Category Archives: Wingnuts Being Wingnuts

Righties Declare Victory in the War on Women

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However, at the moment I don’t feel conquered. A bit tired, but not conquered.

Speaking of wars — history tells us that at the end of the first day of the Battle of Shiloh, Confederate General Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard telegraphed Richmond that he had won “a complete victory.” History also tells us that Union General William Tecumseh Sherman also assumed the Confederates had won. He sought out his commanding officer, General Ulysses S. Grant, to receive his orders for retreat.

Sherman found Grant hunkered under a tree, in the rain, smoking a cigar. “Well, Grant, we’ve had the devil’s own day, haven’t we?” Sherman said. And Grant, after another puff of the cigar, said, “Yes. Lick ’em tomorrow, though.” There would be no retreat.

The next day Union troops routed the Confederates and won the day, and the battle. Beauregard’s premature assumption of victory haunted the rest of his military career. Although, truth be told, his association with the Confederacy ended up being a worse career move.

I always think of General Beauregard whenever people declare victory a bit prematurely. At the Village Voice, Roy Edroso describes rightbloggers taking virtual victory laps and even performing psychological post-mortems on the conquered Left.

[Rosen’s] comments are a symptom of an underlying intolerance for values that exist outside pockets of liberal majority,” claimed Right Speak. That is, they represent (deep breath) “the mindset that traditional, conservative culture is bad as it exists outside the two coasts and other liberal centers of thought, such as higher education, it is dangerous, because the more it is allowed to be considered as mainstream, the more acceptable it will seem to all when legislation is passed one step at a time that eliminates and erodes many of the values the rest of the country holds.”

“I feel the left is riddled with insecurity,” explained AJ Strata. “They are intimidated by the rich, the powerful (see our military), the successful (another form of rich), and the happy. They thrive on sustaining the moment they revolted from parental oppression (be it religion, sexual orientation, taste in clothes, whatever). Why they even consider having or raising kids is beyond me. Maybe it is more of that lashing out and trying to prove they were right when they went full anarchist to leave the nest.” Whoever would imagine there were enough such people to elect a President? America must be in a very grave state.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mittens is calling Hilary Rosen’s remarks an “early birthday present.” So far, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Mittens have told us why Mrs. Mittens has been deprived of the “Dignity of Work.”

It may be a few days before we know if the “mommy war” flap put any dent in the gender gap working against Mittens, or if the rightbloggers are pulling a General Beauregard. But if things work out the way I suspect they will, I have some advice for them:

Today’s Must Reads

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Krugman, “The Gullible Center.” All hail Krugman.

Motoko Rich, “Federal Funds to Train the Jobless Are Drying Up.” It begins:

With the economy slowly reviving, an executive from Atlas Van Lines recently visited Louisville, Ky., with good news: the company wanted to hire more than 100 truck drivers ahead of the summer moving season.

But a usually reliable source of workers, the local government-financed job center, could offer little help, because the federal money that local officials had designated to help train drivers was already exhausted. Without the government assistance, many of the people who would be interested in applying for the driving jobs could not afford the $4,000 classes to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. Now Atlas is struggling to find eligible drivers.

I want some libertarian to tell me why the glorious Free Market (blessings upon It) isn’t finding a way to train workers. However, I’m sure we’ll be told that as soon as government is “out of the way” with its dependency-creating job training programs, the free markets will take over and everything will be fine. Sigh. See also Zandar.

Alex Pareene, “The Coming War on Mormon Jokes.” Now that Mittens is almost certainly the nominee, righties are closing ranks in support of Mormonism and accusing lefties of anti-Mormon bigotry. Next headline news: “Sun to Set in the West.”

Now They’re Saying We’re Insects?

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A few days ago a Gallup poll found a widening gender gap in swing states.

The biggest change came among women under 50. In mid-February, just under half of those voters supported Obama. Now more than six in 10 do while Romney’s support among them has dropped by 14 points, to 30%. The president leads him 2-1 in this group.

Romney’s main advantage is among men 50 and older, swamping Obama 56%-38%.

