Heeheeheeheehee....

Inside The GOP Establishment's War To Crush The Tea Party Revolt--Talking Points Memo:

"I've been told by a number of donors to our 'super PAC' that they've received calls from senior Republican senators," FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe told The New York Times. Those donors would then say to FreedomWorks, per Kibbe, that "'I can't give to you because I've been told I won't have access to Republican leadership.'"

It was a sentiment echoed by The Madison Project's policy director Daniel Horowitz to TPM on Tuesday: "It’s almost as if McConnell and his allies are acting like the IRS with intimidation."

Actually, I'm a little torn. On the one hand, I would like to see those Teabagger bastards crushed, humiliated, and made to go sit in the corner, the sooner the better. On the other hand, watching a protracted and bloody civil war in the GOP, with the establishment battling the very mobs they used to whip into a frenzy to get votes, would provide months of entertainment. Question is, on which side will Faux News come down?

Still, groups like The Madison Project and the Senate Conservatives Fund seem unlikely to back down, and they may just prove that Republican leadership still has to fight its own party on some fronts.
"We’re not getting hurt by this because our donors are primarily ordinary conservatives across the country who are not intimidated by or even connected to people in the political class," Horowitz said.

What's Setting Them Off Now?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

A couple of weeks ago, an anonymous staffer at the allegedly liberal TV network MSNBC took to Twitter to mention an ad that was scheduled to run during the Super Bowl: “Maybe the right wing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new Cheerios ad w/​biracial family.”

You may remember when the first commercial featuring the attractive African-American dad, white mom and annoyingly cute daughter aired. Racist trolls came out of the woodwork.

“Shoving multiculturalism down our throats when we know it fails … awesome,” groused one neo-segregationist on the popular site Reddit.

(You can tell the right-wingers by their code words, particularly their hatred of multiculturalism and obsession with things being “shoved down their throats.”)

“Why are we celebrating race traitors and their ugly monkey children?” posted another, sounding exactly like some of the comments posted about Michelle Obama and her daughters on right-wing sites like Breitbart.com and RedState. YouTube had to shut its comments section down because of the flood of racist, hateful comments made about the video.

Let me tell you, folks, when you get too nasty for YouTube’s notoriously vile comments section, you have reached a new depth. We are talking the Marianas Trench of awfulness. “Sinister,” “an abomination” and “disgusting propaganda” are just some of the ones that can be printed here.

So it wasn’t that bold to predict a backlash from those persistent voices on the right who use conservatism as a cover for their bigotry and hatred. However, let us not forget one of the right’s most sacred beliefs: pointing out that racism exists, has existed, or even might exist is worse than actual racism.

Rather than distance themselves from the people who attacked the original ad, people like RNC Chairman Reince Priebus demanded an apology from MSNBC and said he was ”banning” all RNC staff and “Republican surrogates” from appearing on the network, even though MSNBC had apologized for and deleted the offending tweet within three hours. The rest of the right-wing noise machine followed suit.

So, predictably, MSNBC head Phil Griffin went into full grovel mode, assuring the poor babies whom the tweet had offended that “the tweet last night was outrageous and unacceptable,” and that the person responsible had been sacked.

(After which Fox News, in a show of solidarity, fired frequent commentators Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin and Bill O’Reilly for all the nasty things they’ve said about liberals. Ha ha! Just kidding about that last bit.)

So the Super Bowl came and went, and sure enough, there didn’t seem to be nearly as much uproar over the new Cheerios ad. Probably because this time, right-wing rage was directed at Coca-Cola for an ad showing happy, smiling people — white, black, Latino, Asian, even a brief shot of a gay couple roller-skating with their child — over a sound track of “America the Beautiful” sung in a variety of languages.

The tag at the end of the commercial was “America Is Beautiful,” which you’d think no one could object to. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. Right-wing reaction was predictably apoplectic.

“Coca-Cola is the official drink of illegals crossing the border,” tweeted Fox’s Todd Starnes. Despite the fact that nothing in the ad said anything about immigrants not learning English, the hashtag #speakamerican took off on Twitter, as in this message from someone calling himself @RealTrueCon: “#Characters in these Cola commercials, from Mexicans to Indians, learn to #SpeakAmerican already! Or better don’t be in ’em.”

(Of course, unless you’re speaking Cherokee, Navajo or any one of a plethora of Native American tongues, you’re not really “Speaking American,” are you?)

