Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is very good at playing the sensible conservative. He’s got that aw-shucks, Minnesota nice attitude that makes him sound like the type of conservative who isn’t actually bent on destroying anyone below the upper middle class.

This is what makes him very dangerous.

Because in his heart, Pawlenty is no moderate. He’s a conservative — a radical one — who has never met a tax cut he didn’t like, or a spending cut he wasn’t willing to make, so long as they attach to the right people. (Oh, he was more than happy to cut the renter’s tax rebate program, so people who rent — disproportionately poor people — get less back in taxes. But that’s different. Those people are poor.)

Pawlenty is now running for President, and he is, one assumes, getting ready to move enough rightward to try to make teabaggers into T-Paw baggers. His first step? Kill the poor:

Emergency rooms should be able to turn patients away to cut costs, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) said last night

Appearing on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Sustren” last night, Pawlenty said the federal law that mandates ER treatment should be repealed.

“Well, for one thing you could do is change the federal law so that not every ER is required to treat everybody who comes in the door, even if they have a minor condition,” Pawlenty said. “They should be — if you have a minor condition, instead of being at the really expensive ER, you should be at the primary care clinic.”

So let’s say a guy with the condition I’m recovering from comes into the ER. He doesn’t have insurance. He’s presenting with some pain and swelling of a sensitive area, but that isn’t necessarily cancer; could be torsion. Could be a hydrocele. Could be all sorts of minor, non-life-threatening conditions. Does he stay, or does he go?

If he stays, he gets the ultrasound that proves it’s cancer, thus starting treatment that saves his life. If he goes, he does so knowing that he can’t afford the doctor. So he lets things get worse. And worse. And worse.

If he goes back — when his guts ache and his brain is foggy — the treatment regimen is now more expensive. And less likely to succeed. A surgery and treatment plan that would have had 99 percent success now gives odds closer to 50/50. If our patient survives, he’ll face crushing medical debt that can only be alleviated via bankruptcy. If he dies, he dies.

This is Tim Pawlenty’s bold medical proposal — let the uninsured suffer, and die, so that ERs don’t have to take in the poor. This is something, incidentally, not even hospitals are clamoring for — they’d just like Pawlenty to sign on to an extension of medical assistance, a bill Pawlenty vetoed because…well, it helps the poor, I guess.

Nobody should risk death because of a lack of health care. The system we have — in which the poor at least can go to an ER to get treated — is absolutely awful. Pawlenty wants to take that last snippet of a safety net, and whisk it away — leaving the uninsured to die in the process. That is not conservative. That is evil.

Discussing a hypothetical stipend increase for Americorps volunteers — so that they don’t have to receive food stamps as many now do — John Cole pretty much nails exactly how things would go down:

Wanting to negotiate in good faith, having never learned a lesson ever, the Democrats like Baucus and Conrad would slow down the debate to give the Republicans time to participate. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe would work for a couple weeks with Senate leadership, get a couple things they want in the bill, then sigh and utter their public regrets that they just can not support the bill. Chuck Todd, the Politico, and other dullards in the beltway media would run a few pieces wondering why Obama hasn’t reached out more to moderates. While this is happening, the wurlitzer’s media blitz starts.

First off, we all know who loves Americorp- the Clenis. From there, it is all downhill. Breitbart would seize upon the bill, and claim that the anonymous stipend is just President Obama seeking to pay off his campaign volunteers- just like the KHMER ROUGE, POL POT, STALIN, AND DUVALIER! They would find some innocuous aspect of Americorps and turn it into something that is no doubt worse than Hitler.

[...]

Somewhere around this time, Randy Scheuneman and Meg Stapleton would post a bunch of nonsense on Palin’s facebook page, maybe declaring that Americorps is just like Hitler Youth Corps. This would get picked up by the Weekly Standard’s resident Palin fluffer, Matt Continetti, repeated by the increasingly loathesome Michael Goldfarb, and mainstreamed into CNN by Stephen Hayes in one of his typical fact-free appearances. Bill Kristol would pick up the ball and run with it, and before you know it, Fred Hiatt’s fishwrap would have 20 editorials railing against Americorps.

At this time, we would have tea partiers packing guns to town hall events, terrified of a socialist takeover of, well, something, carrying racist signs and chanting “Keep Government out of Americorps!,” and the rest of the MSM can start their coverage. Sensing an opportunity, shitheels like Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln and Mary Landrieu sense the bill is in trouble, and would start to pack the goodies into it for their home state. Lieberman and Marshall Wittman would sense that liberals really want this, and then start voicing grave concerns about the bill, and Marty Peretz and company would call anyone who noted Lieberman is just being an asshole an anti-Semitic Jew hater. Evan Bayh and other “fiscal conservatives” would then start mugging for every camera they could find, and would make appearances on all the Sunday shows with mean old man John McCain talking about the need to cut government and why war should always be off budget.

The read-the-whole-thing level of this post is off the charts. And deeply depressing. And accurate as all get out.

Is this Carly Fiorina ad the worst political ad of all time of this year? Yes, but of course, the year is young.

