Right Wing Nut House

My latest at Pajamas Media is up today, a piece that is about 95% satire. It is exaggerated, over the top, and bears little resemblance to facts or the truth.

If you lack a sense of humor, please do not read or comment on it. But the idea of informing on your fellow citizens is creepy even if the White House won’t be making a list or keeping the emails. Pity if some of you can’t see it.

Anyway, here’s a sample of my brilliant, amusing prose:

I was too young and too obscure to make Richard Nixon’s enemies list back in the day. Not yet out of my teens, my attendance at subversive rallies against the Vietnam War and my contributions to a wildly anti-Nixon publication at my high school we bravely called The Truth just weren’t enough to bring me to the attention of Charles Colson. Thus, I never had a chance to get my name listed along with other great Americans like Ted Kennedy, Paul Newman, and Joe Namath.

I was a good little radical back then, mouthing all the idiocy we heard our elders spouting about evil corporations, evil conservatives, and the evil, evil military. Alas, the world passed me by and the one great opportunity of a lifetime to be recognized as an enemy of the state was lost.

Until now.

Having since grown up, gotten a job, and been disabused of the idea that there is, in fact, such a thing as a free lunch — along with other magical ideas liberals hold — you can imagine my delight when I heard that President Obama is going to be starting an enemies list of his own.

This time, I am absolutely determined to make the grade. Nothing will stand in my way. Come hell or high water, I am going to get my name on that list if I have to camp out in front of the office of Linda Douglass, communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform, until she slaps my moniker on that list just to get rid of me.

Read the whole thing.

You can find some wonderful symmetry between the Birther conspiracists and those on the left who have become so paranoid about opposition to Obama that they have invented a “Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory” on health care reform demonstrations.

Both are rooted in denial of facts, refusal to believe evidence right in front of their eyes, the exaggerated build up of the opposition, manufactured (or misinterpreted) evidence, and the unshakable belief that they are right.

The big difference is, on the Democratic side, the conspiracy nuts include:

The President
The Speaker of the House
The Majority Leader of the Senate
The entire DNC
Every major liberal blog

That’s quite a lineup, huh? On the Birther side, you have few nutty congressmen and a whole bunch of fringe kooks who would deny the sun rising in the east and setting in the west if someone presented evidence to the contrary.

So what is the bogus conspiracy theory being pushed by Democrats and the left?

Let’s let the President of the United States - or, perhaps we should start referring to him as the “Kook in Chief” - explain it:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Organized mobs?” “Paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies?” First of all, referring to fellow countrymen who disagree with you as a “mob” is beneath the dignity of the office - not that Obama has necessarily demonstrated that he cares a whit about that kind of thing in the first place - and bespeaks a paranoid outlook regarding your political opposition.

And I don’t know about you, but I sure would like to know specifically which insurance companies and “special interests” - specific lobbying groups and companies - are organizing and paying for these demonstrations? After all, if you’re going to smear the thousands and thousands of people who are opposed to a public policy initiative like health care reform and show up at these congressional town halls, it should be snap to identify those companies who are paying for these protestors to come out and demonstrate, right?

What are their names, Mr. President? How are they paying people to turn out? Are they paying gas money to the demonstrators so that they can drive the few blocks to where these town halls are taking place? Maybe they’re giving a stipend - sort of like strike pay that unions give to members who walk a picket line? (Now that’s grass roots action for ya!)? Just how is all this organized? How deep does this conspiracy go?

ABC News went to one of these town halls where protestors turned out by the hundreds:

There were no lobbyist-funded buses in the parking lot of Mardela Middle and High School on Tuesday evening, and the hundreds of Eastern Maryland residents who packed the school’s auditorium loudly refuted the notion that their anger over the Democrats’ health care reform plans is “manufactured.”

“I went to school in this school,” a man named Bob told me. “I don’t see anyone in this room that isn’t from Mardela Springs right now.”

“We’ve been quiet too long,” said a woman named Joan.

They came to yell at their congressman, freshman Democratic Rep. Frank Kratovil, and they were surprised to hear that the “Congress in Your Corner” event to which they had been invited — by a robocall from Kratovil himself — was not to be a public airing of grievances, but instead an opportunity for private, one-on-one sessions with the freshman Democrat.

As the crowd grew, and began venting frustration over the fact they would only be meeting with the congressman behind closed doors, Kratovil’s aides suggested he switch to a town hall format

Obviously, ABC wasn’t looking hard enough for signs of the conspiracy. Our corporate media is covering for the insurance companies, I’m sure.

Or - these really are demonstrations organized at the grass roots and while I abhor the behavior of some (and admire Kratovil for standing up and taking his licks), the fact remains that the only sign of some kind of conspiracy involving big business was that, according to Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, the demonstrators were too well dressed to be “genuine.”

Ed Morrissey:

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) appeared on Hardball last night in support of the Left’s attempt to discredit the people showing up to townhalls in protest of ObamaCare. Boxer says she can tell that they’re fakes, because they’re too well dressed. How does she know that this is a problem? Because well-dressed people apparently told her to get the hell out of Florida in the Bush-Gore recount, too.