One poll does not an election make, but this was a Gallup poll, and I understand Gallup tends to overstate Republican support. But instead of trying to reassure women voters that the GOP is not anti-woman, the freaking idiot Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus compared us to insects.

Well, for one thing, if the Democrats said we had a war on caterpillars, and mainstream media outlet talked about the fact that Republicans have a war on caterpillars, then we have problems with caterpillars. The fact of the matter is it’s a fiction and this started a war against the Vatican that this president pursued. He still hasn’t answered Archbishop Dolan’s issues with Obama world and Obamacare, so I think that’s the first issue.

This is right up there with the claim, repeated many times on the Right, that the reason African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats is that they’ve been snookered into staying on the Democrat “plantation” by food stamps and welfare. That righties don’t realize this as a slap in the face of African American voters exemplifies why African Americans vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

Now Reince Priebus is saying the war on women is a media fiction that women, apparently, are falling for out of stupidity. And apparently our concerns are of no more importance than an insect’s. This is not reassuring us that you’ve got a clue, Reince.

Of course, there are women who do support Republicans. Women who diss their own gender are a common phenomenon. (I blame their fathers, but that’s another rant.) This columnist at the New York Daily News is an example.

The truly compelling — and frightening — finding from the Pew poll on the gender gap isn’t about abortion or contraception. It’s that women prefer big government solutions. And this is where feminism meets its match.

The percentage of women who favor bigger government providing more services outpaced men by 9 points in 2011, and has since at least 2000, with widest gap in 2004 at 12 points.

Women, it seems, are falling for the left’s “we’ll take care of you” economic paternalism, the insistence that women need the state, or wealthy taxpayers, to rescue them from a life of oppression, squalor and servitude.

The way I’d put it is that women are more realistic about their own vulnerabilities than men. They are much more likely to actively seek emotional support systems and to realize that sometimes they need help from others. Men are more likely to be in denial that they need anything from anyone else, which is a big reason why men commit 75 percent of suicides. When the fickle finger of fate points at men, they are less emotionally prepared to deal with it.

For most of us, beyond our friends there are big, ominous powers out there capable of either helping us or jerking us around. The government is one of those powers. Employers are another one. For some, Church is a third. According to Republicans, the only one of those likely to harm you is government.

But in their real lives, women are far more likely to have been jerked around and otherwise treated shabbily by their employers than by the government. Government can be annoying and unhelpful sometimes, but it usually doesn’t make your day to day life a living hell the way a bad employer can. And these days, even Catholic women are ignoring their Church on “women’s” issues.

So when anyone, including another woman, sneers about the left’s “we’ll take care of you” economic paternalism, it does not resonate with the real-world experience of most women. Sure, some fall for it, such as the Tea Party ladies who want to keep government out of their Medicare. But I think more women would vote for the “paternalism” of government over that of their employers when it comes to, say, why they are on the pill.

I don’t think most women look to Democrats to create a government that will “take care” of us. But when Republicans clearly take the side of corporations and churches over individuals, that ought to scare the stuffing out of us. And I think it is scaring the stuffing out of some of us.

And it ought to scare the stuffing out of men, too, but in my experience white men at least are more likely to be loyal to the powers that be. Yes, there are many exceptions, but on the whole I think I am right. This is another reason they are more likely to commit suicide when their trust is betrayed.

The fact that Republicans can’t seem to imagine why it would be bothersome to a woman to have to get a permission slip from their employers to get their pills paid for tells me these people cannot be trusted.

Government programs that benefit the poor, especially children, don’t impact the day-to-day lives of most women nearly as much as programs that give our employers more power to jerk us around or corporations more power to rip us off with impunity. And messing with our health care is the last straw. Steve Benen:

As we’ve reported on the show many times, the effort on the part of GOP policymakers at the federal and state level to undermine women’s health care is as severe as anything we’ve seen from a major party in many years. Unlike the war on caterpillars, Republican efforts are real.

