Update on the Fox News Downfall

In addition to Bill O'Reilly's well deserved exit from Fox News, on Monday, the door slammed on now former co-President of Fox News, Bill Shine, amid a cluster of NEW law suits over both corporate sexism and racial discrimination.  Some of those stories include reports of black female employees being coerced into arm wrestling white female employees, for the gratification of their white male bosses.

Shein took over from sex crazed exec and office pervert (alleged) Roger Ailes, effectively the founder of Fox News.  It appears he did not do much if anything to change the toxic misogynistic and racist culture of the organization.

Further rumors that are credible say that Sean Hannity will be out by Friday, giving rise to rumors that Fox News may be on its way to a substantial decline or even a possible collapse.

We have another deplorable supporting the Fox News misogyny, Michael Reagan weighing in.
Another anti-women conservative, the son of the disastrous conservative president Ronald Reagan,
who tweeted in defense of Fake News, apparently ignoring that the dress of women on camera was dictated by the management:

"If women are going to wear low cut dresses that show cleavage don't be harassed when we men look. Or should we sue for sexual arousal?"

Apparently Reagan never got the memo or the upbringing that men and women are each of us responsible for our own feelings and reactions, and especially for unacceptable behavior.  The issue here is that unacceptable behavior, including unprofessional conduct. 

It is ironic that so many of the women of Fox News are now found on MSNBC.  Perhaps even more surprising is that there is an apparent friendship and mutual adration society that has quietly existed for a while now between Roger Ailes and MSNBC  super star Rachel Maddow.  The story goes that Ailes is a huge admirer of the work done by Maddow.  It is worth noting that as Maddow has gained experience she has surpassed the performance of Fox News, particularly in the more desirable demographics.

I found it ironic while posting the news of the departure of another figure from the right wing propaganda outlet, notorious for its factual inaccuracies and partisan malice, grotesque hypocrisy, racism and on-air sexism, that some of the more ignorant right wing trolls claimed that the worst thing that ever happened at Fox News was some slightly salty language.  They denied the findings of the law firm that Fox hired to investigate the charges against the company which found them to be true.  And credible journalism like the New York Times reported that the sexual harassment extended at times to women being intimidated into being groped, kissed against their will, and women being coerced to perform oral sex acts on executive in the Fox News offices during working hours.  The trolls were apparently a mixture of women and men on the right, among some of the most misinformed individuals I have ever encountered (based on their expressed beliefs appearing in comments), which argues well for the accuracy of Hillary Clinton that both sexism and misogyny were factors in her election defeat.

In other news supporting the contention that the radical right are members of an adult version of the Little Rascals' "He Man Women Haters Club" has been the news that Rep. Fisher in New Hampshire was one of the originators of a particularly toxic and noxious sub reddit, a type of forum / website, in which he makes the observation

..on The Red Pill made by one of Fisher’s alleged usernames in 2008 reads, “rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot. I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

...The Red Pill frequently normalizes rape, diminishes female intelligence and discusses the best ways to pick up women, including “negging,” a tactic in which men say backhanded compliments to women in order to lower their confidence and make them more open to sexual advances.

This is conservatism in the 21st Century.  Those who do not share these deplorable and repugnant views in how they conduct themselves are however far too willing to include in their party and their politics those who do act and think like this in devaluing and demeaning women.  This is the GOP that accepted TRump as a candidate and support him in his presidency.  This thinking is where the racist and the sexism in policy originates on the right.  And the Evangelical Right is smack in the middle of it, as are the far right white supremacists and other people Hillary Clinton correctly identified  as deplorables.  Just as Racism drove right wing hatred of Obama for being bi-racial, this misogyny drove the hatred of Hillary Clinton.  Neither was rational or objective. No one repudiates it on the right, no one drives out these people on the right.

Fox News and Republican candidates and Conservative polices all normalize the view of women as lesser, not equal.  This is true in opposing equal pay for women as much as in treating women as sexual objects or second class citizens without the same rights and true equality.  The right is attempting to make misogyny socially acceptable and to make other hate such as racism, religious intolerance, and hate and fear for the LGBT acceptable.  The opposition to so-called "political correctness" is just one facet of this effort to undermine women in society.