So much fail, so little time. Is it the way Fiorina suggests that good fiscal conservatives are mindless sheep? The way she attacks Campbell for deficits while simultaneously attacking him for supporting tax hikes that might have ameliorated them? No, truly the best part of the ad is the Demon Sheep Itself:

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Incidentally, the title of this post comes courtesy of Cake:

As you all most certainly know, an embarrassing quote from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., surfaced over the weekend. Reid apparently stated during the 2008 election that then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., would be an electable African-American candidate because he was lighter-skinned, and because he had the ability not to speak in a “Negro dialect.”

The quote was cringeworthy, and full of what Josh Marshall once described as “racial grandpaism,” the sort of archaic, muddled statement made by a guy who is generally well-meaning, but also generally possessed by some racist baggage left over from their upbringing.

Was the quote racist? Well, yes. But racism is not a capital offense; I have said racist things and so have you. One can’t grow up in America and not be suffused with some of the racist legacy our culture carries. The best any of us can do is recognize this and strive to overcome it, and apologize and learn when we fail to live up to our responsibility to overcome it.

More to the point, Reid’s statement, while clumsy and racist, was not malicious. He wasn’t saying that Obama shouldn’t be president because he was a charlatan, or that it was reasonable and proper that darker-skinned African-Americans should be less electable. A more artful phrasing of what he was trying to say might have gone something like this: Because of the legacy of racism in this country, a candidate like Barack Obama, who is biracial and who is able to speak to audiences in a manner that is less connected with stereotypically African-American speech patterns, will be more electable than a candidate like, say, Al Sharpton, who is darker-skinned and whose speaking style is more stereotypically African-American.

That doesn’t mean that this is right; it’s a value-neutral statement of fact. And what’s more, it’s true. Just as it’s true to say that being white makes one more “electable,” historically, than not being white, or that men are more likely to be elected president than women. It’s not right. It’s not fair. It’s something we should work to change. But it’s true, and saying so doesn’t make one a racist or sexist. Saying so makes one observant.

Which brings us to former Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

As you may recall, Trent Lott used to be Senate Majority Leader until, in 2002, he was forced out in a scandal involving a statement he made that included racist language. The then-Majority Leader’s statement that got him in trouble came in a tribute to retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond, KKK-S.C. Lott said of Thurmond:

I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.

Strom Thurmond ran for president in 1948, at a time when he was a Democrat of the traditional Southern variety — i.e., a flaming racist douchebag who nevertheless had an illegitimate biracial daughter conceived, quite probably, in rape.

Southern Democrats were furious at efforts by President Truman to ameliorate the damage caused by the apartheid system of segregation. The breaking point came at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, at which a young Minneapolis mayor by the name of Hubert Humphrey urged the party to “get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.” The speech prompted a walkout of Southern Democrats, who left to form their own party, the Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats nominated Thurmond, at the time the Governor of South Carolina, as their standard-bearer.

The party’s platform was simple: States’ Rights. Anti-Miscegenation. Pro-Segregation. Pro-Lynching. They were a party whose raison d’être was the full-throated defense of Jim Crow. Perhaps their platform was summed up best by Thurmond, who during the campaign said, “I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there’s not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigra [sic] race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches.”

Again, when he said those words, he had a 23-year-old African-American daughter.

Flash-forward back to today. Many on the right, apparently wowed by their ability to connect that both Trent Lott and Harry Reid were or are Senate Majority Leaders, and that both were accused of racism, are now calling on Reid to step down as Majority Leader, because the situation is totally the same. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., said flatly, “If he [Lott] should resign, then Harry Reid should.”

This is, in a word, bonkers.

Again, what Reid said was inartful and cringe-inducing and yes, racist. But it was not malicious. A different phrasing could save it from racism, and the core idea — that America in 2010 will treat candidates of varying racial backgrounds in different ways — is absolutely true.

Compare to what Lott said. Lott said that if America had followed Mississippi’s lead in 1948 and voted for the Dixiecrats, that America today would have avoided a lot of problems.

And yet the Dixiecrats stood for the worst sorts of barbarism committed in this country. They were the spiritual heirs to the slaveholders, the men and women who were absolutely and completely committed to keeping a boot of the throats of all non-white Americans. They expressly supported lynching, for God’s sake.

There is no way to save that quote, no way to phrase it that does not make it offensive and malicious. Lott was saying, flatly, that if only we’d maintained a system of segregation and racial apartheid in the South, that America today would be better off.

To compare the two situations is ludicrous.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it:

Claiming that Harry Reid’s comments are the same, is like claiming that referring to Jews as “Hebrews” is the same as endorsing Nazism. Whereas a reputable portion of black people still use the term Negro without a hint of irony, no black person thinks the guy yelling “Segregation Forever!” would have cured us of “all these problems.”

Leaving aside political cynicism, this entire affair proves that the GOP is not simply still infected with the vestiges of white supremacy and racism, but is neither aware of the infection, nor understands the disease. Listening to Liz Cheney explain why Harry Reid’s comments were racist, was like listening to me give lessons on the finer points of the comma splice. This a party, rightly or wrongly, regarded by significant portions of the country as a haven for racists. They aren’t simply having a hard time re-branding, they don’t actually understand how and why they got the tag.

Exactly right. Harry Reid said something stupid while arguing that a specific African-American man could get himself elected to the presidency. Trent Lott endorsed the worst part of America’s racial legacy, and held it up as our nation’s salvation. That Republicans can take these two situations and not see a difference between them says far more about the Republican Party than about Harry Reid.

