An oil platform in the Gulf owned by Mariner Energy caught fie and exploded this morning. The platform is about 80 miles south of Louisiana. News stories say the oil rig crew were all rescued and so far no one knows if oil is leaking. Mariner Energy is owned by the Apache Corporation.

Already the usual tools are writing passionate screeds about why this doesn’t prove the oil drilling moratorium is justified. These screeds will be popping up online any minute now.

From Think Progress:

Just yesterday, however, the Financial Times reported that employees from Apache and Mariner, along with thousands of oil industry workers, rallied in Houston to protest the Obama administration’s offshore drilling moratorium that was designed as a safety precaution after BP’s disastrous Gulf oil spill. A Mariner Energy employee chastised the Obama administration for its drilling moratorium, which would not have affected the rig that exploded today:

Companies ranging from Chevron to Apache bussed in up to 5,000 employees to the Houston convention centre to underline to Washington the industry’s contribution to the country. [...]

“I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this administration is trying to break us,” said Barbara Dianne Hagood, senior landman for Mariner Energy, a small company. “The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the gulf coast, gulf coast employees and gulf coast residents.”

Apache Corp. recently agreed to buy BP assets in order to help the British oil giant meet its financial obligations as a result of its Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Excuses coming in 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 …

After years of hysteria that included calls to trash the 14th Amendment, we learn there are two-thirds fewer illegal immigrants in the United States today than there were ten years ago. The mighty flood was more of a swollen creek.

The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

Put another way,

After years of rapid growth, illegal immigration is slowing down in California and across the country, with the state’s share of the nation’s estimated 11.1 million undocumented immigrants dropping to 23% from 42% in 1990, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The Pew Survey says the illegal immigrant population peaked at around 12 million in 2007 and has been dropping since.

Fewer illegal immigrants came to the U.S. every year between 2007 and 2009 than in the years in the first half of the decade, the study found. About 300,000 illegal immigrants entered the U.S. each year between 2007 and 2009, a drop from the 850,000 new unauthorized immigrants that entered each year between 2000 and 2005.

Our buddy William Teach notes that 300,000 is still too many, but that’s not going to slow to zero as long as the Koch brothers need someone to clean their pools.

What’s more, the biggest decreases have been in the states that have done the most squawking, including Arizona. Greg Sargent says,

The report also offers more evidence that the criticisms of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and other Republicans about lax enforcement on behalf of the federal government are overblown, let alone hyperbole about an ongoing “invasion” from across the border. While careful to state that “the data in this report do not allow quantification” of all the factors involved in the decline of the illegal immigrant population, it lists major shifts in the level of immigration enforcement and in enforcement strategies,” as one of the major factors that “undoubtedly contribute to the overall magnitude of immigration flows.”

My question is, what will California do if it can’t scapegoat illegal aliens for its economic crisis? Just go into denial, most probably. Maybe New York should send them some shrinks; I think we have a surplus.

Anyway, I submit this is illustrative of most “issues” emanating from the Right in the past several years. Time and time again, real crises are ignored while the Right gins up phony ones for which they propose radical solutions. In no particular order:

• They gin up a phony Social Security crisis and propose privatization.
• They gin up a phony “out-of-control lawsuits” crisis and persuade most state legislatures to pass “tort reform” laws.
• Oh no! Salt-of-the-earth family farmers are being wiped out by the inheritance tax! Not really, but the Right coined the term “death tax” and eliminated it.
• And need I say … Iraq?

And then there are the phony scandals designed to draw attention away from real issues, such as the “climategate scandal” to discredit the scientific data on global climate change.

Meanwhile, real problems fester. They pooh-poohed the health care crisis for years — America has the best health care system in the world, dontcha know? And all the data saying otherwise is part of the World Communist Conspiracy. The Bush Administration and most of the Right refused to take Islamic terrorism seriously until September 11. Then they quickly took possession of the issue and blamed it all on Bill Clinton.

