and insisting “everything’s getting worse,” looked around, and went, “hmmm, it really isn’t.”

Then along came Sandy. The quick Presidential response to the hurricane and the grateful reaction of Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who only a few weeks before had been savaging Obama at the GOP convention, blew away any lingering doubts non-delusional voters may have had about both the President’s competence and his ability to work with Republicans.

As the polls showed the President pulling further and further ahead in crucial swing states, Republicans began pulling the blanket of delusion over their heads. Pundits like Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Michael Barone and even the usually sane George W. Will predicted a Romney landslide, with Will predicting 321 EVs for Romney.

 One expects this sort of thing from hacks like Morris, Barone and Rove, but Will really should have known better. The polls were “skewed,” they insisted, because they assumed that Democratic voter turnout would be the same in 2012 as it was in 2008. That wasn’t going to happen this year, they asserted with the all the misguided and uninformed bravado of a latter-day George Armstrong Custer.

Actually, had you asked earlier in the year, I might have said you had a point. There were a lot of disaffected Democrats, particularly on the Left. (Anyone who says liberals all think the same has clearly never been around any). But that was before the GOP, some of its prominent supporters, and its candidates began taking extreme radical positions on things like abortion, contraception, gay rights, and immigration, and saying things that frightened, offended or ticked off Latinos, LGBT people, African-Americans, and especially women. That fired up the very constituencies the GOP had told themselves would stay home.

So thanks, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Todd Akin, Rick Santorum, John Koster, Richard Mourdock, etc.! You fired liberals up and damaged the GOP brand with moderates, probably for years. And right wingers, dwelling as they do in their tightly woven cocoons where only Fox News and talk radio can penetrate, never even saw it. They still don’t. But numbers really don’t lie.

Now that the Republican leadership has failed in their stated number one goal of making Barack Obama a “one term president,” what will they do? Will they actually start pushing bills other than futile grandstanding attempts to “repeal Obamacare”? Will they actually deal in good faith on the budget?

Well, we live in hope. But first they’re going to have to do is stop deluding themselves that everyone hates the President and the Democrats as much as they think they do and that they’ll be rewarded for obstructionism. Reality, it’s said, has a well-known liberal bias, but it’s still reality. 

Doghouse Riley on the Crazy Eyes Cover and the Myth Of "Liberal Media"

Bats Left/Throws Right:

....whatever's wrong about that Newsweek Bachmann cover--and, somehow, no one to my knowledge has mentioned "being the sort of country where a religiously mazed Bible saleswoman rates any sort of national news coverage"--it's not an example of Librul Media bias which makes FOX look good. Liberal Media? It's fucking Tina Brown. It's marketing. It's the reduction of everything to celebrity gossip as perpetrated by the Roone Arledge of Literacy...

...We heard this crap about Sarah Palin. We heard it about George W. Bush, more to the point, and look where that got us. Nobody said it was unethical to make fun of John Kerry, or Al Gore, or Mike Dukakis. It's just well past time for forty-something male commenters to acknowledge that this is no one-sided game, that this sort of thing is the Right's great stock in trade--the bumper-sticker witticism, the Messiah caricature--and demanding unilateral disarmament from the Left, let alone from "The Left", is ridiculous.

Doghouse Riley's become one of my daily must-reads. Check him out.

And while you're at it, check out this compilation showing both conservatives and liberals being dinged by sensationalistic covers.

So spare us the whining, Bachmanniacs. We'd all be better served if both parties were going after the press for perpetrating this shallow, "optics"-obsessed, narrative-driven bullshit that they call journalism rather than whining about how they're "in the tank" for the other side. The mainstream  media just generally  sucks all around. Claiming that they're taking sides just gives these idiots the cover of saying "well, both sides are saying we're being unfair to them, so we must be balanced."

Crazy Eyes and the Right Wing Cult of Victimhood

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This past week, those on the American right stopped patting themselves on the back for nearly causing America to default long enough to engage in another of their favorite pastimes: whining that they’re being picked on.

This time, the source of the injury to their delicate feelings was the cover of Newsweek, featuring the visage of Michele Bachmann.

The cover photo, over a headline dubbing her “The Queen of Rage,” showed Bachmann looking pretty much like she’s looked in a lot of pictures and videos, including her much-parodied response to the State of the Union address: staring off into space, wide-eyed, as if she’s watching a troupe of fairies dancing in a mystic circle only she can see.