Fox News go-to guy on terror and long-term terrorist supporter Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., says something that is, in fact, true:

The fact is while the overwhelming majority of Muslims are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the Islamic terrorists are Muslims, and that is our main enemy today.

The fact is that while the overwhelming majority of Americans are outstanding people, on the other hand 100% of the idiot Republicans in Congress are Americans. They are, fortunately, only the enemies of reasoned discourse.

They really are hollow people, with no hearts at all:

A bill introduced earlier this year by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) dealing with family reunification policies for immigrants was completely rolled into the reform package, except for its provisions allowing same-sex partners of permanent residents to qualify for a visa. The decision behind the little-noted change sparked friction between liberals hoping to kick off debate with an all-inclusive bill and Hispanic leaders more focused on keeping religious leaders on board with the plan.

“All the evangelists, Catholics and churches that are part of this were whacking out “over the gay and lesbian provisions,” said a Democratic lawmaker familiar with negotiations on the bill.

Democrats say they’re planning to reinsert the provision later in the process. I hope they do.

I can’t imagine what sort of human being would oppose a simple, compassionate policy like this. Allowing longtime, committed cross-national couples does not “endanger” marriage, nor does it harm any straight person in any way at all. But even a tiny bit of compassion towards LGBT people is more than organized right-wing Christians can stand.

You think it would get old; you think I’d stop being shocked by things like this. But no; I’m continually astonished at how some (not all) Christians — and in particular, politically powerful, organized Christian groups — lack even the most basic decency or compassion. What the hell makes them so petty?

Okay, so this may be a cheap shot … wait, no. Strike that. It is a cheap shot, but it’s also awesome.

Okay, seriously, Palin is a joke, and her supporters are laughably ignorant. It hardly needs saying, and isn’t some huge revelation.

That being said, it does point to a larger problem though, that there is great appeal in the modern political climate for oversimplification of issues, and for the idea that there are simple solutions to complicated problems. The appeal of this worldview is twofold.

First, of course, if there are easy solutions, then hey, we’re not that bad off! Drill, baby drill! Ignore the complications and context! Just do it! It’s easy!

Second, if there are easy solutions and your political opponents are not taking them, but are instead insisting on complicated trade-offs between competing values … well, it becomes much easier to believe that they’re not just mistaken but actually malevolent.

I think this POV is poison to democracy. It exists across the political spectrum, and (of course) there have been times historically when it concentrated on the left, but I think modern day it’s fair to say that it’s far more concentrated on the right.

It’s what lay behind tarring Al Gore and John Kerry as ‘eggheads.’ It’s what lead ‘policy wonk’ to become something of a slur, rather than the compliment it ought to be. It’s what lead pundits to wonder if Barack Obama might just be too smart for his own good¹. It’s the reason Glen ‘oligarhy’ Beck has a job. This surging anti-intellectualism, as I said, isn’t exactly new, but that doesn’t stop it from being worrisome.

EDIT: Steve Benen makes some great points on this very topic here, while riffing off of Ross Douthat’s recent column.

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Well, that and racism, I mean. (back)

This is a post-election thread; feel free to discuss any of the recent election news, future election trends, etc., here.

Virginia and New Jersey: No surprises here. I don’t think these races indicate national trends, but I can’t blame Conservatives for grabbing on to any hope they can.

In the end, I think the single best thing the Democrats can do for 2010 is to get aggressive and desperate about improving the economic situation; for instance, with a big temporary cut in payroll taxes. But I doubt they’ll do it, since “gutsy” has never in my lifetime been something Democrats do well.

New York: Frankly, the Republican who was pushed out of the race — who was pro-choice and pro-marriage equality — really does seem out of step with the Republican base. For that reason, I think the Republican base in NY did the principled thing by rebelling, just as the Democratic base in Connecticut was right to rebel against being represented by Joe Lieberman.

Will this be really good for the Democrats in the end, as many Democrats are currently crowing? I don’t know.

Washington state: Huzzah for a victory on civil unions. Dammit that it was so close.

Maine

Maine should be the death of the claim that people don’t hate gays, they just hate being told what to do by the Courts. The folks who oppose equality have never cared about that, except as a pretext, so they could oppose equality while pretending not to be bigots.

The folks in Maine did everything the way they’re “supposed” to. They were polite, they were organized. They spent years building up support with face-to-face contacts. They went through the legislature, not the courts.

None of that makes any difference to the people who oppose equality. None of it ever did.

Quoting Andrew Sullivan:

The hard truth is: people are still afraid of this, and our opponents knew how to target their fears very precisely. They have honed it to an art - their prime argument now is that although adults can handle gay equality, children cannot. And so they play straight to heterosexuals whose personal comfort with gay people is fine but who sure don’t want their kids to turn out that way. One way to prevent kids turning out that way, the equality opponents argue, is to ensure that they never hear of gay people, except in a marginalized, scary, alien fashion. And this referendum was clearly a vote in which the desire to keep gay people invisible trumped the urge to treat them equally.[...]

But civil rights victories, the final and enduring ones, are always built on the foundations of defeats. Sometimes, the defeat of a minority’s sincere aspiration to equality helps reveal the injustice of the discrimination and the cruelty of the marginalization. Sometimes, it helps show just how poorly treated we are, and galvanizes a community to fight back more fiercely as we saw in that amazing march on DC last month. That has certainly been true of previous civil rights movements. It is just as true of ours.