I’ll spare you the full list of every bill in every state, but the policy offensive is, well, offensive. Restricting contraception; cutting off Planned Parenthood; state-mandated, medically-unnecessary transvaginal ultrasounds; forcing physicians to lie to patients about abortion and breast cancer; abortion taxes; abortion waiting periods; forcing women to tell their employers why they want birth control, going after prenatal care, possible abortion permission slips … this is no minor policy initiative.

For the chairman of the Republican National Committee to dismiss concerns as “fiction” only adds insult to injury.

Eric Boehlert documents that righties are in massive denial about how much they are hurting themselves with women. They think we are insects? Let’s show ’em how hard we can sting.

This Wacky World

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It’s a good news/bad news sort of day. For example, the Connecticut Senate voted to abolish the death penalty. Score one for civilization. On the other hand, the Arizona Senate is considering a bill that would eliminate programs that promote energy efficiency. Why? Because “clean energy programs in Arizona are a plot by the United Nations to create a single world government in order to control people’s lives.”

Maybe we could just sell Arizona to some other country. I’m thinking China would take it if Mexico won’t.

Coca-Cola announced it is withdrawing support from ALEC in the face of a threatened progressive boycott. I’m starting to think that if we’d had social media 30 years ago the right-wing coup would never have gotten off the ground.

On the other hand, Krugman sees ALEC influence in New Jersey.

John Cole has a long and thoughtful post about why he switched from being a wingnut to being a sane person. As he explains why he used to support the Bush Administration, key part to me is “I believed it. I identified with it. It was part of who I was for years. It was my deference to authoritarianism after years in the military. It was tribalism.”

This is why reason doesn’t work on wingnuts. They are a tribe, and wingnuttiness is part of their tribal, and hence personal, identity. Any disagreement with the tribe, any attempt to show that everything they stand for is nonsense and lies, is an existential threat that must be stamped out by any means necessary.

So no matter how patiently one might try to show them that whatever they believe is irrational and a pack of lies, they will simply retreat further into la-la land and retort with whatever non sequiturs and ad hominems they find handy.

Cole says that what finally got to him was the sheer meanness of the Right.

And while Republicans may very well have been crazy for decades, the outright ugliness, I think, has escalated beyond measure. The hideous treatment of Graeme Frost was the final straw, I guess. It was just the last, final, “WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?” moment. You see the same thing from the same folks as they viciously attack Trayvon Martin for his horrible sin of being gunned down in cold blood.

Something like that seems to have happened to Charles Johnson back in 2009, which in many ways was a more remarkable conversion. I don’t remember that Balloon Juice was ever as hard, screaming, foaming-at-the-mouth Right as Little Green Footballs used to be. It’s like Johnson woke up from a bad dream.

Speaking of bad dreams — Item One —

A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were “a felony war crime.”

What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were “prohibited” under U.S. law — “even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.”

Item two — Curveball goes public —

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who openly admitted to fabricating intelligence about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, is breaking his silence with appearances in a BBC documentary that began airing this past Sunday and will conclude next Sunday.

Not that I expect many people to notice …

Big Gubmint Is Coming for Your Women

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Joan Walsh has a fascinating column out about why right wingers chose to declare war on women, right now, in 2012, even as it clearly is working against them politically. She presents the argument that on some probably unconscious level they fear that Big Gumbint is trying to steal their womenfolk.

I want to emphasize that this is probably subconscious. But what we’re looking at are deeply insecure men (and some women) who resent, even fear, anything that helps women be less dependent on men. Their nonsensical rhetoric about how “government dependency” is tearing families apart actually makes some sense if you understand that somewhere in their heads, “tearing families apart” translates into “independent women will reject me”

Be sure to read Walsh’s whole column for the argument.

Sanford Cops Wanted to Arrest Zimmerman

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Here’s a new wrinkle in the Trayvon Martin killing, from the Miami Herald —

Despite public claims that there wasn’t enough probable cause to make a criminal case in the Trayvon Martin killing, early in the investigation the Sanford Police Department requested an arrest warrant from the Seminole County State Attorney’s office, the special prosecutor in the case told The Miami Herald on Tuesday.

