Saturday, August 10, 2013 4:31:19 PM
'Slap Hillary' Game, Created By GOP PAC, Called Violent And Disgusting By Women's Rights Advocates
08/09/2013
Anti-violence advocates are coming out against a game promoted by a Republican super PAC that allows users to virtually ‘slap’ Hillary Clinton.
The Hillary Project [ http://thehillaryproject.com/ ] -- a "nonprofit, nonpartisan, advocacy" committee –- resurrected the old game this week to help bolster its mission to stop the former secretary of state from running for president. ...
[...]
The game in question allows the user to control when Clinton speaks and to virtually hit her across the face [(currently first one at) http://thehillaryproject.com/games/ ] when they see fit. Another game posted to the site allows players to force Clinton to dance and a third enables users to get President Barack Obama and former first lady into a street fight.
The group, which lists Christopher Marston -- a Republican campaign consultant and a former member of the Bush administration -- as its treasurer, has been forthright about its intentions.
It wants to "wage a war on Hillary Clinton’s image [ http://thehillaryproject.com/petition/ (click on "Read the Petition" to see its text)] by exposing her past and analyzing her would-be presidency for the public and national political press corps,” the super PAC wrote on its site.
[...]
"This ridiculous behavior is why no amount of 're-branding' is going to help Republicans win over women voters -- they just don't get it," Jess McIntosh, communications director of EMILY's List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, said in a statement, according to CBS [ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57597486/anti-hillary-clinton-super-pac-creates-slap-hillary-online-game/ ]. ...
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/slap-hillary-game_n_3727390.html
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And Now John Cornyn Is Somehow Not Conservative Enough For The Tea Party
By Jason Linkins
Posted: 08/08/2013 1:09 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 5:02 pm EDT
As a person who has been alive since at least 2008, it's hard to imagine how you get to a point where two-term Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is insufficiently conservative for the conservative base. After all, in 2010, Cornyn was in an eight-way tie for first [ http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/most-conservative-members-of-congress-20110224 ] in National Journal's rankings of the "Most Conservative Members of Congress," and the American Conservative Union lauds him as an "ACU Conservative [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/126485325/2012-Ratings-of-the-United-States-Congress#page=12 ]." As near as I can tell, the last person to contend that Cornyn wasn't up to snuff was his 2008 primary opponent, Larry SECEDE Kilgore -- who, yes, literally changed his middle name to "SECEDE" in all capital letters [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/us/politics/with-stickers-a-petition-and-even-a-middle-name-secession-fever-hits-texas.html ], because he is way, way into the idea of Texas seceding.
But the fractured GOP is continuing down its recent path of having the Tea Party faction eat their own -- because you gotta eat something, I guess. The movement that began with taking out rock-ribbed conservatives like South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar remains as hungry for flesh as ever, and the National Review's Betsy Woodruff reports that John Cornyn has been looking awfully tasty lately [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/355274/texas-tea-partiers-gunning-gohmert-primary-cornyn-betsy-woodruff ]:
Louie Gohmert for Senate? That’s what a number of Texas tea-party activists are hoping for. They’re not happy with Senator John Cornyn, and Katrina Pierson, who serves on the Texas Tea Party Caucus Advisory Board, tells me she’s heard from a number of activists pushing for the outspoken East Texas congressman to challenge the senator.
And JoAnn Fleming, the executive director of East Texas–based Grassroots America We The People, says she’s hearing the same thing. She knows Gohmert personally and says she’s had numerous activists tell her she should ask the congressman to run.
As Salon's Jillian Rayfield notes [ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/texas_tea_partiers_want_louie_gohmert_for_senate/ ], Gohmert has already told the Washington Examiner [ http://washingtonexaminer.com/louie-gohmert-wont-launch-senate-primary-bid-against-john-cornyn/article/2533372 ] that he is not going to get into a primary with Cornyn, saying, "I don't feel it in my heart."
But Woodruff reports that tea partiers in Texas are still hoping Gohmert will run. What on earth has Cornyn done to deserve this? According to Woodruff, Cornyn's decision to separate himself from Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) plan to shut down the government until the Affordable Care Act is repealed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/mike-lee-obamacare_n_3640906.html ] looms the largest. But it's impossible to paint Cornyn as a fan of Obamacare, unless you live in a world where not being willing to blow up Washington over the issue is proof of impure conservative bodily fluids.
This is the basic reason that the GOP leadership continues to stage utterly futile repeal votes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/obamacare-repeal-attempts_n_3697207.html ] -- the basic hope is that everyone can get their ya-ya's out and prove their bona fides in a way that doesn't inflict a lot of electoral collateral damage. (This is also why Republicans continue to vote to defund the long-dead-and-gone ACORN [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/gop-acorn-defunding_n_3690753.html ].) The contemporary governing strategy of GOP legislators in Congress is basically to follow the same model as methadone clinics.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/john-cornyn-louie-gohmert_n_3726560.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Steve Stockman: People In Wheelchairs Help Democrats Win Health Care Argument
By Sabrina Siddiqui
Posted: 08/08/2013 5:20 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 5:48 pm EDT
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) says he knows why Democrats are winning the argument on health care reform: They get help from sad-looking people in wheelchairs.
"Democrats will bring out somebody in a wheelchair, and we lose the argument on visuals," Stockman said Wednesday in an interview with Newsmax TV [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHQxLD5eEg (next below)],
Stockman was defending his support for a conservative effort in Congress that would shut down the government by blocking any continuing resolution that includes funding for the Affordable Care Act. But he disputed the characterization that Republicans are trying to shut down the government, and he called for a shift in messaging that emphasizes the need to keep the government running.
"One of the things that we’re doing wrong is that we’re accepting the argument that when we defund Obamacare, that we’re closing the government down," he said. "We’re not! In fact, we’re saving the nation’s future by not funding it."
But that suggestion holds little merit, given the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House would never allow a bill that unravels President Barack Obama's signature health care law to advance.
A number of Republicans have condemned the idea [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/richard-burr-mike-lee_n_3653870.html ], forming a gap [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/tea-party-obamacare_n_3719124.html ] between tea party-backed lawmakers and some of the GOP's senior members of Congress. Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney also joined the chorus [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/mitt-romney-government-shutdown_n_3716055.html ] of naysayers this week, urging congressional Republicans not to tie their crusade against Obamacare to a government funding bill.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/steve-stockman-obamacare_n_3728156.html [the first YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZnaeVHXWw ; with comments]; also, same interview, "Steve Stockman: 'We Spent More Time On Trayvon Martin Than We Did' On Benghazi", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-stockman-trayvon-martin_n_3731472.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Obama: Republicans' 'Unifying Principle' Is Denying Health Care To 30 Million People
By Jennifer Bendery
Posted: 08/09/2013 5:08 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 6:46 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Friday slammed Republicans for their continuing push to repeal his signature health care law, asking why the primary issue uniting the GOP involves kicking tens of tens of millions of people off of health insurance with no alternative plan for providing them coverage.
During a White House press conference [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvREml4kPbs (full conference, next below],
"The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care," Obama said, referring to the number of people who will have health insurance as a direct result of the law. "Why is it that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail? Their number one priority?"
The president chuckled as he said Republicans at least used to say they would replace the law with a better health care proposal. Not anymore, he said.
"There's not even a pretense now that they're going to replace it with something better," Obama said. "The notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it. That's their assertion. Not backed by fact. Not backed by any evidence. It's just become an ideological fixation."
A key part of the law begins on Oct. 1, when insurance exchanges start. Under that provision, the 15 percent of Americans still without health insurance will, for the first time, be able to sign up for coverage at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can buy on the individual market. Those who still can't afford insurance at those reduced rates can get a tax credit under Obamacare.
The Oct. 1 start date for the exchanges coincides with the date that Congress needs to pass a temporary spending bill to keep the government running. Tea party Republicans have vowed not to pass that spending measure -- and shut down the government in the process -- if the bill includes any funds for Obamacare.
Obama suggested that Republicans who are making those threats are missing the point that what they're doing is hurting the bulk of the country.
"The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea," he said. "You should be thinking about how you can advance and improve ways for middle-class families to have some security so if they work hard, they can get ahead, and their kids can get ahead."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/obama-obamacare_n_3733933.html [with embedded excerpt of the news conference covering the same pertinent comments as the first YouTube above (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGPQihIHGQg ), and (over 12,000) comments]
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Ted Cruz: 'Obama Is An Extraordinary Politician' With 'Profoundly Dangerous' Principles
By Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 08/08/2013 10:15 am EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 2:56 pm EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) [ http://www.cruz.senate.gov/ ] has opened up about his road to victory in 2012, crediting President Barack Obama as a model for how to get the job done.
In an interview with Time [ http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/08/why-ted-cruz-thinks-the-media-gets-conservatism-wrong/ ] released on Thursday, Cruz lauded Obama as an "extraordinary politician" who he respects a great deal. He added that his 2012 campaign was modeled after two victories: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in 2010 and Obama in 2008.
"If you look at that 2008 Democratic primary, there was no more formidable, unstoppable candidate — other than an incumbent President — in modern times than Hillary Clinton," Cruz said. "And Barack Obama ran a guerrilla campaign that empowered the people. So for Christmas I gave a number of campaign staffers David Plouffe’s book, The Audacity to Win."
While following some campaign tactics from Obama, Cruz stressed to Time that he still does not see eye-to-eye with the president on policy.
"I think he is committed to his principles, which is rare in politics," Cruz said. "Now I also think, and please don’t leave this part out, that the principles he believes in are profoundly dangerous."
Despite headlining the Iowa Republican Party [ http://www.iowagop.org/senator-ted-cruz-headlines-iowa-gop-summer-picnic/ ] 2013 summer picnic, Cruz has dismissed speculation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/21/ted-cruz-president_n_3631413.html ] surrounding a 2016 presidential run. In a late July interview with ABC's "This Week" from the Hawkeye State, Cruz said he was there to participate in the "national debate" on America's direction.
"I’m not focused on the politics," Cruz told ABC. "I’ve been in the office all but seven months. The last office I was elected to was student council. So this has been a bit of a whirlwind.”
While Cruz has been mum on his political future, some conservatives have made it clear that he is their choice. Cruz cruised to victory in the Western Conservative Summit's [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/ted-cruz-2016_n_3672324.html ] 2016 straw poll, earning 45 percent of the 504 votes cast at the late July event.
Standing more than three years away from Election Day 2016, Cruz reiterated [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/sen-ted-cruz-triumphs-in-2016-presidential-straw-p/ ] that his current focus was serving in the Senate.
“At this point, 100 percent of my focus is on the U.S. Senate," he told the Washington Times. "And the reason is simple: The Senate’s the battlefield."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/ted-cruz-obama_n_3725444.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The Tea Party’s paranoid aesthetic
(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
To understand the powerful appeal of the movement to many of its adherents, a narrative history is first required
By Kim Messick
Saturday, Aug 10, 2013 07:30 AM CDT
Most commentary on the Tea Party focuses on its political aspects — its positions on specific programs or pieces of legislation, or its support (or lack thereof) for particular politicians. This is completely unsurprising. The Tea Party, after all, is a political movement, one that tries to shape the decisions of political actors — voters, legislators, pundits — into maximum coherence with its own agenda. Even commentators with a broader interest in the Tea Party usually pivot back to politics in the end; what they really want to know is how its other concerns, be they economic, social or religious, will affect its more narrowly political activities. (A good example is Ari Melber’s perceptive piece “The Tea Party’s Social Agenda [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53013.html ]” in Politico, April 13, 2011.)
Again, there is nothing untoward in this. But I think our concentration on the Tea Party’s overtly political aspects tends to disguise an important source of its continuing appeal. This source, for lack of a better term, I will label “aesthetic.” In doing so, I certainly don’t mean to imply that the Tea Party has artistic interests or that we’re likely to see exhibits in MOMA of its characteristic paraphernalia (“Turn here for the tricorne hats!”). I have in mind a much more general sense of “aesthetic,” in which it connotes a fusion of form and content in order to express, in a heightened way, a particular meaning or set of meanings.
In the case of the Tea Party, the content, though mostly political, is often religiously inflected. (A 2011 study ranked the predictors of Tea Party affiliation. The strongest was being a Republican. The second strongest? Believing that religion should play a larger role in politics.) There are invocations of God and His justice, historical interpretations (of the Constitution, say, or some program or proposal), evaluations of candidates for office, and policy recommendations. (“Affordable Care Act bad! Tax and spending cuts good!”) These elements are then assembled in various ways to communicate the message an advocate finds appropriate for a given audience or occasion. I want to argue that we can discern in these messages a kind of master narrative, a collection of meanings that expresses the Tea Party’s sense of American history and of its own place within that history. It is this “story line,” I think, that explains the powerful appeal of the Tea Party movement to so many of its adherents, as well as its endorsement of a uniquely intransigent approach to the conduct of political affairs.
This master narrative is so entrenched one can find traces of it in most Tea Party rhetoric, but the best examples — as so often with this movement — tend to come from the writings and speeches of Glenn Beck. (There’s a very real sense in which Beck was the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party. If it hadn’t come into existence on its own, Beck would have invented it.) On June 19, Beck spoke to the Tea Party Patriots’ “Audit the IRS” rally in Washington. (In what follows, I quote from the transcript of his remarks posted on his website [ http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/06/19/glenn-gives-rousing-civil-rights-speech-outside-the-capitol/ ]. I have made no attempt to edit them for spelling or syntax.) He began this way:
To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant… Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do what ever it is the circus requires… God did not make men masters over others. Nor did he intend any man to impose unrighteous dominion over another… It is time we remind ourselves of this truth again, and begin to rise up against the intimidation… from our new political circus masters.
Beck does not identify these “circus masters” very clearly. Joe McCarthy provided names when he hurled his accusations, whole lists of them, but Beck tends to favor acronyms: the IRS gets fingered early on, as one would expect given the occasion, but the EPA, ATF, FBI and NSA are also singled out for dishonorable mention. Still, alphabet soup isn’t the only dish on Beck’s menu. He’s fond of the pronoun “they,” and puts it to vague if ominous use: “they” did not fire the IRS officials who “rattled the chains of control,” “they” store “all data” on “every American” but allow “anyone to cross our borders … without any worry or consequence,” “they” want “a new war with Syria” that “will bring death and destruction the world over.” Beck doesn’t mention Barack Obama by name, but most of these functions belong to the executive branch he presides over. This point was probably not lost on his audience.
To be fair, Beck doesn’t think the only problem here is a rogue presidency. The situation he describes is much more dire than that. For one thing, it has a much longer pedigree:
Since our founding, a good percentage of our fellow citizens closed their eyes to the civil rights of all Americans… Nothing has changed, except the chairs at the table. Someone has always been on the losing end of the stick of power. Blacks are the most obvious, the Chinese, the Native Americans, but lets not forget the Irish, the Catholics, the Mormons, the Jews, and now it seems all those of faith that will not conform.
Confronted with such persistent hostility to our liberties, we might seek comfort in the thought of our defenders — those agents, public and private, whom we can trust to shield us from “the stick of power.” But, alas, there is scant comfort to be taken there. The dolorous fact is that our defenders have largely laid down their shields, when they have not actively taken up sticks of their own. “Our pulpits,” Beck charges, “have gone quiet out of arrogance, fear and apathy.” The government, far from protecting our civil rights, thinks it’s OK “to hassle, threaten or intimidate others because of their skin color, religion or political belief.” Our public servants are “drunk with power” and “[t]he only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks.” Our major political parties, both of them, “have played us, lied to us and stolen from us.” Even organizations ostensibly devoted to “human rights” have gone rotten. They now have little in common with the charismatic leaders, such as Dr. King, who originally inspired them. Instead “[they] have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent … They are no more than the enforcers or the attack dogs of those who wish to keep men confined in spaces they design. Whatever moral force they once had is spent. Their time is up.” And what about those who are supposed to guard the guardians? The media “can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist … What they do is public relations. [They] will not print the truth about the average American who finds himself concerned with the direction of our country today.”
Where does all this leave us? Nowhere good, to be sure. “[T]he chains … are being forged for a new generation of slaves,” Beck intones. And the real horror of these chains, the unbearable irony they embody, is simply this: Our story started out as a story of freedom. “Our forbears came to these shores not for free stuff, but for freedom. The chance to make their own way, create a different life. They came here because they knew that God had made them free to make their own way in life, take the risk, do their best and take responsibility for their own lives.”
Well, at this point we should pause and take note of several things. Consider, first of all, the urgency of Beck’s language. The occasion for his speech, as previously mentioned, was a rally officially called “Audit the IRS,” but obviously more than one federal agency was on his mind and the minds of his audience. Even making allowances for the hyperbole natural at such events, we are left with some singularly violent rhetoric. The various officials responsible for the IRS, Benghazi and NSA “scandals” aren’t just government employees guilty of professional incompetence or extremely poor judgment. They are “drunk with power” and determined to “hassle, threaten, or intimidate others” even if, in the case of those with foreign ambitions, this will bring “death and destruction the world over.” Their motives are always corrupt: IRS personnel, for instance, weren’t trying to apply a complex tax code to a highly charged situation. They simply wanted to rattle “the chains of control.” Nor do civil rights groups seek a safe harbor for our liberties in a fiercely roiled, highly dynamic society. They’re “bullies” and “attack dogs” who want to “confine” us, not free us. The government as a whole, in Beck’s vision, isn’t a collection of fallible human beings struggling (and often failing) to bring some kind of benign order to an irreducibly chaotic world. It’s a circus master engaged in forging the chains that will bind “a new generation of slaves.”
This incredibly livid language serves, I think, two principal functions. The first, and most obvious, is to enforce a kind of political Manichaeism. It conjures a world that inherently resists any attempt to arrange its elements in a non-apocalyptic way: What look like policy disputes are actually episodes in the eternal contest of Good with Evil; what appear to be mistakes are really insidious triumphs, the brutal forward motion of a doomsday machine. Devoid of ambiguity, suffused instead with a starkly etched moral simplicity, this is the kind of world in which Beck and the Tea Party are most comfortable.
Important as this is — and it is very important; its combination of righteousness and victimization is essential to the Tea Party’s image of itself as Innocence Aggrieved — it should not blind us to the second function of Beck’s rhetoric. For not only does his language summon a morally polarized universe (with all the benefits, tactical and personal, of such a scheme), but in doing so it underwrites a basic purpose of any narrative: It creates drama. The first duty of any storyteller is to hold the interest of his audience, and every prospective writer learns that the easiest way to do so is through conflict. But not all conflicts are created equal. Call your book “Deliver Us From a Less Than Fully Optimal Balancing of the Various Interests Involved in the Management of Global Conflict” and relatively few will beat a digital path to Amazon in search of it. But call it “Deliver Us From Evil,” as Tea Party favorite Sean Hannity did in 2004, and the dramatic appeal of your tome increases exponentially. If Beck had told his audience that the IRS’s mistake was just that — an error in judgment by well-intentioned, overworked bureaucrats — he would have been a) vastly more consistent with the available evidence and b) vastly more boring. In Tea Party politics, reasonable is what closes on Saturday night.
But the drama of Beck’s story doesn’t derive solely from his inflamed diction. It has a second, even more important, source. If we set aside the way in which he describes his dramatis personae and focus, instead, on what they do — on plot rather than character — we immediately notice something peculiar. Beck’s cast is crowded: There are federal agencies, journalists, civil rights groups, ministers, political parties, pilgrims. And Dr. King. And hookers. This suggests, superficially anyway, a plot with the potential to be somewhat complex. But the structure of Beck’s narrative mirrors the simplicity of its characters. There are many actors, but only two roles: oppressors and oppressed. The latter are represented by those increasingly rare descendants of our libertarian forbears who will “not abide convenient lies,” the former by everyone else. For Beck, a Virtuous Remnant confronts a landscape that is uniformly hostile. How many divisions do the “circus masters” have? Plenty. The IRS, EPA, ATF and FBI. The Republicans and the Democrats. Journalists. Civil rights and religious leaders. Feminists. Everywhere the Virtuous look, they are surrounded by those who want to corrupt and subvert them, to enslave them. And if this isn’t dispiriting enough, they must reflect, now and then, on a singular irony: many of those who pursue them — the government agencies, the public-minded professionals, the service organizations — were supposed to be devoted to helping them. The Virtuous are under attack by those who pledged to protect and to serve. The bitter knowledge of betrayal makes their situation even more desperate.
And, let’s face it, even more interesting. The Virtuous are the ultimate underdogs. Their insurmountable odds are the most insurmountable of all: Everything is arrayed against them. Imagine Luke Skywalker discovering that the Rebel Alliance is in Darth Vader’s pocket. Imagine Leonidas realizing that the 300 Spartans behind him in the pass at Thermopylae intend their knives for his back rather than Xerxes’. In Beck’s vision, a small band of noble warriors faces a vast force, widely dispersed but highly integrated, that schemes constantly for their complete oppression. They face, in other words, a great conspiracy. But here we must make a crucial distinction. For the conspiracy Beck limns isn’t just local and recent; as we’ve already seen, he traces it back to the very origins of the country. (“Since our founding [italics mine], a good percentage of our fellow citizens closed their eyes to the civil rights of all Americans … Nothing has changed.”) The IRS and NSA aren’t the conspiracy, not really, even after we add in the other suspects from the alphabet. For Beck, American history itself is the conspiracy. His narrative is, in a very literal sense, a paranoid one, and the paranoia is integral to the narrative’s power and appeal. It represents an aesthetic effect in the service of a political vision.