So congrats, Maine Equality. You did a fine job. Congrats, HRC. You helped. No congrats to Obama who is treating this civil rights movement the way Kennedy first treated his. But we don’t need Obama.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And we will win in due course, with a good spirit and keen arguments, and with passion and conviction in our hearts. We will win.

On July 1, over at Minnesota righty superblog True North (”Pointing Minnesota in the Right Direction”), Kevin Ecker decided to use his time to highlight an anti-immigration rally in Austin, Minnesota:

Political activism at it’s [sic] best is honest grassroots efforts by people finally fed up with lying politicians who decide to do something about an issue rather than just complain. We have a great example of that coming up here in Minnesota on the immigration issue.

On Saturday, July 11th at 2 PM, there will be a rally held at the Mower County Courthouse. It’s located at 201 First Street NE, Austin, MN. This will be the second rally in a month at that location.

Basically Austin is a town that the residents feel has been devastated by illegal immigration, and a lone resident, Sam Johnson, finally got fed up. He organized the first rally despite being up against professionally organized counter protests by the likes of La Raza, Centro Campesino and various Marxist organizations bussed in from the cities.

Sam Johnson, honest American, just doing the best he can to make our country free of “illegal immigration.” Or, you know, any immigration. Because this is Sam Johnson:

In case you’re wondering — and I doubt you are, but some people might not be able to view the picture — yes, that’s a guy wearing a neo-Nazi uniform. Because Sam Johnson isn’t just a hard-working white American who’s fed-up with illegal immigration. He’s a neo-Nazi, the head of the National Socialist Movement Southeast Minnesota. He is one of the most vile individuals in my state, and he’s a guy who the world will be better off without.

Sally Jo Sorensen of the outstanding Bluestem Prairie blog actually interviewed Johnson (one hopes she took a long, hot shower afterward); you should really read all of part one and bookmark the site for the next two installments, but here’s a brief excerpt:

“Minorities should not be citizens,” Johnson said, “only 100 percent true white Americans.” He outlined his vision of a nation in which all people of color would be stripped of their citizenship, no matter how long their families had lived in the United States, and moved to communities that would be strictly delineated according to race.

People of African descent would live with other people of African descent, Latinos with Latinos, Asians with Asians, American Indians with American Indians, and “real Americans” with other “real Americans. “Real American” and non-citizen status would be determined be having had family living in the country for five generations or 50-70 years.

Only if non-whites broke the law would they be sent back to the country of their ancestors’ origins, regardless of how long their families had lived in the United States. Of course, Johnson emphasized, this would dictate deporting all immigrants living here illegally.

“Minorities could have jobs, own homes, and enjoy their own culture,” he said. They simply wouldn’t be citizens of the United States, nor could they become citizens. They would have to keep separate.

Why separate?

“If you look back in history to every country that’s allowed different races to mingle,” he said, “you’ll see that nation has fallen.”

“Look at what happened to Rome,” he said, when I example him for an example of what he meant. “Jews and Africans came into Rome, there were uprisings, and Rome fell.”

This is the guy that True North — a blog that has included Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.; PowerLine’s Scott Johnson; and David Strom, the head of the Minnesota Taxpayers League as contributors — decided to back. A neo-Nazi. But that shouldn’t be surprising — the Republican party has deliberately chosen to throw its lot in with the most extreme elements of the hard-core, fascist-and-no-that’s-not-hyperbole, racist right. It is disgusting. It is despicable.

This is why those of us on the left don’t buy it when the right claims that they’re not racist — because they are so very willing to embrace racists when it helps them. If Republicans want to stop being seen as the party of hate, they need to stop the hatred. Otherwise, they need to own the fact that a sitting Republican congresswoman is a contributor to a website that promoted a neo-Nazi hate rally, promotion that included sharing Sam Johnson’s email address with those looking to get involved. Only a party that found racism acceptable could be comfortable with that.

UPDATE: Just because these things have a way of finding their way down the memory hole:

Let’s thank the Ceiling Cat tonight for four brave Republican U.S. Reps — John Shadegg of Arizona, Paul Broun of Georgia, Trent Franks of Arizona, and Sue Myrick of North Carolina. You see, they have uncovered the most terrormorfyingest Muslamofascist plot in the history of history. It seems that the Council on American Islamic Relations has engaged in a sinister plot to take over America by…well, it’s all too shocking:

Four Republican lawmakers have accused the most prominent Islamic advocacy group in Washington of trying to plant “spies” as interns on Capitol Hill.

[...]

In an unusual announcement this morning, four conservative Republicans — Reps. John Shadegg (Ariz.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Trent Franks (Ariz.) and Sue Myrick (N.C.) — formally asked the House Sergeant at Arms to launch an investigation of the Center for American-Islamic Relations. They accused CAIR, a non profit group, of trying to infiltrate Capitol Hill with interns and staffers.

Shadegg said Wednesday that CAIR is an organization that “members of Congress should be aware of and that should be investigated by the Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service.”

[...]

The proclamation from the four Republicans came in advance of a book, entitled “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” which includes a forward by Myrick. The author of the book, Dave Gaubatz, an anti-Islam activist who wrote last year that “a vote for Hussein Obama is a vote for Sharia Law.”