If that’s not paranoia, I don’t know what is. Note the forced and bogus connection made between two completely different situations. Birthers do the same thing all the time. And they’re kooks and Boxer is sane?

Then you have liberal blogs and the DNC pushing the theory that a group called Freedom Works is in cahoots with the insurance companies and are directing the demonstrators and orchestrating chaos:

Above-the-fold headlines of the disruptive protests caused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to accuse Republicans of fueling the anti-Democratic healthcare activists in an attempt to institute “mob rule.”

But Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele denied on Wednesday that the GOP somehow coordinated the protests.

“To sit back and say this is some sort of Republican cabal is some baloney,” Steele said on a conference call with reporters. “And you can substitute [baloney] with something else if you want.”

And Steele argued the protesters have raised questions that the Obama administration deems beneath it to answer.

“This administration has the arrogance to look down their nose” at the protesters, Steele said.

The authenticity of the town hall protests, and whether or not they represent real dissatisfaction with Democrats’ healthcare reform proposals, has become a key element of the early August battle.

The White House questioned the authenticity of the rabble-rousers earlier this week.

“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the AstroTurf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Gibbs and the DNC have taken aim at groups like FreedomWorks, the activist group founded by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), for allegedly facilitating the protests at the behest of corporate interests.

FreedomWorks spokesman Max Pappas said in an interview with CBS that his group simply provides talking points to town hall attendees to engage in “civil” dialogues with lawmakers.

Those talking points from Freedom Works are one of about a thousand such efforts on the web. American Thinker had a series of 7 posts on “What to ask your Congressman” at these town halls while Hot Air just published their own suggestions.

If all these sites are getting paid to publish suggested talking points by evil insurance companies, maybe I should get in on the act. Who do I contact to spread the lies?

Of course, the revelations by Mary Katherine Ham yesterday about the “smoking gun” memo that Think Progress and TPM Muckraker were touting as “proof” of a conspiracy to disrupt town hall meetings, made most of the left look loonier than Orly Taitz:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

My pet cat Aramas has more influence with tea party protestors than these bushers. And yet, they are the source of the tactics used by opponents of health care reform?

Exaggerating evidence of conspiracy is right out of the Birther handbook. And yet they’re the screwballs and liberal bloggers are members of a “reality based community?” Maybe on the planet Mongol, not here.

From the president on down, Democrats and liberals have become unhinged about opposition to Obama’s agenda. Somehow, it just seems more evil if big business, right wing fanatics, shady Republican operatives, and robot-like conservatives are all involved in this conspiracy to defeat the health care reform monstrosity that no one in Congress has read yet because it hasn’t been written. And citizens are supposed to require lobbyists and political pros to get ginned up about that?

When 71% of the American people believe that Obama is adding to the deficit unnecessarily, do liberals believe that a few thousands of those souls won’t take it upon themselves - with a little encouragement from tea party groups who have been organizing for more than 6 months - to show up and register their unhappiness?

Completely rational, and reasonable explanations for this outpouring of anger and activism are rejected by the left in favor of the elitist idea that ordinary citizens cannot think for themselves and must be told by lobbyists and corporate flaks to go out and demonstrate. And to carry this elitist lunacy even farther, it is intimated that these same ordinary citizens are actually paid for their efforts.

Birthers and lefty conspiracists - peas of a pod, birds of a feather, and partners in kooky lunacy.

This is one of the most dishonest, despicable things I’ve ever seen in politics. TPM and Think Progress published a purported “smoking gun” memo from an anti-health reform group that they were pushing as a blueprint for action that protestors at town hall meetings were following to disrupt the proceedings.

There’s only one problem: The group that is responsible for writing the memo are a bunch of bush leaguers with no more influence than my pet cat Aramas on demonstrators protesting anything:

When the “manufactured” outrage the Left is trying to demonize lines up so inconveniently with public polling, it’s sometimes necessary to create evidence for the “manufactured” storyline.

Enter Think Progress, which unearthed this shocking, secret memo from the leader of a small grassroots conservative organization in Connecticut, which allegedly instructs members on “infiltrating town halls and harassing Democratic members of Congress.”

Right Principles PAC was formed by Bob MacGuffie and four friends in 2008, and has taken in a whopping $5,017 and disbursed $1,777, according to its FEC filing.

“We’re just trying to shake this state up and make a difference up here,” MacGuffie told me during a telephone interview. He’s surprised at his elevation to national rabble-rouser by the Left.

Right Principles has a Facebook group with 23 members and a Twitter account with five followers. MacGuffie describes himself as an “opponent of leftist thinking in America,” and told me he’s “never pulled a lever” for a Republican or Democrat on a federal level. Yet this Connecticut libertarian’s influence over a national, orchestrated Republican health-care push-back is strong, indeed, if you listen to liberal pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who have crafted a nefarious web out of refutable evidence.