A Sanford Police incident report shows the case was categorized as “homicide/negligent manslaughter.”

The state attorney’s office held off pending further review, The Miami Herald has learned.

I don’t know what they were going to “review,” since there was a shocking inattention to collecting evidence at the scene.

The development is in stark contrast to the statements repeatedly made by Bill Lee, the Sanford police chief who has since stepped aside and was lambasted for his handling of the case. Lee publicly insisted that there was no probable cause to arrest Zimmerman, leading many critics to say he came across more like a defense attorney for the security buff.

“Zimmerman provided a statement claiming he acted in self defense which at the time was supported by physical evidence and testimony,” Lee wrote in a memo posted on the city’s website. “By Florida Statute, law enforcement was PROHIBITED from making an arrest based of the facts and circumstances they had at the time.”

Yesterday ABC News reported —

The lead homicide investigator in the shooting of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin recommended that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter the night of the shooting, multiple sources told ABC News.

But Sanford, Fla., Investigator Chris Serino was instructed to not press charges against Zimmerman because the state attorney’s office headed by Norman Wolfinger determined there wasn’t enough evidence to lead to a conviction, the sources told ABC News.

Police brought Zimmerman into the station for questioning for a few hours on the night of the shooting, said Zimmerman’s attorney, despite his request for medical attention first. Ultimately they had to accept Zimmerman’s claim of self defense. He was never charged with a crime.

Serino filed an affidavit on Feb. 26, the night that Martin was shot and killed by Zimmerman, that stated he was unconvinced Zimmerman’s version of events.

Possibly the Sanford police department has entered the “every man for himself” ass-covering phase of the investigation. As in, “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not the one who let the jerk go.”

The Right, which has been on a sickening “smear the dead kid” binge for the past several days, has now seized upon the information that George Zimmerman is a registered Democrat. Ed Kilgore: “aha! The whole thing was a Blue Team fragging of some sort, and nothing Real Americans should care about.”

Sanford Police Keep Digging That Hole …

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George Zimmerman’s lawyer chickened out of an appearance on MSNBC’s The Last Word — but Lawrence O’Donnell asked his questions anyway.

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The Sanford police are leaking every smear of Trayvon Martin they can think of to justify the miscarriage of justice they are perpetrating. Trayvon is being portrayed as a juvenile delinquent who had been suspended from school for possession of an empty baggie that may have contained marijuana! So, obviously, shooting him was justified somehow.

Now the police are claiming that 140-pound Trayvon Martin had “decked” the 200-plus-pound Zimmerman with one punch and was pounding his head into the pavement when Zimmerman shot him. Zimmerman suffered a broken nose and head injuries! Although oddly, he didn’t need immediate medical attention. He went to a doctor the next day, police say.

But you know what doesn’t seem to exist?

  • Photographs or medical reports of Zimmerman’s injuries
  • Photographs of the crime scene, including the state of Zimmernan’s clothes.
  • Zimmerman’s clothes, showing grass stains and other evidence that he was pushed to the ground.

Seriously, Sanford police? You expect us to just believe you that this happened, when the injured party can’t refute it, because he is dead?

Un-bee-lee-va-bull.

Even if actual evidence comes to light that Trayvon Martin had “decked” Zimmerman, as Charles Blow says in the video above, “If you start a fight and are losing it, you don’t get to claim self-defense.”

See also “What Everyone Needs To Know About The Smear Campaign Against Trayvon Martin (1995-2012)” and “Dishonoring Trayvon Martin.”

From the NRA to George Zimmerman, via ALEC

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Paul Krugman writes about a connection between FLorida’s “stand your ground” law and the infamous ALEC.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

ALEC, of course, is also behind a lot of anti-union, anti-consumer protection and anti-environmental protection bills that have been popping up in state legislatures by the truckload. ALEC is funded by several big corporations — including Koch Industries — and interest groups. It invites state legislators and their families to all-expenses-paid “conferences” at luxury resorts, gives them the boilerplate of bills it wants to become law, and even coaches the saps how to sell the bills to constituents and other legislators. This accounts for a rash of nearly identical bills being introduced in many state legislatures at once. (See, for example, four ALEC bills vetoed by the governor of Minnesota last month.)

