We've seen this right-wing terrorism before. From 1992 until Newt took the House.

America has just seen the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion zealot and a well-known white supremacist shooting down a security guard in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum within roughly one week.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. We were warned. The Department of Homeland Security released a report (initiated by the Bush administration) that recognized growing right-wing extremism. Oddly the conservative media took umbrage at that report, but the two killers Scott Roeder and James Von Brunn certainly validated it. So where is this coming from?

Paul Krugman reported something extremely important Friday.

Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that “some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have been virtually erased.

These people are inciting violence for the purpose of regaining political control, the same political control recently lost by the conservative Republicans when their administration of government was determined to be a complete failure. The right-wing conservative media is stoking violence and hiding behind freedom of speech and freedom of the press to do it. Then they are denying they told anyone to go out and kill, even while they excoriate the Obama administration in terms not heard since they previously treated Bill Clinton the same way.

What the American right-wing politicians and media are doing amounts to terrorism. They are instigating and promotion it and letting their fringe elements individually decide when and where to act on it. Then they the pundits and politicians deny they approve of those actions even while urging others like Terry Randall of Operation Rescue fame.

There are limits to freedom of speech and the press. The classic example is that it is criminal to yell fire in a crowded theater. That's not free speech. It's a felony.

Dave Niewert has just published an excellent and timely new book on the American right wing extremists called "The Eliminationists." In it he makes the point that American conservative politicians used to advocate conservative policies, but they were generally law-and-order people who rejected crazy fringe ideas and condemned violence. Their rhetoric was that of sane careful administrators even if conservative. But that changed in the early 90's. Led by the talk radio rhetoric, the mainstream Republican conservatives adopted the rhetoric and many of the ideas held by the fringe groups such as the radical anti-abortionists (Eric Rudolph) and the militia and Patriot movements, so that now there is no difference in rhetoric between mainstream conservative politicians and the radical right wing militia groups and the anti-abortion extremists. The only difference is that the mainstream conservative politicians stopped short of picking up guns themselves and killing someone.

But the result of the increase in inflammatory conservative rhetoric on right-wing TV and radio has been seen by the fringe right wing movements as giving them from the mainstream culture permission to act on the extreme rhetoric and crazy stories.

Bob Somerby at the Daily Howler points out that this all happened before, the last time there was a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress. It included one crazy who crashed his light plane into the White House to try to kill President Clinton. Much of the extreme rhetoric and violence died down, though, as soon as Newt Gingrich orchestrated the takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994.

That's what this is all about. The right-wing has been kicked out of power because they can't run government effectively. They have no policies for America. But they have a way to regain power, and it is through terrorism, extremist rhetoric and sowing massive amounts of fear in the public. Then they offer themselves as the only possible cure for the very terrorism they are stoking. And the mainstream media lets them get away with it without comment. In fact, they spent two years (1998 - 2000) gratuitously trashing and making up lies about the Democratic nominee for President until the Presidential election was so close the right-wing packed US Supreme Court could swing the 2000 election to the Republican candidate. The trashing of the President and 2000 Presidential candidate stopped when Bush was elected. Bush got a love fest for eight years except during the proof of each of his worst disasters when the media couldn't avoid reporting negatively on him. Funny thing. It started again as soon as Barack Obama took office. It has started slow, as the media finds its stories and themes, but it was building process under Clinton also. But we are seeing the same pattern.

Think history will repeat itself? I do. It's not a conspiracy, it's cultural. The institutionalized powers and the super wealthy in America feel threatened and displaced by a Democratic party government that actually works to benefit average Americans. They will remove the Democrats. Again.

Institutionalizing conservative tyranny

Elections have consequences. We've been told that, but Isiah J. Poole has a graphic that makes it very, very clear what those consequences are. Go look at his article.

Here is his key point:

The conservative bloc on the [Supreme] court is a rogue band of ideological thugs who care less about strict constructionism and all of the other conservative legal buzzwords they use, but are all about furthering a conservative political agenda. [Snip]

The right understands the importance of a compliant judiciary in consolidating their political power, and they have made populating the judiciary with like-minded justices a cornerstone of their agenda. As a result, not only are conservatives on the precipice of having a decades-long hammerlock on the Supreme Court, but they have institutionalized a conservative tilt throughout the federal judiciary

The right-wing tilt of the Supreme Court is just the most obvious problem. Look at the graphic at the bottom of Poole's article. It shows the Reich-wing tilt of the entire federal judiciary.

These are lifetime appointments. It will take decades to bring back a judiciary that believes in the Rule of Law rather than the conservative ideology.

Right-wing pundits not happy with the Republican field of Presidential candidates

Digby has a clear understanding of why the right-wing pundits are so wigged out by the Huckabee candidacy. She explains why the current field of candidates is exactly what the Republican Party should have expected:

The conservative evangelicals have always wanted one of their own, a real life conservative southern preacher, and damned if they didn't just wake up and realize that they have one. Rudy McRomney can't compete with that. The big money boyz insist that the Republicans nominate somebody who knows exactly who the boss really is, the racists want a mean bastard and the operatives desperately require somebody who can win over swing voters. Unless the Christian Right decides to take one for the team, the Republicans have quite a dilemma. [Snip]

"[Peggy]Noonan writes:

The Republican race looks--at the moment--to be determined primarily by one thing, the question of religious faith. In my lifetime faith has been a significant issue in presidential politics, but not the sole determinative one. Is that changing? If it is, it is not progress.

Did she think these people were joking at those rallies when they said this?

As evangelical Christians, our main concern is the citizenship that is ours in heaven that has been purchased by our Savior. But we also understand that we have a responsibility here on this earth, so long as we are alive, until the Lord returns, to show God's love and to contend for God's righteousness -- and to tell this world that through His Law, and through His Word, God is trying to tell us something for our good, for our health, for our holiness. And we, as Christians, need to be active in the public sphere, not just to impose some kind of worldview or ideology, but to be salt and light, because that's not my idea -- that's how we were commissioned by the Lord Jesus Christ.

We need to speak as Christian citizens

The religious right may just have finally tuned in to the fact that there was a candidate who spoke that language and they have decided to defy their betters in the salons of New York and DC (and TV Ministries too) to vote for the guy they feel represents them. As ye sow, so shall ye reap, my friends.

Not that it matters. Even if the GOP establishment manages to take out Huckabee, the wild-eyed blue state nutballs and robots they have competing against him won't fare any better. The only people who are deeply attached to the GOP at this point are hedge fund managers, denizens of the Village and the conservative evangelicals. Putting up Rudy McRomney won't change that.

I wrote yesterday of the alliance that the money Republicans and the Religious Republicans had made since about 1980. The reaction of the urban conservative pundits to the rise of Michael Huckabee as the leading contender for the Republican nomination for President is exactly what the religious conservatives have expected from the alliance. Up to now they have had East Coast, Midwest or California Urban financial Republicans or Texas technocrats who affected a bit of a religious tone grafted on them to make them presentable to the religious right. Now, in Mike Huckabee, they are getting one of their own and they expect the alliance with Urban Republicans to work so that Huckabee can compete and have his run for the Presidency.

The urban conservative pundits are shocked, shocked I tell you, that the religious Southern hicks should actually expect one of their own to be nominated. The religious right is learning that what was to them an alliance with the Republican economic conservatives was really a parasitical relationship in which the economic conservatives used the religious right and never gave them anything except sweet words. The economic Republicans have been using the Religious right and never expected to get the bill.

With Huckabee, the bill has been presented. Now we get to watch as the wheels come off the alliance. The economic Republicans simply aren't going to give total control of their party to the religious hicks, and as the reaction to Romney's Mormon religion has demonstrated, the religious right won't accept anything less than control of the party and a shot at control of America.

That's what I think we are seeing played out in the the Republican battle for the Republican nomination for President.

