Not Even Trying To Pretend They Have Any Principles

Ted Cruz on Syria: "No decision by an elected official is more serious than whether to send our armed forces into conflict. President Obama was right to seek Congress’s authorization to use military force against Syria. But having carefully considered the president’s substantive arguments, I am compelled to vote against the requested authorization."

 Ted Cruz on Ukraine: “You’d better believe that Putin sees that in Syria, Obama draws a red line and ignores the red line. You’d better believe that Putin sees all over the world.”

So the man who voted to tie the President's hands on Syria is now saying Obama's weakness on the "red line" is what brought on the Ukraine crisis. 

Jesus, they're not even trying to cover up the fact that they have no principles whatsoever, other than "Whatever Obama does is wrong." 

The Long Con

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Two weeks ago, the right-wing faithful gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). It’s an event where the princes and princesses of Wingnuttia appear to rally the troops, stir the fear, and crack open the wallets and pocketbooks of donors.

It’s kind of like a Burning Man Festival for right-wingers, except instead of weed and hallucinogens, the CPAC attendees are high on paranoia, resentment and belligerence, and the CPAC headliners are more than happy to give them their fix.

Soon-to-be-ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann, for instance, gave a radio interview from CPAC in which she claimed that the reason Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer recently vetoed Arizona’s “turn away the gays” bill was that gay people had “bullied” the American people.

Bachmann also suggested using the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to arrest people who “intimidate” billionaire donors to the Republican Party.

Yeah, Michele, it’s totally the straight people and the billionaires in this country being bullied. Why, I heard that just yesterday, a couple of gay people took Gov. Brewer’s lunch money and stuffed her in her locker, and I heard someone pantsed the Koch brothers in the lunchroom.

We’re so fortunate that we have people like Rep. Bachmann to speak for the oppressed, if by “oppressed” you mean “straight, extremely rich white people.” And by the way, Michele, if I was under investigation by the FBI for money laundering and wire fraud, as you are, I wouldn’t be bringing up RICO. It might give them ideas.

When it comes to spreading the fear, however, there’s no one to match NRA President Wayne LaPierre. In a thunderous speech on March 6, LaPierre delivered the kind of doom-laden paranoid rant once restricted to unwashed men on street corners wearing sandwich boards proclaiming that the end is nigh.

We need all the guns we can get our hands on, LaPierre said, because “we know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and there are home invaders, drug cartels, carjackers, knockout gamers and rapers, and haters and campus killers, and airport killers, shopping mall killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse our society that sustains us all.”

Wow. I’m sure glad I’m not him. Anyone who walks around this terrified all the time must be miserable. By the way, I’m not sure how a big stash of guns is supposed to help against “vicious waves of chemicals or disease,” but whatever.

No right-wing gathering would be complete, of course, without the appearance of the Quitta From Wassilla, half-term Gov. Sarah Palin.

And once again, Saint Sarah of the Snows did not disappoint. She delivered another parody of “Green Eggs and Ham” (“I do not like this kind of hope, and we won’t take it nope, nope, nope”) that was later revealed to be plagiarized from a chain email making the rounds two years ago.

She then proceeded to plagiarize from the NRA in suggesting a solution to the current crisis in Ukraine. “Mr. President,” she declaimed, “the only way to stop a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

Wait, what? Did the Resigning Woman seriously just suggest using nukes to get Russia out of the Crimea?

Naaah, at least not by any real definition of “serious.” Palin knows she’s never going to get within a mile of the nuclear button, just as Wayne LaPierre knows his collection of gold-plated AR-15’s isn’t going to defend us against “chemicals and disease,” and Michele Bachmann knows that billionaires aren’t really being intimidated.

They, and the other headliners at CPAC, are all part of the most massive and successful Long Con in the history of this country: the modern conservative movement. It’s all about filling their coffers with contributions from people in the freest, richest country in the world whom they’ve convinced that a Stalinist gulag is right around the corner and that their stuff is about to be looted from them any moment by Those People.

And it works. Palin’s own “Sarah PAC,” for example, raised and spent more than $1.2 million last year — only $10,000 of which went to actual candidates. The rest went for “operations,” including “consultant costs” and “travel expenses,” according to FEC campaign filings. Nice work if you can get it.

Whatever their original purpose, far right fear-a-paloozas like CPAC, and the conservative movement itself, have devolved into serving two purposes: lining the pockets of grifters like Sarah Palin and Wayne LaPierre, and reminding us why they should never be let near the levers of power.

