A political columnist at Esquire puts together the best thing I’ve read on the Wisconsin recall.
He states the other side won out of anger at the very idea of it and that outside pundits, specifically Ed Schultz and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, fed this. That coverage on the progressive network, as if the recall was in the bag, was used by Koch money to aggravate people and assure them they were right to be angry. (Incidentally, I stopped watching Maddow and Schultz for related reason. Their careers rise and fall on the niche entertainment value of how irritating and meddlesome they appear to non-progressives on national issues. Whether that’s an asset or a liability is for marginal and uninspiring Democratic politicians to mull over.)
The writer, Charles Pierce, points out the belief in Wisconsin that governors should not be recalled except for criminal misconduct, ignoring recent history in which California’s Gray Davis was recalled over outrage at electricity market gouging and rolling blackouts — which the electorate, largely, did not find out had been rigged by Enron until well after Arnold Schwarzenegger was in office.
But those were the forces that combined with an overwhelming flood of out-of-state money to make liars out of practically everybody. This was a winning electorate that found itself besieged by the images it saw on its television, and it felt its concerns being drowned out by drum circles and chants. When Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch got up and began her speech with the line “this is what democracy looks like,” she was doing more than simply engaging in some stunningly high-level gloating; she was telling her audience exactly what they wanted to hear. Their democracy was hijacked by other people. The out-of-state special interests that most bothered them were not the Koch Brothers; it was Rachel Maddow and Ed Schultz. Upwards to $50 million poured into Wisconsin from various plutocrats and their front groups to tell the people in this hall that people from outside Wisconsin were taking them all for a ride. The money was a balm. The money was an amplifier. The money gave them absolution because the money told them what they already believed …
As the room grew steadily more rowdy, I fell into conversation with Ed Hannan, a lawyer from Greendale …
“It means the restoration of integrity in government,” he continued. “It means an understanding of the role of government, the limitations of the role of government, and the return of power to the taxpayers, as opposed to union organizers. That is how important this is. Going forward, what we will then see is more legislation that is going to limit the role of government and, more than that, a repeal of laws. For instance, the Minimum Mark-Up Law, a limitation on the environmental laws. We need to have sunset laws on environmental restrictions and the employment-related laws. This election was never about collective bargaining. It was about legislation that removed the state as the collection agency for union dues.”
There was no point in arguing with the man. There didn’t seem even to be any sport in pointing out that the “restoration of integrity in government” that he saw in the results was on behalf of a guy who took to the podium last night three steps ahead of a sitting grand jury. The distance between what I saw and what Ed Hannan saw was too great. I might as well have been talking to him in Finnish.
The Obama campaign’s Jim Messina dunned me for $5 with the virtual ink not even dry on the Wisconsin analyses:
What just happened in Wisconsin wasn’t an accident.
Republican Governor Scott Walker and his allies outspent the Democratic challenger nearly EIGHT to ONE — and one of the most unpopular governors in the country managed to hold on.
This result is direct confirmation that all the outside money that’s poured into elections this cycle can and will change their outcome. And it’s exactly what could happen on the national stage unless we can close the gap between special interests and ordinary people.
Go choke yourself.
You need to talk to your guy about making a message that beats the misinformation spread by billionaire money for the purpose of guaranteeing the white independent vote. You’ve no other choice. Shaking everyone else down regularly for serial micro-payments won’t get it done.
When voting yesterday I noted with bemusement “candidate” Orly Taitz, the clinically insane person best known for her national quest to prove the President is a foreign Manchurian candidate. But you can never be too nuts in this country. Taitz got over 100 thousand votes, most of them all in the category of “Registered Psychopath — White.” One also cannot rule out the possibility that some ‘voters’ ticked her out of sheer boredom and perversity.
It’s refreshing to see the delusions of “Queen of the Birfers” Orly Taitz extend beyond her crackers quest to prove Barack Obama was born in Africa. The South County dentist/lawyer/real-estate saleslady’s OrlyTaitzEsq site this morning boasts that Tuesday night’s election results show she is “currently” the fourth runner-up to incumbent Democrat U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and that “ballots will continue to be counted through July 13.” Oh, Orly . . .
Still, Taitz can take comfort in the fact that she finished ahead of 19 other candidates, and that at least 113,563 Californians share her crazy, including 17,549 in Orange County, where she was the choice of 6.1 percent of the voters.
Love the OC Weekly’s portrayal of the Taitz voter — below.
Eugene Kaspersky, whose lab discovered the Flame virus that has attacked computers in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East, said on Wednesday only a global effort could stop a new era of “cyber terrorism”.