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Addendum 9:40 AM CST
Mark Kleiman addressed the "...gibbering fury directed by establishment Republicans at Mike Huckabee." Mark answers the question "why?" as being "class prejudice, social snobbery masquerading as intellectual snobbery." That, and the "Momey-cons" are really afraid of what a President Huckabee would do to their money.

Mark's opinion is that the "Money-cons" consider Globalism as being as close to a religion as they will accept, and a President Huckabee is way too populist for those people to trust. Huckabee would support an economically autarchic America, with high trade barriers. If Huckabee gets the nomination, then the Money-cons will stay home and not vote in November 2008. The result would be to elect a President Clinton or Obama by really large margins - a landslide - of a level that would also bring in five or six net new Democratic Senators and perhaps two dozen more Democrats into the House.

That seems possible, I don't know how likely. Still, I like the sounds of that scenario. What I don't like, but really feel is very likely, it the prediction made by Atrios.

We need a Democratic president so that the Republicans and their Blue Dog allies in Congress are finally inspired to take back the executive power grabs that they temporarily thought were necessary for the survival of the nation.

What this will mean in practice is that Democratic president will face a firestorm of "scandal" which will make Monica Madness pale in comparison. The powers that Bush claimed will be turned against a Democratic president and will likely be their undoing.

And this scenario is much better than the alternative.

I expect the Democratic nominee to win as President. I expect the voters to soundly reject whoever the Republicans finally decide to offer, because the Republican Party has proven to the voters that it is corrupt and incompetent. And I agree with Atrios, that one aspect of the Democratic win will be a firestorm of scandal that will make the Bill Clinton presidency look like a walk in the park on a sunshiny day.

That's all less important that the way power has been centralized in the Executive Department under Bush. The centralization of power in the federal government in the Executive Branch that exceeds anything America has ever seen, and it has been accompanied by a major diminishing of Congress. Instead of a Constitutional democracy America has moved a long way towards being a Monarch with an advisory committee called Congress that has no real function beyond just raising the taxes demanded by the Monarch to fight his wars.

Nixon attempted the same centralization of federal power in the Presidency that Bush has achieved, but Nixon's effort was derailed when he was forced to resign to avoid being impeached. This is no longer 1974, though. The shift of the Republican Party to the extreme radical right, accompanied by their efforts to eliminate the moderate Republicans has changed the structure of American government. The new structure has been solidified by the modern methods of gerrymandering congressional districts permitting elected representatives to stay in office as long as they like. Those changes mean that the Congress cannot impeach and remove a President.

Impeachment was not possible (but close) when the Republicans tried to remove Bill Clinton, and it will be less possible in the future as the Democrats become more disciplined as a party. Impeaching the President was the one real power Congress had over the President beyond limited control of the budget.

That imbalance of power between the Monarch President and Congress has to be corrected if America is to remain a democratic nation. I'm not sure I see how it will occur.

We are heading into what the Chinese historians call "interesting times." There's really no telling what the outcome will be.

Why hasn't America been attacked by terrorist since 9/11?

To answer that question you can take the Bush administration's self-serving excuses. Those are that 1. "We are fighting them in Iraq so that they won't come over here.

Yeah, right. We invaded a country without a connection to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and only after we invaded and occupied their country, destroyed their government and economy, did they create an all new set of terrorists to try to force our occupying forces out. This stops terrorists from attacking America -- how? The mechanism is, to put it politely, highly unclear.

What is clear is that by invading Iraq with no justifiable reason the American Republican Party was starting an unnecessary war that would create its own opponents. the opponents, facing the most powerful military in the world they adopted asymmetric warfare and invited outside help for training and materials from existing terrorist organizations.

Then, not only did the Bush administration Republicans motivate the creation of bands of insurgents who had to use what the Republicans call "terrorist" techniques of fighting, they stupidly failed to control Iraq while they destroyed the Iraqi Army and Police who might have stopped the growth of the insurgency.

Now Iraq has numerous militias and insurgent groups using asymmetric warfare on each other and on the occupying American troops. The American troops in Iraq are a great recruiting and fundraising tool for the insurgents and militias, and the fighting teaches them the best and most effective techniques with which to take on the most powerful military in the world.

The so-called terrorists in Iraq were not their before the Republican invasion of that country. They are a creation of the U.S. Republican Party militarists and nationalists. They wouldn't have been there had George Bush and Dick Cheney not created them!

Then we get Bush excuse no. 2. The terrorists have not attacked America because the newly created Department of Homeland Security has greatly increased America's defenses against terrorists.

It is hard to know whether DHS has actually been in any way successful, since The Bush administration keeps everything behind a wall of secrecy. The secrecy itself is a major destruction of open democratic government, but the secrecy seems primarily intended to protect the Republican Party rather than to keep "terrorists" from learning the more effectively attack America.

But the secrecy is doing the job it was intended to do. It keeps Americans from knowing what their government is doing to them.

For a more extensive description of how effective DHS has been, go read Amy Zegart at the Reality-Based community.

This is all an American-centered view, focused on why there has been no follow-up to the 9/11 attack. But there is more information to look at, and James Wimberly asks the next great question - Why Hasn't Spain Been Attacked Since 11-M?, then provides a short set of answers.

Gen. Petreaus was asked the key question during his interview Monday. Is America safer for the invasion of Iraq? Gen Petreaus waffled and did not answer at that time, getting a rebuke from his boss, George Bush. More lies and secrecy from the Bush administration.

Democracy does not work when the leaders of the government are allowed to keep their actions secret and lie to the public. Bush, Cheney and the Republican Party are working hard to destroy the American democracy and replace it with an authoritarian government run by plutocrats like themselves. There is no other explanation for what is happening.

Not only are we not safer from terrorists than we were September 11, 2001, they have successfully changed the subject to the (relatively minor) threat of Islamic-based terrorism while they put basic American democracy into grave threat!

Petreaus, Crocker say the plan is to stay in Iraq until Bush leaves office

Petreaus has promised that there will be some troop reductions - a handful of Marines within a month or so and beginning next April sufficient Army Brigades and Marine Regimental Combat Teams will be withdrawn to bring the number of U.S. troops in Iraq at roughly 130,000. That's the same level as when the surge started.

Then, if the Iraqi Army can replace the Americans, the number may possibly (were his fingers crossed?) be down to about 100,000. From the LA Times:

The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically.

"Bush has found his exit strategy," said Kenneth M. Pollack, a former government Mideast specialist now at the Brookings Institution. As Petraeus met with lawmakers and unveiled chart upon chart showing declining troop levels, the U.S. commander seemed to have opened a new discussion about how the United States would wind up its commitment to Iraq. Yet viewed more closely, his presentation, and that of U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, were better suited to the defense of an earlier strategy: "stay the course."

Petraeus said the government might be able to consider withdrawing some troops below pre-"surge" levels under some circumstances. But Crocker's emphasis was on how long it would take Iraq to chart its new path, and on the necessity for American support into this dim and distant future.

As Bush has promised since someone finally convinced him that his personal war in Iraq is a disaster - he is going to punt the Iraqi problem down to the next President.

The only two reasons for this are to provide something resembling a positive legacy for Bush when he leaves office, and to leave it to the Democratic President who will replace him to pull the troops out of Iraq and face the right-wing demagogues yelling "You Lost Iraq!"

That is a benefit for Bush and a benefit for the Republicans who want to run on national security. That offers no benefit to the Iraqi nation or people, and no benefit to America. But that has never bothered Republicans, has it?

What do each of these people have in common?

• Vince Foster


• Media Whores online.
  Wikipedia has an article on the watchdog site which closed in 2004. The right-wing Wurlitzer went after them when they exposed the arrest of Bush's daughters, Jenna and Barbara Bush, for underage drinking at Chuy’s in Austin.