In both those respects, CPAC was a resounding success.

Yeah, You're Just Full of Christ's Love.

Right Wing Watch:

Austin Ruse runs an outfit called the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute. According to his bio, "He has briefed members of the U.S. House and Senate on U.N. matters, as well as briefing White House and National Security Council staff. Ruse has also briefed senior government officials, journalists, Church and non-governmental leaders from around the world.He has appeared on a number of national cable network programs discussing UN and Catholic issues, including news programs on CNN, CBS News, MSNBC, and Fox News. Ruse has published in First Things, Washington Times, National Review Online, Weekly Standard, Human Events, Touchstone, as well as newspapers around the world."

So last week he goes on American Family Radio and has this to say about the story of the Duke student who revealed that she's putting herself through college by appearing as an adult-film actress:

That is the nonsense that they teach in women’s studies at Duke University, this is where she learned this. The toxic stew of the modern university is gender studies, it’s “Sex Week,” they all have “Sex Week” and teaching people how to be sex-positive and overcome the patriarchy. My daughters go to a little private religious school and we pay an arm and a leg for it precisely to keep them away from all of this kind of nonsense. I do hope that they go to a Christian college or university and to keep them so far away from the hard left, human-hating people that run modern universities, who should all be taken out and shot.

Got that? This good Christian Right Winger, whose organization's mission statement says their purpose is "to defend life and family at international institutions," advocates the execution of people with whom he disagrees.

Remind me again of who the fascists are in American politics?

Then, when Right Wing Watch reported Ruse's words verbatim, he lashed out again:

“The pajama boys over at Right Wing Watch have their panties all in a twist about what I said, and I sometimes think that the left is really dumb, these are the low-information voters that make all of these mistakes when they get into the ballot box and all of these mistakes as they go through their lives and one of the reasons is because they are so dumb,” he said.

So after calling people "dumb" and "pajama boys" (whatever the hell that means in wingnutspeak), he "criticized them as “smear merchants” who “call [people] names.”

The Party of Love, ladies and gentlemen. I'm sure the Church is proud of its defenders.

Wingnuts: We Don't Want War, But Everything Else Makes Obama a Wuss

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

The Republicans and their captive media are saying a great many things about the Russian incursion into Ukraine, but there’s one thread that runs through it all: It’s not Vladimir Putin’s fault, it’s all Barack Obama’s.

For example, some commentators, such as The Washington Post’s Mark Thiessen and Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin, claim that President Obama’s “weakness” in Syria somehow “emboldened” Putin to invade Ukraine.

Oh, really? What weakness was that? The weakness where, under threat of U.S. bombing, the Assad regime caved and agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons stockpile?

Or maybe they think it was “weakness” not to defy the will of the American people and put American boots on the ground in a complicated, many-sided religious-based conflict which would have us fighting alongside elements of al-Qaida. That would have been insane recklessness and wrong-headed adventurism that would make the Iraq debacle look like the pinnacle of strategic brilliance, but it wouldn’t look weak.

According to a story in The Washington Post, Sen. John McCain called the Russian aggression “the ultimate result of a feckless foreign policy in which nobody believes in America’s strength anymore,” even as he admitted that the U.S. “does not have a realistic military option to force Russian troops to withdraw.”

In another forum, McCain suggested sanctions on Russia, which the administration is considering. How much you want to bet if they do what McCain suggests, he’ll still call them weak?

At least the folks at Fox News had a more measured response. “Even if [the president] wanted to help … we simply don’t have the ground forces to do it,” said Bill O’Reilly. “And confronting the Russians in the air would lead to major hostilities that the USA cannot afford right now.”

Frequent Foxista Charles Krauthammer agreed: “Well, obviously it’s beyond our control. The Russians are advancing. There is nothing that will stop them. We are not going to go to war.”

Oh, wait, my mistake. Those quotes from Fox were from 2008, when the Russians invaded another neighbor, Georgia. You know, back when we had a president of Fox’s preferred party, a president who claimed to have “looked into Putin’s soul,” a president who still bears no blame for anything he did in the minds of the right.

Now, when “that one” is in the White House, we have Steve Doocy saying that the president “hasn’t done much” to solve the situation, and Bill O’Reilly claiming that the crisis occurred because Obama has “lost moral authority.”