But we are wrong, I think, if we take this effect to consist solely in a heightened sense of drama. After all, there are other ways to make a story dramatic. And many people would find this degree of paranoia unhelpful, because implausible, in a story that presents itself as an account of our political history. They might accept it in a work of fiction — who doesn’t love “Three Days of the Condor”? — but reject it as analysis. For them, the paranoia would actually exert an anti-dramatic effect: It would make the story ridiculous, and nothing deflates an attempt at drama quite so quickly (or effectively) as an obvious absurdity. To understand its function in Beck’s narrative, we need to ask why it works so well for him and his audience: why they find the paranoia not just compatible with, but essential to, their sense of the drama of American history.
II
The classic treatment of paranoia in American politics is, of course, the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics [ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html ].”* Hofstadter originally delivered the piece as a lecture in 1963 (one day before the assassination of JFK), then revised it for publication in Harper’s about a year later. Writing in Harper’s in 2007, the human rights attorney Scott Horton called it “one of the most important and … influential articles published in the 155 year history of the magazine.”
“The Paranoid Style” is, among other things, a brilliant exemplar of the qualities that made Hofstadter (who died in 1970 at the tragically early age of 54) one of the great Americanists of his generation. In lucid, energetic prose, it marshals a wide variety of historical sources in support of its main contention:
American political life… has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds. Today this fact is most evident on the extreme right wing… Behind such movements there is a style of mind… that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.
There is no way to improve on Hofstadter’s delineation of this “style of mind”:
The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true… The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a ‘vast’ or ‘gigantic’ conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is… an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms— he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.
Hofstadter tracks the long career of political paranoia in our history, following it through 18th-century warnings of “systematic means” at work “to overthrow” Christianity, to 19th-century indictments of Catholics, immigrants and Mormons, to those who saw a cabal of munitions makers behind the carnage of World War I. His principal concern, however, was its reemergence in the right-wing movements of the early Cold War years, first in the form of McCarthyism and the John Birch Society, later in the strain of Republican politics that would evolve into the Goldwater campaign of 1964.
Hofstadter attributed these periodic outbreaks of paranoid thought to social causes, specifically to “conflicts that involve ultimate schemes of values and that bring fundamental fears and hatreds, rather than negotiable interests, into political action.”
Such conflicts often derive from “ethnic and religious” differences, or from class tensions. Unlike the clinical paranoid, who interprets his conspiracies “as directed specifically against him,” the political paranoid “finds [them] directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others.”
It would be foolish to deny that social fissures of this sort are involved in the “paranoid style.” They quite obviously are. We’ve already observed the deeply religious cast of Tea Party politics, and its racial and ethnic anxieties, as reflected in its virulent response to the election of Barack Obama and to the prospect of immigration reform, are perhaps too obvious to require mention. But as an explanation of political paranoia, this reliance on social conflict raises an obvious question: Why do some people experience such conflicts as a clash of “ultimate values” while many, even most, others do not? We could reply that only the paranoid respond in this way, but this would involve us in an obvious circle. What we need is an account of why these kinds of conflicts trigger a paranoid response in some people but not in others.
I think Hofstadter’s work itself provides the basic materials for such an account, though to construct it we have to move beyond his text in ways he might have found uncongenial. In later essays, Hofstadter famously distinguished between “interest politics,” the clash of material desires in the give-and-take of everyday political life, and “status politics.” His usage of the latter phrase was notoriously slippery — a fact he readily admitted — but one critical element of it consisted in “the problem of American identity, as it is complicated by our immigrant origins and the problem of ethnic minorities.” The intuitive idea is familiar enough: America, unlike most other nations, has no “natural” citizens — no racial or religious or ethnic group that uniquely defines what it means to be “American.” We might gloss this as the claim that no particular class of Americans is normative with respect to “Americanness” as a whole. Our identity, what it means to be us, is always and essentially contested.
Now consider this lament from Beck:
“We don’t recognize our country anymore… Who are we?… What is it we even believe as a people anymore? Where did we get these ideas that now seem so popular?”
That plaintive question — “Who are we?” — is precisely the one Hofstadter places at the root of the paranoid style. There is no denying that it is a real question. But as it does not elicit a paranoid answer from most Americans, we need to know why it forces exactly that from a certain segment of our fellow citizens. The answer, I think, lies in realizing that Hofstadter’s distinction between the clinical and the political paranoid is unduly restrictive. In saying this, I don’t meant to suggest that political paranoids are mentally ill; I mean, instead, that we don’t have to choose between taking ourselves or, alternatively, our “nation … culture [or] way of life” as the object of conspiracy. There is a third option: We can so identify our nation with ourselves that any doubt about the former’s identity calls into question our own.
Hofstadter sees that the paranoid style involves “a projection of the self,” but he thinks it proceeds from the self to the conspiratorial Other. (The political paranoid ascribes to the Other qualities, good and bad, that he detects in himself.) This seems plausible enough, but an even more vital instance of projection, I think, extends from the self to the nation. Tormented by difference, unable or unwilling to abide the fluidity of American identity, some persons anchor it in the racial, ideological, or ethnic features of their own community. This community then becomes “normative” for the nation as a whole; any threat to the former, any challenge to its prestige or authority, is automatically a threat to the latter.
This series of equations — self with community, community with nation — underlies, I believe, the characteristic elements of the Tea Party’s vision of politics. In the quotation above, Beck makes explicit the identification of “our country” with what we “believe,” such that a change in our “ideas” must prompt the question, “Who are we?” It never occurs to him that America might be seen as a prolonged argument about which ideas we should adopt, or that even when we agree on what these ideas are (liberty, say, or equality or fairness), we tend to disagree about exactly what they mean. In Beck’s mind, those whose definition of freedom differs from his own — who don’t take it to mean that we “make … our own way in life” for instance — aren’t advocates of an alternative notion of freedom; they’re simply people who don’t understand what “freedom” is. Because Beck’s community — the Tea Party community — is normative for America as a whole, its vocabulary is the standard reference for all political actors. Their lexicon is our dictionary. Anyone whose usage differs from theirs literally speaks a foreign tongue.
To Beck’s credit, his conception of America’s normative community is usually couched in these ideological terms; he generally (though not always) avoids the racial and ethnic spite that mars so much Tea Party rhetoric. (His July 28, 2009, remark that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” is rightly notorious.) But the critical step is the act of identification itself; its precise content is of only secondary importance. In the summer of 2009, during the raucous town hall meetings that followed the early debates over “Obamacare,” I saw an elderly white woman cry out, “I feel like I’ve lost my country!” At the time, my impulse was to answer, “No, you didn’t lose your country. You lost an election.” But this reply now strikes me as overly facile. From her point of view, it pointed to a difference where there was no difference. The country had recently elected a President whose political values differed fundamentally from her own; and as her values were those of the normative community — the community uniquely definitive of what America means — it followed that America had a president who was, quite literally, unAmerican. For her, and those like her, the country really had been lost.
On my view, this inability — or refusal — to untangle national from personal identity is the ultimate source of the paranoid style. For it means that political conflicts will almost always engage the anxieties and energies associated with self-preservation. The space most of us enjoy between the personal and the political does not exist for Hofstadter’s paranoid; anything that disturbs the latter also disturbs the former. But this means that Hofstadter’s distinction, the distinction between taking oneself or one’s country as the object of conspiracy, has already collapsed. The political paranoid knows that the “circus masters” and their familiars aren’t simply after the “sticks of power”: they’re after him. He (or she) is the ultimate quarry of the long, intricate conspiracy that is American history.
How should we describe a political vision that refuses to distinguish self from nation and sees history as an elaborate plot against both? How can we capture its unique amalgam of grandiosity, rage and vulnerability? The only word that comes to mind here is another refugee from clinical psychology: “narcissistic.” Hofstadter knew, of course, that paranoia — clinical and political — is often associated with a grandiose view of the self, but he downplayed this aspect of it and emphasized instead its sense of persecution. I think that narcissism explains both the apocalyptic tone of Tea Party politics and the powerful appeal of its master narrative. Both derive from the same source: an almost solipsistic conviction that the self is the focal point of a malign and insidious history.
The Tea Party’s paranoid aesthetic conveys this narcissistic view of itself and its role in our politics and history. If its fusion of form and content is compelling to its audience — and it obviously is — this is because it offers one of the most intense pleasures any narrative strategy can: the pleasure of luxuriating in our own importance and significance, qualities only confirmed by the fact that history itself has resolved on our total defeat. This is the message paranoid narcissism ceaselessly delivers to its devotees. “The Others are irreligious, unproductive, licentious, treacherous. You are the rock on which this nation was built and you are the foundation on which it will rise again. You. It’s all about you.”
For my money, the supreme expression of paranoid narcissism in recent popular culture is “The X-Files,” the science-fiction series that ran on FOX television from 1993 until 2002. For those of you who spent the ‘90s in suspended animation, the series follows two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), as they slowly unravel a multilayered conspiracy in which elements of the intelligence community work with rapacious industrialists to turn over the planet to even more rapacious aliens. (At least, I think that’s the conspiracy; it had grown so incredibly baroque by the series’ end that I can’t be entirely sure.) In the final episode of the first season (“The Erlenmeyer Flask”), there is a scene that perfectly embodies the combination of nearly infantile self-obsession with barely suppressed panic that constitutes paranoid narcissism. Agent Mulder has devoted himself to exposing the conspiracy, largely because he blames it for certain tragedies in his personal life (the disappearance of his sister, the collapse of his parents’ marriage). He receives information that leads him to a decrepit warehouse on a bleak industrial boulevard. (Wonderfully, the warehouse is “Zeus Storage,” the boulevard is “Pandora.”) He makes his way inside, wanders down a dark corridor, then enters what appears to be an equally dark chamber. But as he moves forward, the gloom and silence give way to the green glow of instrument panels and the soft gurgling of water. He stops and stares at the scene before him: neatly organized rows of glass tanks, each of which contains a fully submerged, apparently human body, sound asleep and breathing effortlessly in its liquid bed.
It is hard to describe the subtle series of expressions that plays across Mulder’s face. (David Duchovny is a greatly underrated actor.) He has, he thinks, penetrated to the heart of the conspiracy, so there is a moment of triumph. What he sees there is shocking and horrific, so alarm and confusion register as well. But there is something else: a fleeting but definite glimpse of self-satisfaction, a recognition of something long sought and finally achieved: a consummation. The conspiracy, which has robbed him of so much, has now put before him exactly what he needs. The chamber of horrors is also a kind of demonic treasure chest, a ludic inferno that confirms and justifies the obsessions which have animated him for so long. On the other side of this haunted looking-glass, Mulder finds more than evidence of a conspiracy; he finds a justification for his life.
Any number of mythic references will do: he has stared long and hard into the rippling waters; he has tracked the minotaur through the labyrinth; he has forced the door to Blackbeard’s Castle; and what he ultimately finds in each of these dark places, as in the desolate and deserted warehouse, is always — himself.
III
The Tea Party’s paranoid narcissism helps us explain another important feature of its politics: an intransigent dismissal of the necessity, even the morality, of compromise. In 2011, Democrats and many Republicans looked on in horror as the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives pushed the country to the brink of its first ever default; only when it had exacted punishing concessions from President Obama did it agree, sullenly, to accede to an increase in the debt limit. A similar debacle may play itself out in connection with immigration reform.
Establishment figures in both parties tend to interpret this kind of conduct as an expression of immaturity. The Tea Party, they sigh, simply doesn’t understand that compromise is the life’s blood of transactional politics: only a naïf thinks no bread at all is better than half a loaf. What this view of things misses is that the Tea Party doesn’t think of politics as transactional; its narcissism is the right’s version of identity politics. When purely material concerns are at issue — when we’re in the realm of Hofstadter’s “interest politics” — it might make sense to give some to get some. But when our identity is at risk — as it always is for the paranoid narcissist — there can be no room for compromise. The very suggestion is absurd: it amounts to the claim that we should accept being only partly ourselves. For the Tea Party, intransigence is another name for self-preservation.
The question the rest of us confront, then, is not how to tutor the Tea Party in the realities of democratic governance. It is what we should think when one of our two major political parties is captured by a faction that rejects the possibility of normal politics. In his essay, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt — 1954,” Richard Hofstadter left us these strikingly prescient words:
{I}n a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.
What our own time is in the process of proving, however glumly, is that such a political climate is much more than merely “conceivable.”
* ”The Paranoid Style” lent its name to a collection of essays [beginning with a cover essay] originally published in 1964 [ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html ] and reissued by Vintage Books [ http://www.amazon.com/Paranoid-Style-American-Politics-Vintage/dp/0307388441 ], with a characteristically perceptive introduction by Sean Wilentz, in 2008. All quotations from Hofstadter are taken from this edition.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_tea_partys_paranoid_aesthetic/ [with comments]
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Patrick McHenry Confronted About Obamacare At Town Hall
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/patrick-mchenry_n_3726970.html [the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hze2k6Q5yz0 ; with (over 4,000) comments]
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Taking Aim at Moms and Obamacare -- Are Republicans Insane?
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/obamacare-moms_b_3715053.html [with comments]
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Robert Pittenger, GOP Lawmaker, Outrages Tea Party By Saying No To Government Shutdown
08/07/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/robert-pittenger-government-shutdown_n_3720172.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Tea Party takes aim at GOP
Tea Party activists, rallying at the US Capitol earlier this summer, have resurrected a strategy of using town hall forums to display their anger.
Activists call for risking government shutdown to stop health law
August 09, 2013
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/08/08/tea-party-seeks-recapture-fervor-over-health-care-law-pressuring-lawmakers-use-budget-fight-leverage/Vege0MmLpuF15zSqkLyisL/story.html [with comments]
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Steve Chabot: Defund Obamacare, But Keep The Good Parts
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) wants to defund Obamacare, but supports its key provisions.
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-chabot-obamacare_n_3733320.html [with comments]
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Andy Harris Town Hall Erupts With Calls For Impeachment, End To 'Nice Guys'
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/andy-harris-town-hall_n_3732258.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Conservatives once ridiculed Ayn Rand
(Credit: Benjamin Wheelock/Salon/AP/Phil Long)
Today's doltish conservatives, like Paul Ryan, worship her. But their forebears called Rand's work "preposterous"
By Michael Lind
Thursday, Aug 8, 2013 06:45 AM CDT
The growing influence on the American right of Ayn Rand, the libertarian right’s answer to Scientology’s novelist-philosopher L. Ron Hubbard, is a wonder to behold. When she died in 1982, Alissa Rosenbaum — the original name of the Russian-born novelist — was the leader of a marginal cult, the Objectivists, who had long been cast out of the mainstream American right. But the rise of Tea Party conservatism, fueled by white racial panic and zero-sum distributional conflicts in the Great Recession, has turned this minor, once-forgotten figure into an icon for a new generation of nerds who imagine themselves Nietzschean Ubermenschen oppressed by the totalitarian tyranny of the post office and the Social Security administration.
Rand-worshipers can be found in, among other places, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. At a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan declared [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/43705712.html ], “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
The late Gore Vidal would not have been surprised by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate’s choice of a patron saint. After all, it was Vidal who observed, in a 1961 article for Esquire [ http://www.gorevidalnow.com/2011/06/gore-vidal-on-ayn-rand-in-1961-she-has-a-great-attraction-for-simple-people/ ]:
She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.
Vidal might be dismissed as a biased leftist. But the late William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of post-1945 conservatism who engaged in a famous televised spat with Vidal during the 1968 Democratic convention, shared Vidal’s contempt for Ayn Rand. After her death in 1982, Buckley wrote in the New York Daily News [ http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Blogs/47.shtml ]: “She was an eloquent and persuasive anti-statist, and if only she had left it at that, but no. She had to declare that God did not exist, that altruism was despicable, that only self-interest was good and noble.” In 2003, Buckley described his encounter [ http://www.openculture.com/2011/05/william_f_buckley_flogged_himself_to_get_through_iatlas_shruggedi.html ] with Rand’s interminable propaganda novel “Atlas Shrugged”: “I had to flog myself to read it.”
Ayn Rand and her “Objectivist” cult members never forgave Buckley for reading them out of the mainstream American right, along with the equally crackpot John Birch Society. In 1957 Buckley, then the young editor of the flagship magazine of the conservative movement, National Review, published a review of “Atlas Shrugged” by Whittaker Chambers, the ex-communist intellectual who had played a key role in exposing Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy.
Chambers titled his review “Big Sister Is Watching You [ http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback ].” He wrote:
Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the “looters.” These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, Labor, etc. etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. “This,” she is saying in effect, “is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.”
The juvenile plot of “Atlas Shrugged” is a melodramatic war between “Children of Light” and “Children of Darkness”:
The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. In so far as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in Board rooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia.
Today’s libertarian rightist radicals distinguish between “makers” and “takers.” In the flagship conservative magazine of the 1950s, Whittaker Chambers did not tolerate such crude sloganeering:
In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as “looters.” This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the plaguey business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.
Long before the historian Corey Robin made the case for the Nietzschean roots of much modern libertarianism [ http://www.thenation.com/article/174219/nietzsches-marginal-children-friedrich-hayek#axzz2b7prI2YA ], Chambers detected Nietzsche’s influence on the author of “Atlas Shrugged”:
Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsche’s “last men,” both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.
Chambers concluded that despite all her talk about individualism and liberty, Rand was driven by a romantic and illiberal vision in which a heroic minority of superhuman geniuses would remake a corrupt society from top to bottom:
One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind).
Chambers did not live to see one of Ayn Rand’s early disciples, Alan Greenspan, become chairman of the Federal Reserve, the ultimate technocrat of the financial caste, if not of industrialists and engineers.
Rand’s conceited Nietzschean elitism was shared by another libertarian hero, Ludwig von Mises, who wrote to Rand [ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/08/11/ryan-and-mises-and-rand-oh-my/ ]: “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.” (Hayek later confessed [ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/08/11/ryan-and-mises-and-rand-oh-my/ ] that he was defeated by “Atlas Shrugged”: “Although I tried seriously to read the book, I failed, because there was no romance in it. I tried even more diligently to read that fellow John Galt’s hundred-page declaration of independence, and I knew I’d be questioned on all that, but I just couldn’t get through it.”)
The mentality of Ayn Rand, as described by Chambers back in 1957 in the pages of the leading conservative magazine, is remarkably similar to the mentality of the Tea Party right that seeks to sabotage government (as Rand’s heroes sabotage the economy), no matter the consequences for the nation:
In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked.
What should we conclude from the fact that Ayn Rand’s works are admired by 21st century American rightists like Paul Ryan who have forgotten, if they ever knew about, sophisticated conservative intellectuals like Chambers and Buckley? Gore Vidal’s comments in 1961 seem chillingly prescient in 2013:
Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/conservatives_once_ridiculed_ayn_rand/ [with comments]
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Tom Cotton’s Run for Senate in Arkansas Makes Him the New Neocon Darling
Congressman Tom Cotton’s bid for a Senate seat makes him conservatism’s new poster boy and the bane of Democrats, writes Michelle Cottle.
Aug 9, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-s-run-for-senate-in-arkansas-makes-him-the-new-gop-darling.html [with comments]
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Tom Cotton In 1997: Women's 'Greatest Fear' Is Men Leaving Them
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:48 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 7:06 pm EDT
If the Republican Party is trying to connect with female voters, Arkansas Senate candidate Tom Cotton may not be the one to help them do it.
Cotton, a freshman congressman who is running for Senate in 2014, warned feminists in a 1997 article for the Harvard Crimson [ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/10/3/promises-and-covenants-pmen-are-simple/ (next below)] that no-fault divorce will backfire on them by enabling their husbands to leave them for trophy wives.
"Feminists say no fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation," Cotton wrote. "They apparently don't consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women."
Cotton, who is unmarried [never married], wrote that he surveyed several women -- whom he referred to as "Cliffies [and let me tell you, those tender young blossoms sure do just love being called that]," or female students at Radcliffe -- and they all told him the same thing: that their "greatest fear" in life was to be left by their husbands, and their "deepest hope" was to be "a good wife and mother." To that end, he says, feminists should stop trying to make it easier to get divorced.
"If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly," he wrote. "They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women."
Cotton tried to make the case for "covenant marriages," in which people can only divorce in cases where there's fault, "defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime."
The National Organization for Women denounced covenant marriage in 1997 when Louisiana became the first state to create it as a legal category, arguing that it was intended to trap women in bad marriages and re-establish patriarchy. But Cotton wrote that women should support the policy in order to restrain men from leaving, so that they will stay and "fulfill women's deepest hopes."
"[Men] can learn that personal happiness comes from the desire to devote and sacrifice oneself to one's beloved," he wrote. "A few men can see this by themselves, and women are quite lucky to hook them. Ordinary women must not only defend these men against feminism, but also demand that all other men accept the lifelong nature of marriage. If not, one-half of all women who marry see their ‘greatest fear’ come true."
Laws allowing no-fault divorce across the country were considered a victory for women's rights in the 1970s. A 2004 Stanford Business School study [ https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/detail1.asp?Document_ID=2427 ] found states that passed no-fault divorce laws saw a 20 percent reduction in female suicide after 20 years and a 33 percent reduction in domestic violence and murder against women.