And the timeline of most of these “issues” goes something like this — somewhere, out of sight, someone with control of vast wealth and with the last name of Koch, Scaife, Bradley, and a few others, identifies a “solution.” Then they put the word out to the vast network of think tanks, media outlets and politicians that they own to sell this “solution” to the public. Then it’s a matter of manufacturing a crisis, either out of whole cloth (as with the “death tax”) or sometimes by seizing on some news item that they can distort (climategate; the McDonald’s coffee episode). Then the Noise Machine goes to work beating the public to death with a highly, um, revised version of the story to make people believe something outrageous happened that didn’t really happen. But the “revised” version of the story will pass into public legend.

Pretty soon a small army of PR firms has created dozens of astroturf organizations, which work together with Fox and other right-wing media outlets to mobilize the, um, “low-information” voters who never quite got the critical thinking thing down. Then, with the right propagandists to lead them, the people will march to the voting booth and vote for more Koch-owned politicians to go to Washington and sell them out. Yee haw.

A Staten-Island group called Where To Turn, formed to provide assistance to 9/11 families, has asked that anti- and pro-”mosque” rallies scheduled for lower Manhattan on September 11 be rescheduled out of respect for the mourning families.

Well, you know how the “antis” responded. [Bronx cheer]

FYI, the September 11th Families Association has issued a statement on the Park51 controversy:

The September 11th Families’ Association represents a diverse, multicultural community with many different opinions and views pertaining to 9/11 issues. The Association’s main goal has always been to unite the 9/11 community and as such we recognize the validity of all sides in issues affecting it. We encourage and promote productive dialogue in the hopes of reaching a resolution to sensitive issues such as the proposed building of a mosque and Islamic cultural center near the WTC site.

I take that to mean they polled the members and there was no clear consensus among the victims’ families.

The Families of September 11 have yet to take a position. Same thing with the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. As I’ve said before, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows supports Park51.

I think a lot of why we can’t have a rational discussion about this issue is summed up in a comment on the Poltico, by someone who calls himself “Louisiana Broker” –

Lest We Forget… Allahu Akbar (God is great) were undoubtedly the last words uttered by the Islamic terrorist hijackers…as they they dove their fully fueled, fully loaded (with innocent passengers) airliners into the World Trade Towers…in rapid succession…on 9/11/2001. What irony now…to have a towering,13 story,100 million dollar mosque…casting an ominous shadow over this empty pit of sorrow and grief…where the dead must hear these same words over and over and over again…in a daily call to prayer…literally…”over their dead bodies.”

It’s like time froze for some people.

First: While we will never know for sure if every bone fragment that wasn’t completely pulverized when the towers collapsed has been found, at this point the pit itself has been pretty much dug out and sifted. They’re still sifting the Fresh Kills landfill, I believe, and occasionally finding remains. (Would Pam Geller object to a mosque at the Fresh Kills landfill?) Also, they occasionally find remains in lower Manhattan outside the “ground zero” area, such as bone fragments on roofs. But the Ground Zero site itself was scooped and scraped out awhile back, pretty much down to bedrock. It hasn’t been a smoldering pile of ash for several years now. By 2006, it was a 16-acre, 70-foot-deep hole. Now they’re starting to plant trees.

Second, yes, it finally is a real construction site. Barring unforeseen disaster, I predict that in five years it will mostly be built over, and in ten years it will be hard to tell where the parameters of “ground zero” were. Life goes on.

Anyway, “Louisiana Broker,” who obviously has never been to Manhattan, imagines that Park51 will “tower” over the Ground Zero site. That’s a joke, right? For anyone who doesn’t get it — see “The Usual Hysteria.” Note in particular the links to satellite image of lower Manhattan and the two really, really big buildings that are in between Ground Zero and the Park51 site.

Finally, the builders have been clear there will be no audio system blasting the “call to prayer” outside the center, and even if there were, no way would you be able to hear it two blocks away over the usual city noise.