Meanwhile, the Fox Nation website put up a page of video of Putin doing, as they described it, “macho things,” including the inevitable horseback riding with his shirt off. Frankly, the only thing creepier that Putin’s constantly releasing videos of his shirtless self is the right’s panting obsession with his “manliness.”

Perhaps the purest expression of the right wing’s attitude was capsulized by Mister 9/11 himself, Rudy Giuliani. Speaking to Fox’s Neil Cavuto, Rudy revealed that what he really admires and wants in an executive is ruthless dictatorial strong-arming:

“Putin decides what he wants to do and he does it in half a day, right? He decided he had to go to their parliament. He went to their parliament. He got permission in 15 minutes. He makes a decision and he executes it, quickly. Then everybody reacts. That’s what you call a leader. President Obama, he’s got to think about it. He’s got to go over it again. He’s got to talk to more people about it.”

There you have it, folks. To the right, Obama’s problem is that he’s not more like the dictator Vladimir Putin. Of course, when the president does do something, they scream that he’s worse than Hitler.

I’ve been critical in these pages of President Obama’s foreign policy, but I can tell you this, without reservation: I am so glad right now that he’s president and that John McCain and Rudy Giuliani aren’t.

John Kerry’s gone to Kiev and other capitals to show our support for the current Ukraine government and drum up more, our NATO allies are meeting to discuss how to deal with the crisis, the G7’s suspending preparations for the planned G8 summit in Sochi. And all the while, the president works with our international partners to create further steps to isolate Russia as punishment for its aggression.

Meanwhile, the saber-rattlers claim not to want military action, but criticize every option short of it as puny and weak — even options they themselves have suggested.

As Barney Frank once said, in a saying that should be the slogan of the Democratic Party, “We’re not perfect, but they’re nuts.”

Where Do The Haters Go Now?

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

This past week, the big question in the great state of Arizona was “will she or won’t she?” — with “she” being the state’s governor, Jan Brewer, and the question being whether or not she’d veto an act passed by the state legislature making it legal for businesses to refuse service to gay or lesbian people on “religious grounds.”

The bill, which would allow businesses to do to gay and lesbian customers what they can’t do to black, Latino, Jewish, etc. ones, all in the name of religious freedom, passed the state House 33 to 27 and the Senate 17 to 13.

The hullaballoo was fierce and immediate, with gay and lesbian activists such as actor and politician George Takei urging a boycott of the state if the law takes effect, and business leaders calling for Brewer to veto the bill because it would kill jobs and commerce.

Companies like Apple (which is planning to build a plant in the state), American Airlines and Marriott also called for a veto.

Officials of the NFL, which is holding next year’s Super Bowl in Arizona, issued a statement saying, “Our policies emphasize tolerance and inclusiveness and prohibit discrimination based on age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other improper standard,” thus raising fears that they might actually move the Super Bowl, like they did in 1992 when Arizona refused to enact a Martin Luther King Day holiday.

Interestingly, among the people urging a veto of the bill were three of the senators who’d actually voted for it.

“While our sincere intent in voting for this bill was to create a shield for all citizens’ religious liberties,” wrote Sens. Bob Worsley, Steve Pierce and Adam Driggs (the majority whip), “the bill has instead been mischaracterized by its opponents as a sword for religious intolerance. These allegations are causing our state immeasurable harm.”

Turns out religious principle might end up costing money. Can’t have that, can we?

This whole argument that we should be allowed to discriminate against people if we can find some justification in the Bible raises the question: Where does it end? I frequently get emails from a virulent racist who peppers his angry and often incoherent screeds with supposed biblical support for the oppression of — well, I can’t use some of the words he uses.

And this fellow isn’t alone. Should people like that be allowed to refuse to serve African-Americans, Latinos, Jews or interracial couples on the ground that their interpretation of the Bible forbids mixing of the races, even at lunch counters? Are we going to return to the vileness of Jim Crow laws so long as we can drape that ugliness in religious robes?

Finally, Gov. Brewer saw sense and vetoed the bill. I’m sure a lot of people who would have loved to freely exercise their hatred in the name of the Baby Jesus were let down. But I want to help, because that’s the kind of guy I am.

If you really want to live in a country where they put the gays in their place, may I suggest Russia? They’re all about conservative Christian values these days. Of course, the weather is horrific, the food is worse, the plumbing doesn’t work, and packs of feral dogs roam the streets, but these should be small prices to pay to safeguard yourself from having to deal with gay people.