Think Progress highlighted his memo’s directives to “‘Yell,’ ‘Stand Up And Shout Out,’ ‘Rattle Him’,” calling it a “right-wing harassment strategy against Dems.” The blog falsely connected MacGuffie to the national conservative group FreedomWorks through the most tenuous of threads. The Think Progress link that purports to establish MacGuffie as a FreedomWorks “volunteer” leads to his one blog posting on a Tea Party website (on the free social networking site, ning.com). Think Progress calls Tea Party Patriots a “FreedomWorks website.”

The problem is it’s not a FreedomWorks site, according to FreedomWorks spokesman Adam Brandon. FreedomWorks is a “coalition partner” of TeaPartyPatriots.org, but does not fund the site in any way.

“There is no formal structural connection,” Brandon told me. “Never has been. Never will be. We’re just fellow travelers in the movement.”

There is no “memo” that tells protestors what to do. If anyone else besides this guys mother, grandmother, and maiden aunt saw this “blueprint” I would be enormously surprised. It was a wholly manufactured piece of “evidence” - along with the ridiculously tenuous connections - by TPM.

Josh Marshall bragged to high heaven about the George Polk Award for journalism he received. I am going to write the award committee and ask them to rescind it. This isn’t even yellow journalism. It is propaganda, as Marshall and the rest of the left (who are, in fact, the ones who receive instructions on a daily basis about how to frame issues through their exclusive email list) can’t be bothered with the facts, can’t be bothered with the truth, and are only concerned about demonstrating their rank partisanship and shocking demagoguery.

Of course, it is impossible for the truth to catch up to the lies at this point. We will see the left pointing to this ridiculous memo for the duration of the health care reform debate as “evidence” that the outrage is “manufactured” and not genuine. Nor will the media take the time or make the effort to differentiate between the vast majority of demonstrators who are locally organized and the few agitators who have come in from out of town. Ignorance of the nature of the protests and who is taking part extends to the White House, as this email I got proves:

There’s been a lot of media coverage about organized mobs intimidating lawmakers, disrupting town halls, and silencing real discussion about the need for real health insurance reform.

The truth is, it’s a sham. These “grassroots protests” are being organized and largely paid for by Washington special interests and insurance companies who are desperate to block reform. They’re trying to use lies and fear to break the President and his agenda for change.

“Largely paid for?” Who is paying what to whom and why? If this is true, how come we never hear any names of these evil companies or individuals? So far, all we’ve got is a memo from a guy running a PAC out of his basement. Specifically, which companies are paying the protestors? Which lobbying groups are giving people money to disrupt the town halls? If you don’t have any names, it’s a base political smear, nothing more.

Are big insurance companies paying people gas money to drive the few blocks to where the town hall meeting is being held? Isn’t the White House aware that the tea party groups have been organizing since February and have email lists of hundreds of volunteers in the area? Why do they need help from lobbyists to send out a couple of hundred emails?

The facts are a little less dramatic. And while Marshall and his cohort of lock-step liberals in the media drum on about “astroturfing” and “mobs,” the protests go on. Not always with the decorum and reasonableness that such a weighty subject demands. But as I said yesterday, that kind of disruptive action hurts much more than any fakery the liberals can come up with to delegitimize the protests.

Max Boot, writing at Commentary:

In 1847, David Pacifico, a Jew who had been born in British-held Gibraltar and was therefore a British subject, had his house burned down in Athens by an anti-Semitic mob. The Greek government refused to protect him or provide any restitution. Lord Palmerston, Britain’s foreign secretary, sent the Royal Navy to blockade Greece until it paid Pacifico’s demands.

Critics charged that Palmerston was overreacting. The House of Lords even voted to censure him. But in the House of Commons, Palmerston carried the day with a magnificent five-hour oration in which he declared: “As the Roman, in days of old, held himself free from indignity, when he could say, Civis Romanus sum [I am a Roman citizen], so also a British subject, in whatever land he may be, shall feel confident that the watchful eye and the strong arm of England will protect him from injustice and wrong.”

Theodore Roosevelt struck a similar tone in 1904 after Ion Perdicaris, a Greek-American living in Morocco, was kidnapped by the bandit chief Ahmed al-Raisuli. His Secretary of State John Hay drove the 1904 Republican Convention into a frenzy of approbation when he made it known that an American naval squadron had been sent to Morocco to demand “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead.” (It later turned out that Perdicaris was no longer an American citizen, but that was a mere detail compared to the principle Roosevelt espoused.)

I recount these tidbits of ancient history to show how far we have come over the past century — in the wrong direction. Today the United States is the mightiest nation in the world — far stronger than Britain was in its 19th-century heyday or than we ourselves were in 1904. Yet what happens today to those who dare take our citizens hostage? Umm, pretty much nothing.

Boot bemoans the death of gunboat diplomacy and pines for the good old days when if even one American was placed in peril of his freedom, the Navy would gallop to the rescue, threatening those sultans, potentates, and tinpot dictators with swift and certain destruction if they dared to muss a single hair on our fellow countryman’s head. He grouses that hostage taking (which is what, in essence, the North Koreans did with a our recently released journalists), is now “a matter for diplomatic confabs rather than military movements.”