Then there was this from those right-wing stalwarts at Breitbart.com: “When the company used such an iconic song, one often sung in churches on the Fourth of July … to push multiculturalism down our throats [sound familiar?], it’s no wonder conservatives were outraged.”

Actually, it’s never any wonder when conservatives are outraged. The only surprises come when you try to figure out what trivial thing is going to set them off next.

To be a right-winger in 21st century America is apparently to go through life like a raw exposed nerve, just looking for something, anything, to trigger another explosion of incomprehensible rage.

It must be exhausting for them. Glad I’m not one.

Everyone Wants To Be a Holocaust Victim These Days

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Dear Lord, here we go again. It seems that a battle is brewing out there as to who gets to claim the honor of comparing themselves to Jews in the Holocaust.

You can’t hardly turn around these days without encountering some right-winger claiming that Obamacare, or legal abortion, or whatever it is that grinds their particular gears, is just like the suffering of the millions who were crammed into camps to be worked, starved, and/or gassed to death.

The latest entry in the I-wanna-be-a-Jew stakes is billionaire venture capitalist Tom Perkins.

Perkins asserted in a now-infamous letter to The Wall Street Journal that, thanks to the Occupy movement and the nasty things said in his local paper about his rich buddies, he needed to “call attention to the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to its war on its ‘1 percent,’ namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American 1 percent, namely the ‘rich.’”

He went on to grouse about nasty things people had said about his wife, best-selling novelist Danielle Steele, then wound up with this jaw-dropper: “This is a very dangerous drift in our American thinking. Kristallnacht was unthinkable in 1930; is its descendant “progressive” radicalism unthinkable now?”

In case you didn’t get the reference, Kristallnacht (“Night of Broken Glass”) was a series of coordinated attacks against Jewish homes and businesses in Germany and Austria in 1938.

It resulted in the immediate deaths of 91 Jews, the arrest and incarceration of 30,000 Jews in concentration camps, the destruction of an estimated 7,000 Jewish businesses, and the burning of more than 1,000 synagogues.

As far as I know, neither Mr. Perkins nor any of his fellow 1-percenters has suffered anything more than hurt feelings. We should not, however, let that get in the way of a nationally published snit from a privileged drama queen and his novelist wife.

Friends, I see a crisis a-brewin’. Not for Mr. Perkins, mind you. I think he’ll be fine. But if all sorts of different people keep claiming they’re the moral equivalent of Holocaust victims, pretty soon there really is going to be conflict.

I suppose we could convene some sort of blue-ribbon panel to decide who gets the “our suffering is just like the German Jews of the 1930’s-40s” award. But that could lead to more hurt feelings, and since hurt feelings equal the Holocaust to these people, that’ll just put us back to square one.

I’ve suggested before that maybe the professionally aggrieved need to come up with some other atrocity to which they can equate their particular butthurt. So far, they seem unable to do so. So here are some other things the right and the “1 percent” can claim their suffering is equal to:

— The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre: Supposedly instigated by Catherine de Medici, Mother of King Charles IX of France, this 1572 killing of French Protestants ended with up to 70,000 people dead.

Upside: since many of the dead were aristocrats, the 1-percenters can probably figure out a way to draw some parallel that will make at least as much sense as Kristallnacht. Downside: it’s a little far removed, historically speaking.

—The Cambodian Killing Fields: At the end of the Cambodian Civil War, dictator Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge went on a rampage of vengeance against just about everyone they figured was connected with the former regime: professionals, intellectuals (a group which included anyone who wore glasses), Buddhist monks, you name it. By the end, more than 2.5 million had been executed and buried in mass graves.

Upside: It’s recent enough for people to recognize the reference. There was even a movie. Downside: some of the dead were intellectuals, like college professors and scientists, and the right’s not crazy about them either.

— The Congo Free State: In the late 1800s, King Leopold of Belgium turned the Congo into a collection of private concessions and demanded a “labor tax” on the natives, which essentially reduced them to slaves feeding Europe’s growing hunger for the region’s rubber. Up to 8 million died in the ensuing rebellion, their hands cut off by soldiers to prove to the military authorities that they had made a real kill and hadn’t wasted bullets.

Upside: the right loves to equate taxation with slavery. Downside: they do love them some privatization.