Or how about Uganda? Their president recently signed a bill that makes homosexual acts punishable by life in prison. The original version of the bill made those acts punishable by death, and hey, you can’t hardly get more biblical than that.

Just last week, a Ugandan newspaper helpfully published a list of what it called the country’s “200 top” gays, to make it easier for the authorities to enforce traditional family values at gunpoint. Now, the country is periodically racked by unrest followed by vicious government crackdowns and there’s terrible poverty and disease everywhere, but hey, there probably won’t be any gay people coming into your business if you set it up there.

At least as far as you’ll know. Because discriminating against gay and lesbian people doesn’t make fewer of them. It just makes for more misery in the world.

All in the name of God, of course.

So That's What Happened to Joe

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Good news, everyone! Joe the Plumber has finally landed on his feet and got himself a real job.

You may remember Joe the Plumber, the lovable lunkhead from Toledo, Ohio, who made a big splash in the 2008 presidential race. Turns out, he wasn’t actually a plumber, but he got in candidate Obama’s face, and that was enough to make him an overnight darling among the rubes and the ignoramii, who saw a reflection of themselves in his bullet-headed belligerence and his imperviousness to actual facts.

For instance, despite multiple experts asserting that Obama’s tax proposals would either have no effect on or would actually benefit people like him, JtP continued to insist his taxes would go up under Obama.

John McCain mentioned Joe so many times and hosted him at so many campaign appearances that one began to wonder if he was going to ditch his running mate and put Joe on the ticket.

In the aftermath of the McCain debacle, Joe kicked around the wingnut grifter circuit for a while, picking up one high-profile gig after another. The online right-wing consortium Pajamas Media put Joe back in the headlines when they sent him as a war correspondent to cover the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, which was at the time boiling over in Gaza.

While there, Joe contributed some deathless gems of war journalism, such as saying, on camera, “I have thousands of questions, but I can’t think of the right one.”

Perhaps the high point of his career came in 2011, when he ran as a Republican for the U.S. House of Representatives against Democrat Marcy Kaptur. The low point came shortly after, when Kaptur stomped him like a loan shark collecting from a bad debtor.

After that, we heard from Ol’ Joe only sporadically, like the time he appeared in support of Arizona State Senate candidate Lori Klein and suggested that the solution for illegal immigration was “put a damn fence on the border, go into Mexico and start shooting.”

It looked like he was headed for that limbo from which no man returns until and unless he surfaces on “Dancing With The Stars” (if he’s lucky) or as a commenter or one of those “World’s Dumbest” shows on TruTV (if he’s not).

Then, from this week’s Toledo Blade newspaper, came the happy news that Joe had found employment — with Chrysler. He’d even joined the United Auto Workers union.

Wait, what? Joe the Not-Really-a-Plumber, that tireless crusader against Barack Obama and his “socialist” policies, the man who told us in no uncertain terms that “our Founding Fathers knew that socialism doesn’t work” (think about that one for a moment) is working for the company that was bailed out by the government, a move widely denounced as “socialism” by the right?

The man who appeared at an anti-union rally in Wisconsin in 2011 shouting, “Unions don’t deserve anything, you don’t deserve anything, you work for it yourself!” is now carrying a union card?

Once again, we have received incontrovertible proof, as science fiction writer Spider Robinson once said, that God is an iron. (“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”)

I trust I’m not the only one chuckling at the fact that, as economist Sean McAlinden of the Center for Automotive Research told The Washington Post, “[Joe] wouldn’t have gotten a job in Toledo if Chrysler hadn’t been bailed out. … The unemployment rate in Toledo would have been at 15 percent.”

But fear not. Joe still holds fast to the only principle the Republican Party has left, summed up in the acronym IOKIYAR (“It’s OK If You’re A Republican”). Asked about his union membership after his vehemently anti-union stance, Joe explained himself by saying he doesn’t have a problem with private unions, like the one he’s in.

“Private unions, such as the UAW,” he wrote on his Facebook page, “is [sic] a choice between employees and employers. If that is what they want, then who am I to say you can’t have it?”

Unions for me and not for thee. Directly benefiting from government intervention in the economy while railing against it. Yep, he’s still a Republican, all right.

Government intervention can work. It can save jobs. Unions help workers. Joe and his ilk may never admit it, but they sure take advantage of it whenever they can.