Cotton's campaign did not immediately comment on whether the congressman stands by the article, but Cotton remains a staunch social conservative. He opposes abortion rights, equal pay for women, marriage equality and women in combat, and he voted against every version of the Violence Against Women Act that has come up since he took office.
Cotton is challenging Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), the lone Democratic senator in an increasingly Republican state [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-s-run-for-senate-in-arkansas-makes-him-the-new-gop-darling.html (the item blurbed just above)]. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) began personally fundraising for Pryor this week, writing in an email to supporters that Cotton is "recklessly anti-woman."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis added)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-women_n_3732492.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Promises and Covenants
By Thomas B. Cotton,
October 3, 1997
Men are simple creatures. It doesn't take much to please us. The problem is women. How does an utterly simple creature understand an infinitely complex one? Since this creature realizes he is even simpler than most men, I knew only women could help me understand, well, women.
I have been asking women two questions. My first question was "What is your greatest fear in life?" Uniformity characterized the responses. (Yes, these are actual responses from Cliffies; I did not fabricate them.) "Watching my husband walk out on me." "Losing my lover." "Getting a divorce."
My second question was very similar: "What is your deepest hope in life?" Again, the responses were uniform. "Finding and holding onto the love of my life." "Being a good wife and mother." "Marrying a man who worships me and whom I worship."
Really?
My sample is admittedly small and perhaps unrepresentative. If it is representative-I tend to think it is-then maybe men can unlock the secret to a woman's heart and soul. Maybe the key is nothing more than a lifetime of love and devotion, of selflessness and sacrifice.
Yet that is a lot to ask of a man: Talk to a psychologist, a sociobiologist or a mother and you learn that men are naturally restless and rowdy, maybe even a little incorrigible. Throughout time, though, women and social institutions have conspired to break man's unruliness. In the past few decades, however, they have largely abandoned that noble and necessary project.
Perhaps to compensate, some admirable men are striking out on their own. First, we have the Promise Keepers (PK). PK is a mass, Christian-based movement of men known for filling football stadiums with men who repent their sins and shortcomings, and then promise to be stronger husbands, fathers and spiritual leaders. Tomorrow, in its largest event ever, PK will attract hundreds of thousands of men to the Washington Mall. Those (improved) men will then return to their homes and churches, joining the small, PK-influenced men's groups that now populate one-third of churches nationwide. Second, we have state politicians, most of whom are men, taking on no fault divorce. Louisiana recently became the first state to attack this 1970's innovation. Louisiana's new law creates something called "covenant marriage." Couples who choose a covenant marriage undergo counseling before they marry and can divorce only with fault, defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime. State legislator Tony Perkins, the author of the law (and an active member in PK), expects covenant marriages will soon account for half of all new marriages in Louisiana. Many states are expected to follow Louisiana's lead.
Presumably, women should encourage such developments since divorce leads to their "greatest fear in life." And most women probably do support them, but not the putative potentates of feminism.
The National Organization of Women (NOW) has dedicated itself, nationally and in its state chapters, to "exposing" both PK and covenant marriage as a thinly veiled attack by the Religious Right on women's rights, or as an attempt to re-establish patriarchy. An example of the fanaticism with which NOW follows this course is its powest subdivision, the "Promise Keepers Mobilization Project."
Feminists understandably view movements like PK and covenant marriage with anxiety. They undermine what feminists consider a crowning achievement, no fault divorce. Feminists say no fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation. They apparently don't consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women.
Nor do they consult the data on no fault divorce. This data says that 62 percent of divorced women used to receive permanent alimony, whereas now only 13 percent receive any alimony. It says that only 25 percent of divorced women with child custody receive child support, and only one-half of that is ever paid. It says that after divorce, men see their standard of living increase by 42 percent, while women see their's fall by 73 percent. It says, in short, that divorce is a leading cause of poverty among American women.
Feminists might say that these figures show a need to crack down on "deadbeat dads." That blithely misses the point. As revolutionary patriot, jurist and marriage counselor James Wilson said, "When divorces can be summoned to the aid of levity, of vanity or of avarice, a state of marriage becomes frequently a state of war or stratagem; still more frequently, a state of premeditated and active preparation for successful stratagems and war."
Feminists who allegedly speak for women should attack divorce, not its effects. If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly. They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women. If restrained, however, men can fulfill women's deepest hopes. They can learn that personal happiness comes from the desire to devote and sacrifice oneself to one's beloved.
A few men can see this by themselves, and women are quite lucky to hook them. Ordinary women must not only defend these men against feminism, but also demand that all other men accept the lifelong nature of marriage. If not, one-half of all women who marry see their "greatest fear" come true. If so, they can have their "deepest hopes" fulfilled.
Copyright © 1997 The Harvard Crimson, Inc.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/10/3/promises-and-covenants-pmen-are-simple/ [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90833623 and preceding (and any future following)]
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Fate Of Southern Democrats Could Determine Senate Control
By DONNA CASSATA
08/09/13 03:41 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- Republicans are counting on some Southern comfort to win Senate control next year.
The fate of Democratic incumbents in GOP-trending Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, the ability of the 71-year-old GOP leader to hold his Kentucky seat and the eventual outcome of a Georgia primary will help decide whether Republicans gain the six seats necessary to grab power in the Senate for the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency.
Fifteen months before Election Day, the GOP has a genuine shot at the majority, especially with the midterm elections' traditional low turnout and possible Obama fatigue on the party's side. But both Republicans and Democrats stop short of writing off several Democratic incumbents who would have to lose for the GOP to regain power, and some Republicans worry about holding GOP seats in Kentucky and Georgia.
The transformation of the South from solidly Democratic to nearly all Republican in the half century since the 1964 Civil Rights Act has made the states generally inhospitable to Democratic politicians. And next year's elections will test whether the last remaining Southern Democrats can survive.
Overall numbers and geography favor the GOP – 21 Democratic seats are on state ballots compared with 14 Republican. Seven of the Democratic seats are in states that Obama lost in 2012 to Republican Mitt Romney, some by 15 points or more. Adding to the GOP bullishness: Democratic retirements in three of the seven states – West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota – and a few recruiting disappointments.
"There's a lot of hard work to be done, but we feel very comfortable about the progression of the 2014 map in our favor and the quality of Republican candidates expressing an interest in running in key states," said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Still, Republicans had a similar edge in 2010 and 2012, and failed to take control because of flawed candidates and ill-conceived remarks. The GOP list of lost opportunities is long – Delaware, Colorado, Nevada in 2010, Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Montana in 2012.
"All of those prognostications were wrong," Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said. "One of the things that we demonstrated in the last election is that Senate races are about the two people who are on the ballot."
Next year's Senate contests stand as perhaps the best chance for the GOP, especially since Republicans will have to defend 24 Senate seats to the Democrats' 10 in the presidential election year of 2016.
Currently, Democrats hold a 54-46 edge. Newark Mayor Cory Booker is expected to win next week's Democratic primary in New Jersey and the Oct. 16 special election, boosting the Democratic margin to 10.
___
BLUEGRASS BRAWL
The political ads and videos in Kentucky make it seem like five-term Sen. Mitch McConnell has three opponents – primary challenger Matt Bevin, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and Obama.
With close to $10 million on hand to make his case, McConnell is casting himself as the bulwark against the president's policies in a state that Obama lost by 23 percentage points last year. "To Barack Obama and his allies, coal country represents a threat," McConnell intones in a video that repeatedly shows the president and never mentions Grimes by name.
McConnell is seeking not just another six-year term but also a shot at the prize of Senate majority leader. And he is taking no chances either politically or legislatively.
He has run four television ads since March, responding quickly to outside groups, promoting his own candidacy and seeking to define his rivals. McConnell has assailed Bevin over payment of taxes in two ads, with one airing even before the businessman announced his GOP primary candidacy.
In the Senate last week, McConnell voted with fellow Kentuckian and tea party favorite Rand Paul to cut U.S. aid to Egypt. The vote put McConnell on the opposite side of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a rare place for a senator who has been a strong supporter of Israel.
On Thursday, in an embarrassment for McConnell, audio of a Jan. 9 telephone conversation revealed that his campaign manager said he was "holding my nose" while working for the candidate. In a brief telephone interview, Jesse Benton, who has deep tea party ties, didn't dispute the authenticity of the taping, saying he wasn't confirming it but wasn't denying it either. Separately, in a statement emailed to reporters, he said he believes in McConnell and is 100 percent committed to his re-election.
Economic Policy Journal posted the audio online.
If McConnell dispatches Bevin, who is on the air with his own ad hitting the senator for supporting the Wall Street bailout in 2007, Democrat Grimes has served notice that she'll be a tough competitor.
"I don't scare easy," she declares in a web video that criticizes McConnell as an obstructionist.
Republicans take heart in the senator's history of nail-biting wins. He prevailed by 5,169 votes in 1984 and survived another challenge in 2008.
___
LAST DAYS OF SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS?
Republicans are counting on two House members – one in office just seven months – to knock out moderate Sens. Mark Pryor in Arkansas and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, two politicians with familiar family names.
Pryor stands as the most vulnerable after Arkansas voters soundly rejected a Democratic incumbent in 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, and the GOP got a top recruit, freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, a 36-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran. Pryor welcomed Cotton to the race with an ad criticizing his House votes against a sweeping farm bill, the Violence Against Women Act and a student loan bill.
"Being able to draw that clear contrast is something that didn't happen in 2010," Cecil said. "Now we have a record."
Landrieu faces three-term Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Baton Rouge, in a state that has become more Republican and changed demographically since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Republicans and Democrats describe Landrieu as tenacious and point to past races that she won comfortably. She has $4.9 million cash on hand.
In swing-voting North Carolina, Republicans probably will have a tough primary race before picking a nominee to run against Sen. Kay Hagan. Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House, has announced, and state Senate leader Phil Berger may run.
___
GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Republicans nervously watch the Georgia primary free-for-all, which includes no less than three House members vying for the open Senate seat.
Conservative Rep. Paul Broun has said evolution and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of Hell." Rep. Phil Gingrey, an OB-GYN since 1975, backtracked earlier this year after saying former Rep. Todd Akin was "partly right" when he said during his failed Senate race in Missouri last year that women's bodies can avoid pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape." Rep. Jack Kingston, a conservative, has emerged as the moderate.
Other Republicans are expected to join the field.
Georgia rules set the primary for next June, but if no candidate gets 50 percent, a runoff occurs in early August, a late date that could leave the GOP with a roughed-up nominee.
Democrats recruited Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn and CEO of Points of Light, the volunteer organization founded by President George H.W. Bush.
Democrats hope the Nunn name still resonates in the state nearly 20 years after the senator retired. The challenge is clear: No non-incumbent Democrat has won a major statewide race in Georgia since Gov. Roy Barnes in 1998.
___
ON THE HORIZON
Republicans are awaiting word from 75-year-old Thad Cochran on whether the Mississippi senator will seek a seventh term in a state the GOP will have no problem holding.
Alaska, where Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is a top Republican target, could get another GOP candidate to join Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and Joe Miller, the tea party favorite who won the 2010 GOP primary against Sen. Lisa Murkowski but then lost as she prevailed as a write-in. Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan is expected to decide after he returns from a deployment in Afghanistan.
Among other potential GOP Senate challengers is Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in Michigan. Republican Ken Buck, who lost to Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet in 2010, filed the necessary paperwork on Thursday for a run against Sen. Mark Udall.
AP Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/democrats-senate_n_3731189.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Harry Reid: I Hope Republican Opposition To Obama Is Not Because Of His Race
(BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
By Luke Johnson
Posted: 08/09/2013 2:15 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 3:18 pm EDT
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Friday that he hopes Republicans are opposing President Barack Obama based on substance and not based on his race.
"It has been obvious that they're doing everything they can to make him fail. I hope that...that's based on substance, not the fact that he's African American," he told Nevada Public Radio [ http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?SegmentID=10365&ProgramID=2847 ], KNPR. He referenced a comment made in 2010 by his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said it was his primary goal [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/10/25/126242/mcconnell-obama-one-term/ ] to make Obama a one-term president.
Reid also predicted that McConnell would lose in his 2014 reelection race, where he faces Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. "Alison Grimes is ahead of the Republican leader. That's two we're going to pick up," Reid said, also predicting victory in the Georgia Senate race, where Democrats have recruited Michelle Nunn, the CEO of Points of Light and daughter of former Democratic Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn.
Reid laughed at the recent flap in which McConnell's campaign manager, Jesse Benton, said on a leaked recording [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/jesse-benton-recording_n_3726708.html (together with the original source, in the post to which this is a reply)] that he was holding his nose to work for McConnell.
Jennifer Bendery contributed reporting.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/harry-reid-republicans-race_n_3732893.html [with comments]
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EXCLUSIVE: Oklahoma Congressman Comes Out As A Birther
CREDIT: NewsOn6
By Scott Keyes on August 9, 2013 at 8:51 am
AFTON, Oklahoma — Although Freshman Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) believes President Obama may secretly be a Kenyan who forged his birth certificate, he thinks it’s too late to do anything about it.
During a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon, Mullin fielded a question from the self-professed “Birther Princess”. The woman presented him with documents — which he repeatedly refused to take — from Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse”, which investigated [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/01/435878/sheriff-joe-birther-investigation/ ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/sheriff-joe-arpaio-cold-case-posse_n_1680191.html ] whether Obama had forged his birth certificate in order to run for president. (He had, they determined, in a surprise to no one.)
Though Mullin at first appeared to be batting down the Birther Princess’s nutty theory, it quickly became clear that he only took issue with her timing, not the substance of her accusation. “I believe what you’re saying,” he told the woman, saying he thought the birther issue “probably would’ve been” big enough to drag down Obama in 2012. Mullin felt aggrieved that he had to question whether Obama was actually born in the United States, concluding that although the issue is “still there,” it’s too late to prove it to the country.
MULLIN: I believe what you’re saying and I don’t support this president whatsoever. But ma’am, we lost November 6th. We had the opportunity to get another president in there. [...] We had four years to take care of that. Our country’s facing some serious issues. If the rest of the American people thought that was a big enough issue which, I thought it probably would’ve been. Who would’ve thought we would ever actually be questioning if we had a natural-born president being president? Who would’ve ever thought that we’d actually be there? [...] So when I say we lost the argument, we lost that argument. Now let’s move on to some other issues. I believe it’s still there, but my God if we didn’t prove it the first four years, what do you think the chances are now?
Watch it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXJd5ug4uto ]:
Though amateur political analysts might have assumed the birther movement would die out after Obama won reelection in 2012, it’s enjoyed something of a renaissance recently. In addition to Mullin, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) called on Congress to open a new birther investigation [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/06/17/2169751/jeff-duncan-birther/ ] this June. “Let’s go back and revisit some of these things because Americans have questions about not only the IRS scandal but also about the president’s validity,” Duncan declared during a radio interview.
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/09/2441741/markwayne-mullin-birther/ [with comments]
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Joe Arpaio Requiring His Deputies To Carry AR-15s At All Times, Fight Crime Even When They're Off Duty
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/joe-arpaio-ar-15s_n_3731487.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 12,000) comments]
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Markwayne Mullin: Everybody Is On Food Stamps, Including Physically Fit Fraudsters
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 08/09/2013 11:30 am EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 3:23 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told a horror story to his constituents during a town hall in Welch, Okla., on Thursday.
In a video of the event posted by ThinkProgress [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/09/2442191/congressman-claims-widespread-fraud-because-he-saw-a-physically-fit-couple-use-food-stamps-to-buy-groceries/ ; the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL-LNYgefR8 , next below)],
"Every lane was open and it was backed up and I noticed everybody was giving that card," Mullin said, apparently referring to the electronic benefit transfer cards most states use to distribute food stamps. "They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month."
In Virginia, food stamp benefits are automatically deposited [ http://www.dss.virginia.gov/files/division/bp/ebt/cardholder_info/faq/va_ebt_english.pdf ] on the first of the month for anyone whose case number ends in zero, one, two or three.
"But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me," Mullin continued. "This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program. She was in the spandex, and you know, they were both physically fit. And they go up in front of me and they pay with that card."
Mullin knew what he'd witnessed. "Fraud," he said. "Absolute 100 percent, all of it is fraud. There's fraud all through that."
Nearly 47 million Americans currently receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, most of them either elderly, disabled or children. Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently trying to cut spending on SNAP by about 5 percent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/food-stamp-cuts_n_3691093.html ], or $4 billion per year.
Stories of cash register resentment [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/food-stamps-resentment_n_3518821.html ] have long informed Republican efforts to curtail the program, enrollment in which has doubled since the onset of the Great Recession. But in most stories it's more common for the characters allegedly misusing the program to be fat, not fit.
Food stamp applicants are required to be poor but they're not required to have a certain level of physical fitness. Mullin's office did not immediately respond to a request for additional information about the alleged fraud. The rate of SNAP fraud in the form of benefit-trafficking has declined to 1 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture [ http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/fraud/fraud_2.htm ].
At a separate town hall event on Thursday, also posted by ThinkProgress, Mullin suggested President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/09/2441741/markwayne-mullin-birther/ (second item above)].
"Who would’ve thought we would ever actually be questioning if we had a natural-born president being president?" he said. "That point was made and people still elected him to be president."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/markwayne-mullin-food-stamps_n_3731770.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 4,000) comments]
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Tulsa leaders split on street named for KKK member
JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS
August 9, 2013 05:26 PM EST
TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa's city leaders are divided over whether to rename a popular downtown street named for a businessman who was in the Ku Klux Klan, but some residents worry a drawn-out fight could send the message that the city still embraces intolerance.
After a three-hours-plus public hearing Thursday night on changing the name of Brady Street, the City Council arrived at an informal 4-4 tie on the issue. The ninth council member, Phil Lakin, was absent Thursday and could break the tie when at next week's official vote. Lakin did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday, and it's unclear which way he will vote.
Regardless, the debate revealed divisions on the council.
Supporters warned that if city leaders decide to keep the name, it would only prove what some blacks believe now about the city of 400,000: There is still a white Tulsa and a black Tulsa.
"If it doesn't pass, we will continue to have a need for a much better education process about the role of the KKK in Tulsa historically and the impact it has had on our black friends and neighbors in this community," said Councilor G.T. Bynum, who supports the name change. "Black people in Tulsa have had a very difficult time in Tulsa over the last 100 years."
Wyatt Tate Brady, the street's namesake, was a shoe salesman who became a prominent Tulsa businessman. He signed the city's incorporation papers, started a newspaper and pumped his wealth into promoting Tulsa to the rest of the country.
But Brady, the son of a Confederate veteran, was also a member of the Klan. New questions arose after a magazine article looked at whether he was involved in the most notorious event in Tulsa history: a 1921 race riot that left some 300 black residents dead.
Today, Brady Street cuts through the heart of the Brady Arts District, a glitzy downtown area that represents arguably the most successful redevelopment project the city has ever pursued. Boarded-up warehouses, overgrown lots and blight have been replaced with trendy bistros, a cigar bar and a museum and park honoring Dust Bowl music legend Woody Guthrie.
Supporters have been lobbying for the name change since 2011, when an article in the literary magazine This Land said Brady created an environment of racism that led to the 1921 riot that decimated a thriving district that historians have called Black Wall Street.
The district is in the city's downtown, and some say that beyond that new redevelopment, the city isn't committed to investing in the north side, which is home to many black residents and pocked with blight and vacant lots.
"If we don't change this name, tell me what would be a good step in changing this part of town?" resident Carlos Moreno told council members Thursday. "Convince me. I'm listening."
Those who want to leave the name alone include some of the Brady district's business owners. They say a name change could lead to a revisionist look at other notable residents who have parks, buildings and streets named after them.
Some said keeping the name shows people that learning from the past – not scrubbing it – is the better option. Some suggested placing signage or a plaque in the district if the council votes to keep the name to tell visitors who Brady was and the infamous things he did.
"If erasing the memories of the riot is your intention, then you may be on your way to a time when it is forgotten," said Robert Fleischman, president of the Brady Arts District Business Association.
But others question why the city would keep a street name linked to the oppression of blacks.
Resident James L. Johnson Sr. noted that some business owners have already made changes, because they understood that putting the Brady name on their businesses would offend people who know about Brady's past.
"Wyatt Tate Brady is still a hero to (the city)," Johnson said. "White supremacy and racism is alive and well in this city, whether they like to admit it or not."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130809/us-renaming-brady/ [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64484589 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=74139716 and preceding and following]
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Steve Lonegan Campaign Deletes Racially Charged Tweet About Cory Booker
08/09/2013
Former Bogota, N.J., Mayor Steve Lonegan's campaign team tried to pull back a racially charged tweet this week [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/cory-booker-steve-lonegan-new-jersey-senate-95378.html ] aimed at opponent Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Politico reports. Lonegan, a Republican, and Booker, a Democrat, are both running to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the late Frank Lautenberg.