• Jamil Hussein


• Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp Private Beauchamps' stories have been completely confirmed. Doesn't matter. The Wurlitzer still is out to destroy him.

What do they each have in common? Each told the truth when the right-wingers preferred a lie. So in each case the right-wing Republicans set out to destroy each of them.

Go read the story written by Phoenix Woman at Firedoglake.

The Dead-ender American Right uses 1920's German rhetoric

I'm glad that Josh Marshall sees this also. When the Right-wing starts a war and it goes badly south on them, they can't just chalk it up as an effort gone bad and move on. They are really emotionally invested in their wars, and instead of admitting they are lost they have to find a scapegoat to blame. We are seeing this now with the Dead-ender Republican war-supporter right-wing.

What I'd like to focus on though is the increasingly clear and no less disturbing trend for the president's defenders to ape the tactics, rhetoric and strategy of the post-WWI German revanchist right, which laid the groundwork for and in many respects evolved into the Nazi party.

An inflammatory comparison? Yes. But the inflammatory nature of the comparison shouldn't scare us into ignoring how strong the similarities are. You see it in the explicit 'stab in the back' rhetoric and the effort to cover up their own authorship and prosecution of the role by blaming their own failures on the critics of the war.

And then perhaps the most telling sign, from an American perspective: As the dead-ender right's plans and dreams about Iraq come under greater and greater strain from the alternative universe of reality, and as the president's popularity wanes further and further, there's a growing tendency for them to think about and write about domestic American politics in terms of violence and extra-constitutional action.

Every proposal that might end the war in Iraq on a positive tone (there are none the offer to "win" the war there) depends on a successful Iraqi government taking control of Iraq and bringing peace and stability to that nation. Yet there is no hint that the Iraqi government will ever become the government of more than the "Green Zone." The Saudi Arabians have given up the expectation that the Maliki government will succeed.

The Dead-ender Right-Wing is refusing to recognize the reality in Iraq and instead trying to sell the fiction that the war in Iraq has been lost because of the powerless rhetoric of criticisms of the war here in America. This is the classic "We lot because we were stabbed in the back by the" Socialists Liberals rhetoric used by the German right wing and ex-military after WW I.

The fact is that the last two years of WW I were fought under the total command of Germany by Ludendorf and Hindenburg, they tried everything they could, and when the final, last-ditch effort in Spring of 1918 failed they realized that the war could not be won, so they (the Generals, not the government) surrendered.

Iraq is as unwinnable for the Americans today as was "The Great War" for the Germans in 1918. But the right-wing which in both cases was responsible for starting the two wars refuses to take any responsibility for their own actions. Instead the search for domestic traitors who stabbed the nation in the back was (and is) used to avoid responsibility by those truly responsible.

More from the John Marshall article:

As the war for faux-democracy looks more and more like a debacle, the lure of authoritarianism at home becomes greater and greater for the war's dead-end defenders. And as redeployment looks more and more likely, they have to keep raising the stakes on the consequences of doing so. Apparently our whole future, our honor, destiny, certainly our safety from the Iraqi insurgents who will restart the insurgency in the US -- all of this is in the balance. The stakes must keep rising because that is, paradoxically, the only way for them to avoid taking responsibility for their failures.

This is a fantasy, and like most right-wing political fantasies, it is nasty and self-serving. But like the similar right-wing inspired military fiasco in Vietnam, this one will ring through American politics for the next generation.

Where is Buffy the Vampire-Slayer? Now that her show has been canceled she should have plenty of free time. We need her and her stakes to impale in the hearts of the right-wing dead-ender "Undead" before they again rise up to try to kill everyone around the Hellmouth at Sunnydale and in the rest of America.

TSA reports of terrorist 'tests of security' are lies

Heard the one about the fake ice packs that were filled with clay and wrapped in duct tape? Here are the facts:

The TSA bulletin said the ice packs were covered in duct tape and had clay inside of them.

Sanfilippo said they weren't covered in duct tape and didn't have clay inside of them. “It is a little bit off,” he said of the bulletin.

The chief said a Harbor Police officer found what appeared to be hardened old gel that had seeped out of the ice packs and dried, leaving a clay-like substance around the outside edge of the pack.

But...but... this was from an official TSA Security Bulletin! Yeah, and here is what the local TSA official in San Diego had to say about that:

“We get these [bulletins] all the time,” he told the Union-Tribune. “Almost all the time they prove false.”

Folks, the Republicans are in political trouble, and they damned sure can't run on their competence running government. But they can do everything possible to scare the public and then say "We are the only ones tough enough to protect you. Keep us in office."

It kept them competitive during the Cold War, and now that the Communists have decided to stop being the Republican boogymen, they are searching desperately for a new set of fears to feed the public. Apparently the terror alert color codes didn't work that well. That is the main function of the Department of Homeland Security - to scare the public and make Republicans electable over competent politicians.

The media is delighted to help them.

Be afraid, people, be afraid - of what the right-wing authoritarian Republicans will do to America. Today's America is a lot less free than the one we had in the year 2000, and it is the Republicans who have brought that.

The clash of cultures in America

Rick Perlstein discusses Sen. Vitter (R-LA) and his apparent hypocrisy. While Sen. Vitter looks to liberals as though he is a hypocrite, he is in fact a member of a culture in which such behavior is NOT hypocrisy.

Sen. Vitter (R-LA) is a conservative christian. He strongly believes in the proposed Constitutional amendment to "protect the sanctity of traditional marriages." He considers divorce and homosexuality to be symptoms that society is falling to pieces around him. Everyone is sinful, and Society is in a great war with Satan, who tempts everyone with sin. Since everyone is sinful, then when one gives in to Satan and sins, it is necessary to recognize it, stop the sin, and ask forgiveness from God - a forgiveness God will always grant to someone who is remorseful.

Once forgiven, then the person must continue the battle against Satan. This is not hypocrisy. It is man's role in the great battle between God and Satan in which the battleground it the souls of inherently sinful men and women. Since Sen. Vitter is aware that even he can succumb to the temptations of Satan, he will have to redouble his efforts to create a society in which Satan has no chance of winning.

So Sen. Vitter had an eleven month affair with a New Orleans prostitute, and Larry Flint identified his phone number as one the D.C. Madame, Jeane Palfrey, released as belonging to one her customers for $275.00-for-90-minutes girls in Washington, D.C. So what? Satan tempted Sen. Vitter's with sin and, as an inherently sinful man, he failed to resist. Now he has admitted his sin, asked (and received) forgiveness from God, and will continue his fight in the great war between God and Satan as before.

His admission of sin and his receipt of forgiveness from God remove any guilt or anxiety, and his christian conservative voters agree with him. He is a sinner, a flawed man, and they will expect him to redouble his efforts to create a more christian nation, one in which Satan cannot win.

This culture is not the culture of either secular or religious liberalism. We find his behavior to be more than just a sin against God. It is profoundly anti-social, and his failure to recognize that and to suffer anxiety over such behavior makes it very likely that he will do it again. Worse, we see him acting out his own failure by using government to punish others if they violate his sense of sin. He wants to pass laws to punish women for what he considers the sin (not the crime, though he would pass and enforce laws to make it such, but the sin) of sex outside of marriage and the (chosen - not innate) sin of homosexuality.

It is easy for Sen. Vitter and the christian conservatives to judge the people they consider sinners because they reject them and avoid direct knowledge of them. Instead of asking why someone did something they consider a sin, they will preach at that person. If a member of their own family or close circle of friend commits such sins, they refuse to talk about it, so knowledge of the impact of such things as the way they treat women and homosexuals is limited to the biblically acceptable language. The personal destruction in the lives of people they condemn becomes God's punishment for their sin rather than the results of the way they treat those they condemn.