Yes…and thank God for that.

Boot is smarter than this and it pains me that he has opined with such shallow and wrongheaded analysis. In fact, it is utter nonsense to draw any kind of parallels between 19th century notions of protecting our citizens from harm and the challenges facing 21st century statecraft in not allowing small incidents like this to blow up into regional or even worldwide conflagrations.

And let’s not forget a healthy dose of overweening nationalism and arrogant imperialism that was at the bottom of many of those exercises in western power. How dare those ignorant savages insult one of our citizens! By jove, send Old Ironsides and park her right in the middle of their best harbor. I’ll bet it will be a long time before those backward yahoos try and insult America again!

Boot refers to the evolution in the way we handle these incidents as the “wrong direction.” That’s poppycock. The world is an enormously more complex place than it was in the 19th and turn of the 20th century. Boot knows this and yet, wants a more nationalistic outburst from the government and the American people when hostage taking by these thugs occurs:

Granted, there are good reasons not to launch a war against North Korea or Iran over the fate of these hostages. North Korea, after all, has something that the Moroccans and Greeks didn’t — nuclear weapons. Still, it’s an outrage that there isn’t more outrage, either in the U.S. government or the country at large, over the fate of our fellow citizens who are held hostage by thugs. We could use a “Civis Americanus Sum” doctrine today.

You know, I could give a crap what the Romans would have done in instances such as these. The situations are in no way analogous and bespeak a frightening surrender to emotionalism when patience and reason are called for.

I can see a military element to the equation if we are ever confronted with the kind of mass hostage taking that occurred in Iran or could have occurred in Grenada. And an incident like the Mayaguez or the USS Pueblo capture by the North Koreans certainly demands a military response.

But rouge nations like Iran and North Korea using a couple of Americans as pawns in a larger diplomatic game by capturing them and holding them for ransom might indeed generate outrage but after that kind of emotional explosion, where are you? What good was accomplished? Are the hostages any closer to coming home?

And what good would it do to send the Seventh Fleet or even just a carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf or the Sea of Japan? I know Boot recalls the Falklands where obsolete (at the time) Exocet missiles did a lot of damage to the British Fleet. Both Iran and North Korea have anti-ship weapons that are considerably more modern and sophisticated than Argentina possessed. I daresay any overt military response from our Navy would be answered in a way that could get a lot of Americans killed and probably escalate the incident into something neither side would have wanted.

The world has changed in the last 100 years and Boot, for whatever reason, doesn’t apply the necessary logic to the issues involved and simply goes off on an emotional jag, questioning why we can’t respond to hostage taking the same way that good old TR would have. Not granting the exponentially more complex world we live in today compared to Teddy Roosevelt’s dreams of imperial subjugation with his “big stick” makes such displays laughably obsolete, if not emotionally satisfying.

But it would be a helluva price to pay simply to partake in a chest puffing exercise in futility.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, my special guests are Jimmy Bise, Dan Rhiel, and Stacy McCain. We’ll look at the lefty blogger who slandered Sarah Palin by starting a divorce rumor as well as the town halls being held by Democrats that are being disrupted by conservatives.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

Is it ever the right thing to do to shout down the political opposition at an open meeting?

I realize people are angry. I know that conservatives feel a sense of powerlessness as Republicans in congress fumble and stumble around and the Democrats seem to have it all going their way. I accept the fact that this health care bill is a fearful monstrosity and that extraordinary measures should be taken to defeat it.

But is screaming in impotent rage at your congressmen the way to go about doing it?

The left has been doing it for 40 years. Poor Hubert Humphrey was hardly ever able to make himself heard during his 1968 election appearances because anti-war protestors dogged his steps, shouting him down at every opportunity. Back in those days, they didn’t remove troublemakers as they do today - at least I don’t recall that they did. Sometimes there were several hundred people chanting and screaming so removing them all would have been a problem.

Nixon was also often shouted down during that contest. It was a typical display of bad manners by the left that only served to help elect Richard Nixon and set back their cause of ending the war immeasurably.

Here are some examples of what’s been going on:

Angry protestors in Philadelphia shouted down both Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter.

On Saturday in Texas, demonstrators against what they called government-run health care surrounded Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett and followed him out to his car, shouting “just say no.”

The crowds are partly the result of conservative Web sites asking for turn out at town hall meetings - including three tonight in Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina. Hundreds of events by both Democrats and Republicans are being targeted in every state.

But the turnouts also reflect the real fear over the increased taxes and government controls that are part of the health bills being considered in Congress.

“They know that that means somebody’s taxes are eventually be used to pay for this - and they are worried that that’s their taxes,” said Max Pappas of the conservative Web site Freedom Works.

As an aside, it is obvious that CBS reporters read liberal websites:

Is this just some less-than-polite heckling or political maneuvering? CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports.