The tweet [ http://images.politico.com/global/2013/08/09/lonegantweet.html ], which was quickly deleted from the campaign staff's Twitter account, included an annotated map of Newark, which it joked came from Booker's debate notes on foreign policy. On the tweeted map, parts of the city were circled and labeled "West Africa," "Guyana," "Portugal" and "Brazil." The western tip of the city was labeled "Middle East," followed by, "Afghanistan Pakistan PLUS Bangladesh AND Trinidad."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-lonegan-campaign-tweet_n_3731864.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 6,000) comments]
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Everything you know about drugs is wrong
Author Carl Hart says we focus too much on drugs' dangers – and not enough on how racism affects drug policy
Aug 10, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/everything_you_know_about_drugs_is_wrong/ [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90830804 and preceding and following]
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Rush Limbaugh Calls Oprah 'Fat'
By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:29 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 4:38 pm EDT
Here is how Rush Limbaugh tried to explain away Oprah's encounter with a woman who refused to sell her a handbag in Switzerland — an encounter widely viewed as tinged with racism [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/oprah-racism-swiss-tourism-office_n_3731165.html ]:
"Maybe it's because the Oprah's fat! ... Look, don't most people think that the fat and the obese are poor and stupid?"
Sigh.
[audio embedded; covered in its first part by (in the latter part of) the first YouTube next below, and in full by (in the latter part of) the second YouTube next below]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/rush-limbaugh-oprah-fat_n_3733021.html [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90787838 and preceding and following]
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Rush Doubts Oprah's Racism Claims: Maybe It's Because She's "Fat"
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by MMFA Alt. Channel
For more on this: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/09/rush-doubts-oprahs-racism-claims-maybe-its-beca/195319 ( http://mm4a.org/1cAguXv )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KskvqZhBTs
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Rush Limbaugh's Disgusting Oprah Attack
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by NewsOfWorldToday
Here is how Rush Limbaugh tried to explain away Oprah's encounter with a woman who refused to sell her a handbag in Switzerland — an encounter widely viewed as tinged with racism: "Maybe it's because the Oprah's fat! ... Look, don't most people think that the fat and the obese are poor and stupid?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPjBLjmzcjo [also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5PGDKCfn3s and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcCtdwnx7YU ]
*
Rush Limbaugh Calls Oprah "Fat" (And Other Attacks On Women's Looks)
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by mediamatters4america
Oprah Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight about an instance of racial discrimination she experience. Limbaugh discounted Oprah's claim, explaining that perhaps she was mistreated because she's fat.
So, we put together a quick roundup of Limbaugh attacking Chelsea Clinton, Michelle Obama and others looks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rpMEfvs1mg
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Dana Rohrabacher 'Would Defund White Trash'
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said he would like to "defund white trash" who abuse government programs.
(AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
By Ryan Rainey
Posted: 08/09/2013 3:33 pm EDT
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said on Twitter this week that he would like to "defund white trash" who take advantage of federal social programs.
Rohrabacher made the remark in a reply [ https://twitter.com/DanaRohrabacher/statuses/364637254016176128 ] to a Twitter user who was complaining about immigration policy.
Ga_bree_lla
@ga_bree_ella
06 Aug [ https://twitter.com/ga_bree_ella/statuses/364633733569056768 ]
@ImmortalTech @danarohrabacher Its ok for lazywhitetrash 2live off food stamps but won't legalize my ppl who actuall contributetothiscountry
Dana Rohrabacher
@DanaRohrabacher
@ga_bree_ella would defund white trash, but not our vets , seniors & other deserving Americans 2 provide benefits 2 those here illegally
1:41 AM - 6 Aug 2013
House Republicans are seeking cuts to food stamps that would trim the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/food-stamp-cuts_n_3691093.html ]'s cost by roughly 5 percent over 10 years.
In June, Rohrabacher said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/john-boehner-vote-immigration_n_3459728.html ] that John Boehner (R-Ohio) should be removed from his position as House speaker if he brought immigration reform to a full vote without majority support from Republicans.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/rohrabacher-white-trash_n_3733333.html
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How to stop right-wing nuts: The elusive solution
A new governing majority in the House could pass guns, immigration and climate change reform. Here's how it'd work
Aug 8, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/how_to_stop_right_wing_nuts_the_elusive_solution/ [with comments]
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Buck McKeon: Terrorists May 'Mingle In' With Latinos To Cross Border
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) says more border security is needed as part of immigration reform.
08/09/2013
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Mike Huckabee: Muslims Depart Mosques Like 'Uncorked Animals,' Throwing Rocks, Burning Cars
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/mike-huckabee-muslims_n_3725678.html [with embedded video report, and (over 8,000) comments]
*
Mike Huckabee is wrong about Islam
08/07/2013
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/07/mike-huckabee-is-wrong-about-islam/ [with comments]
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'No Muslim Parking' Signs Prompt Outrage At Westview Shopping Center In Texas
08/10/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/no-muslim-parking-_n_3733132.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Richard Dawkins' Anti-Muslim Tweets Spark Furor, Even Among Atheist Supporters
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/richard-dawkins-anti-muslim-tweets_n_3732678.html [with comments]
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70 Percent Of Georgia Republicans Believe In Creationism: PPP Poll
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/georgia-republicans-creationism_n_3726445.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 10,000) comments]
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Pennsylvania Rep. Steve Bloom Seeks Cosponsors For Bill That Spurs Creationism Discussion
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/steve-bloom-creationism_n_3720530.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 6,000) comments]
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'Snake Salvation' Reality TV Show Features Serpent Handling Christian Preacher Andrew Hamblin
By Yasmine Hafiz
Posted: 08/08/2013 6:17 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 6:27 pm EDT
Andrew Hamblin is part of a group of Tennessee Christians [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/andrew-hamblin-snake-handler_n_1572528.html ] who believe that God has instructed them to 'take up serpents [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A18&version=NRSV ]' in the literal sense. He and some other preachers take the Biblical exhortation extremely seriously, as their unique (and illegal) form of religious practice involves praying with venomous snakes in their bare hands.
Soon they will be praying with serpents on reality TV on "Snake Salvation [ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/snake-salvation/ ]," set to debut September 10th on the National Geographic Channel. A camera crew followed around Hamblin, of Tabernacle Church of God in Lafollette, Tenn., and Jamie Coots of Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name Church of Middlesboro, Ky., in the fall of 2012 and the spring and summer of 2013.
Snake-handling has been going on in that region for generations, but while older serpent pastors were wary of outsiders, the younger crop of snake preachers are open about their practice, posting photos on Facebook [ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=443309699098204&set=a.114306595331851.19880.100002575335834&type=1&theater ] and welcoming visitors (though they aren't allowed anywhere near the snakes).
The serpent-handlers believe that they have been commanded by God to take up snakes, which serves as a sort of spiritual litmus test of faith, as those blessed by God will remain unharmed. The practice is rooted in a passage from Mark 16 [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A18&version=NRSV ] of the Bible which reads:
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
In a 2012 profile by the Tennessean [ http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120603/NEWS06/306030069/Snake-handling-believers-find-joy-test-faith ], Hamblin elaborated on the feeling of serpent-handling, saying that if more people had the same experiences that he does while in church, they wouldn't mock it. He said, "It is the closest thing to heaven on earth that you could get. You can feel God's power in the flesh."
Serpent-handling congregations are typically suspicious of the media and law-enforcement agencies, as their unusual method of worship was outlawed by Tennessee [id.] in 1947 following the death of five people from serpent bites at churches in two years. Hamblin and other serpent-handlers also routinely run afoul of the state law that prohibits people from capturing wild animals or keeping poisonous snakes, as they usually catch their own.
However, Hamblin and Coots have decided to step into the spotlight to share their religious convictions with a wider audience, hoping that people will benefit from seeing the extreme demonstration of their faith. "We say we are in this to save souls," commented Coots. "But people don't see us if they don't come into the four walls of the church."
Sixteen episodes of the show are planned, said executive producer Matthew Testa, who cites the uniqueness of the local faith tradition as a compelling reason for viewers to watch the show beyond the thrill of seeing regular pastors engaged in a dangerous practice. "We live at a time when, because of the Internet and television, we are all becoming more and more alike," he commented to USA Today [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/07/serpent-handling-pastors-to-star-in-reality-show/2630243/ ]. "To find a really distinct American subculture is incredibly rare."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/snake-salvation-reality-tv-show-andrew-hamblin_n_3727654.html [with embedded video report, and comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32565156 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84628488 and preceding and following]
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Kentucky Board Of Education Swats Deniers, Backs Evolution, Climate Change In New Science Standards
By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:25 pm EDT
In a rejection of complaints by creationists and climate change deniers, the Kentucky Board of Education approved new science standards [ http://wfpl.org/post/kentucky-education-officials-ok-new-science-standards-despite-criticism-evolution ] on Thursday, moving forward on a plan that reinforces the teaching of evolution and climate science.
The move came after a lengthy period of public discussion that featured colorful backlash against the proposal. Opponents reportedly branded the standards [ http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130723/NEWS01/307220132/School-science-hotly-debated-Kentucky ] as “fascist” and “atheistic” and said they promoted "socialistic" thinking that leads to “genocide” and “murder.”
The board apparently disagreed, arguing that the standards reflect a scientific consensus and are needed to ensure that Kentucky students are competitive as they prepare for college and careers.
WFPL reported [ http://wfpl.org/post/kentucky-education-officials-ok-new-science-standards-despite-criticism-evolution ] that the board met Thursday, declaring the supposed controversy over evolution moot because it is already included in the current set of science standards. They also went beyond that [ http://portal.ksba.org/public/Meeting.aspx?PublicAgencyID=4388&PublicMeetingID=9441&AgencyTypeID=1 ], clarifying that evolution is the "fundamental, unifying theory that underlies all the life sciences," and that there is no "significant ongoing debate within the scientific community" about its legitimacy. Officials also rejected calls to include creationism as a competing item in the curriculum.
Members also voiced their support for keeping climate research and studies in the new standards.
The Next Generation Science Standards were developed with input from officials in 26 states, including Kentucky, and are part of an effort to make science curricula more uniform across the country.
The Kentucky Board of Education's approval of the changes must now be approved [ http://blogs.courier-journal.com/politics/2013/08/08/science-education-standards-advance-despite-critics/ ] by the state’s Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee and House and Senate education committees. It is unclear whether some lawmakers in the state -- which is home to creationist landmarks like the Creation Museum and the upcoming "Ark Encounter," a massive replica of Noah's Ark -- will give their approval.
Board Chairman David Karem was optimistic, however.
“I think that ultimately they will be adopted,” he told the Louisville Courier-Journal [ http://blogs.courier-journal.com/politics/2013/08/08/science-education-standards-advance-despite-critics/ ]. “I don’t mean that there won’t be some people who have concerns about them, but I feel confident that ultimately they will be in place.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/kentucky-science-standards_n_3732650.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Jeb Bush Defends Common Core At ALEC Meeting
By Joy Resmovits
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:03 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 4:37 pm EDT
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush once again defended the Common Core education standards [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/common-core-standards_n_3716662.html ] in front the American Legislative Exchange Council's highly-protested annual meeting in Chicago Friday.
"There are critics of Common Core Standards from both ends of the ideological spectrum. I know there are some in this room," Bush said, according to prepared remarks provided to The Huffington Post. The meeting was closed to the press.
"I respect those who don’t share my views. What I can’t accept are the dumbed-down standards and expectations that exist in almost all of our schools today," Bush continued, echoing language often used by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
The speech places Bush, a Republican, among an ever-dwindling group of conservatives who speak out in favor of the Core. That group also includes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who last week told charter school supporters that Republican pushback to the Core is a "knee-jerk" reaction [ http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/08/04/christie-spars-with-gop-again-this-time-over-education-standards/ ] to President Barack Obama's promotion of the project. The business community also is defending the Core, with the Business Roundtable planning a major ad blitz this fall.
The Common Core is a set of learning standards developed by a group of governors and non-profits under the auspices of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The standards are meant to prepare students for an ever-globalizing economy by holding them to common goals that emphasize critical thinking, non-fictional informational texts and universal mathematical concepts, such as fractions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund the effort, and the Obama administration incentivized states to accept the standards' by offering cash through the Race to the Top competition.
Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., have adopted some form of the Core, and a report released this week showed that while politicians argue about it [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/common-core-standards_n_3716662.html ], states are already teaching to the standards.
Opposing the Core has become a cause du jour of the Tea Party, which has organized members to fight against its implementation. They argue that the Core is a federally-imposed, big-government mandate that will end local control of schools. On the national stage, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently said that curricula should be developed locally [ http://shark-tank.net/2013/07/25/marco-rubio-opposes-common-core-education-standards/ ]. (Under the Core standards, states and districts can develop their own curricula.)
The Republican National Committee adopted language against the Core [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/19/common-core-standards-attacked-by-republicans/ ], but ALEC, a conservative group that crafts model legislation for states, recently rejected [ http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2012/11/alec_votes_down_anti-common_core_resolution.html ] an anti-Common Core resolution.
Republican Kansas State Rep. J.R. Claeys said Bush's speech went over well at the Friday meeting, but while the ALEC crowd might support the idea of standards in general, some have big questions about the Core.
"Most Republicans are in favor of holding our schools to a set of standards so that they can be held accountable for the results they provide. I am concerned about some of the issues that we have with the Common Core, and it deserves some review," he said after the speech. "When anyone sees teachers unions and the president getting behind something, people get suspicious."
"I don't think his support of Common Core hurts [Bush] among the people here," Claeys added, "because we do believe in having standards."
Plummeting test scores in New York further sparked intense criticism of the Core this week. The state administered its first-ever test aligned to the Common Core standards this year, and as expected, the results showed that very few students [ http://gothamschools.org/2013/08/07/test-scores-fall-sharply-statewide-but-nyc-fares-relatively-well/ ] are on track to be "college and career ready."
Critics say it's unfair to suddenly tell kids they're failing, as Bush acknowledged Friday.
"There will be a painful adjustment period as schools and students adapt to higher expectations," Bush said. "Just look at the results announced in New York this week. Remember, only one-third of our students are college or career ready, and higher expectations, assessed faithfully, will show that ugly truth."
"But the greatest mistake we make in public education is underestimating the capacity of our children to learn," Bush continued. "Under the banner of self-esteem we whitewash failure. We demand more of kids on football fields and basketball courts than we do in classrooms."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/jeb-bush-common-core_n_3732478.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Ken Buck Files Paperwork For 2014 Senate Run Against Mark Udall
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/ken-buck-senate_n_3725082.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Jack Villamaino, Former GOP Candidate, Gets 4 Months In Jail For Felony Voter Fraud
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/jack-villamaino-voter-fraud_n_3728456.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Scott Brown Remains Vague On 2014 Run For Governor, Says 'We'll Soon Find Out'
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/scott-brown-governor_n_3725259.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Scott Brown's Younger Brother Arrested Heavily Armed, Impersonating Police
Aug. 9, 2013
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-scott-browns-younger-brother-arrested-impersonating-police/story?id=19914273 [with embedded video report, and comments]
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[House Majority Whip] Kevin McCarthy [(R-Calif.)] Jokes About 'House Of Cards,' Murdering Colleagues
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/kevin-mccarthy-house-of-cards_n_3731985.html [with comments]
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Citizens United 'Dark Money' Could Be Revealed By States, NYC Public Advocate Report Finds
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/citizens-united-dark-money_n_3725363.html [with embedded video report, the report ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/158901122/Building-A-Frontline-Defense-To-Stop-Secret-Political-Spending ) embedded, and comments]
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Conservative ideology no longer privately insured
Wayne LaPierre (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Two insurance industry reports expose the right's broken logic on gun control and environmentalism
By David Sirota
Friday, Aug 9, 2013 07:00 AM CDT
Stripped down to its fundamentals, the insurance business is the business of assessing risk. Regardless of what is being insured, a successful insurer is one that analyzes the risk of having to pay out benefits, and then adjusts coverage rates to make sure more money is coming in than is going out. The more accurate the assessment of risk, the more financially successful an insurance company tends to be.
Because of this model, private insurance is the conservative ideologue’s favored method of assessing danger and managing risk, for it is a purely free-market instrument. Indeed, as a right-wing activist would readily admit, private insurance focuses exclusively on the dollars and cents of actuarial analyses, and it bases prices on data and empiricism, not on fact-free political ideology and poll-tested platitudes.
So, then, what happens when the insurance industry so touted by the conservative movement starts saying things that wholly contradict that movement’s talking points?
This is the unanswered question posed by two new insurance-related reports that expose the bankruptcy of the right’s environmental extremism and its opposition to gun control.
The first comes from the insurance industry’s official think tank, the Geneva Association [ https://www.genevaassociation.org/ ]. Rejecting conservatives’ opposition to the fight against climate change, the organization issued a study documenting “a significant upward trend in the insured losses caused by extreme weather events.” It concluded that the insurance industry should fight back against the conservative movement’s attempts to downplay climate change fears and “play an active role in raising awareness of risk and climate change.” It also called for a “transition to a low-carbon economy” and “the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions” because that “will ultimately create a more resilient society.”
Then came a dispatch from the Des Moines Register [ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130707/BUSINESS/307070054/Kansas-schools-law-thrusts-EMC-Insurance-into-gun-debate ], which reported that the company insuring most Kansas schools “has refused to renew coverage for schools that permit teachers and custodians to carry concealed firearms on their campuses.” The announcement was a rebuke to a new Kansas law that responded to the Newtown, Conn., school massacre by permitting gun owners to carry firearms in schools.
In both cases, the insurance industry’s free-market analysis of risk — not a fact-free declaration of political ideology — ended up rebuking the conservative talking points of the day. In the climate-change case, for instance, an organization composed of buttoned-down insurance CEOs rejected the right’s campaign of do-nothingism and denialism. Likewise, in the gun case, insurance actuaries’ evaluation of risk ended up discrediting the arms-race ideology of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, who infamously called for more guns in schools on the assumption that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The conservative response to this kind of news is usually a temper tantrum. You know how it goes — Stephen Colbert-like declarations that “reality has a well-known liberal bias” and then claims that it is all a left-wing conspiracy (no doubt, some will cite the insurance industry’s reports as proof that the insurance companies are in on the conspiracy!).
But maybe that’s not how it will all play out this time around. With the broadsides against the conservative movement now coming from the very private insurance industry that the movement so adores, maybe this can be a moment of change on the right. Maybe — just maybe — conservatives can see that what’s really at work here is their own sacred free-market principle of “creative destruction.”
Only this time around, it is the right’s misguided ideology that is being destroyed.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/09/conservative_ideology_no_longer_privately_insured/ [with comments]
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08/09/2013
Anti-violence advocates are coming out against a game promoted by a Republican super PAC that allows users to virtually ‘slap’ Hillary Clinton.
The Hillary Project [ http://thehillaryproject.com/ ] -- a "nonprofit, nonpartisan, advocacy" committee –- resurrected the old game this week to help bolster its mission to stop the former secretary of state from running for president. ...
[...]
The game in question allows the user to control when Clinton speaks and to virtually hit her across the face [(currently first one at) http://thehillaryproject.com/games/ ] when they see fit. Another game posted to the site allows players to force Clinton to dance and a third enables users to get President Barack Obama and former first lady into a street fight.
The group, which lists Christopher Marston -- a Republican campaign consultant and a former member of the Bush administration -- as its treasurer, has been forthright about its intentions.
It wants to "wage a war on Hillary Clinton’s image [ http://thehillaryproject.com/petition/ (click on "Read the Petition" to see its text)] by exposing her past and analyzing her would-be presidency for the public and national political press corps,” the super PAC wrote on its site.
[...]
"This ridiculous behavior is why no amount of 're-branding' is going to help Republicans win over women voters -- they just don't get it," Jess McIntosh, communications director of EMILY's List, which works to elect pro-choice Democratic women to office, said in a statement, according to CBS [ http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57597486/anti-hillary-clinton-super-pac-creates-slap-hillary-online-game/ ]. ...
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/slap-hillary-game_n_3727390.html
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And Now John Cornyn Is Somehow Not Conservative Enough For The Tea Party
By Jason Linkins
Posted: 08/08/2013 1:09 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 5:02 pm EDT
As a person who has been alive since at least 2008, it's hard to imagine how you get to a point where two-term Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is insufficiently conservative for the conservative base. After all, in 2010, Cornyn was in an eight-way tie for first [ http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/most-conservative-members-of-congress-20110224 ] in National Journal's rankings of the "Most Conservative Members of Congress," and the American Conservative Union lauds him as an "ACU Conservative [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/126485325/2012-Ratings-of-the-United-States-Congress#page=12 ]." As near as I can tell, the last person to contend that Cornyn wasn't up to snuff was his 2008 primary opponent, Larry SECEDE Kilgore -- who, yes, literally changed his middle name to "SECEDE" in all capital letters [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/us/politics/with-stickers-a-petition-and-even-a-middle-name-secession-fever-hits-texas.html ], because he is way, way into the idea of Texas seceding.
But the fractured GOP is continuing down its recent path of having the Tea Party faction eat their own -- because you gotta eat something, I guess. The movement that began with taking out rock-ribbed conservatives like South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis, Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, and Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar remains as hungry for flesh as ever, and the National Review's Betsy Woodruff reports that John Cornyn has been looking awfully tasty lately [ http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/355274/texas-tea-partiers-gunning-gohmert-primary-cornyn-betsy-woodruff ]:
Louie Gohmert for Senate? That’s what a number of Texas tea-party activists are hoping for. They’re not happy with Senator John Cornyn, and Katrina Pierson, who serves on the Texas Tea Party Caucus Advisory Board, tells me she’s heard from a number of activists pushing for the outspoken East Texas congressman to challenge the senator.