Republican fairies, naturally. Non-gay ones.

Of course, to the right, running an accurate photograph of their current icon is like quoting her past statements accurately: proof of a vast left-wing conspiracy in the media.

“Can anyone really say with a straight face that the mainstream media is not totally biased against conservatives?” a conservative blogger at a site called “Freedom’s Lighthouse” complained.

Gee, I don’t know, dude. Maybe you should ask Anthony Weiner how the media go easy on liberals. Or you could ask Bill Clinton, who was once shown on a Time magazine cover with his face printed as a frightening-looking photo negative, over the headline “Why People Don’t Trust Bill Clinton.”

Actually, Bachmann’s supporters should  be ecstatic about the Newsweek cover, because once they begin their customary temper tantrum, it’s like throwing a switch that sends the talking heads and chattering pundits of the allegedly “liberal” media into their own customary fits of blather about their favorite subject: themselves. Was the picture unfair? Are we sexist? Would anyone in the media distort appearances to try to make a male Democratic front runner look unhinged for the sake of a story?

Maybe you should direct that last question to Howard Dean.

Meanwhile, something a lot more substantive that can and should be more closely examined about Bachmann gets pushed to the back burner: the fact that the woman who’s so given to railing about government spending and programs isn’t shy about benefiting from them herself.

She’s been a vocal critic of federal home loan programs like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even while she and her husband were taking out a $417,000 home loan backed by those agencies. The Bachmann family farm received $251,000 in federal farm payments between 1995 and 2006, and Michele took $50,000 in profit out of the place in 2008.

The clinic run by Bachmann’s husband received money from Medicaid, a program she decries for “swelling the welfare rolls,” until her hubby got caught taking it. At that point, according to a Bachmann spokesman, Medicaid became “a valuable form of insurance for many Americans.”

Then, as a congresswoman, Bachmann frequently appealed to agencies like the EPA (which she’s suggested she’d eliminate if she were president), the Agriculture Department, and the Department of Transportation for funds from the very stimulus programs she once dubbed “fantasy economics.”

She also praised Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for using government money to help prop up the struggling pork industry in her state and urged him to continue to “stabilize prices through direct government purchasing.”

The website Politico has referred to this sort of behavior as “selective socialism.” It’s the sort of thing we’ve gotten used to from the right, which, as I’ve said before, often reminds me of a teenager screaming at her parents “I hate you, you ruined my life, I wish you were dead!” then demanding a ride to the mall.

Maybe, like the tea partiers who want to “keep the government’s hands off Medicare,” Michele Bachmann is actually so unhinged that she truly doesn’t regard it as government spending if it’s spent on her. Or maybe she’s just another grifter assuring the rubes that she’s the only one who’s looking after their interests while she pockets government cash with both hands.

In any case, those are bigger questions about Bachmann than the superficial one of whether or not the Newsweek cover made her look bad.

Modern media types, however, are ­notorious these days for concentrating on style (or “optics,” to use the new buzzword) rather than substance. They’re more ­interested in fretting about whether they’re “balanced” than in whether they’re ­reporting the truth.

That’s not because they’re liberal. It’s because they’re lousy at their jobs.

Bachmannia!

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So another Republican candidates’ debate has come and gone, and the GOP’s newest rising star is Mrs. Crazy Eyes herself, Mrs. “Armed and Dangerous,” Mrs. “we need to slit our wrists to stop health reform”: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.

The consensus is that Bachmann “stole the show,” first by announcing her candidacy at the outset of the debate (as if being at the debate itself wasn’t announcement enough), and then by doing better than anyone expected. That is to say, she didn’t say anything egregiously stupid or inflammatory. Plus, she managed to look into the right camera this time.

Actually, that last part may not be a good thing. I can’t help it; every time I look at Bachmann’s wide, blank eyes, I get a chill down my spine and a flashback to Martin Sheen’s insane president character in the movie version of “The Dead Zone.” (“Mr. Vice President, the missiles are flying. Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”) But right now, the right loves them some Bachmann. I’ve started calling it Bachmannia.

Bachmannia, like its predecessors Trumpmania and the short-lived Newtmania, arises out of the right’s desire to find a candidate who’s ABR — anyone but Romney. An awful lot of pundits seem to regard Mitt Romney as the guy to beat. He’s got the money, he’s got the organization, and he sure does have good hair.