“It’s not cyber war, it’s cyber terrorism and I’m afraid it’s just the beginning of the game … I’m afraid it will be the end of the world as we know it,” Kaspersky told reporters at a Tel Aviv University cyber security conference.
“I’m scared, believe me,” he said.
Now where would we be without hyperbole I ask you?
Today Ted Nugent did a radio interview with an Illinois station, WJBC, in advance of his show in Peoria. Ted informed the hosts that apparently the only reason there is unemployment is because people are lazy sods who want a handout. There are help wanted signs everywhere, according to Ted. And his many business friends tell him Americans don’t want to work, they just want to know how many sick days that get.
Hosted by R. C. McBride and Jim Fitzpatrick, the chat was mostly politics. It gave the rocker a chance to expound on all the people who hate him, the President, and his peculiar but very Tea Party views.
If you listen to the entire thing here — I admit it’s a hard slog — even the hosts become audibly uneasy with the direction Nugent’s philosophies take
But I did the heavy lifting so you don’t have to. The most paranoid and weird bits:
We are living in dangerous times. we have a corrupt government … We have a president who will quote the founder of communism … Then he’ll visit the Vietnam Memorial Wall and lie claiming that he wants to thank 58,000 dead American soldiers and Airmen and Marines and Seamen while he quotes the man they fought against.
No one has ever been as corrupt and dared to quote Mao Tse Tung as the President of the United States does right now … No one has raped the economy and destroyed the economy as quickly and efficiently as Barack Obama and his czars have done in such a short period of time because that was his goal. He wanted to fundamentally transform the greatest quality of life in the history of mankind into some kind of Detroit canker sore of dependency.
Because I’m a hunter, people hate me. People who hate me because
I hunt defines the left …
People who hate me believe you don’t have to get up early and work hard because you can get money from people who do get up early and work hard.
I’m a producer, I’m an asset to you, I benefit the American economy … If you look at the Occupiers, they hate me for that. I couldn’t be more proud that those who think Barack Obama and the Mao Tse Tung chant of redistributing earnings is good. I don’t want them to like me because that’s evil.
For every person that gets some form of welfare there are thousands
who don’t deserve it.
[One of the hosts gets audibly nervous at this saying “I don’t know if I’m qualified to [say] that …” He adds his family received some government benefit in the past when he was growing up. Nugent replies that he is because he’s done the “research.”]
Then Nugent comments on those on welfare — he means African Americans:
They get their hair done. They have cell phones. They have all the newest clothes they possibly want …
Ted, on the economy and unemployment:
An able bodied person in United States of America has no excuse to
not have a job. I drive up and down the streets of this country every day and there are help wanted signs everywhere. And I have hundreds of entrepreneurial friends who are trying to hire people and 99 out of 100 people who come in claiming to want to find a job, the first thing they ask is “How many sick days do I get?” Are you kidding me? Maybe you need to communicate more with people who are actually in touch with direct human touch with the people that are causing the problems in America … There is an actual category that is acceptable, there is an actual authorized category of people in the United States of America … people who have quit looking for work. That’s a category of Americans? That’s unbelievable!
The asset to the US economy, playing the Star Spangled Banner and cursing out women and the elites for morning television.
My take has always been that, primarily, only morons click on Google AdSense links, and by extension, Facebook advertising. Those who do click may be doing so only out of curiosity, often to see just how awful whatever’s being shilled actually is.
And some knob named Alexander Heffner at the blog of the ex-newspaper formerly known as the Christian Science Monitor:
Mark Zuckerberg has the potential to rekindle confidence in the markets and to engage everyday Americans in the kind of economic growth that has been limited to only a handful of individuals in recent years.
Four out of five Facebook users say they have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site, underlining, to some observers, the challenges Facebook faces when it comes to drawing in revenue.
Furious Facebook.Com investors have filed a lawsuit against founder Mark Zuckerberg, alleging he knew the business had been overvalued ahead of its flotation last month (May12).
Zuckerberg floated his social networking site on the U.S. stock market for $100 billion (£63 billion) but shares soon dropped in price, prompting complaints from many investors.
Critics allege the CEO knew the stock was overpriced and protected his own finances by selling off the organisation, according to TMZ.com.
Mark Zuckerberg and his FB colleagues are great poster boys for the culture of lickspittle and how it works. The jig’s up for Facebook but they have their piles.
And you’re not famous and you have a couple hundred ‘friends,’ maybe more, on Facebook?
It’s all right to tell the doctor you don’t need any more renewals on that prescription for stupid pills. It’s OK to stop taking them. Really.