And JoAnn Fleming, the executive director of East Texas–based Grassroots America We The People, says she’s hearing the same thing. She knows Gohmert personally and says she’s had numerous activists tell her she should ask the congressman to run.
As Salon's Jillian Rayfield notes [ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/texas_tea_partiers_want_louie_gohmert_for_senate/ ], Gohmert has already told the Washington Examiner [ http://washingtonexaminer.com/louie-gohmert-wont-launch-senate-primary-bid-against-john-cornyn/article/2533372 ] that he is not going to get into a primary with Cornyn, saying, "I don't feel it in my heart."
But Woodruff reports that tea partiers in Texas are still hoping Gohmert will run. What on earth has Cornyn done to deserve this? According to Woodruff, Cornyn's decision to separate himself from Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) plan to shut down the government until the Affordable Care Act is repealed [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/23/mike-lee-obamacare_n_3640906.html ] looms the largest. But it's impossible to paint Cornyn as a fan of Obamacare, unless you live in a world where not being willing to blow up Washington over the issue is proof of impure conservative bodily fluids.
This is the basic reason that the GOP leadership continues to stage utterly futile repeal votes [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/obamacare-repeal-attempts_n_3697207.html ] -- the basic hope is that everyone can get their ya-ya's out and prove their bona fides in a way that doesn't inflict a lot of electoral collateral damage. (This is also why Republicans continue to vote to defund the long-dead-and-gone ACORN [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/gop-acorn-defunding_n_3690753.html ].) The contemporary governing strategy of GOP legislators in Congress is basically to follow the same model as methadone clinics.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/john-cornyn-louie-gohmert_n_3726560.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Steve Stockman: People In Wheelchairs Help Democrats Win Health Care Argument
By Sabrina Siddiqui
Posted: 08/08/2013 5:20 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 5:48 pm EDT
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) says he knows why Democrats are winning the argument on health care reform: They get help from sad-looking people in wheelchairs.
"Democrats will bring out somebody in a wheelchair, and we lose the argument on visuals," Stockman said Wednesday in an interview with Newsmax TV [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHQxLD5eEg (next below)],
which was flagged by Right Wing Watch [ http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/steve-stockman-we-re-not-shutting-down-government-we-re-saving-america (source of the pertinent excerpt at the top)].
Stockman was defending his support for a conservative effort in Congress that would shut down the government by blocking any continuing resolution that includes funding for the Affordable Care Act. But he disputed the characterization that Republicans are trying to shut down the government, and he called for a shift in messaging that emphasizes the need to keep the government running.
"One of the things that we’re doing wrong is that we’re accepting the argument that when we defund Obamacare, that we’re closing the government down," he said. "We’re not! In fact, we’re saving the nation’s future by not funding it."
But that suggestion holds little merit, given the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House would never allow a bill that unravels President Barack Obama's signature health care law to advance.
A number of Republicans have condemned the idea [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/richard-burr-mike-lee_n_3653870.html ], forming a gap [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/tea-party-obamacare_n_3719124.html ] between tea party-backed lawmakers and some of the GOP's senior members of Congress. Former presidential nominee Mitt Romney also joined the chorus [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/06/mitt-romney-government-shutdown_n_3716055.html ] of naysayers this week, urging congressional Republicans not to tie their crusade against Obamacare to a government funding bill.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/steve-stockman-obamacare_n_3728156.html [the first YouTube, as embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FDZnaeVHXWw ; with comments]; also, same interview, "Steve Stockman: 'We Spent More Time On Trayvon Martin Than We Did' On Benghazi", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-stockman-trayvon-martin_n_3731472.html [with embedded video, and comments]
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Obama: Republicans' 'Unifying Principle' Is Denying Health Care To 30 Million People
By Jennifer Bendery
Posted: 08/09/2013 5:08 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 6:46 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Friday slammed Republicans for their continuing push to repeal his signature health care law, asking why the primary issue uniting the GOP involves kicking tens of tens of millions of people off of health insurance with no alternative plan for providing them coverage.
During a White House press conference [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvREml4kPbs (full conference, next below],
Obama at times appeared incredulous as he described the years-long effort by Republicans to nix the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, which has been law since March 2010. House Republicans have voted to repeal the law [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/02/gop-obamacare-vote_n_3695871.html ] 40 times.
"The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don't have health care," Obama said, referring to the number of people who will have health insurance as a direct result of the law. "Why is it that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail? Their number one priority?"
The president chuckled as he said Republicans at least used to say they would replace the law with a better health care proposal. Not anymore, he said.
"There's not even a pretense now that they're going to replace it with something better," Obama said. "The notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it. That's their assertion. Not backed by fact. Not backed by any evidence. It's just become an ideological fixation."
A key part of the law begins on Oct. 1, when insurance exchanges start. Under that provision, the 15 percent of Americans still without health insurance will, for the first time, be able to sign up for coverage at a significantly cheaper rate than what they can buy on the individual market. Those who still can't afford insurance at those reduced rates can get a tax credit under Obamacare.
The Oct. 1 start date for the exchanges coincides with the date that Congress needs to pass a temporary spending bill to keep the government running. Tea party Republicans have vowed not to pass that spending measure -- and shut down the government in the process -- if the bill includes any funds for Obamacare.
Obama suggested that Republicans who are making those threats are missing the point that what they're doing is hurting the bulk of the country.
"The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea," he said. "You should be thinking about how you can advance and improve ways for middle-class families to have some security so if they work hard, they can get ahead, and their kids can get ahead."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/obama-obamacare_n_3733933.html [with embedded excerpt of the news conference covering the same pertinent comments as the first YouTube above (at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGPQihIHGQg ), and (over 12,000) comments]
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Ted Cruz: 'Obama Is An Extraordinary Politician' With 'Profoundly Dangerous' Principles
By Chris Gentilviso
Posted: 08/08/2013 10:15 am EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 2:56 pm EDT
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) [ http://www.cruz.senate.gov/ ] has opened up about his road to victory in 2012, crediting President Barack Obama as a model for how to get the job done.
In an interview with Time [ http://swampland.time.com/2013/08/08/why-ted-cruz-thinks-the-media-gets-conservatism-wrong/ ] released on Thursday, Cruz lauded Obama as an "extraordinary politician" who he respects a great deal. He added that his 2012 campaign was modeled after two victories: Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in 2010 and Obama in 2008.
"If you look at that 2008 Democratic primary, there was no more formidable, unstoppable candidate — other than an incumbent President — in modern times than Hillary Clinton," Cruz said. "And Barack Obama ran a guerrilla campaign that empowered the people. So for Christmas I gave a number of campaign staffers David Plouffe’s book, The Audacity to Win."
While following some campaign tactics from Obama, Cruz stressed to Time that he still does not see eye-to-eye with the president on policy.
"I think he is committed to his principles, which is rare in politics," Cruz said. "Now I also think, and please don’t leave this part out, that the principles he believes in are profoundly dangerous."
Despite headlining the Iowa Republican Party [ http://www.iowagop.org/senator-ted-cruz-headlines-iowa-gop-summer-picnic/ ] 2013 summer picnic, Cruz has dismissed speculation [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/21/ted-cruz-president_n_3631413.html ] surrounding a 2016 presidential run. In a late July interview with ABC's "This Week" from the Hawkeye State, Cruz said he was there to participate in the "national debate" on America's direction.
"I’m not focused on the politics," Cruz told ABC. "I’ve been in the office all but seven months. The last office I was elected to was student council. So this has been a bit of a whirlwind.”
While Cruz has been mum on his political future, some conservatives have made it clear that he is their choice. Cruz cruised to victory in the Western Conservative Summit's [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/ted-cruz-2016_n_3672324.html ] 2016 straw poll, earning 45 percent of the 504 votes cast at the late July event.
Standing more than three years away from Election Day 2016, Cruz reiterated [ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jul/28/sen-ted-cruz-triumphs-in-2016-presidential-straw-p/ ] that his current focus was serving in the Senate.
“At this point, 100 percent of my focus is on the U.S. Senate," he told the Washington Times. "And the reason is simple: The Senate’s the battlefield."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/ted-cruz-obama_n_3725444.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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The Tea Party’s paranoid aesthetic
(Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
To understand the powerful appeal of the movement to many of its adherents, a narrative history is first required
By Kim Messick
Saturday, Aug 10, 2013 07:30 AM CDT
Most commentary on the Tea Party focuses on its political aspects — its positions on specific programs or pieces of legislation, or its support (or lack thereof) for particular politicians. This is completely unsurprising. The Tea Party, after all, is a political movement, one that tries to shape the decisions of political actors — voters, legislators, pundits — into maximum coherence with its own agenda. Even commentators with a broader interest in the Tea Party usually pivot back to politics in the end; what they really want to know is how its other concerns, be they economic, social or religious, will affect its more narrowly political activities. (A good example is Ari Melber’s perceptive piece “The Tea Party’s Social Agenda [ http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0411/53013.html ]” in Politico, April 13, 2011.)
Again, there is nothing untoward in this. But I think our concentration on the Tea Party’s overtly political aspects tends to disguise an important source of its continuing appeal. This source, for lack of a better term, I will label “aesthetic.” In doing so, I certainly don’t mean to imply that the Tea Party has artistic interests or that we’re likely to see exhibits in MOMA of its characteristic paraphernalia (“Turn here for the tricorne hats!”). I have in mind a much more general sense of “aesthetic,” in which it connotes a fusion of form and content in order to express, in a heightened way, a particular meaning or set of meanings.
In the case of the Tea Party, the content, though mostly political, is often religiously inflected. (A 2011 study ranked the predictors of Tea Party affiliation. The strongest was being a Republican. The second strongest? Believing that religion should play a larger role in politics.) There are invocations of God and His justice, historical interpretations (of the Constitution, say, or some program or proposal), evaluations of candidates for office, and policy recommendations. (“Affordable Care Act bad! Tax and spending cuts good!”) These elements are then assembled in various ways to communicate the message an advocate finds appropriate for a given audience or occasion. I want to argue that we can discern in these messages a kind of master narrative, a collection of meanings that expresses the Tea Party’s sense of American history and of its own place within that history. It is this “story line,” I think, that explains the powerful appeal of the Tea Party movement to so many of its adherents, as well as its endorsement of a uniquely intransigent approach to the conduct of political affairs.
This master narrative is so entrenched one can find traces of it in most Tea Party rhetoric, but the best examples — as so often with this movement — tend to come from the writings and speeches of Glenn Beck. (There’s a very real sense in which Beck was the Tea Party before there was a Tea Party. If it hadn’t come into existence on its own, Beck would have invented it.) On June 19, Beck spoke to the Tea Party Patriots’ “Audit the IRS” rally in Washington. (In what follows, I quote from the transcript of his remarks posted on his website [ http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/06/19/glenn-gives-rousing-civil-rights-speech-outside-the-capitol/ ]. I have made no attempt to edit them for spelling or syntax.) He began this way:
To keep a man a slave you do much the same as the cruel circus masters did to the elephant… Clamp heavy chains around their legs and stake them to the ground. Then beat and terrorize them. After a while you no longer even have to stake the chain; the elephant gives up and just the mere rattle of the chain convinces the elephant there is no hope, so they give up and do what ever it is the circus requires… God did not make men masters over others. Nor did he intend any man to impose unrighteous dominion over another… It is time we remind ourselves of this truth again, and begin to rise up against the intimidation… from our new political circus masters.
Beck does not identify these “circus masters” very clearly. Joe McCarthy provided names when he hurled his accusations, whole lists of them, but Beck tends to favor acronyms: the IRS gets fingered early on, as one would expect given the occasion, but the EPA, ATF, FBI and NSA are also singled out for dishonorable mention. Still, alphabet soup isn’t the only dish on Beck’s menu. He’s fond of the pronoun “they,” and puts it to vague if ominous use: “they” did not fire the IRS officials who “rattled the chains of control,” “they” store “all data” on “every American” but allow “anyone to cross our borders … without any worry or consequence,” “they” want “a new war with Syria” that “will bring death and destruction the world over.” Beck doesn’t mention Barack Obama by name, but most of these functions belong to the executive branch he presides over. This point was probably not lost on his audience.
To be fair, Beck doesn’t think the only problem here is a rogue presidency. The situation he describes is much more dire than that. For one thing, it has a much longer pedigree:
Since our founding, a good percentage of our fellow citizens closed their eyes to the civil rights of all Americans… Nothing has changed, except the chairs at the table. Someone has always been on the losing end of the stick of power. Blacks are the most obvious, the Chinese, the Native Americans, but lets not forget the Irish, the Catholics, the Mormons, the Jews, and now it seems all those of faith that will not conform.
Confronted with such persistent hostility to our liberties, we might seek comfort in the thought of our defenders — those agents, public and private, whom we can trust to shield us from “the stick of power.” But, alas, there is scant comfort to be taken there. The dolorous fact is that our defenders have largely laid down their shields, when they have not actively taken up sticks of their own. “Our pulpits,” Beck charges, “have gone quiet out of arrogance, fear and apathy.” The government, far from protecting our civil rights, thinks it’s OK “to hassle, threaten or intimidate others because of their skin color, religion or political belief.” Our public servants are “drunk with power” and “[t]he only difference between Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. is that at least Vegas has the decency to admit the town is full of hookers and crooks.” Our major political parties, both of them, “have played us, lied to us and stolen from us.” Even organizations ostensibly devoted to “human rights” have gone rotten. They now have little in common with the charismatic leaders, such as Dr. King, who originally inspired them. Instead “[they] have become bullies and grotesque parodies of the principles they pretend to represent … They are no more than the enforcers or the attack dogs of those who wish to keep men confined in spaces they design. Whatever moral force they once had is spent. Their time is up.” And what about those who are supposed to guard the guardians? The media “can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist … What they do is public relations. [They] will not print the truth about the average American who finds himself concerned with the direction of our country today.”
Where does all this leave us? Nowhere good, to be sure. “[T]he chains … are being forged for a new generation of slaves,” Beck intones. And the real horror of these chains, the unbearable irony they embody, is simply this: Our story started out as a story of freedom. “Our forbears came to these shores not for free stuff, but for freedom. The chance to make their own way, create a different life. They came here because they knew that God had made them free to make their own way in life, take the risk, do their best and take responsibility for their own lives.”
Well, at this point we should pause and take note of several things. Consider, first of all, the urgency of Beck’s language. The occasion for his speech, as previously mentioned, was a rally officially called “Audit the IRS,” but obviously more than one federal agency was on his mind and the minds of his audience. Even making allowances for the hyperbole natural at such events, we are left with some singularly violent rhetoric. The various officials responsible for the IRS, Benghazi and NSA “scandals” aren’t just government employees guilty of professional incompetence or extremely poor judgment. They are “drunk with power” and determined to “hassle, threaten, or intimidate others” even if, in the case of those with foreign ambitions, this will bring “death and destruction the world over.” Their motives are always corrupt: IRS personnel, for instance, weren’t trying to apply a complex tax code to a highly charged situation. They simply wanted to rattle “the chains of control.” Nor do civil rights groups seek a safe harbor for our liberties in a fiercely roiled, highly dynamic society. They’re “bullies” and “attack dogs” who want to “confine” us, not free us. The government as a whole, in Beck’s vision, isn’t a collection of fallible human beings struggling (and often failing) to bring some kind of benign order to an irreducibly chaotic world. It’s a circus master engaged in forging the chains that will bind “a new generation of slaves.”
This incredibly livid language serves, I think, two principal functions. The first, and most obvious, is to enforce a kind of political Manichaeism. It conjures a world that inherently resists any attempt to arrange its elements in a non-apocalyptic way: What look like policy disputes are actually episodes in the eternal contest of Good with Evil; what appear to be mistakes are really insidious triumphs, the brutal forward motion of a doomsday machine. Devoid of ambiguity, suffused instead with a starkly etched moral simplicity, this is the kind of world in which Beck and the Tea Party are most comfortable.
Important as this is — and it is very important; its combination of righteousness and victimization is essential to the Tea Party’s image of itself as Innocence Aggrieved — it should not blind us to the second function of Beck’s rhetoric. For not only does his language summon a morally polarized universe (with all the benefits, tactical and personal, of such a scheme), but in doing so it underwrites a basic purpose of any narrative: It creates drama. The first duty of any storyteller is to hold the interest of his audience, and every prospective writer learns that the easiest way to do so is through conflict. But not all conflicts are created equal. Call your book “Deliver Us From a Less Than Fully Optimal Balancing of the Various Interests Involved in the Management of Global Conflict” and relatively few will beat a digital path to Amazon in search of it. But call it “Deliver Us From Evil,” as Tea Party favorite Sean Hannity did in 2004, and the dramatic appeal of your tome increases exponentially. If Beck had told his audience that the IRS’s mistake was just that — an error in judgment by well-intentioned, overworked bureaucrats — he would have been a) vastly more consistent with the available evidence and b) vastly more boring. In Tea Party politics, reasonable is what closes on Saturday night.
But the drama of Beck’s story doesn’t derive solely from his inflamed diction. It has a second, even more important, source. If we set aside the way in which he describes his dramatis personae and focus, instead, on what they do — on plot rather than character — we immediately notice something peculiar. Beck’s cast is crowded: There are federal agencies, journalists, civil rights groups, ministers, political parties, pilgrims. And Dr. King. And hookers. This suggests, superficially anyway, a plot with the potential to be somewhat complex. But the structure of Beck’s narrative mirrors the simplicity of its characters. There are many actors, but only two roles: oppressors and oppressed. The latter are represented by those increasingly rare descendants of our libertarian forbears who will “not abide convenient lies,” the former by everyone else. For Beck, a Virtuous Remnant confronts a landscape that is uniformly hostile. How many divisions do the “circus masters” have? Plenty. The IRS, EPA, ATF and FBI. The Republicans and the Democrats. Journalists. Civil rights and religious leaders. Feminists. Everywhere the Virtuous look, they are surrounded by those who want to corrupt and subvert them, to enslave them. And if this isn’t dispiriting enough, they must reflect, now and then, on a singular irony: many of those who pursue them — the government agencies, the public-minded professionals, the service organizations — were supposed to be devoted to helping them. The Virtuous are under attack by those who pledged to protect and to serve. The bitter knowledge of betrayal makes their situation even more desperate.
And, let’s face it, even more interesting. The Virtuous are the ultimate underdogs. Their insurmountable odds are the most insurmountable of all: Everything is arrayed against them. Imagine Luke Skywalker discovering that the Rebel Alliance is in Darth Vader’s pocket. Imagine Leonidas realizing that the 300 Spartans behind him in the pass at Thermopylae intend their knives for his back rather than Xerxes’. In Beck’s vision, a small band of noble warriors faces a vast force, widely dispersed but highly integrated, that schemes constantly for their complete oppression. They face, in other words, a great conspiracy. But here we must make a crucial distinction. For the conspiracy Beck limns isn’t just local and recent; as we’ve already seen, he traces it back to the very origins of the country. (“Since our founding [italics mine], a good percentage of our fellow citizens closed their eyes to the civil rights of all Americans … Nothing has changed.”) The IRS and NSA aren’t the conspiracy, not really, even after we add in the other suspects from the alphabet. For Beck, American history itself is the conspiracy. His narrative is, in a very literal sense, a paranoid one, and the paranoia is integral to the narrative’s power and appeal. It represents an aesthetic effect in the service of a political vision.
But we are wrong, I think, if we take this effect to consist solely in a heightened sense of drama. After all, there are other ways to make a story dramatic. And many people would find this degree of paranoia unhelpful, because implausible, in a story that presents itself as an account of our political history. They might accept it in a work of fiction — who doesn’t love “Three Days of the Condor”? — but reject it as analysis. For them, the paranoia would actually exert an anti-dramatic effect: It would make the story ridiculous, and nothing deflates an attempt at drama quite so quickly (or effectively) as an obvious absurdity. To understand its function in Beck’s narrative, we need to ask why it works so well for him and his audience: why they find the paranoia not just compatible with, but essential to, their sense of the drama of American history.
II
The classic treatment of paranoia in American politics is, of course, the Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter’s essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics [ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html ].”* Hofstadter originally delivered the piece as a lecture in 1963 (one day before the assassination of JFK), then revised it for publication in Harper’s about a year later. Writing in Harper’s in 2007, the human rights attorney Scott Horton called it “one of the most important and … influential articles published in the 155 year history of the magazine.”
“The Paranoid Style” is, among other things, a brilliant exemplar of the qualities that made Hofstadter (who died in 1970 at the tragically early age of 54) one of the great Americanists of his generation. In lucid, energetic prose, it marshals a wide variety of historical sources in support of its main contention:
American political life… has served again and again as an arena for uncommonly angry minds. Today this fact is most evident on the extreme right wing… Behind such movements there is a style of mind… that has a long and varied history. I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the qualities of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.
There is no way to improve on Hofstadter’s delineation of this “style of mind”:
The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history, and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true… The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a ‘vast’ or ‘gigantic’ conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is… an all-out crusade. The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of this conspiracy in apocalyptic terms— he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.