Since they never discuss the reality (as opposed to the biblically sourced ideological view) of such events, they never become familiar with the real cause-and-effect sequences. Rick sums it up very nicely:

"Secular (and even religious) liberals will laugh and scoff, and call the whole sordid right-wing ritual a "free pass to sin".

And this will be a reasonable conclusion. It is true that this whole worldview contains within it a profound possibility of what economists call moral hazard - a perverse incentive built into a system that hastens the possibility of bad instead of good outcomes (by way of example, conservatives identify welfare payments as moral hazard: if you pay people who do not work, you give them an incentive not to work). The cynical - I would certainly count Gingrich among them - can exploit it to aggrandize their power.

But I have to insist that this worldview is not inherently about whitewashing accountability. At its best, the theology of sin and redemption is real - for those to whom Satan is real - and a real spur to moral living, to community-building, to humility, to compassion to grace. It can be a genuine and mature worldview - one that recognizes that people are both good and evil, both autonomous and compulsive, loving and hateful."

Rick professes to find good elements about this culture and system of thought. I find it more difficult to accept, since it requires sacrificing an awareness of reality to the requirements of someone else's ideology. Because he expects no punishment, personal or social, for his "sins", I expect Sen. Vitter to commit the same or similar sins again. worse, because he displaces what anxiety he might feel into the motivation to work for God's glory through passing laws that create God's world on Earth and he has no clue what he is in reality doing to people he will never know or admit can be hurt by his actions, I find Sen. Vitter and his worldview profoundly frightening.

But I will agree with Rick when he says that recognition of Sen. Vitter's hypocrisy is not going to cause him any real trouble being reelected. This is a culture clash that has moved from local American politics up to national politics - again.

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Addendum: July 11, 2007 - 12:35 AM CDT
There is the minor detail that then Congress-turkey Vitter was breaking the law when he visited a New Orleans Brothel located on Canal Street. But that is all just the male-dominates-women culture which is also such a big part of conservative christianity.

Sure looks like hypocrisy to me, but I guess if God has forgiven him ....

Naah! I really don't buy it. The man is slime.

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Addendum 2 July 11, 2007 - 1:15 AM CDT
Mark Kleiman has posted a news report on Sen. Vitter's extra marital dalliances.

It isn't yet public, though apparently it's widely known in Louisiana political circles, that Vitter's commercial romance was blessed with issue. Reportedly his natural child now lives with her mother in Alexandria, VA. That they are receiving financial support from the Senator has not been shown.

I wonder why the child's mother is living in Alexandria, VA. Perhaps to be near the Senator?

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Addendum 3 - July 11, 2007 6:26 AM CDT
Jeanette Maeir, ex-New Orleans brothel operator, says of former client, Sen. Vitter "He seemed to be one of the nicest men and most honorable men I've ever met."

MSNBC goes on to write:

Vitter, a first-term Republican who previously served in the House, recently played a prominent role in derailing an immigration bill backed by President Bush. He also is a key supporter of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid, serving as regional campaign chairman for the South.

Nice, honorable, but unable to keep his sexual behavior consistent with that description. And Rudy Giuliani has chosen him as a key supporter in the South. That says a lot about Rudy, too.

American conservatism is not traditionally "conservative"

Ezra Klein makes much the same point has has been made by Rick Perlestein. American's problems today stem primarily from the so-called "conservative" movement which is pushing its failed, very radical ideology. Ezra's point is:

Today's Republican party is plutocratic, authoritarian, theocratic, racist, nativist, militarist, and imperialist, but hardly conservative except in the sense of being reluctant to reform entrenched abuses. You could throw rocks at random at the ten clowns who line up at the podia for a Republican Presidential debate and never risk hitting an actual conservative, though you couldn't avoid hitting a Reagan-worshipper. It's American conservatism that is no longer conservative, not merely George W. Bush.

That's too bad: the conservative impulse is just as necessary to a properly balanced political system as the progressive one.

[Underlining is mine - Editor, WTF-o]

This is a good point to add to my earlier article What's wrong with conservatism and why are so many of us angry at Bush and the Republicans?.

If American conservatism is no longer "conservative," then what is it? This is the direct outgrowth of the failed Republican faux aristocracy which brought America into the Depression through its ignorance, greed and failure to act for the good of the nation if it cost them a dime. That group never forgave FDR for replacing them with a government more in line with the needs of a modern industrial nation when their greed brought us into the Depression and could not get us back out. Many of them flirted with and did business with their ideological kin, the Nazis, in the 30's. They resisted entry into WW II, but were happy to benefit when the U.S. remained the only industrially intact nation in the world after the War.

But they were not happy at being removed from power, and used the Cold War and the so-called Communist Threat as a club to frighten the nation and regain power in 1952. They hadn't taken over the Republican Party yet, so they got Eisenhower rather than one of their own as President in 1952. The racist Democrats of the South and the extreme conservatives such as the John Birchers and the McCarthyites were not enough, so they began putting together a so-called "conservative" ideology to justify their predations on society. The result was National Review, "Conscience of a Conservative" and the Goldwater movement, followed by Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41 and a whole host of so-called think tanks designed to build an ideology that justified their takeover of American government. The Southern Democrats were brought in by helping them to fight against Civil Rights, and formally were incorporated into the Republican party in 1972.

The purpose was not to be "conservative" in the sense of returning to better things in the past. The purpose was to return the natural American aristocracy - of which George W. Bush is a charter member - to power where they felt they belonged.

Conservatism is an unworkable ideology, useful only to bamboozle American voters into thinking that they don't need to pay taxes. The Reagan-Bush years were an effort to put their ideology into practice, but it was failing. Ross Perot called them on it, and since the right-wing propaganda machine was designed to attack Democrats, they were unable to get him in 1992, effectively electing Bill Clinton.

This infuriated the right-wing millionaire club, leading to the many manufactured attacks on Clinton. It wasn't members of the ideological conservative movement who went after Clinton. It was members of the American right-wing self-appointed aristocracy like Richard Mellon Scaife who want an American playground where they can become even more wealthy and powerful.

Real conservatives are suspicious of the danger in making radical changes, and provide a brake on implementing overly radical social and governmental changes. American movement conservatives want to install the extremely radical conservative ideology, and like the Marxist-Leninist Communists in the USSR, will ride roughshod over anyone who tries to get them to slow down, to consider the effects of their attempts to install their radical proposals, and in fact will not accept people who are not true-believers.

Oddly enough, when compared with the radicals of the American conservative movement going back well before Goldwater, it is me who is the true conservative.

Where did all the ultra right-wing millionaires come from?

Rarely do I find something significant at The Free Republic, but this seems to make a lot of sense. I quote in full, because if I have an audience at all it does not include those who read the Free Republic, and this needs to be seen and discussed by a larger audience.

INTRODUCTION: The Mafia, CIA and George Bush

Crime/Corruption Extended News News Keywords: SAVINGS AND LOANS, MAFIA, CIA, GEORGE BUSH, CIA, MAFIA
Source: New York: S.P.I. Books
Published: 1992 Author: Pete Brewton
Posted on 02/04/2000 16:08:55 PST by Wallaby

Not for commercial use. Solely to be used for the educational purposes of research and open discussion.

INTRODUCTION
The Mafia, CIA and George Bush
Pete Brewton
(New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992)


Something very significant happened during our country's savings-and-loan crisis, the greatest financial disaster since the Great Depression. It happened quietly, secretly, without any fanfare and attention. It happened before our very eyes, yet we knew it not.

What we all missed was the massive transfer of wealth from the American taxpayers to a select group of extremely rich, powerful people. What these people had in common -- unknown to the American public -- were their symbiotic relationships to the Mafia and the CIA, and to the two most prominent, powerful politicians from Texas, President George Bush and Senator Lloyd Bentsen.