The third US drone strike in as many days in Pakistan has raised the three-day death toll in the aerial attacks to at least 27, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Monday’s strike in the Hesokhel village of North Waziristan’s tribal areas, was said to have targeted a hideout for fighters, officials said.
The latest strike, which officials said had killed 15 people, was the seventh in a span of less than two weeks.
The attack on Monday morning came just after a strike on Sunday that killed 10 suspected fighters …
“Many people here in Pakistan are frankly tired of the United States’ presence in the region, and are calling for Islamabad to sever ties with the US …”
That wouldn’t stop the drones. You have to make them stop, dudes, not just complain about it. Haven’t you gotten that yet?
The reason Pakistan isn’t stopping the drones is because it’s military has no capability and can’t afford to have its best gear quickly destroyed in any fight, small or large, with the US military.
Steve Smith, a longtime racist activist with a history of violence and top-level ties to numerous white nationalist hate groups, has been elected to a 4-year term on the Republican Party’s county committee for Luzerne County, Penn., One People’s Project reports.
Recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1990s, Smith, of Pittston, Penn., has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads), and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People …
Smith’s ties to the racist right stretch far beyond the political. In 2001, he co-founded a racist skinhead group now known as Keystone United (which was until 2009 known as the Keystone State Skinheads, or KSS), one of the largest and most active single-state racist skinhead crews in the country. In March 2003, he and two other KSS members were arrested in Scranton for beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.
To advance his goals, Smith has distanced himself somewhat from his violent past and focused on political activism. As state chairman for American Third Position (A3P), a white nationalist political party that aims to deport immigrants and return the United States to white rule, he has for several years been working the crowds at local Tea Party gatherings, which he once described as “fertile grounds for our activists.???
In October 2010, he led a delegation of A3P activists in presenting the party’s position to a Scranton Tea Party group. “We explained that the A3P was formed to represent white Americans, who have been denied representation for decades …”
In our book, “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” my co-author Theda Skocpol and I examine this remarkable grass-roots engagement … In the end, we found that tea partyers combine laudable and effective political engagement with high levels of misinformation and troubling intolerance of their political opponents …
[Tea Party] members we interviewed held wildly inaccurate views of what is in, or not in, public policy. Tea partyers confidently told us that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (“ObamaCare” in their parlance) includes both death panels and the abolition of Medicare – although both claims are flat-out untrue … At times, the level of misinformation in tea party circles reached conspiratorial proportions. At a tea party meeting in Massachusetts, people discussed the possibility that the “smart grid” (an electrical infrastructure improvement approximately as controversial as road repair) was in fact a plan that would give the government control over the thermostats in people’s homes. Where are these smart, educated Americans getting such terribly inaccurate information?
Some of these rumors live primarily on the Internet, but another major source is Fox News. Almost all interviewees I spoke with had a favorite Fox News show – and some retirees reported watching as many as eight hours of Fox News a day. Checking the transcripts, we found that former Fox News host Glenn Beck had indeed raised the weird possibility of federal thermostat control on his show …
At a meeting I attended in Virginia, a visiting lecturer informed local tea party members . . . The United Nations and American authorities at all levels of government, it was claimed, are engaged in a communist conspiracy. In the near term, this scheme would take the form of apparently innocuous measures like new bike paths. But in the long term … would lead to the confiscation of all private property and the herding of Americans citizens into urban ghettos and then concentration camps. “Sustainable development,” the lecturer concluded, was a euphemism for the coming one world government.
Last week I used the words “bug nuts” to describe The Iowa GOP’s proposed party platform, also chock full of conspiracy theories including an assertion that government had made it illegal to do home repairs.
I have been told a Zygote is a person. That’s Zygote, with a capital Z.
At this juncture I have no tolerance for right wingers, theocrats and stupid people. Wish it were otherwise but it can’t be helped. I’m flawed this way.
You do realize that the term Zygote, like the terms: fetus, infant, toddler adolescent, teen, adult, and senior are quantifiers and not qualifiers of biological human life. So biologically speaking a Zygote is like an adult, but just at different stages of life. Even at the oocyte stage there exists 46 unique chromosomes with the entire genetic blueprint of a new individual. Chromosomes contain tightly packed, tightly coiled molecules called DNA. DNA contains all the instructions needed for this single-cell embryo to develop into an adult …
[snip — more stuff about abortion]
Also, for a long time the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), i.e. “the Central Bank’s Central Bank??? backed a gold standard as being the basis of sound monetary policy. Having a gold standard would reign in debt spending because it would constrain Congress/ Fed from creating liabilities out of thin air. So, guess which standard the political actors will support.