The lawmakers also released a one page “strategy” document they said they obtained from CAIR.

Not just a strategy document. An evil strategy document! Why, just look at the terrifying things CAIR wanted to do! Things like, er, building a grass-roots lobbying network! And raising money! And studying the media! And blogging! And building a database! A database!

Yes, it turns out that CAIR plans to destroy America by working within the American political system to influence policy to favor the interests of their group’s members, interests like (I assume) not being denied access to flights simply because of one’s religion, or possibly the implementation of Shari’a Law. You never know.

Shockingly, as part of their plan, CAIR has encouraged young American Muslims to become Congressional staffers, doing so surreptitiously, utilizing secret Muslim communications methods such as press releases and Facebook pages.

It is a terrifying thought, but at least we’re only talking about staffers. It’s not like the International Monolithic Muslim Conspiracy has placed its dastardly saboteurs in Congress itself. Jeebus help us if that ever happens.

For the love of the Ceiling Cat, Michael Steele, really?

The long-in-the-planning beta launch of the new RNC website is being greeted with some predictable snark from liberal blogs — a lot of it directed at Chairman Michael Steele’s blog, “What Up?”

“What Up?” Really? Really‽ That’s like a 93-year-old white guy’s idea of how them colored kids speak.

I think it’s about time to dust this off.

Like most Americans, I don’t have much time for Bill Ayers. Yes, I know he’s central to the vast left-wing conspiracy to elect Muslim Black Socialist Black Communist Black Muslim Blackity Black Black Black President Barack Hussein Super-Allah Obama, but he’s also a former terrorist — and no mincing words, that’s what he was. If you use violence against civilian targets to further political aims, you’re a terrorist, and while Ayers was ultimately not convicted of any crime, that doesn’t make him innocent. I have little time for the man.

That said, because Ayers and Obama — both professors at the University of Chicago — crossed paths a few times, Bill Ayers has become a Svengali figure in the right-wing mythology of Barack Obama, secret Kenyan. For bizarre, half-assed reasons, conservatives have convinced themselves that Ayers secretly wrote Barack Obama’s first book, Dreams from My Father, because everyone knows African-Americans can’t write — I mean, Barack Obama just isn’t that good a writer. No, really.

This is, of course, incandescently offensive, but pretty much par for the course from the right, so one tends to ignore it, because the alternative is caring whether Bill Ayers lives or dies, and I don’t.

That said, my disdain for Ayers does not inculcate me from the ability to be amused by massive conservative fail, and that’s when one has to note that something wonderful has happened:

Anne Leary creates traffic and attention to her previously obscure blog with a picture of Bill Ayers and a “conversation” that sounds like suspiciously like a letter to WorldNetDaily’s forum:

Dear WND - I am a blogger from the midwest and  I never thought this would happen to me…

Leary (and you should be) claims that she said “Hey you’re Bill Ayers…” and a guilt-ridden Ayers immediately broke down and admitted that he wrote Barack Obama’s book.

Yep. A conservative blogger sits down next to Bill Ayers, and tell him that she’s a conservative blogger, and Ayers immediately tells her that he wrote Dreams from My Father, and she reported that as fact. Was Ayers serious? Of course not. Criminy, even Jonah Frickin’ Goldberg can see through this. But that didn’t stop much of the wingnutosphere from jumping on this as proof — proof! — that Bill Ayers is actually president.

You don’t have to like Bill Ayers to find that highly amusing.

As you’ve probably heard, the folks who brought you Conservapedia are currently hard at work on the Conservative Bible, because that Jesus guy was a crazy dope-smoking hippie who had all these goofy ideas about healing the sick and helping the poor and turning the other cheek and crap like that. Now, I haven’t read it yet, but I’m really looking forward to this scene:

Yes, that’s “One Nation Under God,” a new painting by artist Jon McNaughton, and it’s one of those great moments in conservative kitsch, like Rifle Jesus, that just warms the cockles of your heart.

Now, the servers on the guy’s site are currently melted, what with the HuffPo and Wonkette links, but I’m hoping he gets them back up soon, because for the full effect, you really have to see the mouseover information explaining the symbolism of the picture (because, as all artists know, the best way to make your symbolism apparent to the viewer is to tell them exactly what your symbolism is supposed to mean).

Yes, there’s the “liberal woman reporter!” And the “Mother!” With her “handicapped child!” (Said child does not appear to be in any way disabled, which mayhaps is why McNaughton felt the need to identify him thus. Then again, we’re all probably glad he didn’t try to depict a disabled child “sensitively.”) There’s the Supreme Court Justice weeping over Roe v. Wade, and the Evolution-Teachin’ Professor, and Mister Hollywood, all hanging out by Satan Himself. Okay, after the Polanski stuff, I guess I’ll give McNaughton Mister Hollywood, but still, that’s a mite over-the-top. And my favorite of the onlookers, the “Typical Immigrant,” who is depicted as possibly Asian-American, and who is shocked that Jesus is actually the founder of our country! I guess that’s because he read those silly citizen’s guides with their noting the founding fathers favored church-state separation.

And of course, in the pantheon with Jesus are swell folks like Aryan Youth! (That’s my term for the kid, not his.) And Black Soldier Whose Name is King So I Don’t Have to Paint Martin Luther King, Jr.! And way, waaaaaay off in the distance, it’s Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman and Sequoyah! And also Susan B. Anthony! So there!