This small cabal of businessmen realized that the S&Ls were going the way of the dinosaurs. They recognized that S&Ls couldn't survive under rapid inflation and high interest rates. So they decided to exploit the situation for their own purposes, with help from, and rewards for, the Mafia, the CIA and their favorite politicians. They probably figured that the insulation and protection these powerful institutions and individuals conferred upon them, in addition to all the endemic protections with the financial, judicial, political and journalistic systems, made them invulnerable. They were probably right.

For unlike Watergate and Iran-Contra, this was a bipartisan scandal. There was no opposition party to push for an independent investigation. In fact, the same group of wealthy, powerful businessmen, centered in Houston, that encircle Republicans like George Bush and James A. Baker III, also encircle Democrats like Jim Wright and Lloyd Bentsen.

This information enables one to view the 1988 elections, in which not one cross word was ever spoken about the savings-and-loan debacle, in a whole new perspective. It was not merely a fortuitous coincidence that both Bush, the Republican nominee for President, and Bentsen, the Democratic nominee for Vice President, were part of, and beholden to, the same group of Houston businessmen. Even if the Democrats lost that presidential election, as they did, Bentsen could still win re-election to his Senate seat under the so-called "LBJ rule." The Houston boys, as usual, had their bets covered.

(If the Democrats had won in 1988, this book would be entitled "The Mafia, the CIA and Lloyd Bentsen," for Bentsen and Bush are two interchangeable peas in a pod. They have many friends, business associates and campaign donors in common. The story of the most important one they share begins this book.)

But Bush won in 1988, and one of the reasons he did was his ability to keep the S&L scandal out of the political debate. He was assisted in this by none other than Bentsen, as we shall see. They both had much to hid, Bush in particular. Not only were many of the President-to-be's friends involved -- along with two of his sons -- but Bush himself, as Vice President, had personally intervened in the federal regulation of a dirty Florida savings and loan that was being looted by people with connections to the Mafia and the CIA. This S&L ultimately failed, costing taxpayers nearly $700 million.

The S&L scandal is the vehicle for telling the story about these leading American politicians and businessmen. But the relationships between these individuals and how they control and manipulate public and private institutions is the bigger story. Unless we know who these people are and understand how they operate, we can all look forward to more S&L-type debacles to come.

The S&L scandal was almost the perfect crime. The layers of protection and insulation between what the public discovered was going on at the savings and loans and what actually happened with the money were so many and so thick that the crimes and theft would never be completely figured out. And even if the truth were ultimately unearthed, there were additional layers between that revelation and the bringing of those responsible to the bar of justice and recovering the money.

The first and foremost layer of protection is the difficulty in tracking the money from the savings and loans to its ultimate destination. That is why almost no FBI agent, federal prosecutor, S&L regulator, congressional committee or journalist has been able to track the money. Yet where the money went is really the only thing that matters. The rest of the "facts" that, typically, got investigated, prosecuted and written about were mostly smoke and mirrors, set up to shield who really got the hundreds of billions of dollars that taxpayers must pay back and to hide what the money was used for.[1]
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[1]--A notable exception is the book Inside Job, by Stephen Pizzo, Mary Fricker and Paul Muolo, which nailed down the fact that the savings-and-loan debacle was caused primarily by fraud.
----
The five years that went into this book represent my efforts to peel back all the layers of insulation and protection to get to the real culprits. I have organized this book with that process in mind, to help the reader understand a complicated and confusing subject.

In general, the bulk of the money lost in the S&L crisis that American citizens must now pay for went to the owners of the property and assets that the more notorious borrowers purchased with money from S&Ls run by equally infamous owners. This seems to be obvious, yet it somehow got lost in all the hype and hysteria. While Congress, the Justice Department and the press concentrated on the flamboyant borrowers and managers of the S&Ls, the big recipients of the money -- the wealthy, powerful landowners and property owners -- crept off quietly with their profits.

In the second half of this book, a number of examples will be detailed to show how this happened, and who got the money. For example, one later chapter deals with a $200 million, 21,000-acre land transaction in Florida in which much of the borrowed S&L money went to a paper company owned by the Du Pont empire, one of the oldest, richest, most powerful bastions of wealth in this country.

We know this because many of the lending documents were pursued by a lone, shrewd, tenacious federal regulator named Kenneth Cureton. However, the unraveling of this transaction was a rare and exceptional event. But even it could not be called a complete victory. The Department of Justice's International Division, the government body through which subpoenas to offshore banks must pass, inexplicably became a brick wall for Cureton's efforts to obtain records on the Isle of Jersey in the English Channel, where a big chunk of the money went -- possibly to buy weapons for Iraq.

Since so many of the crucial documents in this scandal are not available, we are left with the second-best avenue of investigation: finding out who the original property owners were and everything we can about them, and then doing the same thing for the S&L proprietors and borrowers. The bulk of this book consists of that enterprise.

The evidence uncovered is clear, convincing, and compelling: Members and associates of the Mafia and the United States Central Intelligence Agency were key participants in our nation's savings-and-loan debacle, and some of the richest, most powerful people in the country did business with these participants and profited from the S&L crisis.

That members of the Mafia and the CIA, two organizations that operate in secrecy and whose members take sacred oaths -- one supposedly dedicated to national security, the other simply to their organizations' security -- may have been working together is not unprecedented in this country. But that fact doesn't make their cooperation any less outrageous.

It is well known that members of the Mafia and the CIA conspired to try to assassinate Fidel Castro. There are other, less substantiated, although credible, allegations regarding the two groups' involvement together in drug smuggling and money laundering in Southeast Asia, Australia and the Caribbean.[2]
----
[2]--The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, by Alfred W. McCoy (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); The Crimes of Patriots, by Jonathan Kwimy (New York: Norton, 1987); and In Banks We Trust, by Penny Lernoux (Penguin Books, 1986).
----
There are also some curious, ominous connections between members of these groups and JFK-assassination figures Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

Drawing a straight, direct line from the CIA operatives discussed in this book to the top officials of the CIA and on to the President is extremely difficult because of the way the CIA works. Most of the characters in this book are not the card-carrying bureaucrats and bean counters at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. They are what are called CIA "assets," who can be someone who turns over an occasional piece of information to the CIA, without even knowing it is for the CIA, all the way up to someone who is continually working for the CIA in covert operations.

A similar and, likewise, important cog in CIA operations is what is known as a cutout. A cutout is a front man or middle man set up to protect the identities of the primary participants. Like an asset, a cutout may or may not know for whom he is working and the actual purpose of his work. (The Mafia also makes use of such cutouts, except they call them "mustaches" or "beards.")

The CIA uses assets and cutouts to maintain one of its prime directives: plausible deniability, or, in other words, "Don't get caught embarrassing the President." (The CIA is the intelligence-gathering and covert-action arm of the President. Perhaps that is the definition journalists should always refer to, rather than just throwing the general term "CIA" around as if it were some sort of independently run mythical loose cannon.) So . . . if an asset or cutout is caught breaking the law, the CIA can deny that its operative was working for it at that particular time.

This leads to one difference between the Mafia and the CIA, particularly in this story. Once it is established that members and associates of the Mafia are involved in a failed savings and loan, that is usually enough to establish, prima facie, the involvement of the Mafia. Members and associates of the Mafia don't do such things without the knowledge, permission and the sharing of the spoils, with their superiors.

The destruction of the savings and loan industry in Texas, and in some other parts of the country, worked basically like an organized-crime bustout or burnout. This is a mob scam in which a failing company is taken over, built up on credit, then drained of all its assets and purposely put into bankruptcy, leaving the creditors holding the bag.