Huguenots, Cambodians, Congolese — these are just some of the millions of real victims the wingnuts and billionaires could compare themselves to, if only they’d expand their imaginations and do the research. And yet we keep getting the same lame comparisons to the Holocaust.

America deserves better from its self-pitying oligarchs and crybaby dead-ender politicians.

Feel the Love Redux

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

It’s gratifying to see how, even in the cold, dark depths of winter, the Republican Party continues to bring that warm glow of love and unity into our national discourse. It’s not for nothing that I call them the Party of Love.

Take, for example, washed-up rocker and prospective GOP presidential candidate Ted Nugent, a guy who really knows how to bring the love, and we’re not just talking about bringing it to the underage girls he brags about having sex with (in one case, he talked his 17-year-old girlfriend’s parents into granting him legal guardianship because she was too young to marry. He was 30 at the time).

Recently, in an interview with Guns.com, The Nuge was fairly exploding with love, referring to President Barack Hussein Obama as a “Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel,” and avowing that “America will be America again when Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Dick Durbin, Michael Bloomberg and all of the liberal Democrats are in jail facing the just due punishment that their treasonous acts are clearly apparent.”

In case you didn’t get that, the “just due punishment” for treason is death, and Nugent was therefore calling for the execution of anyone who disagrees with him, after holding up a “Ted Nugent For President” bumper sticker and declaring that his election would be “the perfect ballot of freedom.”

Because nothing says “freedom” like demanding the killing of political opponents, and nothing says “love” like referring to a president of a different race than you as a “subhuman mongrel.”

Before you write Mr. “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang” off as just some fringe nutter, remember that this is a guy whose endorsement Mitt Romney (remember him?) actively sought. He’s a frequent guest on Sean Hannity, who refers to him as “a friend.” He attended last year’s State of the Union address as the guest of Rep. Steve Stockman. A violent racist may not be exactly the Republican mainstream, but the Republican mainstream caters to him. It must be all the love.

Actually, when you really look at it, Nugent does have some advantages in the presidential race. For one thing, he’s been visited by Secret Service agents enough times after his inflammatory screeds that he probably already knows most of the agents by name.

More important, he’s already mastered that most vital of wingnut skills: When you’ve talked yourself into a corner, distract the listener by bringing up some long-discredited right-wing lie about Benghazi.

Noting that his comments might be considered “inflammatory,” Nugent said, “I would call it inflammatory speech when it’s your job to protect Americans and you look into the television camera and say what difference does it make that I failed in my job to provide security and we have four dead Americans.” The guy’s got the Benghazi Dodge down, I tell you.

Also on this week’s Republican Love Parade, we have Florida House candidate Joshua Black, who decided to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. day by calling for the president to be hanged.

“I’m past impeachment,” Black said on his Twitter account. “It’s time to arrest and hang him high.”

Black, a former “street preacher,” also took to his Facebook page with a rather novel take on the Gospels to argue that Jesus would back him up on this: “This would be exactly what the president has done to others, and, as Jesus said, ‘The measure ye mete, it shall be meted to you again.”

When a fellow Republican responded, “You aren’t seriously calling for the killing of Obama, are you?” Black stood his ground like a good Floridian: “Execution is the appropriate punishment for traitors. #BenedictArnold #ReadAmericanHistory #criminalpoliticians.”

I have to confess, that last one made me a little nostalgic. During George Dubbya’s Wacky Iraqi Adventure, another member of the Party of Love took me to task in an email for my audacity in questioning the Dear Leader’s strategic wisdom: “They hanged Benedict Arnold, you know.”

This managed to be both vaguely threatening and historically inaccurate at the same time, since Arnold wasn’t hanged. He died a rich man in London.

But then again, this is the party who had one of its leaders insist that Paul Revere warned the British, and whose spokespeople complain that too many Americans don’t know that “some guy in Boston got his head blown off because he tried to secretly raise the tax on tea.” Who cares about factual accuracy when you have the kind of love in your heart that tells you Jesus wants you to execute the president and everyone who supports him?

The GOP: Can’t you just feel the love? I can. I have. And that’s why I stay as far away as I possibly can.

Calling All Wingnuts: The "Both Sides Do It" Challenge.