But this time around, Romney’s got the same problem he had last time, as far as primary voters are concerned: a lack of ideological purity. As governor, he supported a regional “cap-and-trade” compact to reduce greenhouse gases and global warming.

Not only was his so-called “Romneycare” plan cited (repeatedly, and with great glee) by Democrats as a template for federal health care reform, but the “Commonwealth Care” health insurance program for low- and moderate-income Massachusetts residents also provides coverage for (horrors!) abortion.

He’s always been against gay marriage, but he once sent a letter to the Log Cabin Republicans stating, “We must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern” and promising that he’d be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Teddy Kennedy.

None of this would likely hurt Romney in the general election, so long as he stuck to the “cut taxes” mantra that’s become the GOPs’ version of the Jedi mind trick — say it enough times in a deep, assured voice and the voters will believe any other damn fool thing you tell them.

Unfortunately, the modern Republican Party is not being run by sane people. Dick Armey’s Freedomworks ­organization has threatened to unleash the hounds (and part of the group’s $25 million war chest) to bring Romney down. Conservative activist Joe Miller, of Alaska, has already registered the domain name StopRomney.com. And so on.

Some political analysts are predicting that the only way Romney’s going to blunt those attacks is to have what little spine he has completely removed and grovel like a whipped cur to the wingnuts. He’s well on the way; his twists and turns as he tries to explain why an individual insurance mandate in Massachussetts is reasonable, rational health care reform, but it’s Hitler-level tyranny as part of “Obamacare,” would be hilarious if they weren’t so pathetic.

I’ve got news for Mitt, anyway: Kissing up to these people never works. When true believers hate, they hate deep and they hate forever. As Democrats never seem to learn, trying to placate the right only earns you more contempt.

If Romney actually had the gumption to stand up to the far right (or do what the Democratic Party establishment does to its far left wing, i.e., ignore them), he might have a shot at winning the general election. But so far he’s showed no signs of having anything like that kind of courage.

It’s the Republican dilemma: Anyone moderate enough to draw the independent voters needed to win the general election has no chance of getting past the wingnut gauntlet known as the GOP primaries. So they may very well end up with Bachmann or someone equally out to lunch.

Then their only strategy for victory is to do what they so often falsely accused liberals of doing: hoping for America to fail. They’ll hope for America’s economy to remain sluggish, for unemployment to remain high, or even for an actual double-dip recession. At which point, even sane people will be angry enough and desperate enough to put a complete lunatic like Bachmann in charge.

State of the Union

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In President Obama’s State of the Union speech this past week, he continued some of the same themes of unity and bipartisanship from his speech in Tucson a couple of weeks ago.

“We are part of the American family,” he said. “We will move forward together, or not at all.”

But the greater challenge may be not just creating a unity of purpose between Republicans and Democrats but getting members of the two parties to get along with the people who are allegedly on their own side.

Rep. Paul Ryan was picked to give the traditional response from the loyal opposition. Ryan’s speech was, like all Republican rhetoric on the deficit, long on exhortations to cut ­spending but awfully vague on exactly which spending to cut. This may be because Ryan’s own plan, dubbed the “roadmap,” calls for severe cuts in Social Security and the dismantling of Medicare, two huge benefits paid to the GOP’s most loyal constituency: senior citizens.

It’s quite a balancing act the Republicans do. If they really tried to make the cuts that would be required to balance the budget without tax increases, their elderly supporters would storm the Capitol (albeit very slowly) and drag their congressman down the street by the heels behind their little Medicare-funded Rascal scooters.

But then, after Ryan’s response, something unusual happened. CNN broadcast another response from another Republican, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who claimed to be giving the “tea party” reaction.

You can always depend on Bachmann to bring the crazy, and she didn’t disappoint. She delivered the whole speech staring off camera, as if she couldn’t bear to look the American people in the eye.

As it turns out, she was looking into another camera, the one broadcasting to the tea party faithful via the Internet, which was also the camera with the teleprompter. It seems that teleprompters, like everything else the right claims to despise, are just fine if you’re a Republican.

And what would a speech from Rep. Crazy-Eyes be without a heaping helping of paranoid fantasies and outright fabrications?

Fresh from her interview in which she asserted that the Founding Fathers “worked tirelessly to eradicate slavery,” Bachmann doubled down on the misinformation, repeating ­frequently debunked claims that “Obamacare” would result in “16,500 IRS agents in charge of policing” the bill and bizarre warnings about “government bureaucrats telling you what light bulbs to buy.”