Funny…Brian Beutler doesn’t wonder - he knows:

On Friday, July 24, a representative of Conservatives for Patients Rights–the anti-health care reform group run by Swift Boat message man Rick Scott–sent an email to a list serve (called the Tea Party Patriots Health Care Reform Committee) containing a spreadsheet that lists over one hundred congressional town halls from late July into September.

The email from CPR to tea baggers suggests that, though conservatives portray the tea bagger disruptions as symptoms of a populist rebellion roiling unprompted through key districts around the country, they have to a great extent been orchestrated by anti-health care reform groups financed by industry. (CPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

That email predates by about a week a recent flurry of events at which Democratic members of Congress have been accosted and harassed by anti-health care reform tea party protesters. But beyond putting those spectacles, now receiving wide play on cable news, into a fresh light, it also provides a window into the tea party protesters’ organizing infrastructure, which, like so much political organizing today, occurs in private email list serves.

Omigod - don’t tell me. The horror of it! Citizens actually organizing to protest! Oh, the humanity. (If Beutler or anyone else has a link to a tea party website that makes the claim these demonstrations are “spontaneous” I would appreciate it. In fact, if there is a link to any site on the web that makes this claim, I would like to see it. This is a strawman argument, nothing more.)

Of course, tea partiers have made absolutely no secret that they are organizing to protest at these town halls. The fact that an organization sent out a list of scheduled town hall meetings in key districts does not mean anything except liberals are worried that the right - usually moribund when it comes to protesting anything - is aping their long cherished tactics. I guess when Moveon sent out a million emails to people telling them to protest the war, that was…what? “Real” grass roots action? Puhleez.

Regardless, it’s how opponents of health care reform act at these meetings that concern me. Boorish behavior like this is inappropriate and serves no purpose other than to make the screamers feel good. That’s pretty selfish if you ask me.

Every single poll shows that the more people know about this bill, the more they detest it. Logic and reason would go a helluva lot farther in showing people how bad this bill is than giving into emotionalism for the sake of a little theatrics and releasing pent up anger. You are not doing the cause one iota of good by demonstrating poor manners and stifling free speech.

Those citizens who are on the fence on this issue (the ones who will probably decide the fate of health care reform in the end), and who are trying to learn more about it, only see a bunch of angry, irrational people, incoherently ranting when they want to hear both sides of the argument. The question is, do we give them a chance to find out how bad this bill is or do we drive them into the arms of those supporting the measure by coming across as a bunch of bozos?

What the left never understood - and still doesn’t get, judging by the way they tried to shout down Bush every opportunity they got - is that presenting your case in a reasonable manner always goes a lot farther with those who are undecided than simply trying to stifle your political opponent’s right of free speech. That tactic breeds resentment from those who are more thoughtful about politics or who are trying to learn about an issue. You lose far, far more than you gain when acting boorishly.

Again, I know people are angry. But giving in to the emotionalism of the moment hurts the cause. I realize the left has used these tactics for generations - and that may be the silliest reason of all for conservatives to mimic them. Do you really want to imitate the absolute worst tactic of your opponent? Where’s the logic in that?

This is not a zero sum game. There is much more to be gained by demonstrating reasonably and respectfully than going off half cocked and disrupting what is, after all, part of the democratic process. There is a real chance that the entire idea of health care reform can be defeated for this congressional term.

But it won’t happen if conservatives continue to make it impossible for the majority of voters to see their side of the argument because they are preventing everyone from hearing both sides.

My latest AIP article is up, albeit with a different title: “CFPA Gone Elitist?” I like the title I gave my piece so there.

But really, if there was ever a case that revealed liberal elitism, snobbery, and their unshakable belief that they know what is best for everybody else because, at bottom, we’re just a bunch of goober chewing, gun toting, Jesus loving, inbred ignoramuses who can’t take care of ourselves, the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency is it:

The point is, Obama’s CFPA will play the role of National Papa by forcing financial services institutions - banks, mortgage companies, brokerage firms - to limit the sale of complicated financial products only to those customers who can grasp their complexity and hence, manage the risk.

This elitist idea is the result of the belief by some liberals that too many consumers were snookered by unscrupulous loan companies and bought mortgages that they should never have purchased. These sub-prime loans had balloon provisions that would kick in after a few years, dramatically increasing their interest rate and with it, their monthly payments.

No doubt some loan sharks did indeed either fail to follow the law and fully disclose all the risks associated with such a loan or simply lied. Laws are already on the books to deal with these criminals who prey on those who are less sophisticated in financial matters than others. Full disclosure laws have been a part of the financial industry for many years and there are clear guidelines regarding the disclosure of all risks and obligations of the consumer.

But that’s just not good enough, say the Daddy Staters. We’re too stupid to know what’s in our best interest and even if we read all the disclosure information, we’re too unsophisticated to understand it.

Enter the CFPA who will sit us down in the government family room not to help us make our own choices in financial matters, but to lay down the law and back it up with a shaving strop.

One of the recommendations to financial institutions who will segregate their products into easy to understand, “vanilla” offerings and more complex instruments, is to give consumers a test to weigh their knowledge of financial matters in order to determine whether they are capable of getting a home loan or purchase some other financial instrument.