But of course, front and center in the picture is Jesus, seen here writing the Constitution which includes provisions for freedom of religion. Silly Jesus! Always with the jokes, that guy! Still, I’m glad someone is finally giving us a look at the real story of the American Revolution, which is not the story of a bunch of rich white guys finding ways to make America somewhat more classically liberal than it was under British rule, but the story of Jesus. Oh, and also, Glenn Beck’s favorite book. That too.

UPDATE: This is some weapons-grade snark right here.

I have conservative friends who argue that it’s unfair of the left to paint them all as a bunch of tea-party-attending, Glen-Beck-listening yahoos. They argue that conservatism has a rich intellectual foundation, and that by cherry picking their worst-sounding supporters, we willfully ignore the writers today who uphold that intellectual foundation.

Writers like the folks at The National Review.

Writers like John Derbyshire¹.

Why do I bring this up? Well, its just that as Faiz Shakir points out over at Think Progress, John Derbyshire went on Alan Colmes’ radio show yesterday and took a stand against female suffrage.

DERBYSHIRE: Among the hopes that I do not realistically nurse is the hope that female suffrage will be repealed. But I’ll say this – if it were to be, I wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep.

COLMES: We’d be a better country if women didn’t vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Probably. Don’t you think so?

COLMES: No, I do not think so whatsoever.

DERBYSHIRE: Come on Alan. Come clean here [laughing].

COLMES: We would be a better country? John Derbyshire making the statement, we would be a better country if women did not vote.

DERBYSHIRE: Yeah, probably.

Okay, so that’s bad enough, but Alan Colmes, rightly gobsmacked by this, next asked

COLMES: What’s next, you want to bring back slavery?

DERBYSHIRE: No. No, I’m in favor of freedom, personally.

COLMES: But women shouldn’t have the freedom to vote?

DERBYSHIRE: Well, they didn’t and we got on along ok.

He goes on to argue against The Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course.

Anyhow, all this illustrates two things for me.

First, it really perfectly encapsulates the strange sort of doublethink you see in conservative political philosophy all the time.

“We believe in individualism! (Just so long as you don’t have sex in ways we disapprove of.)”

“We believe in freedom! (As long as people who disagree with us are not allowed to vote.)”

“We believe in free speech! (But people who criticize the (Republican) president should watch their goddamn mouths.)”

You see this a lot in discussions about economics, where the argument is that government intervention and collective solutions are illegitimate (not just wrong, mind you), no matter how much of the electorate is in favor of them. You see it in the faux-troversies about President Obama’s legitimacy. You see it in Glenn Beck’s rhetoric about how ‘real Americans’ are opposed to President Obama, despite him having won the presidency by an overwhelming majority ². You see it in the analysis we hear every election about how “if it weren’t for the African-American vote, Democrats would be a permanent minority party³ ”

The central idea is this: If you disagree with them, you ought not be allowed to participate in the democratic process in the first place. I contrast this with the way the liberal ACLU operates, fighting for the free speech rights of white supremacists and the religious rights of fundamentalists, both groups who are not (to put it mildly) their ‘core constituency’.

‘Rights for all,’ versus ‘rights for the people who agree with me.’ That’s the difference.

Hell, John Derbyshire makes no bones about it! He says outright, “The conservative case against [female suffrage] is that women lean hard to the left.” That’s not an argument. That’s thuggery.

Anyhow, that’s the first thing I took from it.

The second thing I took away is that when people talk about the rich intellectual tradition of Conservatism, it’s guys like John Derbyshire they’re talking about, so … jeez … maybe they mean something different by ‘intellectual?’

Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people

1. Who, as Andrew Sullivan ably documents, continues to believe that gay people are all child molesters. Or at least enough where we shouldn’t let them around our children, best to be safe, etc, etc, etc. (back)
2. And the Democrats having won both houses! (back)
3. Hey look, here’s an example or two from a while back. (back)

Glenn Beck doesn’t really seem to know, despite saying Barack Obama has a “deep-seated hatred” of it:

(Via Andrew Sullivan)

So Rep. Michele Bachman, R-Shame, was down in St. Louis today, where she ignored Lincoln’s axiom on being thought a fool as per usual. But what is really impressive is this little sequence from her departure, as reported by the Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel:

After the speech, Bachmann had only a few minutes to sign autographs and collect a stack of CDs and books from fans who’d followed her into the lobby. I caught up to her as she headed outside and asked if she had any response to the murder of a Kentucky census worker, having noticed that the Census, a constant target for Bachmann, did not figure into her speech. Bachmann recoiled a little at the question and turned to enter her limo.

“Thank you so much!” she said.

That’s…well, it’s pathetic, that’s what it is. It wouldn’t have taken Bachmann but a second to say, “Well obviously, I condemn violence, yadda yadda.”

Of course, someone who didn’t condemn this sort of violence would simply get into a limo and duck the question.

As for the murder of Bill Sparkman, the evidence coming out makes it quite apparent that he was, indeed, targeted for being a census worker:

One of the witnesses who found a part-time census worker’s body hanging in a Kentucky cemetery says the man was naked and his hands and feet were bound with duct tape.