In the case of savings and loans, the credit was federally insured deposits injected by money brokers, like mob associate Mario Renda, and the creditors are the taxpayers. The front men, the cutouts and the "mustaches," like Don Dixon, Tyrell Barker, Ed McBirney, Jarrett Woods, Roy Dailey, Mike Adkinson and Robert Corson, are left to take the blame. But don't feel sorry for them, for they have usually skimmed enough off to offshore bank accounts to make it well worth a couple of years in jail, keeping their mouths shut.

However, because of the CIA's doctrine of plausible deniability, the involvement of a CIA asset in a failed savings and loan does not make a prima facie case for the involvement of the CIA. In fact, I know of no independent test a journalist can conduct to determine whether the involvement of a CIA asset means the CIA has sanctioned it or whether the asset is just freelancing for his own gain. Both possibilities would look the same to an outside observer.

The only way to tell would be if the CIA admitted its involvement or if there were unassailable, documented evidence sh owing S&L money going from an asset to a CIA operation. This is attainable only by subpoena, if at all. Even in such a case the CIA might deny that it knew the asset was pumping money into the operation or that it knew money came from an S&L. But if the CIA admitted that, it would be admitting that it is both incompetent and stupid.

In the case of the failed S&Ls, the CIA has categorically denied its involvement. The CIA did admit to a congressional committee that it had a relationship to five individuals connected to failed savings and loans, and that it had also done business with four savings and loans that later failed. But the spy agency claimed that its business with these S&Ls was legitimate. however, there are several cases in which there are clear indications that S&L money went directly to operations that the CIA took part in, even if it didn't overtly control them -- for example, the cases of Iran-Contra and of weapons shipments to the Middle East.

but one thing we can say, categorically: The CIA either knew or didn't know what its operatives were doing at S&Ls. If it knew, why didn't it stop them or alert the proper authorities? If it didn't know, how effective an intelligence agency could it really be?

Finally, a word about the circumstantial evidence in this book. Circumstantial evidence must necessarily be used because of the secretive nature of the CIA and the unavailability of S&L documents. The evidence appears many times in this way: A failed S&L was owned and controlled by people who have done business with Mafia associates and CIA operatives; many of the borrowers were Mafia and CIA associates; many of the original property owners have done business with Mafia and CIA operatives and some of the money disappears in foreign accounts controlled by Mafia and CIA associates.

What does such evidence prove? Based on my research and knowledge of the CIA, I believe it makes it more likely than not that someone in the CIA hierarchy knew about and approved, if not instigated, the S&L actions of its operatives. In any event, journalists are not in the proof business, we are in the information business. Proof is for mathematicians and courts of law, and even in those arenas, there are great disputes about what constitutes proof. The readers of this book, and the American public, can evaluate the evidence and information in this book for themselves and decide whether it should be acted upon or ignored.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with circumstantial evidence. In our country's courts of law, fortunes and lives can be won or lost, fairly and squarely, on the basis of circumstantial evidence. Juries, as well as readers of this book, may infer facts and conclusions from circumstantial evidence. I have attempted to set out all the facts and circumstantial evidence that I know. In some cases the meanings are clear and conclusions can be drawn. In other places the going gets a little tough, because there is not enough data and evidence to draw meanings and reach conclusions. For this I apologize; i wish I had found more information.

In all, I have tried to follow the injunction of our forefathers, who in proclaiming their thesis in the Declaration of Independence, stated: ". . . let facts be submitted to a candid world."

Admittedly, it is easy to be cynical and discouraged about the situation presented in the following chapters. One question I am constantly asked is: "What can we, the American people, do about this?" There are no quick-and-easy solutions or panaceas. However, like our founding fathers, we should have faith in the liberating power of knowledge and information. If we know how and why something happened, and who benefitted by it, then we will know the right thing to do.

Reposted from a covert spot on the thread of this post:

Our governments have long had a relationship to Organized Crime (generally called the Mafia.) The story of the American Intelligence services using "Lucky" Luciano during World War II is well documented. [See particularly the section on World War II, freedom, and deportation.] Similarly well documented is the creation of the gambling center in Las Vegas by the Mafia, as is the fact that Fulgeencio Batista, dictator of Cuba, depended heavily on the Mafiosa Meyer Lansky and numerous organized crime leaders from South Florida to maintain himself in power. In return they had control of the gambling, drug smuggling and other crime in Cuba, subject to Batista's 30% take from the Lansky casinos (the Hotel Nacional, the Montmartre Club and others.) Lansky was also providing a cut to Lucky Luciano until after the Castro-led Revolution succeeded.

Our federal government approved Batista's dictatorship together with the gambling there run by the Mafia because Batista provided stability in Cuba, and the Mafia were a major element in keeping him in power. The organized crime families in South Florida that then ran the gambling and hotels in Cuba today make up a lot of the leading families in today's Anti-Castro Cuban-Americans in Southern Florida who have had such a close connection to the Republican Party. Castro's revolt messed this up badly and then he couldn't be bought, for which the Republicans in the U.S. government have yet to forgive him.

Another major indicator of the relationship between the U.S. government and the Mafia is the way in which J. Edgar Hoover refused to even admit that the Mafia even existed and refused to permit investigations of the Mafia until the early 60's.

For some support for Brewton's book that is a bit more recent, try this article Organized Crime, The CIA and the Savings and Loan Scandal. Then there are these hits for a google search>on Houston Organized Crime.

This is only a quick summary of some of the documented connections between our government and the American Mafia. Anyone who thinks that organized crime doesn't own a number of politicians should really ask themselves if they are being realistic. [Did Jeb Bush really get elected Governor of Florida without some assistance from the Mafia? Just wondering.]

Keep all that in mind before you dismiss the assertions that Pete Brewton have made.

---

Consider also these books

• Barry and 'the Boys': The CIA, the Mob and America's Secret History
  and
• The Bush Junta: A Field Guide to Corruption in Government.

Right-wing DixieCrat terrorism -- recent history

Meteor Blades reminds those of us who love the ideals of America that on Jun 21, 1964, three young men were murdered by members of the KKK in Mississippi because they dared to try to register African Americans as voters.

The Black slaves had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War and their freedom was enshrined into the Constitution in the 13th Amendment in 1865. Then the 15th amendment, passed in 1870, guaranteed that "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Nearly a century later the White over-class, represented by the KKK, was murdering individuals who tried to exercise that Constitutional Right or help others to do so. This was only eight months after the Church bombing in Birmingham in which four teenage girls died for the "crime" of being Black. The killers hid behind the twin veils of secrecy and intimidation of witnesses for decades, as right-wingers usually do.

It was these killers, the southern KKK in its many versions, together with the angry frightened white supporters who were being forced to share power with people their families had owned as property (like dogs and horses) a century earlier who were taken wholesale into the Republican Party in Nixon's and Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy of 1972.

Dick Cheney and the Southerners in the American Republican Party are the direct familial and ideological descendants of these frightened, vicious people. They deny it, saying that they do not approve of such terroristic tactics and of the KKK. But the fact is, the two incidents mentioned here proved counter productive. They brought down more heat than could be dealt with, and in fact encouraged a lot more people to work to share the Civil Rights all Americans were supposed to have with African-Americans. The change in the attitudes of the Southern racists was not because terrorism was immoral (illegal had never bothered them) but was because it had quit being a successful strategy -- nearly a century after the Civil War.

I was in college in 1964, so I guess that Meteor Blades and I are about the same age. I suspect he grew up in the North and saw from a distance how bad this terrorism and intimidation was. I grew up in east Texas, and it was so normal that I only realized that I was attending an all-white segregated High School because my parents made sure I was aware of Brown vs. Board of Education and because I watched TV clips of the National Guard trying to keep the peace and get the Black students safely into the Arkansas schools in the late 50's under Eisenhower. The very few incidents that made it into the news (the local editor did not want to lose subscriptions - or have his building burned down) don't touch on the violence and anger of that period.