CNN’s decision to air the speech drew criticism from some Republicans. One aide sent out an e-mail calling it “irresponsible journalism” for CNN to aid Bachmann in her quest to become the GOP’s loosest cannon.

The most surprising criticism, however, came from a tea party group in Bachmann’s home state.

“Please call Michele Bachmann’s office and tell her that she does not speak for the tea party,” the group said in a mass e-mail. “The Tea Party Patriots Organization is a grassroots organization. One person has no right to speak for the whole organization.”

Wow. Too crazy for the tea party. That’s pretty impressive.

On the other side of the aisle, the president got some ­immediate pushback from his own party. In response to his promise to veto any legislation that arrived on his desk with so-called “earmarks,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sniffed that it was a “great applause line” but that Obama “should back off and let us do what we do.” Which is, apparently, diverting as much ­government money as possible to their states or districts to keep the voters happy.

It’s another one of those dirty secrets closely held by ­lawmakers of both parties. Everyone pretends to deplore “pork” or “earmarks” or whatever they’re calling it this year, but every legislator knows their voters won’t keep loving them if they don’t bring some of that federal money home to them. It’s the one thing both parties have always seemed to agree on.

Even Republican Leader Mitch McConnell was resisting a proposed earmark ban until someone from the tea party put a severed horse’s head in his bed or something and caused him to reverse himself, at least in public.

It remains to be seen if this will continue, or if GOP lawmakers will revert to their traditional stance that it’s not “government spending” if the money’s going to their district or their big campaign contributors.

Meanwhile, the two parties continue to squabble, not just with each other, but also among themselves. Maybe what we really need is not just bipartisanship, but multi-partisanship.

NV Senate Candidate: You Can't Be Mean to Me! I'm a Girl!

The Washington Monthly:

Nevada Republican Senate Candidate Sharron Angle:

"...dirty tricks Harry [Reid] is up to his dirty tricks one more time and he's just trying to hit the girl," Angle said on the Alan Stock Show.

"You know, isolate that Sharron Angle, marginalize her and then demonize her," she said in a separate appearance on the Heidi Harris Show. "And he has been doing that to me and what we need to do is say, 'you know Harry, it's not going to do you any good to hit the girl.'"

It's the same bullshit we've seen in regards to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann. Any time they're criticized, one of their supporters is bound to come out with some faux-feminist claptrap like "Sexist! You're just afraid of a successful and powerful conservative woman!"

UPDATE: As someone reminded me, the die hard Hillary Clintonites (aka PUMAs) did the same thing. And they were idiots, too.

You can't have it both ways. You can't claim to be a feminist and then try to use your gender as a shield from criticism of your actual record.

And isn't calling a woman a "girl" supposed to be a no-no? Guess IOKIYAR!

You Have Not Thought This Through

Think Progress tells the story of what happens when a fake conservative like Michelle Bachmann invites a real small-government, limited-intervention conservative like Ron Paul to appear with her:

As Paul spoke passionately about ending all military operations and keeping government out of people’s “lifestyles,” a lone heckler began to shout, “Tell her!” Bachmann remained serene, hands folded in her lap, facing Paul. Bringing up Obama’s announcement that Iran had secret underground nuclear facilities, Paul announced that he had had enough of “fear-mongering” for the sake of the “military-industrial complex.” Bachmann, who once advocated nuking Iran, kept her eyes trained on Paul as her heckler repeated, “Tell her! Tell Michele! Tell her!”

I've noted before that Ron Paul was the only "conservative" running for President last year who actually espoused any real conservative principles, and the other "conservatives" (who were really Daddy-state authoritarians masquerading as conservatives) treated him like a lunatic. I suppose Crazy Shelly Bachmann, who really is a lunatic, figured she and Paul would be kindred spirits.

Look how wrong you can be.

The Congresswoman From Crazytown, Redux

U.S. Constitution: "[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."

Rep. Michelle Bachman, (R-Pluto): "If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the census bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations, at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps. I’m not saying that’s what the Administration is planning to do. But I am saying that private, personal information that was given to the census bureau in the 1940s was used against Americans to round them up."

Rep. Bachmann indicated, as she had before, that she does not intend to answer questions on the Census.

This raises so many questions:

(1) I thought, to the wingnuts, the internment of the scary non-white people was a good thing, and in fact, was to be the model for the forcible internment of today's scary non-white, non Christians in the name of national security. When did that change?