Neat, huh?

The problem is that if a financial company sells a more complex offering to a consumer and it goes south, the customer can go running to the CFPA with a complaint or sue. In other words, if you like medical malpractice, you will love the new CFPA.

I would be unable to pass even a beginner’s test on financial matters. And devising a test to measure if a consumer has the knowledge to “understand” the risks involved in buying a product will be an interesting exercise. If they make it too easy, they leave themselves open to trouble. If they make it too hard, they lose a lot of business.

There are other problems with the new agency as well. Read my whole piece.

It is a titanic battle of the witless, a struggle to determine which paranoid, idiotic, nonsensical, and just plain loony tunes conspiracy nutcases take the booby prize for being the biggest threat to rationality and common sense in our politics.

In truth, I wouldn’t want to live off the difference. The fact is, a sizable segment of both the left and right have allowed their hatred for a president to so cloud their judgment and befuddle their minds that they have descended into a pit of irrational idiocy, and are drowning in their own bilious delusions.

There is no need to look very far for explanations. Driven by the internet, which is tailor made for attracting and gathering like minded twits into communities of conspiracy nuts who feed off each other’s flights of ever more spectacular illogical fancies, the Truther-Birther nexus can be found in how our information society has so splintered and fractured our national polity, that offshoots like these are inevitable.

Previous to the widespread use of the internet to get the bulk of one’s news about what’s happening in the world, information was a linear proposition; a straight line could be drawn directly from a small number of newspapers, magazines, and TV stations to the consumer of news. Alternative publications and viewpoints were out there but one had to expend an effort to find them.

While this may have led to a conformity that put enormous power into the hands of a few, unelected editors and publishers, it also prevented the nutcases from getting their hands on the means to widely disseminate their deranged theories and attract the dullards, the less educated, and those who lacked the critical thinking skills to differentiate between logic and logical fallacies.

Today - as was true in the past with Bush and a lesser extent (only because the internet was in its infancy) Clinton, hatred and fear are the driving force behind these irrational notions. Is it ideological or something deeper? Do blogs and talk radio contribute to the fact of their existence or do those media simply fan the flames of an already out of control conflaguration of stupidity?

I don’t like pat answers to those questions as both left and right pretend to have figured out what’s wrong with the other side. “It’s racism and Glenn Beck” screams the left! “It’s Bush hatred” screams the right. While I have no doubt all of that plays a role in what apparently drives perfectly normal (otherwise) people to believe demonstrably stupid things, I believe that at bottom, it has more to do with the times in which we live rather than any specific reason you can point to in order to explain the aberrant thinking.

Some Americans are afraid. They are afraid of crime, of their neighbors, of neighborhoods that are changing to reflect a more diverse society, of a world where globalization is making the future uncertain, and they are afraid of change. Most of us deal with these fears rationally. We buy good locks for our doors. We don’t walk alone at night. We accept the growing diversity of American society as part of our growth as a nation. We put the prospect of losing our job someday out of our minds.

For some, President Obama’s election represents all of those fears rolled up into one big bundle of trouble. He is their fears made flesh and his radical notions of change have some trying desperately to find a way to stop him. Couple that with the relative powerlessness that conservatives feel at this moment in history and the Birther Movement seems inevitable.

For the Truthers, September 11 knocked us off our comfortable moorings that we were a safe port in a sea of violence while the enormity of the attacks carried out by a handful of crazy terrorists didn’t quite balance out the books. Here you have this enormous world-historical event and it was perpetrated by people to which we have little more than feelings of utter contempt. “Towel heads” or “Ragheads” who blew themselves up, believing crazy stuff about going right to heaven for killing us could not possibly have carried off such an enormous attack.

For Democrats - 35% of whom believed in 2007 that George Bush had advance knowledge of the attacks - it was an acceptable way to express their bigotry against Arabs and hatred of Bush by rejecting the notion that he - or any other president ever elected - would have acted swiftly if foreknowledge of such a devastating attack would have presented itself. (Note: Please don’t bring up Roosevelt’s supposed foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor - nonsense that has been royally debunked by a wide variety of historians.)

To acknowledge that President Bush would have tried and prevent the attack rather than allow it to happen (or, in the extreme Truther-created world, actively plan and assist it), would be granting the object of their deranged hatred the benefit of good intentions - an impossibility if you actually believe that Bush was the second coming of Hitler.

Both Birthers and Truthers are trapped by their own fears, unable to break free and see the light of reason because they are in a comfort zone of having contact with like minded conspiracy floggers any time they wish. Alternative explanations - even when that information is compelling enough to satisfy the vast majority - are ignored because the Birther-Truther believes they are privy to the “real facts” and any challenge to their orthodoxy is a result of plots by the enemy (government, the press).