Hofstadter tracks the long career of political paranoia in our history, following it through 18th-century warnings of “systematic means” at work “to overthrow” Christianity, to 19th-century indictments of Catholics, immigrants and Mormons, to those who saw a cabal of munitions makers behind the carnage of World War I. His principal concern, however, was its reemergence in the right-wing movements of the early Cold War years, first in the form of McCarthyism and the John Birch Society, later in the strain of Republican politics that would evolve into the Goldwater campaign of 1964.
Hofstadter attributed these periodic outbreaks of paranoid thought to social causes, specifically to “conflicts that involve ultimate schemes of values and that bring fundamental fears and hatreds, rather than negotiable interests, into political action.”
Such conflicts often derive from “ethnic and religious” differences, or from class tensions. Unlike the clinical paranoid, who interprets his conspiracies “as directed specifically against him,” the political paranoid “finds [them] directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others.”
It would be foolish to deny that social fissures of this sort are involved in the “paranoid style.” They quite obviously are. We’ve already observed the deeply religious cast of Tea Party politics, and its racial and ethnic anxieties, as reflected in its virulent response to the election of Barack Obama and to the prospect of immigration reform, are perhaps too obvious to require mention. But as an explanation of political paranoia, this reliance on social conflict raises an obvious question: Why do some people experience such conflicts as a clash of “ultimate values” while many, even most, others do not? We could reply that only the paranoid respond in this way, but this would involve us in an obvious circle. What we need is an account of why these kinds of conflicts trigger a paranoid response in some people but not in others.
I think Hofstadter’s work itself provides the basic materials for such an account, though to construct it we have to move beyond his text in ways he might have found uncongenial. In later essays, Hofstadter famously distinguished between “interest politics,” the clash of material desires in the give-and-take of everyday political life, and “status politics.” His usage of the latter phrase was notoriously slippery — a fact he readily admitted — but one critical element of it consisted in “the problem of American identity, as it is complicated by our immigrant origins and the problem of ethnic minorities.” The intuitive idea is familiar enough: America, unlike most other nations, has no “natural” citizens — no racial or religious or ethnic group that uniquely defines what it means to be “American.” We might gloss this as the claim that no particular class of Americans is normative with respect to “Americanness” as a whole. Our identity, what it means to be us, is always and essentially contested.
Now consider this lament from Beck:
“We don’t recognize our country anymore… Who are we?… What is it we even believe as a people anymore? Where did we get these ideas that now seem so popular?”
That plaintive question — “Who are we?” — is precisely the one Hofstadter places at the root of the paranoid style. There is no denying that it is a real question. But as it does not elicit a paranoid answer from most Americans, we need to know why it forces exactly that from a certain segment of our fellow citizens. The answer, I think, lies in realizing that Hofstadter’s distinction between the clinical and the political paranoid is unduly restrictive. In saying this, I don’t meant to suggest that political paranoids are mentally ill; I mean, instead, that we don’t have to choose between taking ourselves or, alternatively, our “nation … culture [or] way of life” as the object of conspiracy. There is a third option: We can so identify our nation with ourselves that any doubt about the former’s identity calls into question our own.
Hofstadter sees that the paranoid style involves “a projection of the self,” but he thinks it proceeds from the self to the conspiratorial Other. (The political paranoid ascribes to the Other qualities, good and bad, that he detects in himself.) This seems plausible enough, but an even more vital instance of projection, I think, extends from the self to the nation. Tormented by difference, unable or unwilling to abide the fluidity of American identity, some persons anchor it in the racial, ideological, or ethnic features of their own community. This community then becomes “normative” for the nation as a whole; any threat to the former, any challenge to its prestige or authority, is automatically a threat to the latter.
This series of equations — self with community, community with nation — underlies, I believe, the characteristic elements of the Tea Party’s vision of politics. In the quotation above, Beck makes explicit the identification of “our country” with what we “believe,” such that a change in our “ideas” must prompt the question, “Who are we?” It never occurs to him that America might be seen as a prolonged argument about which ideas we should adopt, or that even when we agree on what these ideas are (liberty, say, or equality or fairness), we tend to disagree about exactly what they mean. In Beck’s mind, those whose definition of freedom differs from his own — who don’t take it to mean that we “make … our own way in life” for instance — aren’t advocates of an alternative notion of freedom; they’re simply people who don’t understand what “freedom” is. Because Beck’s community — the Tea Party community — is normative for America as a whole, its vocabulary is the standard reference for all political actors. Their lexicon is our dictionary. Anyone whose usage differs from theirs literally speaks a foreign tongue.
To Beck’s credit, his conception of America’s normative community is usually couched in these ideological terms; he generally (though not always) avoids the racial and ethnic spite that mars so much Tea Party rhetoric. (His July 28, 2009, remark that President Obama “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” is rightly notorious.) But the critical step is the act of identification itself; its precise content is of only secondary importance. In the summer of 2009, during the raucous town hall meetings that followed the early debates over “Obamacare,” I saw an elderly white woman cry out, “I feel like I’ve lost my country!” At the time, my impulse was to answer, “No, you didn’t lose your country. You lost an election.” But this reply now strikes me as overly facile. From her point of view, it pointed to a difference where there was no difference. The country had recently elected a President whose political values differed fundamentally from her own; and as her values were those of the normative community — the community uniquely definitive of what America means — it followed that America had a president who was, quite literally, unAmerican. For her, and those like her, the country really had been lost.
On my view, this inability — or refusal — to untangle national from personal identity is the ultimate source of the paranoid style. For it means that political conflicts will almost always engage the anxieties and energies associated with self-preservation. The space most of us enjoy between the personal and the political does not exist for Hofstadter’s paranoid; anything that disturbs the latter also disturbs the former. But this means that Hofstadter’s distinction, the distinction between taking oneself or one’s country as the object of conspiracy, has already collapsed. The political paranoid knows that the “circus masters” and their familiars aren’t simply after the “sticks of power”: they’re after him. He (or she) is the ultimate quarry of the long, intricate conspiracy that is American history.
How should we describe a political vision that refuses to distinguish self from nation and sees history as an elaborate plot against both? How can we capture its unique amalgam of grandiosity, rage and vulnerability? The only word that comes to mind here is another refugee from clinical psychology: “narcissistic.” Hofstadter knew, of course, that paranoia — clinical and political — is often associated with a grandiose view of the self, but he downplayed this aspect of it and emphasized instead its sense of persecution. I think that narcissism explains both the apocalyptic tone of Tea Party politics and the powerful appeal of its master narrative. Both derive from the same source: an almost solipsistic conviction that the self is the focal point of a malign and insidious history.
The Tea Party’s paranoid aesthetic conveys this narcissistic view of itself and its role in our politics and history. If its fusion of form and content is compelling to its audience — and it obviously is — this is because it offers one of the most intense pleasures any narrative strategy can: the pleasure of luxuriating in our own importance and significance, qualities only confirmed by the fact that history itself has resolved on our total defeat. This is the message paranoid narcissism ceaselessly delivers to its devotees. “The Others are irreligious, unproductive, licentious, treacherous. You are the rock on which this nation was built and you are the foundation on which it will rise again. You. It’s all about you.”
For my money, the supreme expression of paranoid narcissism in recent popular culture is “The X-Files,” the science-fiction series that ran on FOX television from 1993 until 2002. For those of you who spent the ‘90s in suspended animation, the series follows two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), as they slowly unravel a multilayered conspiracy in which elements of the intelligence community work with rapacious industrialists to turn over the planet to even more rapacious aliens. (At least, I think that’s the conspiracy; it had grown so incredibly baroque by the series’ end that I can’t be entirely sure.) In the final episode of the first season (“The Erlenmeyer Flask”), there is a scene that perfectly embodies the combination of nearly infantile self-obsession with barely suppressed panic that constitutes paranoid narcissism. Agent Mulder has devoted himself to exposing the conspiracy, largely because he blames it for certain tragedies in his personal life (the disappearance of his sister, the collapse of his parents’ marriage). He receives information that leads him to a decrepit warehouse on a bleak industrial boulevard. (Wonderfully, the warehouse is “Zeus Storage,” the boulevard is “Pandora.”) He makes his way inside, wanders down a dark corridor, then enters what appears to be an equally dark chamber. But as he moves forward, the gloom and silence give way to the green glow of instrument panels and the soft gurgling of water. He stops and stares at the scene before him: neatly organized rows of glass tanks, each of which contains a fully submerged, apparently human body, sound asleep and breathing effortlessly in its liquid bed.
It is hard to describe the subtle series of expressions that plays across Mulder’s face. (David Duchovny is a greatly underrated actor.) He has, he thinks, penetrated to the heart of the conspiracy, so there is a moment of triumph. What he sees there is shocking and horrific, so alarm and confusion register as well. But there is something else: a fleeting but definite glimpse of self-satisfaction, a recognition of something long sought and finally achieved: a consummation. The conspiracy, which has robbed him of so much, has now put before him exactly what he needs. The chamber of horrors is also a kind of demonic treasure chest, a ludic inferno that confirms and justifies the obsessions which have animated him for so long. On the other side of this haunted looking-glass, Mulder finds more than evidence of a conspiracy; he finds a justification for his life.
Any number of mythic references will do: he has stared long and hard into the rippling waters; he has tracked the minotaur through the labyrinth; he has forced the door to Blackbeard’s Castle; and what he ultimately finds in each of these dark places, as in the desolate and deserted warehouse, is always — himself.
III
The Tea Party’s paranoid narcissism helps us explain another important feature of its politics: an intransigent dismissal of the necessity, even the morality, of compromise. In 2011, Democrats and many Republicans looked on in horror as the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives pushed the country to the brink of its first ever default; only when it had exacted punishing concessions from President Obama did it agree, sullenly, to accede to an increase in the debt limit. A similar debacle may play itself out in connection with immigration reform.
Establishment figures in both parties tend to interpret this kind of conduct as an expression of immaturity. The Tea Party, they sigh, simply doesn’t understand that compromise is the life’s blood of transactional politics: only a naïf thinks no bread at all is better than half a loaf. What this view of things misses is that the Tea Party doesn’t think of politics as transactional; its narcissism is the right’s version of identity politics. When purely material concerns are at issue — when we’re in the realm of Hofstadter’s “interest politics” — it might make sense to give some to get some. But when our identity is at risk — as it always is for the paranoid narcissist — there can be no room for compromise. The very suggestion is absurd: it amounts to the claim that we should accept being only partly ourselves. For the Tea Party, intransigence is another name for self-preservation.
The question the rest of us confront, then, is not how to tutor the Tea Party in the realities of democratic governance. It is what we should think when one of our two major political parties is captured by a faction that rejects the possibility of normal politics. In his essay, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt — 1954,” Richard Hofstadter left us these strikingly prescient words:
{I}n a populistic culture like ours, which seems to lack a responsible elite with political and moral autonomy, and in which it is possible to exploit the wildest currents of public sentiment for private purposes, it is at least conceivable that a highly organized, vocal, active, and well-financed minority could create a political climate in which the rational pursuit of our well-being and safety would become impossible.
What our own time is in the process of proving, however glumly, is that such a political climate is much more than merely “conceivable.”
* ”The Paranoid Style” lent its name to a collection of essays [beginning with a cover essay] originally published in 1964 [ http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theory/the_paranoid_mentality/the_paranoid_style.html ] and reissued by Vintage Books [ http://www.amazon.com/Paranoid-Style-American-Politics-Vintage/dp/0307388441 ], with a characteristically perceptive introduction by Sean Wilentz, in 2008. All quotations from Hofstadter are taken from this edition.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/the_tea_partys_paranoid_aesthetic/ [with comments]
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Patrick McHenry Confronted About Obamacare At Town Hall
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/patrick-mchenry_n_3726970.html [the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hze2k6Q5yz0 ; with (over 4,000) comments]
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Taking Aim at Moms and Obamacare -- Are Republicans Insane?
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/obamacare-moms_b_3715053.html [with comments]
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Robert Pittenger, GOP Lawmaker, Outrages Tea Party By Saying No To Government Shutdown
08/07/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/robert-pittenger-government-shutdown_n_3720172.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Tea Party takes aim at GOP
Tea Party activists, rallying at the US Capitol earlier this summer, have resurrected a strategy of using town hall forums to display their anger.
Activists call for risking government shutdown to stop health law
August 09, 2013
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/08/08/tea-party-seeks-recapture-fervor-over-health-care-law-pressuring-lawmakers-use-budget-fight-leverage/Vege0MmLpuF15zSqkLyisL/story.html [with comments]
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Steve Chabot: Defund Obamacare, But Keep The Good Parts
Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) wants to defund Obamacare, but supports its key provisions.
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-chabot-obamacare_n_3733320.html [with comments]
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Andy Harris Town Hall Erupts With Calls For Impeachment, End To 'Nice Guys'
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/andy-harris-town-hall_n_3732258.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Conservatives once ridiculed Ayn Rand
(Credit: Benjamin Wheelock/Salon/AP/Phil Long)
Today's doltish conservatives, like Paul Ryan, worship her. But their forebears called Rand's work "preposterous"
By Michael Lind
Thursday, Aug 8, 2013 06:45 AM CDT
The growing influence on the American right of Ayn Rand, the libertarian right’s answer to Scientology’s novelist-philosopher L. Ron Hubbard, is a wonder to behold. When she died in 1982, Alissa Rosenbaum — the original name of the Russian-born novelist — was the leader of a marginal cult, the Objectivists, who had long been cast out of the mainstream American right. But the rise of Tea Party conservatism, fueled by white racial panic and zero-sum distributional conflicts in the Great Recession, has turned this minor, once-forgotten figure into an icon for a new generation of nerds who imagine themselves Nietzschean Ubermenschen oppressed by the totalitarian tyranny of the post office and the Social Security administration.
Rand-worshipers can be found in, among other places, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. At a 2005 gathering to honor her memory, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan declared [ http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolitics/43705712.html ], “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.”
The late Gore Vidal would not have been surprised by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate’s choice of a patron saint. After all, it was Vidal who observed, in a 1961 article for Esquire [ http://www.gorevidalnow.com/2011/06/gore-vidal-on-ayn-rand-in-1961-she-has-a-great-attraction-for-simple-people/ ]:
She has a great attraction for simple people who are puzzled by organized society, who object to paying taxes, who dislike the ‘welfare’ state, who feel guilt at the thought of the suffering of others but who would like to harden their hearts. For them, she has an enticing prescription: altruism is the root of all evil, self-interest is the only good, and if you’re dumb or incompetent that’s your lookout.
Vidal might be dismissed as a biased leftist. But the late William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of post-1945 conservatism who engaged in a famous televised spat with Vidal during the 1968 Democratic convention, shared Vidal’s contempt for Ayn Rand. After her death in 1982, Buckley wrote in the New York Daily News [ http://rebirthofreason.com/Spirit/Blogs/47.shtml ]: “She was an eloquent and persuasive anti-statist, and if only she had left it at that, but no. She had to declare that God did not exist, that altruism was despicable, that only self-interest was good and noble.” In 2003, Buckley described his encounter [ http://www.openculture.com/2011/05/william_f_buckley_flogged_himself_to_get_through_iatlas_shruggedi.html ] with Rand’s interminable propaganda novel “Atlas Shrugged”: “I had to flog myself to read it.”
Ayn Rand and her “Objectivist” cult members never forgave Buckley for reading them out of the mainstream American right, along with the equally crackpot John Birch Society. In 1957 Buckley, then the young editor of the flagship magazine of the conservative movement, National Review, published a review of “Atlas Shrugged” by Whittaker Chambers, the ex-communist intellectual who had played a key role in exposing Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy.
Chambers titled his review “Big Sister Is Watching You [ http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/222482/big-sister-watching-you/flashback ].” He wrote:
Its story is preposterous. It reports the final stages of a final conflict (locale: chiefly the United States, some indefinite years hence) between the harried ranks of free enterprise and the “looters.” These are proponents of proscriptive taxes, government ownership, Labor, etc. etc. The mischief here is that the author, dodging into fiction, nevertheless counts on your reading it as political reality. “This,” she is saying in effect, “is how things really are. These are the real issues, the real sides. Only your blindness keeps you from seeing it, which, happily, I have come to rescue you from.”
The juvenile plot of “Atlas Shrugged” is a melodramatic war between “Children of Light” and “Children of Darkness”:
The Children of Light are largely operatic caricatures. In so far as any of them suggests anything known to the business community, they resemble the occasional curmudgeon millionaire, tales about whose outrageously crude and shrewd eccentricities sometimes provide the lighter moments in Board rooms. Otherwise, the Children of Light are geniuses. One of them is named (the only smile you see will be your own): Francisco Domingo Carlos Andres Sebastian d’Anconia.
Today’s libertarian rightist radicals distinguish between “makers” and “takers.” In the flagship conservative magazine of the 1950s, Whittaker Chambers did not tolerate such crude sloganeering:
In Atlas Shrugged, all this debased inhuman riffraff is lumped as “looters.” This is a fairly inspired epithet. It enables the author to skewer on one invective word everything and everybody that she fears and hates. This spares her the plaguey business of performing one service that her fiction might have performed, namely: that of examining in human depth how so feeble a lot came to exist at all, let alone be powerful enough to be worth hating and fearing. Instead, she bundles them into one undifferentiated damnation.
Long before the historian Corey Robin made the case for the Nietzschean roots of much modern libertarianism [ http://www.thenation.com/article/174219/nietzsches-marginal-children-friedrich-hayek#axzz2b7prI2YA ], Chambers detected Nietzsche’s influence on the author of “Atlas Shrugged”:
Miss Rand acknowledges a grudging debt to one, and only one, earlier philosopher: Aristotle. I submit that she is indebted, and much more heavily, to Nietzsche. Just as her operatic businessmen are, in fact, Nietzschean supermen, so her ulcerous leftists are Nietzsche’s “last men,” both deformed in a way to sicken the fastidious recluse of Sils Maria. And much else comes, consciously or not, from the same source.
Chambers concluded that despite all her talk about individualism and liberty, Rand was driven by a romantic and illiberal vision in which a heroic minority of superhuman geniuses would remake a corrupt society from top to bottom:
One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. In the name of free enterprise, therefore, she plumps for a technocratic elite (I find no more inclusive word than technocratic to bracket the industrial-financial-engineering caste she seems to have in mind).
Chambers did not live to see one of Ayn Rand’s early disciples, Alan Greenspan, become chairman of the Federal Reserve, the ultimate technocrat of the financial caste, if not of industrialists and engineers.
Rand’s conceited Nietzschean elitism was shared by another libertarian hero, Ludwig von Mises, who wrote to Rand [ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/08/11/ryan-and-mises-and-rand-oh-my/ ]: “You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the efforts of men who are better than you.” (Hayek later confessed [ http://coreyrobin.com/2012/08/11/ryan-and-mises-and-rand-oh-my/ ] that he was defeated by “Atlas Shrugged”: “Although I tried seriously to read the book, I failed, because there was no romance in it. I tried even more diligently to read that fellow John Galt’s hundred-page declaration of independence, and I knew I’d be questioned on all that, but I just couldn’t get through it.”)
The mentality of Ayn Rand, as described by Chambers back in 1957 in the pages of the leading conservative magazine, is remarkably similar to the mentality of the Tea Party right that seeks to sabotage government (as Rand’s heroes sabotage the economy), no matter the consequences for the nation:
In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked.
What should we conclude from the fact that Ayn Rand’s works are admired by 21st century American rightists like Paul Ryan who have forgotten, if they ever knew about, sophisticated conservative intellectuals like Chambers and Buckley? Gore Vidal’s comments in 1961 seem chillingly prescient in 2013:
Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’ is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society. Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/conservatives_once_ridiculed_ayn_rand/ [with comments]
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Tom Cotton’s Run for Senate in Arkansas Makes Him the New Neocon Darling
Congressman Tom Cotton’s bid for a Senate seat makes him conservatism’s new poster boy and the bane of Democrats, writes Michelle Cottle.
Aug 9, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-s-run-for-senate-in-arkansas-makes-him-the-new-gop-darling.html [with comments]
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Tom Cotton In 1997: Women's 'Greatest Fear' Is Men Leaving Them
By Laura Bassett
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:48 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 7:06 pm EDT
If the Republican Party is trying to connect with female voters, Arkansas Senate candidate Tom Cotton may not be the one to help them do it.
Cotton, a freshman congressman who is running for Senate in 2014, warned feminists in a 1997 article for the Harvard Crimson [ http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/10/3/promises-and-covenants-pmen-are-simple/ (next below)] that no-fault divorce will backfire on them by enabling their husbands to leave them for trophy wives.
"Feminists say no fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation," Cotton wrote. "They apparently don't consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women."
Cotton, who is unmarried [never married], wrote that he surveyed several women -- whom he referred to as "Cliffies [and let me tell you, those tender young blossoms sure do just love being called that]," or female students at Radcliffe -- and they all told him the same thing: that their "greatest fear" in life was to be left by their husbands, and their "deepest hope" was to be "a good wife and mother." To that end, he says, feminists should stop trying to make it easier to get divorced.
"If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly," he wrote. "They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women."
Cotton tried to make the case for "covenant marriages," in which people can only divorce in cases where there's fault, "defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime."