(2) Did Rep. Bachmann refuse to answer the last Census? Or is it only censuses conducted under Democratic administrations that cause Bachmann to put on the tinfoil hat? Is the census, like everything else the wingnuts abhor, OKIYAR?

(3) Since a US Representative, I assume, takes an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, and, since the Census is mandated by that Constitution, shouldn't Rep. Bachmann step down if she intends to resist the Census?

(5) Just how crazy does this woman have to act before Minnesota's had enough?

Michelle Bachmann: The Congresswoman From Crazytown

Bachmann: Swine Flu Happens Under Dem Presidents | TPMDC

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter," said Bachmann. "And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

As the Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages points out, Bachmann has the 1970s flu outbreak all wrong. It happened in 1976 when Gerald Ford was in office.

Dear Lord, the woman is a train wreck. It's like crazy, hateful, and ignorant are battling for dominance inside her head. She makes Sarah Palin look like a statesman.

In any kind of rational political system, she'd be one of those raggedy people standing on street corners ranting about the Illuminati and the Council on Foreign Relations.

In the GOP, she's a rising star. I'll be surprised if they don't start touting her as a Presidential candidate soon. She's already mastered one of the more reprehensible and dishonest wingnut rhetorical devices: "I'm not really making an accusation, but.." while doing exactly that.

Here, let me try my hand at it: "Prostitution in Congresswoman Bachmann's district has gone up 30% since she's been elected*. I'm not saying that she's a madam or otherwise involved in the management of the sex trade, but it's an interesting coincidence. It raises questions."

You know, that's kind of fun.


*not an actual fact, but neither was Bachmann's observation.

The GOP Re-Discovers Free Speech

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Barack Obama got elected president, in part, because he promised to bring change to America. One of the major changes he's wrought, one that seems to go unremarked in the press, is this: He's made the Republicans believe in free speech and open dissent again.

Take Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, who first came to national attention when she suggested that Barack Obama had "anti-American beliefs" and called for a media investigation of said anti-Americanism. Lest you think that sort of thing was a one-time fluke, Ms. Bachmann has, since that time, proved that she can reliably and consistently bring the crazy.

Recently when discussing President Obama's energy proposals, Bachmann stated, and I quote: "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, 'Having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,' and the people -- we the people -- are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country."

Wow. I seem to remember when even the mildest questioning of the Dear Leader Bush's plans and schemes was described, in so many words, as "treason" and "support of terrorism." In fact, I still have the e-mails people sent me in the run-up to the Iraq War, including a memorable one "reminding" me that "they hanged Benedict Arnold, you know" (thus managing to be both vaguely threatening and historically ignorant at the same time).

Can you imagine if any Democratic commentator, let alone a Democratic member of Congress, had even rhetorically talked about wanting people to be "armed and dangerous" in opposition to a president's legislative initiative? There'd be Republicans calling for their removal from Congress at best and for their immediate incarceration at Guantanamo Bay at worst. Ms. Bachmann should be glad the Republicans aren't in charge any more, I guess.

Then there are the remarks made by conservative author Tammy Bruce who was subbing for nationally syndicated talk-show host Laura Ingraham one day. It appears that Ms. Bruce is, to put it mildly, not a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama.

"You know what we've got?" Bruce sputtered about Mrs. Obama. "We've got trash in the White House."

I was curious to see if any prominent liberal-leaning commentator had referred to former First Lady Laura Bush as "trash." Fortunately, I'm pretty handy with the Google, so I put in the words "Laura Bush" and "trash" and came back with a number of hits. Most of those, however, dealt with various speeches Mrs. Bush had given on the environment.

There was one reference to Mrs. Bush as "trash" in an article entitled "First Lady, or First Slut?" But that was on a self-described "Right Wing Pro-Life Christian Conservative" Web site called christianmarriage.com that was taking the former first lady to task for supposedly "off-color remarks" made at an unspecified event.

Besides, that was just some nutty blog site, not a nationally syndicated radio show. (It's a favorite dodge of wingnuts to justify the rhetorical excesses of their national leaders by pointing to something they vaguely remember reading in some deleted post by some anonymous commenter on some obscure blog, but that's not the way we roll here in this column.)