Should it surprise us that so many Republicans believe that Obama wasn’t born here or that so many Democrats believe Bush was evil enough to allow terrorists to attack us despite knowing in advance? Not when believing these theories allows one to see themselves as possessing knowledge that no one else is given the ability to understand. Interpreting the “facts” correctly - being able to connect the dots, no matter how scattered and fanciful they might be - is a way for the conspiracists to feel superior to the rest of us.

And they cloak this air of superiority in what they convince themselves is stellar research and hidden facts, with only those possessing superior insight able to discern the truth.

Richard Hofstadter:

A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it.

As I have written before, this becomes a self-reinforcing feed back loop where the denizens of these conspiracy cultures try and outdo each other in positing ever more fantastic theories about what “really happened,” leaving reason and rationality even further behind.

Birthers who either fake or are taken in by a fake birth certificate of Obama’s
want to believe so badly, that the obvious becomes obscure. Truthers who want to believe in a government plot for 9/11 (or that Bush knew of the attacks), take similar “evidence” as gospel despite scientific findings that contradict it or the bulk of testimony that debunks it. The binds that tie these pathetic people together is their simple inability to accept the facts as the rest of us know them to be. This says more about humanity than it does either conservative or liberal ideology.

Talk radio on the right has pretty much rejected the Birther’s arguments. But they are not guiltless. Their out of control, exaggerated, hyperbolic criticisms of Obama have created a climate where one can believe anything bad about the president. The atmosphere of fear that they are deliberately ginning up to get ratings and audience is contributing in no small way to the Birther phenomenon.

Perhaps some strong statements against the Birther movement by Limbaugh, Hannity, and a few of the bigger names in the business might bring that 28% number down, just as strongly worded criticisms of by the Democratic leadership against Truthers would help dispel at least some of the paranoia on the left about Bush.

But as long as Democratic congressmen give credence to theTruthers while Republican congressmen refuse to categorically come out and say that Obama was born here and is an American citizen, the Birther-Truther problem will be with us to bedevil our politics.

Recently acquired Mark Kotsay avoids the tag of Yankees catcher Jose Posada, who had the ball in his other hand, in the eighth inning of yesterday’s game. The Sox won 14-4.

I have not written about my beloved White Sox this year, sparing most of my regular readers who either have no interest in baseball or the Sox.

The reason for this dearth of postings about my favorite baseball team is quite simple; the White Sox have stunk up the joint this year.

Wildly inconsistent, they can look like contenders for a stretch of 4 or 5 games and then tank for the next 5. Their starting pitching can look like Cooperstown candidates for a week while the bullpen appears to have de-evolved into a bunch of  manic chimpanzees, throwing the ball all over the park. Those roles can be reversed the following week.

Only in the last month or so has the team begun to hit the way they should. But even here, they fail the consistency test, being unable to buy a hit with a man in scoring position one day while turning into a bunch of Ted Williams clutch hitters the next.

It is perplexing in the extreme to see this team fumble, kick, drop, or simply miss routine plays in the field. This is the only thing they have done with any consistency all year . Their defense is so porous, if it were a shirt, it would have been given to “Save the Children” so full of holes it has proven to be.

But today, my Sox find themselves only 1.5 games behind the division leading Detroit Tigers (3 games down in the loss column). The fact is, both Detroit and Minnesota have proven to be as sucky as the Sox so that all three teams are bunched together at the top of the Central Division, waiting for one club to break out and get hot.

That may not happen. None of those three teams have the pitching to dominate other teams over long stretches. Each club has perhaps 3 good starters while the rest are Bozos in cleats. The Sox improved their staff marginally by acquiring former Cy Young Winner Jake Peavy from San Diego for a couple of real good pitching prospects. Ordinarily, this would have fans swooning in anticipation of another divisional flag flying over US Cellular Field.

Alas, Mr. Peavy has been on the disabled list for more than a month with a bad ankle and won’t see the mound at what many of us still defiantly call “Comiskey Park” until late this month - if at all. As former Sox pitcher Jack McDowell pointed out on his blog, that will give Big Jake only 6 starts before the end of the year - hardly enough to make an impact. In fact, GM Kenny Williams said that the Peavy move was done as much for the future as the present.

Williams may not believe the team has much of a chance to win this year either.

Be that as it may, we have the illusion of a pennant race this year anyway. But really, the Sox should have been eliminated after last week’s catastrophic road trip to Detroit and Minnesota that saw the Tigers take 3 out of 4 from the hapless Chicagoans (the Southsiders were ahead in 3 of those games but blew two of them in the last inning), and getting swept three straight in the Baggie Dome in Minneapolis.

But the Baseball Gods have a streak of comedy in them. Immediately after wiping the floor with the Sox, Detroit journeyed to Texas where the resurgent Rangers pummeled them. Thus, the Sox only lost 1 game in the standings while hanging a “Do Not Disturb - Ballplayers Sleeping” sign over the visiting clubhouse in Minnesota.

Their performance during that stretch did not generate any confidence for the 4 game Yankee series that begins the current 10 game homestand. It is a shame that the Yankee-White Sox rivalry has all but disappeared the last few decades. In the 1950’s and early 60’s, it was white hot as the hated New Yorkers went on a stretch between 1949 and 1962 where they won the American League pennant 11 times. Only Cleveland’s win in 1954 and the White Sox triumph in 1959 spoiled that historic, incredible run.