But the point is that most of the opposition misunderstands the situation. They’re imagining a mosque towering over the Ground Zero they remember from a few years ago, which isn’t even in the ball park of what’s actually going to be built.

I’m still torn about whether to go down there on September 11 to stand with the “pros.” I’m leaving the date open.

Update: This is a very recent video showing the construction on “ground zero” that also shows what the memorial part of the project will look like. As you watch this, keep in mind that people are getting bent out of shape over a measly 13-story building.

The memorial part of the project, a “forest” of 400 trees surrounding two reflecting pools built on the “footprints” of the towers, is supposed to be finished in time for the 10th anniversary. The memorial museum and the One World Trade Center tower (I understand the name “Freedom Tower” is officially nixed) are supposed to be open to the public by 2013.

So the man says combat operations are finished in Iraq, and the nation shrugs. Like anything is going to change.

This doesn’t feel like the end of Vietnam. We were all so over Vietnam. Nobody wanted to talk about it, once it was really over. But Iraq isn’t Vietnam — no draft, no 58,236 U.S. military deaths, far less news coverage. Most Americans were not directly impacted by Iraq, and so it was more of an abstraction for most than Vietnam was.

Well, discuss, if you like.

“The duty of Congress is to provide a method by which the interest of the whole people shall be all that receives consideration.” — Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

An article by Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati at Common Dreams reminded me that one hundred years ago today Theodore Roosevelt delivered his New Nationalism speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, to an audience of Civil War veterans. Weirdly, Collins and Pizzigati do not provide a link to the speech. So here it is: “The New Nationalism,” Theodore Roosevelt.

It’s sad to realize that much of what TR said in that speech would get him branded as a far-left Marxist extremist today, including the rather mild quote at the top of this post. Indeed, this speech makes our current president look downright conservative.

I once heard someone call the “New Nationalism” speech the foundation of modern liberalism, and I have to agree. That’s not to say that TR was completely liberal by our standards today. As a man of his day, he harbored some racist and sexist views. But then, so did Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. We are all creatures of our cultural conditioning.

But this speech lays out the broad principles of liberalism well, better than anything that came before it. And better that most stuff that came after it, for that matter. A shame nobody read this speech to the tea partiers this weekend. Many heads would have exploded.

Elsewhere — I’m a bit tired of doom and gloom, so I’m posting a couple of links to cheerful stories.

Not your ordinary horseshoe — the story of Molly the pony, with adorable pictures.

Shocker — a Christian minister who is actually, um, Christian.

Update: Yes! I knew it! Here is Glenn Beck from this past February at CPAC, calling Theodore Roosevelt a socialist. Beck pointed to this section of the New Nationalism speech –

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. This, I know, implies a policy of a far more active governmental interference with social and economic conditions in this country than we have yet had, but I think we have got to face the fact that such an increase in governmental control is now necessary.

Dana Milbank describes what happened next:

“Is this what the Republican Party stands for?” Beck demanded. He was answered with boos and cries of “no!” “It’s big government, it’s a socialist utopia and we need to address it as if it is a cancer.”

Obama, no doubt, will be delighted to learn that he has been joined in the conservatives’ ire by the Hero of San Juan Hill.

Jonah Goldberg agreed with Beck, utterly mangling what Roosevelt was saying in the process.

At Salon, Mark Benjamin has a postmortem with video of Saturday’s Glenn Beck extravaganza. The piece underscores the point of the last post, which is that the movement has no cause.

[Update: A number of rightie bloggers, including the genuinely demented William A. Jacobson and this more articulate lady, have objected to the previous post as a mischaracterization of the "movement." But you know what they can't do? They can't refute the premise and define the movement's cause, because the movement doesn't have one. It's a movement that exists to fill a psychological need for a movement, and it's a movement being bankrolled by people who think they can manipulate the mob for their own ends. And the true believers can't face up to that.]