Anyway, I couldn't find one example of a published liberal author, or a liberal host or guest on a national broadcast, referring to a Republican first lady as "trash." Not one. Not the much-maligned Keith Olbermann, not MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, certainly not the liberal castrato Alan Colmes, whose sole function on Sean Hannity's show seemed to be to get verbally slapped around by the host and smile about it.

I can pretty much guarantee you that if anyone had called Mrs. Bush, or the other Mrs. Bush (Dubbya's mom), or Mrs. Reagan "trash" in any kind of nationally broadcast forum, we'd still be hearing about it. A lot. We'd also be hearing a lot about how that kind of thing just goes to show how terrible and tasteless and hateful the "angry left" is.

But free and unfettered speech, angry and hateful and tasteless though it may be, seems to be a newly discovered passion for the wingnuttiest of Republicans. Glad they've finally come around to the idea that dissent is important.

Too bad it took them six years and getting their butts kicked in two consecutive elections to do it.

A Message To Republicans

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A message to Republicans:

I know I've been hard on your party during this election cycle. I've said some fairly harsh things. I've called you divisive. I've called you hypocritical. I've called you incompetent, and even insane.

All of these things, of course, are true.

But, in the end, I really do wish you well.

I really do hope that, after this election, you can rid yourself of your worst ideas and your worst elements. I hope you can get rid of the idea that just because people disagree with you, or just because they live in a certain area of the country or in the wrong size municipality, that they're not only wrong, but that they're not even "real Americans."

During this election, vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin told an audience: "We believe that the best of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America." The implication being that those non-small-town, non-pocket areas, i.e. the cities and suburbs where
most Americans actually live, are not "real America."

McCain spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer took up the theme when talking about the contested state of Virginia, asserting that "the real Virginia" was in the McCain-supporting rural counties, not the heavily populated, Obama-leaning areas in Northern Virginia. Honorable John's brother Joe McCain (not to be confused with Joe the Plumber) went even further, calling counties in Northern Virginia "communist country."

When Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann chimed in, calling for the media to investigate the views of Obama and of the people in Congress to find out, "are they pro-America or anti-America?" I began to realize that this "you're a Republican or you're against America" strategy was the actual, if unofficial, Republican Party line.

As the old saying goes, 'Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is on purpose." Even here in North Carolina, Rep. Robin Hayes told a Republican rally that: "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." He then denied saying any such thing, until confronted with a video of him saying it, after which he at first claimed he didn't recall it, then said, "It
came out the wrong way."

As an aside, I think any political adviser worth his salary needs to sit his or her candidate down in front of a computer early on and say, "Mr. Candidate. This site is called YouTube. Any stupid thing you say is going to be on video, on this site, and it's going to be all over the Internet within minutes. You won't be able to deny it, and you'll look stupider if you try. So watch your mouth."

It is for this reason, more than any political ideology, that I want to see John McCain and Sarah Palin fail. I want to live in a country where "if you don't vote for me, you're not a real American" is a losing strategy and not a winning one. I want to live in an America where I can disagree with my government's policies, or the ideas of a
candidate, without being labeled "anti-American."

I'm sick of it. And, if the polls showing that McPalin's divisive attacks are turning voters off are any indication, the rank and file of Americans are sick of it, too.

I have, however, seen some glimmers of hope. McCain himself, when confronted with a woman who said she was afraid of Obama because "he's an Arab," said "No." Obama, McCain said, is "a decent family man" and a "citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues." (OK, that first part could be interpreted as implying that an Arab is not a decent family man, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

"We want to fight, and I will fight," McCain said on another occasion, "but I will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments, and I will respect him."

Now, it is true, there were scattered boos from the Republican crowd on both occasions, and McCain and Palin did dive right back into the mud within the day, but again, I'll give the benefit of the doubt and interpret that as just indicating there's still work to be done.

Even Gen. Colin Powell, once touted as a potential Republican candidate for president, chose to endorse Barack Obama, citing as one reason his displeasure with the divisive rhetoric of the McCain campaign. Maybe, just maybe, the Karl Rovian politics of the past, aimed at getting 51 percent of the vote and then burning all your bridges by telling the other 49 percent to sit down and shut up or we'll treat you as an enemy
of the State, are in decline.

Yes, Republicans, I've called you divisive. I've called you hypocritical. I've called you incompetent, and even insane. I've made fun of you before, and I'll do it again, because hey, that's what I do. But I don't think I've ever called you un-American. If I have, I apologize.

It's just wrong.