Krugman continues,

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Do read all of Krugman’s column, because he provides a lot of details we all need to know, and I don’t want to re-run the whole column here. Just go read it.

Sorta kinda related — be sure to also read “The Outsourced Party”

Great Retorts

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Charles Pierce has a first-rate rant on the Trayvon Martin murder (yeah, I’m calling it murder) that includes this retort to Geraldo Rivera’s “Every time you see someone sticking up a 7-11, the kid is wearing a hoodie.”

“And every time I see someone convicted of ripping off pension funds, he’s wearing a $500 suit.”

Actually, I don’t think that’s true. It’s more like a $1500-$2500 suit, if not higher. It may have been awhile since Mr. Pierce shopped for a suit. But it’s a good point.

Someone asked Newt about polls that say many Republicans think the President is a Muslim. And Newt actually said, “Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he’s Muslim]?” And John Cole asked, “Why Does Newt Gingrich Behave in Ways That People Would Think He is an Asshole?”

And finally — it surprises me that Rick Ungar writes for Forbes, since the rest of their writers are obvious Koch Brother puppet think tank hacks. Ungar tends to get his facts straight, however, so do read “The Giant Medicare Fraud Committed By Congress: Repeal Of The IPAB.” Compare/contrast to this insipid puff piece on the imbecilic Paul Ryan at Fox.

For more on IPAB and why it’s a good thing, and why Big Pharma wants to kill it, see Sarah Klliff.

A Crazy Gun Law Too Far?

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Last night Ed Schulz interviewed Dan Gelber, a former Florida state senator. Gelber had been in the Florida legislature when the “stand your ground” law passed; he was one of the few senators who voted against it. He said that during the legislative session he asked repeatedly for the name of a single person in Florida who had been unfairly prosecuted for defending himself. And no one could produce such a person.

In other words, there was no wrong that needed to be remedied by the “stand your ground” law. Nothing was broke that needed to be fixed. “The NRA is a victim of their [own] success in that they have won all the major battles and look for these fringe issues now” Gelber said. “This was a solution in search of a problem.”

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Gail Collins said essentially the same thing in a column a few days ago.

There is nothing so dangerous as a lobbying organization that’s running out of stuff to lobby about.

I am thinking in particular of the National Rifle Association. These people are really in desperate straits. The state legislatures are almost all in session, but some of them have already pushed the gun-owner-rights issue about as far as it can go. You can only legalize carrying a concealed weapon in church once.

This year, in search of new worlds to conquer — or at least to arm — a couple of states are giving serious attention to bills that would allow gun owners to carry their concealed weapons in places like day-care centers and school buses.

People, do you think there is a loud public outcry for more guns on school buses? I truly believe that this is all the product of a desperate N.R.A., trying to show its base that there are still lots of new battles to be won.

On the other hand, a few hours after videos of then-Gov. Jeb Bush signing and endorsing the “stand your ground” law popped up on TeeVee and the web, Jebbie endorsed Mittens for president. Coincidence?

For example, see the Ed Show again, about 53 seconds into this clip:

Heh. Anyway — Lately we’ve seen several examples of the Right pushing too far and getting smacked for it. Susan G. Komen for the Fail is still smarting from its recent public humiliation. Several scheduled events have been postponed or canceled, and several executives have resigned.

It may be awhile before we get a clear picture of how much Rush Limbaugh hurt himself with his Sandra Fluke rant, but the Right remains in denial about what happened and is unlikely to moderate its behavior in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, right-wing state legislatures continue to pass more and more ridiculously crazy anti-abortion laws, and in some place a backlash is well underway.

Political processes are broken and have failed to protect us from right-wing insanity, but it appears a lot of people are learning to fight back on their own. The Crazy may finally have exceeded its bounds.