Members of the crowd seemed genuinely enthusiastic, but when I talked to them, they uniformly resorted to clichés to explain what the rally was about.

Gerald Chester, a truck driver from Elkhart, Ind., said he came because of Beck. “What he is about is a good thing, restoring honor,” Chester said. “Bringing God back into Americans’ lives is important.” When asked what attendees should do to accomplish this, Chester replied, “That’s a good question.”

Note that the people in the video do not say anything hateful or crazy, and Mark Benjamin isn’t trying to demonize them. He just gives them an opportunity to explain why they are there. The most interesting thing, I think, is the way people reacted when asked what the movement is calling on them to do; what “call to action” they are hearing. You can see in their faces that the question surprised them. They hadn’t thought it all out that far.

Sorta kinda related — Paul Krugman, “It’s Witch Hunt Season.”

“The Americans are poor haters in international affairs because of their innate feeling of superiority over all foreigners….Should Americans begin to hate foreigners wholeheartedly, it will be an indication that they have lost confidence in their own way of life.” — Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Be sure to read Steve Benen’s take on Beckapalooza and the tea party movement and the emptiness of its rhetoric.

This is about a fight for American “liberties.”

That sounds great, too. Who’s against American “liberties”? But I’m still looking for some details. Might this include law-abiding American Muslims exercising their liberties and converting a closed-down clothing store into a community center? No, we’re told, not those kinds of liberties.

This is about giving Americans who work hard and play by the rules more opportunities.

I’m all for that, too. But would these opportunities include the chance for hard-working Americans to bring their kids to the doctor if they get sick, even if the family can’t afford insurance? No, we’re told, not those kinds of opportunities.

It goes on. The point is that (a) the teabaggers don’t actually have a cause, just a lot of resentments; and (2) their slogans and symbols are displays of tribal dominance only. Most teabaggers have no idea what the slogans and symbols mean.

To get a clue about what’s going on with the teabaggers, look to Eric Hoffer and his analysis of mass behavior. Like another wise man, Erich Fromm, Hoffer recognized that people march blindly into mass movements because the group provides something the individual feels is lacking in himself.

In slightly different ways, both Fromm and Hoffer noted that the fanatic was someone trying to escape himself by merging with a group. Within the group the helpless can feel powerful; the confused can find certitude; the guilty can find absolution. Theatrical events such as yesterday’s Beck-a-palooza provide temporary relief from the fears and disappointments gnawing at their psyches.

So, ultimately, a successful mass movement doesn’t need a purpose other than to be a mass movement. It may be that a mass movement so utterly content-free and so obviously contrived as the “tea party” is exceptional, but show me a population of frustrated, disappointed, and resentful people, and there’s a mass movement waiting to happen. All it takes is a “leader” who can tap into those frustrations, disappointments, and resentments.

As Hoffer says, the propagandist does not instill new opinions but “articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. He echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know.’”

So, it doesn’t matter that the tea party has no discernible cause other than its own existence. It’s got everything else a mass movement needs to thrive and grow, especially hate. Hoffer went on and on about the power of hate as a unifying agent.

You don’t have to be Freud to realize how mostly white, mostly middle class, mostly middle-aged and older people can feel that today’s America is not the country they knew when they were much younger, and not like that one bit. Even white privilege, while still around, ain’t what it used to be. To powerful interests manipulating public opinion to their particular advantage, this demographic group is low-hanging fruit.

And with the help of adulation junkies like Palin and Beck who know exactly what to say to bring those ideas and passions to a boil — and have no scruples about saying it even when it’s nonsense — the mob is primed for the master’s command.

[Update: For those who wish to send a donation to the Muslim community in Murfreesboro, there is a donation button on their website.]

Arsonists set fire to some equipment at the construction site of a mosque in Murfreesboro , Tennessee. I guess it was too close to Ground Zero.