Games between the Yanks and Sox in those days were very intense with the crowds really getting into the action on the field. From 1957 to 1965, the White Sox finished second to the Yankees 3 times - five times a bridesmaid altogether. It seemed in those days before the playoffs where the winner of the 10 team American League went on to the World Series, the pennant was decided those last few days of the season with the hated Yankees winning when they had to and the Sox falling just short.

With the Cubs on the Northside and their record of futility, you wonder why Chicago baseball fans are so schizophrenic?

But today, the White Sox have an opportunity to do something they haven’t done since 1964; sweep a 4 game series from the Yankees. That’s because the previous games of this series that have been won by the Sox have seen the South Siders punish the Yankee pitching staff for 27 runs in three contests, chewing up and spitting out almost every hurler the New Yorkers have put out there. It has been an offensive exhibition that the Sox were known for in previous seasons but has happened all too infrequently this year.

Leading the charge has been the Kiddie Korps of Jayson Nix, Chris Goetz, and the probably American League Rookie of the Year Gordon Beckham who is tearing up the league at age 23. All three (and 26 year old second year man Alexie Ramirez) give the Sox something they haven’t had in a decade - speed at the top and bottom of the lineup. Ramirez twisted his ankle in Minnesota and missed the first three games of the series although he may be on the field today. But the rest of the kids are hitting very well while not embarrassing themselves too badly in the field.

Two other bright spots for the Sox of late has been the stellar play of outfielders Scott Posednik and Carlos Quentin. Posednik joined the team in May after being out of baseball for a few weeks, cut by the Rockies. Pods had been a big part of the World Championship team in 2005 but had been traded after a couple of injury plagued years following that glory.

Now hitting over .300, running the bases like a teenager, the 32 year old former all star seems to have found a Fountain of Youth.

And Quentin’s return from a painful bout with planter fasciets that has kept him out of the lineup until last week’s road trip, is finally starting to bear fruit as the slugger appears to slowly be getting his stroke back. How long he will stay in the field before he re-injures himself is anyone’s guess. If we’re lucky, he’ll stay healthy. But Quentin’s history of constant nagging injury would seem to make that a fool’s hope.

The dog days of summer are officially upon us. Between now and the end of August, the heat on the field and the constant pressure of the pennant race will take its toll on the players as the every game starts to take on a significance not seen in the early part of the season. One thing is sure. Unless the White Sox can find some magic that will help them play more consistently both at the plate and in the field, this season will almost certainly be a bad memory when the calendar next turns in September.

This is highly speculative but you’ve probably heard by now that a couple of Alaska liberal bloggers “broke” the story about Sarah Palin’s supposed impending divorce from her husband.

It sure sounded solid coming from Alaska Report News:

AlaskaReport has learned today that Todd Palin and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are to divorce. Multiple sources in Wasilla and Anchorage (including a former Palin staffer) have confirmed the split.

A National Enquirer story exposing previous affairs on both sides led to a deterioration of their marriage and the stress from that led to Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska last week.

The Palins were noticeably not speaking to each other for most of last Sunday’s resignation speech in Fairbanks. Sarah ditched Todd (MSNBC) right after the speech and left without him. Sarah removed her wedding ring a couple of weeks ago.

Sarah has recently purchased land in Montana and is considering moving the family there. Sarah Palin is originally from Idaho.

Very interesting. But not true, according to Stacy McCain who evidently talked directly to Palin or someone who was authorized to speak on her behalf:

“Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd? I may be just a renegade hockey mom, but I’m not blind!”
– SARAH PALIN

Yes, that is her OFFICIAL reponse, which I got via phone at 5:35 this afternoon. Take that to the bank.

I might add that Alaska Report has a about as good a record as Gawker in breaking news - which is better than some MSM outlets but far from perfect. And Gryphen, who apparently started the whole divorce rumor, is even worse.

Nevertheless, once both those sites hit the internet with the story, the blog feeding frenzy on the left began, with a couple of MSM outlets joining in.

As someone who doesn’t consider himself a journalist but who has been around newsrooms for many years, let me just say that if this had come across my desk, I would have smelled a set up. It’s too pat, the pieces fit too nicely together (an “explanation” for why she resigned) not to raise alarms with real journalists. So I think there is at least the possibility, that either someone in the Palin camp with an ax to grind with the media - or, less likely, Palin herself - whispered a few words to a birdie they were sure would get the word to people who would publish it.

The definition of “pwn” is “1. An act of dominating an opponent, and 2. Great, ingenious; applied to methods and objects.” If this was a set up by the Palin camp, it worked magnificently. Now, most of the lefty blogosphere has egg on their face.

Several Alaska bloggers  hounded the former Alaskan governor with bogus ethics complaints while she was in office - Alaska Report being one of them. Could a little payback be at play here?

Stranger things have happened.