The National Organization for Women denounced covenant marriage in 1997 when Louisiana became the first state to create it as a legal category, arguing that it was intended to trap women in bad marriages and re-establish patriarchy. But Cotton wrote that women should support the policy in order to restrain men from leaving, so that they will stay and "fulfill women's deepest hopes."
"[Men] can learn that personal happiness comes from the desire to devote and sacrifice oneself to one's beloved," he wrote. "A few men can see this by themselves, and women are quite lucky to hook them. Ordinary women must not only defend these men against feminism, but also demand that all other men accept the lifelong nature of marriage. If not, one-half of all women who marry see their ‘greatest fear’ come true."
Laws allowing no-fault divorce across the country were considered a victory for women's rights in the 1970s. A 2004 Stanford Business School study [ https://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/detail1.asp?Document_ID=2427 ] found states that passed no-fault divorce laws saw a 20 percent reduction in female suicide after 20 years and a 33 percent reduction in domestic violence and murder against women.
Cotton's campaign did not immediately comment on whether the congressman stands by the article, but Cotton remains a staunch social conservative. He opposes abortion rights, equal pay for women, marriage equality and women in combat, and he voted against every version of the Violence Against Women Act that has come up since he took office.
Cotton is challenging Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), the lone Democratic senator in an increasingly Republican state [ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-s-run-for-senate-in-arkansas-makes-him-the-new-gop-darling.html (the item blurbed just above)]. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) began personally fundraising for Pryor this week, writing in an email to supporters that Cotton is "recklessly anti-woman."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis added)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/tom-cotton-women_n_3732492.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Promises and Covenants
By Thomas B. Cotton,
October 3, 1997
Men are simple creatures. It doesn't take much to please us. The problem is women. How does an utterly simple creature understand an infinitely complex one? Since this creature realizes he is even simpler than most men, I knew only women could help me understand, well, women.
I have been asking women two questions. My first question was "What is your greatest fear in life?" Uniformity characterized the responses. (Yes, these are actual responses from Cliffies; I did not fabricate them.) "Watching my husband walk out on me." "Losing my lover." "Getting a divorce."
My second question was very similar: "What is your deepest hope in life?" Again, the responses were uniform. "Finding and holding onto the love of my life." "Being a good wife and mother." "Marrying a man who worships me and whom I worship."
Really?
My sample is admittedly small and perhaps unrepresentative. If it is representative-I tend to think it is-then maybe men can unlock the secret to a woman's heart and soul. Maybe the key is nothing more than a lifetime of love and devotion, of selflessness and sacrifice.
Yet that is a lot to ask of a man: Talk to a psychologist, a sociobiologist or a mother and you learn that men are naturally restless and rowdy, maybe even a little incorrigible. Throughout time, though, women and social institutions have conspired to break man's unruliness. In the past few decades, however, they have largely abandoned that noble and necessary project.
Perhaps to compensate, some admirable men are striking out on their own. First, we have the Promise Keepers (PK). PK is a mass, Christian-based movement of men known for filling football stadiums with men who repent their sins and shortcomings, and then promise to be stronger husbands, fathers and spiritual leaders. Tomorrow, in its largest event ever, PK will attract hundreds of thousands of men to the Washington Mall. Those (improved) men will then return to their homes and churches, joining the small, PK-influenced men's groups that now populate one-third of churches nationwide. Second, we have state politicians, most of whom are men, taking on no fault divorce. Louisiana recently became the first state to attack this 1970's innovation. Louisiana's new law creates something called "covenant marriage." Couples who choose a covenant marriage undergo counseling before they marry and can divorce only with fault, defined as abandonment, physical abuse, adultery or conviction of a capital crime. State legislator Tony Perkins, the author of the law (and an active member in PK), expects covenant marriages will soon account for half of all new marriages in Louisiana. Many states are expected to follow Louisiana's lead.
Presumably, women should encourage such developments since divorce leads to their "greatest fear in life." And most women probably do support them, but not the putative potentates of feminism.
The National Organization of Women (NOW) has dedicated itself, nationally and in its state chapters, to "exposing" both PK and covenant marriage as a thinly veiled attack by the Religious Right on women's rights, or as an attempt to re-establish patriarchy. An example of the fanaticism with which NOW follows this course is its powest subdivision, the "Promise Keepers Mobilization Project."
Feminists understandably view movements like PK and covenant marriage with anxiety. They undermine what feminists consider a crowning achievement, no fault divorce. Feminists say no fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation. They apparently don't consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women.
Nor do they consult the data on no fault divorce. This data says that 62 percent of divorced women used to receive permanent alimony, whereas now only 13 percent receive any alimony. It says that only 25 percent of divorced women with child custody receive child support, and only one-half of that is ever paid. It says that after divorce, men see their standard of living increase by 42 percent, while women see their's fall by 73 percent. It says, in short, that divorce is a leading cause of poverty among American women.
Feminists might say that these figures show a need to crack down on "deadbeat dads." That blithely misses the point. As revolutionary patriot, jurist and marriage counselor James Wilson said, "When divorces can be summoned to the aid of levity, of vanity or of avarice, a state of marriage becomes frequently a state of war or stratagem; still more frequently, a state of premeditated and active preparation for successful stratagems and war."
Feminists who allegedly speak for women should attack divorce, not its effects. If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly. They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women. If restrained, however, men can fulfill women's deepest hopes. They can learn that personal happiness comes from the desire to devote and sacrifice oneself to one's beloved.
A few men can see this by themselves, and women are quite lucky to hook them. Ordinary women must not only defend these men against feminism, but also demand that all other men accept the lifelong nature of marriage. If not, one-half of all women who marry see their "greatest fear" come true. If so, they can have their "deepest hopes" fulfilled.
Copyright © 1997 The Harvard Crimson, Inc.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1997/10/3/promises-and-covenants-pmen-are-simple/ [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90833623 and preceding (and any future following)]
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Fate Of Southern Democrats Could Determine Senate Control
By DONNA CASSATA
08/09/13 03:41 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- Republicans are counting on some Southern comfort to win Senate control next year.
The fate of Democratic incumbents in GOP-trending Arkansas, Louisiana and North Carolina, the ability of the 71-year-old GOP leader to hold his Kentucky seat and the eventual outcome of a Georgia primary will help decide whether Republicans gain the six seats necessary to grab power in the Senate for the final two years of Barack Obama's presidency.
Fifteen months before Election Day, the GOP has a genuine shot at the majority, especially with the midterm elections' traditional low turnout and possible Obama fatigue on the party's side. But both Republicans and Democrats stop short of writing off several Democratic incumbents who would have to lose for the GOP to regain power, and some Republicans worry about holding GOP seats in Kentucky and Georgia.
The transformation of the South from solidly Democratic to nearly all Republican in the half century since the 1964 Civil Rights Act has made the states generally inhospitable to Democratic politicians. And next year's elections will test whether the last remaining Southern Democrats can survive.
Overall numbers and geography favor the GOP – 21 Democratic seats are on state ballots compared with 14 Republican. Seven of the Democratic seats are in states that Obama lost in 2012 to Republican Mitt Romney, some by 15 points or more. Adding to the GOP bullishness: Democratic retirements in three of the seven states – West Virginia, Montana and South Dakota – and a few recruiting disappointments.
"There's a lot of hard work to be done, but we feel very comfortable about the progression of the 2014 map in our favor and the quality of Republican candidates expressing an interest in running in key states," said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Still, Republicans had a similar edge in 2010 and 2012, and failed to take control because of flawed candidates and ill-conceived remarks. The GOP list of lost opportunities is long – Delaware, Colorado, Nevada in 2010, Missouri, Indiana, North Dakota and Montana in 2012.
"All of those prognostications were wrong," Guy Cecil, executive director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said. "One of the things that we demonstrated in the last election is that Senate races are about the two people who are on the ballot."
Next year's Senate contests stand as perhaps the best chance for the GOP, especially since Republicans will have to defend 24 Senate seats to the Democrats' 10 in the presidential election year of 2016.
Currently, Democrats hold a 54-46 edge. Newark Mayor Cory Booker is expected to win next week's Democratic primary in New Jersey and the Oct. 16 special election, boosting the Democratic margin to 10.
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BLUEGRASS BRAWL
The political ads and videos in Kentucky make it seem like five-term Sen. Mitch McConnell has three opponents – primary challenger Matt Bevin, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes and Obama.
With close to $10 million on hand to make his case, McConnell is casting himself as the bulwark against the president's policies in a state that Obama lost by 23 percentage points last year. "To Barack Obama and his allies, coal country represents a threat," McConnell intones in a video that repeatedly shows the president and never mentions Grimes by name.
McConnell is seeking not just another six-year term but also a shot at the prize of Senate majority leader. And he is taking no chances either politically or legislatively.
He has run four television ads since March, responding quickly to outside groups, promoting his own candidacy and seeking to define his rivals. McConnell has assailed Bevin over payment of taxes in two ads, with one airing even before the businessman announced his GOP primary candidacy.
In the Senate last week, McConnell voted with fellow Kentuckian and tea party favorite Rand Paul to cut U.S. aid to Egypt. The vote put McConnell on the opposite side of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a rare place for a senator who has been a strong supporter of Israel.
On Thursday, in an embarrassment for McConnell, audio of a Jan. 9 telephone conversation revealed that his campaign manager said he was "holding my nose" while working for the candidate. In a brief telephone interview, Jesse Benton, who has deep tea party ties, didn't dispute the authenticity of the taping, saying he wasn't confirming it but wasn't denying it either. Separately, in a statement emailed to reporters, he said he believes in McConnell and is 100 percent committed to his re-election.
Economic Policy Journal posted the audio online.
If McConnell dispatches Bevin, who is on the air with his own ad hitting the senator for supporting the Wall Street bailout in 2007, Democrat Grimes has served notice that she'll be a tough competitor.
"I don't scare easy," she declares in a web video that criticizes McConnell as an obstructionist.
Republicans take heart in the senator's history of nail-biting wins. He prevailed by 5,169 votes in 1984 and survived another challenge in 2008.
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LAST DAYS OF SOUTHERN DEMOCRATS?
Republicans are counting on two House members – one in office just seven months – to knock out moderate Sens. Mark Pryor in Arkansas and Mary Landrieu in Louisiana, two politicians with familiar family names.
Pryor stands as the most vulnerable after Arkansas voters soundly rejected a Democratic incumbent in 2010, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, and the GOP got a top recruit, freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, a 36-year-old Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran. Pryor welcomed Cotton to the race with an ad criticizing his House votes against a sweeping farm bill, the Violence Against Women Act and a student loan bill.
"Being able to draw that clear contrast is something that didn't happen in 2010," Cecil said. "Now we have a record."
Landrieu faces three-term Republican Rep. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Baton Rouge, in a state that has become more Republican and changed demographically since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. But Republicans and Democrats describe Landrieu as tenacious and point to past races that she won comfortably. She has $4.9 million cash on hand.
In swing-voting North Carolina, Republicans probably will have a tough primary race before picking a nominee to run against Sen. Kay Hagan. Thom Tillis, speaker of the North Carolina House, has announced, and state Senate leader Phil Berger may run.
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GEORGIA ON MY MIND
Republicans nervously watch the Georgia primary free-for-all, which includes no less than three House members vying for the open Senate seat.
Conservative Rep. Paul Broun has said evolution and the Big Bang theory are "lies straight from the pit of Hell." Rep. Phil Gingrey, an OB-GYN since 1975, backtracked earlier this year after saying former Rep. Todd Akin was "partly right" when he said during his failed Senate race in Missouri last year that women's bodies can avoid pregnancy in cases of "legitimate rape." Rep. Jack Kingston, a conservative, has emerged as the moderate.
Other Republicans are expected to join the field.
Georgia rules set the primary for next June, but if no candidate gets 50 percent, a runoff occurs in early August, a late date that could leave the GOP with a roughed-up nominee.
Democrats recruited Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn and CEO of Points of Light, the volunteer organization founded by President George H.W. Bush.
Democrats hope the Nunn name still resonates in the state nearly 20 years after the senator retired. The challenge is clear: No non-incumbent Democrat has won a major statewide race in Georgia since Gov. Roy Barnes in 1998.
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ON THE HORIZON
Republicans are awaiting word from 75-year-old Thad Cochran on whether the Mississippi senator will seek a seventh term in a state the GOP will have no problem holding.
Alaska, where Democratic Sen. Mark Begich is a top Republican target, could get another GOP candidate to join Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and Joe Miller, the tea party favorite who won the 2010 GOP primary against Sen. Lisa Murkowski but then lost as she prevailed as a write-in. Alaska Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan is expected to decide after he returns from a deployment in Afghanistan.
Among other potential GOP Senate challengers is Rep. Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, in Michigan. Republican Ken Buck, who lost to Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet in 2010, filed the necessary paperwork on Thursday for a run against Sen. Mark Udall.
AP Special Correspondent David Espo contributed to this report.
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/democrats-senate_n_3731189.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Harry Reid: I Hope Republican Opposition To Obama Is Not Because Of His Race
(BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images)
By Luke Johnson
Posted: 08/09/2013 2:15 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 3:18 pm EDT
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said on Friday that he hopes Republicans are opposing President Barack Obama based on substance and not based on his race.
"It has been obvious that they're doing everything they can to make him fail. I hope that...that's based on substance, not the fact that he's African American," he told Nevada Public Radio [ http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?SegmentID=10365&ProgramID=2847 ], KNPR. He referenced a comment made in 2010 by his counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who said it was his primary goal [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/10/25/126242/mcconnell-obama-one-term/ ] to make Obama a one-term president.
Reid also predicted that McConnell would lose in his 2014 reelection race, where he faces Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes. "Alison Grimes is ahead of the Republican leader. That's two we're going to pick up," Reid said, also predicting victory in the Georgia Senate race, where Democrats have recruited Michelle Nunn, the CEO of Points of Light and daughter of former Democratic Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn.
Reid laughed at the recent flap in which McConnell's campaign manager, Jesse Benton, said on a leaked recording [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/jesse-benton-recording_n_3726708.html (together with the original source, in the post to which this is a reply)] that he was holding his nose to work for McConnell.
Jennifer Bendery contributed reporting.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/harry-reid-republicans-race_n_3732893.html [with comments]
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EXCLUSIVE: Oklahoma Congressman Comes Out As A Birther
CREDIT: NewsOn6
By Scott Keyes on August 9, 2013 at 8:51 am
AFTON, Oklahoma — Although Freshman Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) believes President Obama may secretly be a Kenyan who forged his birth certificate, he thinks it’s too late to do anything about it.
During a town hall meeting Thursday afternoon, Mullin fielded a question from the self-professed “Birther Princess”. The woman presented him with documents — which he repeatedly refused to take — from Maricopa County (AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse”, which investigated [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/01/435878/sheriff-joe-birther-investigation/ ; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/sheriff-joe-arpaio-cold-case-posse_n_1680191.html ] whether Obama had forged his birth certificate in order to run for president. (He had, they determined, in a surprise to no one.)
Though Mullin at first appeared to be batting down the Birther Princess’s nutty theory, it quickly became clear that he only took issue with her timing, not the substance of her accusation. “I believe what you’re saying,” he told the woman, saying he thought the birther issue “probably would’ve been” big enough to drag down Obama in 2012. Mullin felt aggrieved that he had to question whether Obama was actually born in the United States, concluding that although the issue is “still there,” it’s too late to prove it to the country.
MULLIN: I believe what you’re saying and I don’t support this president whatsoever. But ma’am, we lost November 6th. We had the opportunity to get another president in there. [...] We had four years to take care of that. Our country’s facing some serious issues. If the rest of the American people thought that was a big enough issue which, I thought it probably would’ve been. Who would’ve thought we would ever actually be questioning if we had a natural-born president being president? Who would’ve ever thought that we’d actually be there? [...] So when I say we lost the argument, we lost that argument. Now let’s move on to some other issues. I believe it’s still there, but my God if we didn’t prove it the first four years, what do you think the chances are now?
Watch it [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXJd5ug4uto ]:
Though amateur political analysts might have assumed the birther movement would die out after Obama won reelection in 2012, it’s enjoyed something of a renaissance recently. In addition to Mullin, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) called on Congress to open a new birther investigation [ http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/06/17/2169751/jeff-duncan-birther/ ] this June. “Let’s go back and revisit some of these things because Americans have questions about not only the IRS scandal but also about the president’s validity,” Duncan declared during a radio interview.
© 2013 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/09/2441741/markwayne-mullin-birther/ [with comments]
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Joe Arpaio Requiring His Deputies To Carry AR-15s At All Times, Fight Crime Even When They're Off Duty
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/joe-arpaio-ar-15s_n_3731487.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 12,000) comments]
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Markwayne Mullin: Everybody Is On Food Stamps, Including Physically Fit Fraudsters
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 08/09/2013 11:30 am EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 3:23 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) told a horror story to his constituents during a town hall in Welch, Okla., on Thursday.
In a video of the event posted by ThinkProgress [ http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/08/09/2442191/congressman-claims-widespread-fraud-because-he-saw-a-physically-fit-couple-use-food-stamps-to-buy-groceries/ ; the video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL-LNYgefR8 , next below)],
the freshman Republican said he was in Crystal City, Va., buying groceries in a nice but crowded store when he noticed something strange.
"Every lane was open and it was backed up and I noticed everybody was giving that card," Mullin said, apparently referring to the electronic benefit transfer cards most states use to distribute food stamps. "They had these huge baskets, and I realized it was the first of the month."
In Virginia, food stamp benefits are automatically deposited [ http://www.dss.virginia.gov/files/division/bp/ebt/cardholder_info/faq/va_ebt_english.pdf ] on the first of the month for anyone whose case number ends in zero, one, two or three.
"But then I’m looking over, and there’s a couple beside me," Mullin continued. "This guy was built like a brick house. I mean he had muscles all over him. He was in a little tank top and pair of shorts and really nice Nike shoes. And she was standing there, and she was all in shape and she looked like she had just come from a fitness program. She was in the spandex, and you know, they were both physically fit. And they go up in front of me and they pay with that card."
Mullin knew what he'd witnessed. "Fraud," he said. "Absolute 100 percent, all of it is fraud. There's fraud all through that."
Nearly 47 million Americans currently receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, most of them either elderly, disabled or children. Republicans in the House of Representatives are currently trying to cut spending on SNAP by about 5 percent [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/food-stamp-cuts_n_3691093.html ], or $4 billion per year.
Stories of cash register resentment [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/food-stamps-resentment_n_3518821.html ] have long informed Republican efforts to curtail the program, enrollment in which has doubled since the onset of the Great Recession. But in most stories it's more common for the characters allegedly misusing the program to be fat, not fit.
Food stamp applicants are required to be poor but they're not required to have a certain level of physical fitness. Mullin's office did not immediately respond to a request for additional information about the alleged fraud. The rate of SNAP fraud in the form of benefit-trafficking has declined to 1 percent, according to the Department of Agriculture [ http://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/fraud/fraud_2.htm ].
At a separate town hall event on Thursday, also posted by ThinkProgress, Mullin suggested President Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States [ http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/08/09/2441741/markwayne-mullin-birther/ (second item above)].
"Who would’ve thought we would ever actually be questioning if we had a natural-born president being president?" he said. "That point was made and people still elected him to be president."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/markwayne-mullin-food-stamps_n_3731770.html [with (separate) embedded video report, and (over 4,000) comments]
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Tulsa leaders split on street named for KKK member
JUSTIN JUOZAPAVICIUS
August 9, 2013 05:26 PM EST
TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa's city leaders are divided over whether to rename a popular downtown street named for a businessman who was in the Ku Klux Klan, but some residents worry a drawn-out fight could send the message that the city still embraces intolerance.
After a three-hours-plus public hearing Thursday night on changing the name of Brady Street, the City Council arrived at an informal 4-4 tie on the issue. The ninth council member, Phil Lakin, was absent Thursday and could break the tie when at next week's official vote. Lakin did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday, and it's unclear which way he will vote.
Regardless, the debate revealed divisions on the council.
Supporters warned that if city leaders decide to keep the name, it would only prove what some blacks believe now about the city of 400,000: There is still a white Tulsa and a black Tulsa.
"If it doesn't pass, we will continue to have a need for a much better education process about the role of the KKK in Tulsa historically and the impact it has had on our black friends and neighbors in this community," said Councilor G.T. Bynum, who supports the name change. "Black people in Tulsa have had a very difficult time in Tulsa over the last 100 years."
Wyatt Tate Brady, the street's namesake, was a shoe salesman who became a prominent Tulsa businessman. He signed the city's incorporation papers, started a newspaper and pumped his wealth into promoting Tulsa to the rest of the country.
But Brady, the son of a Confederate veteran, was also a member of the Klan. New questions arose after a magazine article looked at whether he was involved in the most notorious event in Tulsa history: a 1921 race riot that left some 300 black residents dead.
Today, Brady Street cuts through the heart of the Brady Arts District, a glitzy downtown area that represents arguably the most successful redevelopment project the city has ever pursued. Boarded-up warehouses, overgrown lots and blight have been replaced with trendy bistros, a cigar bar and a museum and park honoring Dust Bowl music legend Woody Guthrie.
Supporters have been lobbying for the name change since 2011, when an article in the literary magazine This Land said Brady created an environment of racism that led to the 1921 riot that decimated a thriving district that historians have called Black Wall Street.