Jerry Weaver of Fairfield, Ohio, told The Associated Press on Friday that he was among a group of relatives who discovered the body of Bill Sparkman on Sept. 12.

Sparkman was a substitute teacher who worked part-time for the census. Law enforcement officials have released very few details on his death, only saying he died from asphyxiation.

Weaver says the man also was gagged and had duct tape over his eyes and neck. He says something that looked like an identification tag was taped to the side of his neck.

Some on the right have suggested this might be a suicide, or possibly the work of drug dealers. Well, drug dealers generally don’t target census workers, and don’t ritualistically display those they kill. As for suicide, the details of Sparkman’s death pretty much eliminate any chance of that.

If they wanted to redeem their mortal souls, people like Bachmann and Glenn Beck, people who have been slagging on the census for months, could at the very least condemn this act of violence. I might even be willing to believe them. It’s possible they didn’t think their words had the power to motivate people. (They certainly fail to motivate me.) It’s possible they didn’t think through the consequences of what they were saying. It’s possible that they actually feel terrible about all this.

It’s possible. But the longer the silence goes on, the more clear it is that it’s pretty unlikely. I suspect Bachmann sleeps quite well at night. I suspect she isn’t bothered by this murder one bit. And I suspect that she’ll come out as a pro-choice, atheist, lesbian Democrat before she takes even the basic human step of saying that this sort of violence is wrong.

I’d love to be surprised, Rep. Bachmann. I’d love for you to prove me wrong. But I don’t think you’re going to.

You may recall that back in June, Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-You Serious?, declared that the census was part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to install Barack Hussein Super-Allah Muslim Muslim Muslim Obama as dictator-for-life of the American Soviet. At the time, she said of the census, If we look at American history, between 1942 and 1947, the data that was collected by the Census Bureau was handed over to the FBI and other organizations at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up and put into the internment camps.”

One can draw a bright, straight line between rhetoric like that and this horrific crime:

The FBI is investigating the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official says the word “fed” was scrawled on his chest.

The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old Census field worker and occasional teacher, was found Sept. 12 in the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky.

Investigators have said little about the case. A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the case and requested anonymity, tells The Associated Press the word “fed” was written on the dead man’s chest.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s not muse that this might have been a “lone nut” somewhere. This was a calculated act of political violence, one that was encouraged and supported by Michele Marie Bachmann. By raising the specter of internment, of government-sanctioned attacks on the American people, Bachmann gave those “nuts” a real reason to fear the government.

If the government was seriously thinking about interning Americans simply for their political views — even if those views are directly opposite mine — I’d be first on the line to prevent it. And yes, I’d prefer to resist it though peaceful resistance if possible, but I would view violence as acceptable in defense of liberty.

Of course, the government isn’t thinking about interning Americans, for any reason whatsoever. There is no evidence, credible or otherwise, that even hints that they could be. The most oppressive thing Barack Obama is planning to do is provide health care to people who don’t have it. As for the census, it’s going to happen in 2010, just like it’s happened every ten years since the founding of the Republic, because the Constitution says so, not because Barack Obama has suddenly and capriciously demanded that all people come to Bethlehem to be taxed.

By taking a legitimate and non-controversial function of government — having some idea of how many people we have in the country — and by turning it into a secret neo-Marxist plot, Bachmann has posited a world in which even census workers are stormtroopers of destruction. Were she a private citizen, we might ignore her. But she isn’t. She’s a member of Congress, an elected official. If she’s saying that this is true, is it any wonder that someone out there would believe it?

Bachmann has a responsibility to her constituents and her country to conduct herself in a responsible manner. That she has chosen not to is to her everlasting shame. This death is, at least in part, on her head. And she owes her constituents, her country, and most important, the family of Bill Sparkman an apology. But I won’t hold my breath.

One of the interesting things on the teevee tonight has been the shock and surprise from some on the left that Minnesota’s own Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty doesn’t really seem to be a moderate after all.

For those of you normal people who don’t track the comings and goings of Minnesota’s 39th governor, Tim Pawlenty visited the Value Voters Summit this past weekend, where he got to speak to the hardest of the hard-line wingers, the people who actually nodded when the chief of staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., explained that heterosexual pornography causes teens to become homosexual because it “turns your sexual drive inwards,” a ludicrous statement which, if true, would mean that Tucker Max is the most homosexual human being in the history of history.

Gov. Pawlenty went to the summit, and those who’ve only gotten to know him through sound bites and a few interviews on MSNBC probably expected he’d give a bland, lukewarm speech, heavy on economics, light on red meat.

Those of us from Minnesota knew better. We remembered his acceptance speech from the 2006 GOP state convention, where he declared, “I can tell you what your worst nightmare is. It’s one of the big-spendin’, tax-raisin’, abortion-promotin’, gay marriage-embracin’, more welfare-without-accountability lovin’, school reform-resistin’, illegal immigration-supportin’ Democrats for governor who think Hillary Clinton should be president of the United States.” We are well aware that Pawlenty fits nicely into the anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-education Republican Party of 2010. And we knew that Pawlenty would be only to happy to tell his fellow true believers exactly what they wanted to hear.

He did not disappoint. After his usual cringe-worthy joke (something about Brett Favre not being a “clunker”), Pawlenty told everyone exactly what he believed.