Whenever anyone points out some racist, violent, misogynistic, or just plain nutty statement like any of the ones below: 

It's not long before someone comes along at says "well, Democrats say crazy shit too." And every time, it's usually one of a very few statements, like the one about Guam tipping over or some WTF? statement from Maxine Waters, or Barack Obama's "57 states" stumble. 

So here's the challenge: can anyone provide me with an example of any Democratic politician calling for the killing of political opponents, advocating allowing rape inside of marriage, claiming some disaster or disease is God's punishment for not following their religious belief, or calling for a city to be turned into an internment camp? Feel free to respond in comments. 

I'm Tellin' All O' Y'all, It's Sabotage

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

“Republicans are the ones who tell you government doesn’t work,” political humorist P.J. O’Rourke once said. “Then they get elected and prove it.”

North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Aldona Wos is just the latest example.

This past week, Wos appeared before a legislative oversight committee to explain what’s been going on in her troubled department. Lawmakers wanted to know why, for example, 49,000 children’s Medicaid cards were mailed out to the wrong addresses, and why the state food stamp program was so far behind, with up to 27,000 families caught in backlogs of up to three months.

(Ironically, the computer program that’s supposed to help speed up the processing of applications is called FAST. Apparently, FAST wasn’t being used to mean “speedy.” It was used in the sense of “you don’t eat.”)

Things have gotten so bad that the U.S. Department of Agriculture wrote a letter to Wos calling the food stamp delays “completely unacceptable” and “a failure on the part of North Carolina.”

While Madame Secretary made the required pro-forma apologies for the ever-expanding disaster that is her DHHS, she did come up with one humdinger of an excuse: She blamed “the implementation of the Affordable Care Act.” It’s a “huge issue” in North Carolina, Wos told the committee.

Poor thing. I mean, we’ve only had since March of 2010 to get ready. And what, may I ask, in the Affordable Care Act has squat-all to do with food stamps? Further, what in the ACA does Madame Secretary claim is responsible for mailing 49,000 Medicaid cards to the wrong addresses?

I do know one thing, however, and that’s that I’m going to start using the “Obamacare excuse” every chance I get. Like so:

WIFE: Honey, did you roll the trash can up to the curb like I asked?

ME: Sorry, Pookie. I was so bumfuzzled by the implementation of the Affordable Care Act that I just forgot.

JUDGE: Mr. Rhoades, what is your client’s defense to driving with a revoked license and possession of marijuana?

ME: Your Honor, we feel the implementation of the Affordable Care Act is to blame.

JUDGE: Say what?

ME: My client spent so much time trying to sign up for Obamacare that he forgot to renew his license, and it upset him so bad he just needed some kind of mental relief.

JUDGE: Does that also explain why he was riding a motorcycle down Broad Street with no pants on?

ME: No, Your Honor, that was the fault of the administration’s cover-up of what really happened in Benghazi.

I’ll let you know how it works.

Look, folks. Every state in the union has had to implement the ACA. Somehow other directors of Health and Human Services seem to be getting their jobs done without whining that “Obamacare makes everything so haaaaaard.”

You’ll also notice that the states where the ACA is working best are the ones where the government hasn’t been trying to undercut it from the get-go. You want to know why the DHHS is so screwed up? Because the Republicans want it that way.

When you have an administration whose political base is distinguished by its virulent contempt for people who use programs like Medicaid and food stamps, maybe it should come as no surprise when that administration staffs the agencies responsible for carrying out those programs with political hacks like Wos whose main “qualification” has been their skill at political fundraising.

It should come as no surprise when that same hack goes on to pack the agency with inexperienced 20-something former campaign workers suddenly making 80-plus thousand taxpayer dollars a year.

These people don’t give a rat’s hindquarters about helping the poor. They think the poor deserve to suffer — that is, when they condescend to think about them at all. The McCrory administration knows that, among their core voters, there is no political downside at all to making needy people wait for food stamps or screwing up children’s Medicaid. And they see it as even better politically if they can blame their own dismal failures on Obamacare or on the previous state administration (ironic, that).

The USDA letter mentioned above told Wos, “We have grave concern for the low income people of North Carolina who are waiting for assistance.” The problem is, the Republicans just don’t, no matter how much lip service they give to the idea.

There’s an old saying from AA that “the program works if you work the program.” But if you elect people who don’t think programs work, don’t be surprised when they don’t work them, and don’t be surprised when, like Wos, they fail at their jobs.