The district is in the city's downtown, and some say that beyond that new redevelopment, the city isn't committed to investing in the north side, which is home to many black residents and pocked with blight and vacant lots.
"If we don't change this name, tell me what would be a good step in changing this part of town?" resident Carlos Moreno told council members Thursday. "Convince me. I'm listening."
Those who want to leave the name alone include some of the Brady district's business owners. They say a name change could lead to a revisionist look at other notable residents who have parks, buildings and streets named after them.
Some said keeping the name shows people that learning from the past – not scrubbing it – is the better option. Some suggested placing signage or a plaque in the district if the council votes to keep the name to tell visitors who Brady was and the infamous things he did.
"If erasing the memories of the riot is your intention, then you may be on your way to a time when it is forgotten," said Robert Fleischman, president of the Brady Arts District Business Association.
But others question why the city would keep a street name linked to the oppression of blacks.
Resident James L. Johnson Sr. noted that some business owners have already made changes, because they understood that putting the Brady name on their businesses would offend people who know about Brady's past.
"Wyatt Tate Brady is still a hero to (the city)," Johnson said. "White supremacy and racism is alive and well in this city, whether they like to admit it or not."
© 2013 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130809/us-renaming-brady/ [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=64484589 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=74139716 and preceding and following]
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Steve Lonegan Campaign Deletes Racially Charged Tweet About Cory Booker
08/09/2013
Former Bogota, N.J., Mayor Steve Lonegan's campaign team tried to pull back a racially charged tweet this week [ http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/cory-booker-steve-lonegan-new-jersey-senate-95378.html ] aimed at opponent Newark Mayor Cory Booker, Politico reports. Lonegan, a Republican, and Booker, a Democrat, are both running to fill the Senate seat left vacant by the late Frank Lautenberg.
The tweet [ http://images.politico.com/global/2013/08/09/lonegantweet.html ], which was quickly deleted from the campaign staff's Twitter account, included an annotated map of Newark, which it joked came from Booker's debate notes on foreign policy. On the tweeted map, parts of the city were circled and labeled "West Africa," "Guyana," "Portugal" and "Brazil." The western tip of the city was labeled "Middle East," followed by, "Afghanistan Pakistan PLUS Bangladesh AND Trinidad."
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/steve-lonegan-campaign-tweet_n_3731864.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 6,000) comments]
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Everything you know about drugs is wrong
Author Carl Hart says we focus too much on drugs' dangers – and not enough on how racism affects drug policy
Aug 10, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/10/everything_you_know_about_drugs_is_wrong/ [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90830804 and preceding and following]
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Rush Limbaugh Calls Oprah 'Fat'
By Jack Mirkinson
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:29 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 4:38 pm EDT
Here is how Rush Limbaugh tried to explain away Oprah's encounter with a woman who refused to sell her a handbag in Switzerland — an encounter widely viewed as tinged with racism [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/oprah-racism-swiss-tourism-office_n_3731165.html ]:
"Maybe it's because the Oprah's fat! ... Look, don't most people think that the fat and the obese are poor and stupid?"
Sigh.
[audio embedded; covered in its first part by (in the latter part of) the first YouTube next below, and in full by (in the latter part of) the second YouTube next below]
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/rush-limbaugh-oprah-fat_n_3733021.html [with comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=90787838 and preceding and following]
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Rush Doubts Oprah's Racism Claims: Maybe It's Because She's "Fat"
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by MMFA Alt. Channel
For more on this: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/08/09/rush-doubts-oprahs-racism-claims-maybe-its-beca/195319 ( http://mm4a.org/1cAguXv )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KskvqZhBTs
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Rush Limbaugh's Disgusting Oprah Attack
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by NewsOfWorldToday
Here is how Rush Limbaugh tried to explain away Oprah's encounter with a woman who refused to sell her a handbag in Switzerland — an encounter widely viewed as tinged with racism: "Maybe it's because the Oprah's fat! ... Look, don't most people think that the fat and the obese are poor and stupid?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPjBLjmzcjo [also at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5PGDKCfn3s and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcCtdwnx7YU ]
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Rush Limbaugh Calls Oprah "Fat" (And Other Attacks On Women's Looks)
Published on Aug 9, 2013 by mediamatters4america
Oprah Winfrey told Entertainment Tonight about an instance of racial discrimination she experience. Limbaugh discounted Oprah's claim, explaining that perhaps she was mistreated because she's fat.
So, we put together a quick roundup of Limbaugh attacking Chelsea Clinton, Michelle Obama and others looks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rpMEfvs1mg
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Dana Rohrabacher 'Would Defund White Trash'
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said he would like to "defund white trash" who abuse government programs.
(AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)
By Ryan Rainey
Posted: 08/09/2013 3:33 pm EDT
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said on Twitter this week that he would like to "defund white trash" who take advantage of federal social programs.
Rohrabacher made the remark in a reply [ https://twitter.com/DanaRohrabacher/statuses/364637254016176128 ] to a Twitter user who was complaining about immigration policy.
Ga_bree_lla
@ga_bree_ella
06 Aug [ https://twitter.com/ga_bree_ella/statuses/364633733569056768 ]
@ImmortalTech @danarohrabacher Its ok for lazywhitetrash 2live off food stamps but won't legalize my ppl who actuall contributetothiscountry
Dana Rohrabacher
@DanaRohrabacher
@ga_bree_ella would defund white trash, but not our vets , seniors & other deserving Americans 2 provide benefits 2 those here illegally
1:41 AM - 6 Aug 2013
House Republicans are seeking cuts to food stamps that would trim the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/food-stamp-cuts_n_3691093.html ]'s cost by roughly 5 percent over 10 years.
In June, Rohrabacher said [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/18/john-boehner-vote-immigration_n_3459728.html ] that John Boehner (R-Ohio) should be removed from his position as House speaker if he brought immigration reform to a full vote without majority support from Republicans.
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/rohrabacher-white-trash_n_3733333.html
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How to stop right-wing nuts: The elusive solution
A new governing majority in the House could pass guns, immigration and climate change reform. Here's how it'd work
Aug 8, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/08/how_to_stop_right_wing_nuts_the_elusive_solution/ [with comments]
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Buck McKeon: Terrorists May 'Mingle In' With Latinos To Cross Border
Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) says more border security is needed as part of immigration reform.
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/buck-mckeon-border_n_3733082.html [the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_bETUWAhj4 ; with comments] [and see "Louie Gohmert: Radical Islamists Being Trained To 'Act Like Hispanic'", http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/louie-gohmert-radical-islamist_n_3100254.html (with embedded video, and comments)]
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Mike Huckabee: Muslims Depart Mosques Like 'Uncorked Animals,' Throwing Rocks, Burning Cars
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/mike-huckabee-muslims_n_3725678.html [with embedded video report, and (over 8,000) comments]
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Mike Huckabee is wrong about Islam
08/07/2013
http://dailycaller.com/2013/08/07/mike-huckabee-is-wrong-about-islam/ [with comments]
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'No Muslim Parking' Signs Prompt Outrage At Westview Shopping Center In Texas
08/10/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/no-muslim-parking-_n_3733132.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Richard Dawkins' Anti-Muslim Tweets Spark Furor, Even Among Atheist Supporters
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/richard-dawkins-anti-muslim-tweets_n_3732678.html [with comments]
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70 Percent Of Georgia Republicans Believe In Creationism: PPP Poll
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/georgia-republicans-creationism_n_3726445.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 10,000) comments]
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Pennsylvania Rep. Steve Bloom Seeks Cosponsors For Bill That Spurs Creationism Discussion
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/steve-bloom-creationism_n_3720530.html [with embedded video report, and (approaching 6,000) comments]
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'Snake Salvation' Reality TV Show Features Serpent Handling Christian Preacher Andrew Hamblin
By Yasmine Hafiz
Posted: 08/08/2013 6:17 pm EDT | Updated: 08/08/2013 6:27 pm EDT
Andrew Hamblin is part of a group of Tennessee Christians [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/06/andrew-hamblin-snake-handler_n_1572528.html ] who believe that God has instructed them to 'take up serpents [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A18&version=NRSV ]' in the literal sense. He and some other preachers take the Biblical exhortation extremely seriously, as their unique (and illegal) form of religious practice involves praying with venomous snakes in their bare hands.
Soon they will be praying with serpents on reality TV on "Snake Salvation [ http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/snake-salvation/ ]," set to debut September 10th on the National Geographic Channel. A camera crew followed around Hamblin, of Tabernacle Church of God in Lafollette, Tenn., and Jamie Coots of Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name Church of Middlesboro, Ky., in the fall of 2012 and the spring and summer of 2013.
Snake-handling has been going on in that region for generations, but while older serpent pastors were wary of outsiders, the younger crop of snake preachers are open about their practice, posting photos on Facebook [ https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=443309699098204&set=a.114306595331851.19880.100002575335834&type=1&theater ] and welcoming visitors (though they aren't allowed anywhere near the snakes).
The serpent-handlers believe that they have been commanded by God to take up snakes, which serves as a sort of spiritual litmus test of faith, as those blessed by God will remain unharmed. The practice is rooted in a passage from Mark 16 [ http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+16%3A18&version=NRSV ] of the Bible which reads:
And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
In a 2012 profile by the Tennessean [ http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120603/NEWS06/306030069/Snake-handling-believers-find-joy-test-faith ], Hamblin elaborated on the feeling of serpent-handling, saying that if more people had the same experiences that he does while in church, they wouldn't mock it. He said, "It is the closest thing to heaven on earth that you could get. You can feel God's power in the flesh."
Serpent-handling congregations are typically suspicious of the media and law-enforcement agencies, as their unusual method of worship was outlawed by Tennessee [id.] in 1947 following the death of five people from serpent bites at churches in two years. Hamblin and other serpent-handlers also routinely run afoul of the state law that prohibits people from capturing wild animals or keeping poisonous snakes, as they usually catch their own.
However, Hamblin and Coots have decided to step into the spotlight to share their religious convictions with a wider audience, hoping that people will benefit from seeing the extreme demonstration of their faith. "We say we are in this to save souls," commented Coots. "But people don't see us if they don't come into the four walls of the church."
Sixteen episodes of the show are planned, said executive producer Matthew Testa, who cites the uniqueness of the local faith tradition as a compelling reason for viewers to watch the show beyond the thrill of seeing regular pastors engaged in a dangerous practice. "We live at a time when, because of the Internet and television, we are all becoming more and more alike," he commented to USA Today [ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/07/serpent-handling-pastors-to-star-in-reality-show/2630243/ ]. "To find a really distinct American subculture is incredibly rare."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/snake-salvation-reality-tv-show-andrew-hamblin_n_3727654.html [with embedded video report, and comments] [and see e.g. (linked in) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=32565156 and preceding and following, http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=84628488 and preceding and following]
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Kentucky Board Of Education Swats Deniers, Backs Evolution, Climate Change In New Science Standards
By Nick Wing
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:25 pm EDT
In a rejection of complaints by creationists and climate change deniers, the Kentucky Board of Education approved new science standards [ http://wfpl.org/post/kentucky-education-officials-ok-new-science-standards-despite-criticism-evolution ] on Thursday, moving forward on a plan that reinforces the teaching of evolution and climate science.
The move came after a lengthy period of public discussion that featured colorful backlash against the proposal. Opponents reportedly branded the standards [ http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130723/NEWS01/307220132/School-science-hotly-debated-Kentucky ] as “fascist” and “atheistic” and said they promoted "socialistic" thinking that leads to “genocide” and “murder.”
The board apparently disagreed, arguing that the standards reflect a scientific consensus and are needed to ensure that Kentucky students are competitive as they prepare for college and careers.
WFPL reported [ http://wfpl.org/post/kentucky-education-officials-ok-new-science-standards-despite-criticism-evolution ] that the board met Thursday, declaring the supposed controversy over evolution moot because it is already included in the current set of science standards. They also went beyond that [ http://portal.ksba.org/public/Meeting.aspx?PublicAgencyID=4388&PublicMeetingID=9441&AgencyTypeID=1 ], clarifying that evolution is the "fundamental, unifying theory that underlies all the life sciences," and that there is no "significant ongoing debate within the scientific community" about its legitimacy. Officials also rejected calls to include creationism as a competing item in the curriculum.
Members also voiced their support for keeping climate research and studies in the new standards.
The Next Generation Science Standards were developed with input from officials in 26 states, including Kentucky, and are part of an effort to make science curricula more uniform across the country.
The Kentucky Board of Education's approval of the changes must now be approved [ http://blogs.courier-journal.com/politics/2013/08/08/science-education-standards-advance-despite-critics/ ] by the state’s Administrative Regulation Review Subcommittee and House and Senate education committees. It is unclear whether some lawmakers in the state -- which is home to creationist landmarks like the Creation Museum and the upcoming "Ark Encounter," a massive replica of Noah's Ark -- will give their approval.
Board Chairman David Karem was optimistic, however.
“I think that ultimately they will be adopted,” he told the Louisville Courier-Journal [ http://blogs.courier-journal.com/politics/2013/08/08/science-education-standards-advance-despite-critics/ ]. “I don’t mean that there won’t be some people who have concerns about them, but I feel confident that ultimately they will be in place.”
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/kentucky-science-standards_n_3732650.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Jeb Bush Defends Common Core At ALEC Meeting
By Joy Resmovits
Posted: 08/09/2013 1:03 pm EDT | Updated: 08/09/2013 4:37 pm EDT
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush once again defended the Common Core education standards [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/common-core-standards_n_3716662.html ] in front the American Legislative Exchange Council's highly-protested annual meeting in Chicago Friday.
"There are critics of Common Core Standards from both ends of the ideological spectrum. I know there are some in this room," Bush said, according to prepared remarks provided to The Huffington Post. The meeting was closed to the press.
"I respect those who don’t share my views. What I can’t accept are the dumbed-down standards and expectations that exist in almost all of our schools today," Bush continued, echoing language often used by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
The speech places Bush, a Republican, among an ever-dwindling group of conservatives who speak out in favor of the Core. That group also includes New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who last week told charter school supporters that Republican pushback to the Core is a "knee-jerk" reaction [ http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2013/08/04/christie-spars-with-gop-again-this-time-over-education-standards/ ] to President Barack Obama's promotion of the project. The business community also is defending the Core, with the Business Roundtable planning a major ad blitz this fall.
The Common Core is a set of learning standards developed by a group of governors and non-profits under the auspices of the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The standards are meant to prepare students for an ever-globalizing economy by holding them to common goals that emphasize critical thinking, non-fictional informational texts and universal mathematical concepts, such as fractions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped fund the effort, and the Obama administration incentivized states to accept the standards' by offering cash through the Race to the Top competition.
Forty-six states and Washington, D.C., have adopted some form of the Core, and a report released this week showed that while politicians argue about it [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/common-core-standards_n_3716662.html ], states are already teaching to the standards.
Opposing the Core has become a cause du jour of the Tea Party, which has organized members to fight against its implementation. They argue that the Core is a federally-imposed, big-government mandate that will end local control of schools. On the national stage, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) recently said that curricula should be developed locally [ http://shark-tank.net/2013/07/25/marco-rubio-opposes-common-core-education-standards/ ]. (Under the Core standards, states and districts can develop their own curricula.)
The Republican National Committee adopted language against the Core [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/04/19/common-core-standards-attacked-by-republicans/ ], but ALEC, a conservative group that crafts model legislation for states, recently rejected [ http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/state_edwatch/2012/11/alec_votes_down_anti-common_core_resolution.html ] an anti-Common Core resolution.
Republican Kansas State Rep. J.R. Claeys said Bush's speech went over well at the Friday meeting, but while the ALEC crowd might support the idea of standards in general, some have big questions about the Core.
"Most Republicans are in favor of holding our schools to a set of standards so that they can be held accountable for the results they provide. I am concerned about some of the issues that we have with the Common Core, and it deserves some review," he said after the speech. "When anyone sees teachers unions and the president getting behind something, people get suspicious."
"I don't think his support of Common Core hurts [Bush] among the people here," Claeys added, "because we do believe in having standards."
Plummeting test scores in New York further sparked intense criticism of the Core this week. The state administered its first-ever test aligned to the Common Core standards this year, and as expected, the results showed that very few students [ http://gothamschools.org/2013/08/07/test-scores-fall-sharply-statewide-but-nyc-fares-relatively-well/ ] are on track to be "college and career ready."
Critics say it's unfair to suddenly tell kids they're failing, as Bush acknowledged Friday.
"There will be a painful adjustment period as schools and students adapt to higher expectations," Bush said. "Just look at the results announced in New York this week. Remember, only one-third of our students are college or career ready, and higher expectations, assessed faithfully, will show that ugly truth."
"But the greatest mistake we make in public education is underestimating the capacity of our children to learn," Bush continued. "Under the banner of self-esteem we whitewash failure. We demand more of kids on football fields and basketball courts than we do in classrooms."
Copyright © 2013 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/jeb-bush-common-core_n_3732478.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Ken Buck Files Paperwork For 2014 Senate Run Against Mark Udall
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/ken-buck-senate_n_3725082.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Jack Villamaino, Former GOP Candidate, Gets 4 Months In Jail For Felony Voter Fraud
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/jack-villamaino-voter-fraud_n_3728456.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Scott Brown Remains Vague On 2014 Run For Governor, Says 'We'll Soon Find Out'
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/scott-brown-governor_n_3725259.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Scott Brown's Younger Brother Arrested Heavily Armed, Impersonating Police
Aug. 9, 2013
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sen-scott-browns-younger-brother-arrested-impersonating-police/story?id=19914273 [with embedded video report, and comments]
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[House Majority Whip] Kevin McCarthy [(R-Calif.)] Jokes About 'House Of Cards,' Murdering Colleagues
08/09/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/09/kevin-mccarthy-house-of-cards_n_3731985.html [with comments]
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Citizens United 'Dark Money' Could Be Revealed By States, NYC Public Advocate Report Finds
08/08/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/08/citizens-united-dark-money_n_3725363.html [with embedded video report, the report ( http://www.scribd.com/doc/158901122/Building-A-Frontline-Defense-To-Stop-Secret-Political-Spending ) embedded, and comments]
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Conservative ideology no longer privately insured
Wayne LaPierre (Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
Two insurance industry reports expose the right's broken logic on gun control and environmentalism
By David Sirota
Friday, Aug 9, 2013 07:00 AM CDT
Stripped down to its fundamentals, the insurance business is the business of assessing risk. Regardless of what is being insured, a successful insurer is one that analyzes the risk of having to pay out benefits, and then adjusts coverage rates to make sure more money is coming in than is going out. The more accurate the assessment of risk, the more financially successful an insurance company tends to be.
Because of this model, private insurance is the conservative ideologue’s favored method of assessing danger and managing risk, for it is a purely free-market instrument. Indeed, as a right-wing activist would readily admit, private insurance focuses exclusively on the dollars and cents of actuarial analyses, and it bases prices on data and empiricism, not on fact-free political ideology and poll-tested platitudes.
So, then, what happens when the insurance industry so touted by the conservative movement starts saying things that wholly contradict that movement’s talking points?
This is the unanswered question posed by two new insurance-related reports that expose the bankruptcy of the right’s environmental extremism and its opposition to gun control.
The first comes from the insurance industry’s official think tank, the Geneva Association [ https://www.genevaassociation.org/ ]. Rejecting conservatives’ opposition to the fight against climate change, the organization issued a study documenting “a significant upward trend in the insured losses caused by extreme weather events.” It concluded that the insurance industry should fight back against the conservative movement’s attempts to downplay climate change fears and “play an active role in raising awareness of risk and climate change.” It also called for a “transition to a low-carbon economy” and “the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions” because that “will ultimately create a more resilient society.”
Then came a dispatch from the Des Moines Register [ http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20130707/BUSINESS/307070054/Kansas-schools-law-thrusts-EMC-Insurance-into-gun-debate ], which reported that the company insuring most Kansas schools “has refused to renew coverage for schools that permit teachers and custodians to carry concealed firearms on their campuses.” The announcement was a rebuke to a new Kansas law that responded to the Newtown, Conn., school massacre by permitting gun owners to carry firearms in schools.
In both cases, the insurance industry’s free-market analysis of risk — not a fact-free declaration of political ideology — ended up rebuking the conservative talking points of the day. In the climate-change case, for instance, an organization composed of buttoned-down insurance CEOs rejected the right’s campaign of do-nothingism and denialism. Likewise, in the gun case, insurance actuaries’ evaluation of risk ended up discrediting the arms-race ideology of the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, who infamously called for more guns in schools on the assumption that “the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
The conservative response to this kind of news is usually a temper tantrum. You know how it goes — Stephen Colbert-like declarations that “reality has a well-known liberal bias” and then claims that it is all a left-wing conspiracy (no doubt, some will cite the insurance industry’s reports as proof that the insurance companies are in on the conspiracy!).
But maybe that’s not how it will all play out this time around. With the broadsides against the conservative movement now coming from the very private insurance industry that the movement so adores, maybe this can be a moment of change on the right. Maybe — just maybe — conservatives can see that what’s really at work here is their own sacred free-market principle of “creative destruction.”
Only this time around, it is the right’s misguided ideology that is being destroyed.
Copyright © 2013 Salon Media Group, Inc.
http://www.salon.com/2013/08/09/conservative_ideology_no_longer_privately_insured/ [with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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