On Separation of Church and State:

Now, as you know, you’re gathered here because you share a belief in those values. Those values are under attack. These are not just conservative values. Our values our American values. (Applause.) They are not rooted in pop psychology, they’re not rooted in feelings, they’re not rooted in emotion. They are rooted in the wisdom and experience of our founding fathers and the faith and the wisdom that they brought forward in the defining moments of this nation. And so we need to remind each other – (audio break).

(Applause.)

Our Judeo-Christian values are important, they are traditional, and they are the basis for so much of our country. Now, we have some folks who are skeptics about that. I’m reminded of the story – the true story of Tony Blair, the former prime minister, who came to our prayer breakfast here in Washington, D.C., about a year or so ago. He recalled a story that as a young schoolboy his father had suffered a terrible stroke. It was life-threatening and quite severe. And he remembers being in school and having a teacher pull alongside him and bend down on his knee and whisper to him, “Tony, I’m going to pray for your dad.” And Tony reminded the teacher and remembered the teacher and said, “But teacher, my dad doesn’t believe in God.” And the teacher said, “That’s okay, Tony. God believes in your dad. God believes in your Dad.”

On Abortion rights:

In Minnesota we’ve done a number of things – I won’t go through them all – but one that I’m most particularly proud of and it’s been very impactful is I’ve proposed and signed into law the so-called women’s right to know bill, which provides women important information who are considering abortion, and it also provides a waiting period for them to consider their decision. That combined with many other measures and efforts of good-hearted people all across Minnesota has significantly decreased the number of abortions performed in my state, and it’s a very effective piece of legislation.

(The Women’s Right to Know Act, of course, forced women to read anti-choice propaganda before having an abortion. Part of the information given out by the Minnesota Department of Health initially included the debunked breast cancer-abortion link.)

On GLBT Rights and Marriage Equality:

A really important example of this is defending and protecting traditional marriage. All domestic relationships are not the same, and traditional marriage needs to remain elevated in our society and in our culture. Marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman, and I sponsored that legislation when I was in the Minnesota Legislature, and we should make sure that the people are heard on this, that the Constitution is heard on this, not courts who are making up the law in the backroom.

Now, this is not some radical notion or some extreme notion. My goodness, when it’s been put to the vote of the people even in left-of center places like Oregon and – California voted twice for traditional marriage. If they can support traditional marriage in California we should do it all over this country.

(According to the Washington Independent, at this point Pawlenty ad-libbed, “This is not politically incorrect! This is not politically offensive! This is what our founding fathers believed.”)

On Health Care:

President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress not long ago regarding this topic, and he said he’s going to start calling people out on this debate by name. I guess I was the first one up this morning. The DNC put up a video or some sort of thing attacking me on this debate for various things I’ve said in recent weeks and months, and I accept the challenge. And I’ll just respond by calling out the president back tonight. And I would say – (applause) – and what I’d like to say to him is, DNC and he calls me out, I’ll call you out, call you back, and here’s my message: Stop spending the country into bankruptcy. Stop taxing us into oblivion. And the next time you address a group of young people maybe you should apologize for the crushing debt you’re putting on their shoulders.

(Applause.)

And one additional challenge. If, as he and the Democratic Congress, or some of the Democratic Congress say, “Oh, no, we’re not for public funding for abortions,” then don’t duck, don’t bob, don’t weave, put the language of the Hyde amendment in the health care bill.

Tim Pawlenty is not a moderate. He has never been a moderate. He is a stalwart conservative, quite at ease among the furthest part of the party’s right wing. Democrats and independents need to realize this going into 2012. After all, Minnesota has paid a high price for the reckless budgetary games of Pawlenty. It would be a pity if the rest of America failed to learn from our lesson.

Remarks in debate (which may include references to the Senate or its Members) shall be confined to the question under debate, avoiding personality.

–Rules of the House of Representatives, One Hundred Eleventh Congress
Rule XVII, Section b

If you want to see the decline of American political civility, it exists in the person of Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C. Wilson, unwilling to deal with the President of the United States stating the fact that the current health care proposals will not aid undocumented aliens,¹² Wilson shouted out, “You lie!” on the floor of the House of Representatives, interrupting the speech in the fashion of a Code Pink protester or teabagger.

This is, to be blunt, completely outrageous, and unbecoming of a U.S. Representatives. And I would have said the exact same thing if a Democrat had done this to George W. Bush, even as Bush did lie, repeatedly. The simple fact is that there are rules of decorum, ways you are supposed to comport yourself on the floor of the United States Congress. These rules are in place to smooth out the partisan rancor, to force representatives to disagree without being disagreeable. You can think someone’s an ass; that’s fine. But you don’t say it on the floor, because that’s not the way you conduct yourself.

I doubt Wilson will face a penalty for this, but he should. Indeed, the Rules of the House allow him to be censured for making a personal remark in debate; calling someone a liar would certainly rise to that level. Calling someone a liar when they’re telling the truth, however, remains standard operating procedure for the GOP.

UPDATE: This is the least he should do, but at least he did it:

“This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the President’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the President’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies [sic] to the President for this lack of civility.”

1. As for me, I’d be fine if it did. I don’t see how being in America illegally should earn you the death penalty. But what do I know? I’m just a crazy liberal. (back)
2. Fixed. (back)