The ATM, FBI, and local law enforcement are investigating.

There have been Muslims in the community for 30 years; they have been worshiping in an office building. Members of the Muslim community say they have never experienced hostility until they began to build their new facility.

Opponents of a new Islamic center say they believe the mosque will be more than a place of prayer; they are afraid the 15-acre site that was once farmland will be turned into a terrorist training ground for Muslim militants bent on overthrowing the U.S. government.

“They are not a religion. They are a political, militaristic group,” Bob Shelton, a 76-year-old retiree who lives in the area, told The Associated Press.

Shelton was among several hundred demonstrators who recently wore “Vote for Jesus” T-shirts and carried signs that said “No Sharia law for USA!,” referring to the Islamic code of law.

Others took their opposition further, spray painting a sign announcing the “Future site of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro” and tearing it up.

Earlier this summer opponents criticized the planned mosque at hearings held by the Rutherford County Commission, as supporters held prayer vigils.

At one such prayer vigil, WTVF reported opponents speaking out against construction.

“No mosque in Murfreesboro. I don’t want it. I don’t want them here,” Evy Summers said to WTVF. “Go start their own country overseas somewhere. This is a Christian country. It was based on Christianity.”

So can we call Evy Summers et al. bigots now? If that isn’t bigotry, I don’t know what is.

All you need to know.

Frank Rich writes about “The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party,” meaning Rupert Murdoch and the Koch boys.

All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title: those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R. You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission and child labor laws to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.

Frank doesn’t mention this, but ultra-conservative Christianity has been part of this mix all along, also. Fundamentalist preachers railed against child labor laws, for example. I think they misread the part where Jesus said “Suffer the little children …”

Anyway, the Koch boys’ daddy was crazy, too, and warned of a Communist takeover of the government back in the day. Frank says you could dig up Koch Senior’s opinions from 50 years ago and read them verbatim to any tea party gathering today, and they’d fit right in.

I’ve got some quibbles with some of what Rich writes, though. He says that Jane Meyer’s recent portrait of the Koch brothers in the New Yorker caused a stir among “Manhattan’s liberal elite,” who associated the Koch family with cultural philanthropy and didn’t know about their political activities. If that’s true, then “Manhattan’s liberal elite” have had their heads up their asses for the past several years. Rank and file progressive activists were not surprised at all.

But the people who really have no clue about the puppet masters are the puppets themselves, such as the fools who clogged up Washington today to see Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. If you try to explain to them they’re being manipulated to work against their own best interests by a small cadre of mega-billionaires (more than just those three, of course) they start sputtering about George Soros. But, as Rich says, “Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money.” The Koch boys stand behind the scenery, pulling the strings. And, unlike the Koch boys, Soros’s causes are not tied to how he makes his money.

When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools — in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes. He hasn’t changed. As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business. While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).

Rich shows he is still a couple of steps behind when he says there is still a difference between “mainstream conservatism” and the Koch’s “fringe” agenda. There is no “mainstream” conservatism; just a few fossils left over from the Time Before Glenn Beck who haven’t realized they are dead yet. The fringe is the only potent “conservatism” active at the moment. “The Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda,” Rich writes. Make that past tense, Rich; “morphed.”

But the real issue, as Rich says, is that working “Americans are aiding and abetting their [Koch, Koch and Murdoch] selfish interests.” Those rubes on the Washington mall today know that something is very wrong, which is true, but they don’t see how they are enabling the very forces that are making America more and more dysfunctional. They wear T-shirts proclaiming “liberty” and “don’t tread on me” even as they chain themselves to their corporate lords. Pathetic.

Update: A crowd estimate commissioned by CBSNews put the size of the crowd at Beck-a-looza at 87,000. See also Dave Niewert, “Snoring Honor: Beck’s big rally just a long-winded and boring sermon. And boy, was the crowd white.”

Update update: Scenes From a Glenn Beck Festival