It is somewhat better now. That is largely because the worst of the racists and terrorists have died off or gotten too old to be very active. I had thought that our kids were getting better, and that the right-wing American terrorists were becoming extinct, but the American conservative movement has either resurrected them or created a new set of terrorists with which we have to deal. Race is less the issue than it was, but now Class has come to the fore in ways not seen since the late 19th and early twentieth century, and war is still an acceptable tool to them to use for little more than just getting wealthier. And the only reason personal terrorism has declined in America is that the upper classes and wealthy have decided that it is no longer an effective tool to use to keep and augment their positions. In many ways, centralized ownership and control of the mass media has replaced much of the retail level terrorism of earlier years.

I guess that is a little better but it, too, has to be dealt with.

In the meantime, let's remember that the three murdered members of the Congress of Racial Equality died to give us many of the things that are better about America now. Those of us here now need to try to clean our nation up even more, so that we can hand it off even more improved to our children.

God! I must either be getting old or I'm in a preachy mood this morning! Or both.

Tristero on the Christianists and their abortion scam

Tristero over at Digby discusses what the real fight over abortion is all about. Here are a few key excerpts:

I fail to see how, by any stretch of the imagination, proactively denying adequate medical care to poor women is morally defensible.

This issue is not about, and never has been about, "when does a human life begin?" That simply is not an appropriate question for a government to answer; indeed, to answer it "officially" is tantamount to a religious establishment. And clearly, these are decisions which are quite rightly left to the individuals involved. [Snip]

...the moral issue is really quite simple. A woman has the right to control her body. No one, and certainly no government, should ever force her to have, or not have, children. How she chooses, what she chooses, when she chooses, are private choices.

He also uses some rather inflammatory language, certainly not that of measured and rational discussion, when he calls the Christianist opponents of legalized abortions "pro-coathanger."

Regular readers of my publication may notice that I, too, have stopped pretending that I think the "Christianists" and conservatives who are taking over America and trying to destroy our Constitutional democracy are actually "honorable opponents with whom honest discussion is possible." They aren't. James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Dick Cheney, Michael Ledeen, Norman Podheretz, Alberto Gonzales, William Kristol, "Scooter" Libby and Josh Bolton to name just a few are not listening, nor do that have defense of the Constitution and of America in mind when they conduct their extremely nasty politics.

These and many, many other so-called conservatives are enemies of America. They do not discuss values or issues. They use emotionalized language, money and lies to develop isses that can be used to attack the basic structure of America. Their purpose is to conduct a coup, much as in July 1936 Francisco Franco conducted a coup against the legitimate elected government of Spain. At the most extreme conservatives use and support the use of violence to destabilize the government they don't control. This is exactly the same set of tactics as are used by Islamists against legitimate (and less than legitimate) governments in the Middle East.

So what does this have to do with the abortion issue that Tristero is discussing?

...the issue is not abortion but government regulation of abortion. The fact that so many of us see this differently is precisely at the heart of the fight against the right.

They, not Democrats and liberals, want this country to see the issue in black and white. The effect, if they win, will be catastrophic. And the catastrophe will fall predominantly on poor women. [Snip]

Again, to be clear, this is not about personal opinions about terminating or completing pregnancies. This about [the radical extremist right-wingers] demanding the government regulate pregnancy and reproduction in accordance with one specific ideology.

Possibly no one feels the same as another about abortion itself. But that is not the issue. It's the extreme right forcing people to adhere to their, and only their, morality that is the issue.

As usual, Tristero and Digby clarify the real issue and present it understandably.

It is my conclusion that the extremist right-wingers are well on the way to taking over America and destroying Constitutional democracy under the Rule of Law. America now consists of the radical right-wing extremists [RRWE], currently in control of the federal government, a bunch of people who don't care who is in charge and don't want to hear about it, and those of us who realize that we are being attacked by the ignorant Yahoos and Bankers that run the Republican Party. The RRWE's aren't listening to me, and really wish I would shut up and go away. The "don't cares and don't listens [DCDL]" have blocked out the entire set of conflicts, hoping it will all go away. Finally there are those of us who want America back.

The DCDLs aren't going to respond to rational and moderate discussion (don't care) and really really object to any indication of conflict (don't listen.) They, like the RRWEs just want the conflict and me to go away. But they, also like the RRWEs will not respond in any way to moderate, rational and unemotional discussion. It just allows them to feel that they are correct that the conflicts don't matter so they can continue to ignore them.

If my blunt and less than moderate language prods them into any reaction at all, they and America will be better for it. Otherwise, this conflict will go away like the Spanish Civil War did. Franco took over in 1936 and was the unquestioned authoritarian leader until his death in 1975. Spain had Peace, but little else, until Franco died. It also had the Civil War, Guernica and a massive exodus of many of the finest members of society. Nothing Franco ever did for Spain was worth what he cost that nation. But that is the nature of right-wing extremists, NeoCons, and conservatives. It is inherent in their ignorance, intolerance and authoritarianism.

I, too, am becoming intolerant. I will no longer tolerate the efforts of the Christianists and the extremist radical right to impose their prejudices and idiocies on the rest of us. If they have anything to offer below the level of their enforced idiocies (Creation Science?> Gimme a break!)then I can't find it through their lies and falsehoods, and I see no reason to bother trying.

They should go to Hell in their own way and let the rest of us alone. But they won't. They will have to be stopped, like roaches and termites.

Office of Special Counsel investigating politization of Federal Civl Service

The U.S. Attorney purge was just the very tip of the program to totally politicize the federal government, using it to raise money and get Republicans elected everywhere. Once locked up, the machine that Rove was building would have left America as a one-party state in which elections mean nothing more than did the elections in the USSR or in Saddam's Iraq. Think Progress reports on the investigation now being conducted by the Office of Special Counsel into the politicization of the Federal Government.

Politicization of the federal government has been illegal for decades. The 1939 Hatch Act specifically prohibits partisan campaign or electoral activities on federal government property, including federal agencies. But in 2005, Ken Mehlman, formerly one of Bush’s top political advisers, outlined the White House’s strategy of utilizing government resources for partisan gain:

One of the things that can happen in Washington when you work in an agency is that you forget who sent you there. And it’s important to remind people that you’re George Bush people. … If there’s one empire I want built, it’s the George Bush empire. [One Party Country, p. 102]

With that imperial partisanship in mind, the Bush White House has engaged in an unprecedented quest to politicize the federal government, giving briefings and PowerPoint presentations everywhere from the Interior Department to NASA on how to secure Republican victories. Said one Interior Department manager, “We were constantly being reminded about how our decisions could affect electoral results” (One Party Country, p. 103). Bush loyalists in federal agencies have also helped generate millions for favored political candidates.

This was - and is - a coup-de-etate conducted by the American right-wing extremist conservatives, both economic and religious. It is beginning to be exposed, but the exposure is mostly surface so far.

Potential Right-wing xtian terrorist caught at Falwell's funeral

Some of Jerry Falwell's students felt that the danger of protesters at his funeral was so high that they prepared and brought low-burn gasoline bombs to use on the protesters. The level of paranoia this demonstrates is frightening in itself.

Digby predicts that when a Democrat is elected President in 2008 it will set off a spate of right-wing terrorist activities right here in USA. Timothy McVeigh (See also an interview with Timothy McVeigh.) and Eric Rudolph (See also Eric Rudolph at Wikipedia) are not the only crazies the right-wing has to field with bombs and guns. Both had numerous supporters who aided and hide them. The "Army of God strongly supported Eric Rudolph, and a variety of right-wing militants, gun-nuts and religious types apparently provided some support to Timothy McVeigh. The FBI has played down the people who actually aimed and set off those two and carefully not gone after them.

The anthrax letters sent to a variety of Democratic politicians and News media in 2001 figures has to be considered American right-wing terrorism, based on the fact that the targets are all considered enemies by so many right-wingers. (See also the Anthrax attack website by Ed Lake.

With Bush in office, the right-wing (and especially the Christianists) have felt they were making progress in bringing America into the Dominion. I'm sure that the election of 2006 shook them up, but right now it could be just a setback. But a strong election of a Democratic President in 2008 together with further deterioration of the national Republican political position could set off a bunch of the crazies. Since the police forces are often right-wing themselves, they won't make a big deal of it. The question is whether the media will.

With the media track record over the last 15 or so years, I doubt they will look at it or report it if they see it.

Orcinus has been following such things. Go look at his writings on "Eliminationism in America."

See also:

• Abortion-related violence


• Alpha 66


• Army of God


• Christian Identity


• Christian terrorism


• Domestic terrorism in the United States.


• History of the Army of God


• Paramilitary

Bill O'Reilly worse than Father Coughin of 1930's

Media Researchers at Indiana University have documented that Bill O'Reilly calls a person or a group a derogatory name on the average every 6.8 seconds in his opening editorials. According to Think Progress the researchers used techniques for researching the propaganda content of six months worth of his editorials.

Researchers found that O’Reilly "was prone to inject fear into his commentaries and quick to resort to name-calling. He also frequently assigned roles or attributes — such as ‘villians’ or downright ‘evil’ — to people and groups."

No surprise to anyone except Bill himself.

M. Romney - "Habeas Corpus? Probably not if I am President.

Glenn Greenwald has centered on a key plank that appears likely in the Republican platform if Mitt Romney gets elected President.

Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:

Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.

Mitt Romeny can't say -- at least not until he engages in a careful and solemn debate with a team of "smart lawyers" -- whether, in the United States of America, the President has the power to imprison American citizens without any opportunity for review of any kind. But in today's Republican Party, Romney's openness to this definitively tyrannical power is the moderate position. Ponnuru goes on to note:

Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

It sounds like Giuliani is positioning himself in this race as the "compassionate authoritarian" -- "Yes, of course I have the power to imprison you without charges or review of any kind, but as President, I commit to you that I intend (no promises) to 'use this authority infrequently.'"

Two of the three leading Republican candidates for President either embrace or are open to embracing the idea that the President can imprison Americans without any review, based solely on the unchecked decree of the President. And, of course, that is nothing new, since the current Republican President not only believes he has that power but has exercised it against U.S. citizens and legal residents in the U.S. -- including those arrested not on the "battlefield," but on American soil.

Habeas corpus has been the basis of all legal Freedoms since King John signed the Magna Carts in 1215. There is only one reason for a President to do away with habeas corpus, even in extremely limited circumstance, and that reason is to impose an authoritarian government.

An authoritarian government operates under "Rule (of the population) by Law," not as we function here in America, under the "Rule of Law." Under "Rule by Law" the top government officials are not subject to any limitations built into the law. They are above the law.

Someone ought to ask Jose Padilla how well that works.

Another good Digby Post - Press bias against Al Gore

This is a particularly interesting historical post by Digby. We have been following the misadventures of the sleazy individuals placed into the Department of Justice, most recently Monica Goodling. Digby goes back and looks at where so many of these low-lifes came from.

The connection runs through the Republican Opposition Research office for the 2000 Presidential Election, and includes Tim Griffin the mostly unqualified attorney who was recently a deputy to Karl Rove, and for whom the U.S. attorney in Arkansas was fired last December so that he could take the job.

Keep those things in mind as you read Digby's history. You might also see if you can find the BBC documentary "Digging The Dirt".

The world's largest mercenary army - Blackwater

Most of us who have followed the military action and politics in Iraq have heard of the private contractor "Blackwater." The four men killed in Fallujah whose bodies were strung up on the bridge were Blackwater contract employees. This led to the first abortive attack on Fallujah by the U.S. Marines (apparently ordered by G. W. Bush in a fit of pigue at the deaths of the Blackwater guys) and then when the failure of that attack became celebrated by insurgents as an American defeat, the later attack that effectively levelled the town.

Apparently there is a great deal more to the Blackwater story, a tale involving Cheney's efforts to outsource military activities that go way beyond what he took advantage of at Halliburton. Let the reporter Jeremy Scahill describe what Blackwater really is. If nothing else, it will show why my list of recommended books on the right side of this screen includes books on politics, war, terrorism and right-wing fundamentalist Xtianity. Here is a quick summary from Scahill:

JEREMY SCAHILL: Blackwater is a company that began in 1996 as a private military training facility in -- it was built near the Great Dismal Swamp of North Carolina. And visionary executives, all of them former Navy Seals or other Elite Special Forces people, envisioned it as a project that would take advantage of the anticipated government outsourcing.

Well, here we are a decade later, and it’s the most powerful mercenary firm in the world. It has 20,000 soldiers on the ready, the world’s largest private military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships. It’s become nothing short of the Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration's so-called global war on terror. And it’s headed by a very rightwing Christian activist, ex-Navy Seal named Erik Prince, whose family was one of the major bankrollers of the Republican Revolution of the 1990s. He, himself, is a significant funder of President Bush and his allies.

And what they’ve done is they have built a very frightening empire near the Great Dismal Swamp in North Carolina. They’ve got about 2,300 men actively deployed around the world. They provide the security for the US diplomats in Iraq. They’ve guarded everyone, from Paul Bremer and John Negroponte to the current US ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad. They’re training troops in Afghanistan. They have been active in the Caspian Sea, where they set up a Special Forces base miles from the Iranian border. They really are the frontline in what the Bush administration viewed as a necessary revolution in military affairs. In fact, they represent the life's work of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the “life's work”?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Dick Cheney, when he was Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush during the Gulf War, one of the last things he did before leaving office was to create an unprecedented lucrative market for the firm that he would go on to head, Halliburton. He commissioned [a] Halliburton [division] to do a study on how to privatize the military bureaucracy. That effectively created the groundwork for the absolute war profiteer bonanza that we’ve seen unfold in the aftermath of 9/11. I mean, Clinton was totally on board with all of this, but it has exploded since 9/11. And so, Cheney, after he left office, when the first Bush was the president, went on to work at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which really led the push for privatization of the government, not just the military.

A 20,000 man army is the size of an American division, but Blackwater is unlikely to have support troops like Artillery, Engineers, and such.

The book below (available February 28, 2007) is published by Avalon Publishing Group. The following is their description it.

From Our Editors

In company handouts, Blackwater USA claims to run the largest privately owned firearms training facility in the country, but according to award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Although it's only ten years old, this North Carolina-based private military contractor has already been called "George Bush's favorite mercenary company," "the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm," and "the fastest-growing private army on the planet." Founded by a far-right, super-rich ex-Navy SEAL, this quasi-military group operates clandestinely in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Scahill's detailed, 288-page Blackwater represents the fullest disclosure yet of this very shadowy organization.

From the Publisher

Meet BLACKWATER USA, the world's most secretive and powerful mercenary firm. Based in the wilderness of North Carolina, it is the fastest-growing private army on the planet with forces capable of carrying out regime change throughout the world. Blackwater protects the top US officials in Iraq and yet we know almost nothing about the firm's quasi-military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and inside the US. Blackwater was founded by an extreme right-wing fundamentalist Christian mega-millionaire ex- Navy Seal named Erik Prince, the scion of a wealthy conservative family that bankrolls far-right-wing causes.

Blackwater is the dark story of the rise of a powerful mercenary army, ranging from the blood-soaked streets of Fallujah to rooftop firefights in Najaf to the hurricane-ravaged US gulf to Washington DC, where Blackwater executives are hailed as new heroes in the war on terror. This is an extraordinary exposé by one of America's most exciting young radical journalists.

Blackwater: The Rise of the Most Powerful Mercenary Firm in the World