And in other news another Right Wing Extremist, a be able to have an abortion as the result of either.

From CBS News:

Mourdock, a Tea Party-backed candidate who beat longtime moderate Senator Richard Lugar in the state's Republican nominating contest earlier this year, expressed his view that "life begins at conception" and that he would only allow abortions in circumstances in which the mother's life was in danger.

...Republican candidate Richard Mourdock suggested that pregnancies resulting from rape are "something that God intended to happen,"

His assertion, lacking internal logic, that nothing happens without the will of God would then presumably extend as well to murder or crimes against humanity.  Because nothing can happen without God's will making it so -- which should include abortion, giving the majority of conceptions do not implant or otherwise naturally terminate, so.......approved by God. This is the same mindset that gives rapists custody of their children conceived from criminal acts, and the same mindset in other parts of the world that see no crime in rape, if the victim subsequently marries the rapist, because then "all good".

I have to wonder if Murdock were raped, but did not get pregnant, if he would still find that an Act consistent with the approval of God? I'm betting absent the accident of pregnancy he would not.

Conservatism is, LITERALLY, Resulting in the DEATHS of Women and Children

most recent infant mortality rates, 2014

most recent statistics on comparative maternal mortality rates

Last month the Shriver Report, a non-profit that deals with women in the US and feminism (both advances and reversals)did a survey, in part examining the attitudes of men towards a possible female president. It explains a great deal about why conservative men are waging culture and legislative/policy war on women, not only in regards to reproductive issues but rather a broad spectrum of issues.  Worse, those beliefs and the policies and legislation that result from them, are becoming more extreme and more draconian - and deadly.

This part of that survey findings I found to be key in understanding why conservative men, who are opposed to the advances of feminism and are attempting to undo them, perceive a threat to their roles at an emotional level - this is the 'what' and the 'why':

When asked to describe in their own words why it is harder to be a man in their generation compared with their father’s, men are most likely to say this is due to women attaining a stronger position in the workplace, a stronger position financially, and greater gender equality. These men also cite negative assumptions about men, a more competitive job market, greater household responsibilities for men, and greater expectations for men in society today.

There is something deeply and seriously wrong when we could be more scandalized, shocked, or offended by the notion of men experiencing a limited simulation of pregnancy and childbirth than we are aware of or shocked by women and infants dying at an increasing rate, an appalling rate, comparable to other similarly developed first world countries.

I posted this back on May 7, but it does not appear to have been adequately connected to the subsequent posts as part of the theme of why our post-1980 era conservatism, aka the policies and ideology broadly characterized as Reaganism, are massively misogynistic, massively anti-feminist, to such an extreme they constitute a war on women.

Please pay attention to the statistics on infant and maternal mortality in this video from May 5, 2015.



These statistics are shocking, genuinely deeply shocking, deeply disturbing. These statistics require something to push back against these policies, something to undo, or to reverse, this conservative Reaganism thinking at the deepest and most profound level. Because this thinking is an integral part of conservative identity, because it is emotional rather than rational or logical, bringing about that kind of change in a conservative is extremely difficult by reliance on facts and figures, or logic as persuasion.

My co-blogger Penigma has respectfully and constructively criticized me for proposing that conservative men who vote on legislation affecting women and support for families should experience both the simulated labor pains and the discomfort of simulated pregnancy pre-labor with a pregnancy belly appliance. He viewed those suggestions as extremist and as sensationalism. That was never my intent, and I am not so far persuaded that those proposals are either extreme or sensational; rather, given the number of men who try those experiences voluntarily, and given that they are more brief than the actual experience for women, and that men can opt out of them whenever they become too unpleasant for their tolerance threshold, I think the proposal is actually quite benign and positive.  Deaths certainly justify at least considering alternatives when other solutions have been so unsuccessful.


My co-blogger Penigma has also chided me, in his usual very gentlemanly and considerate manner, for focusing too much on pregnancy and labor, and not sufficiently on other aspects related to the war on women, such as the attempts to limit or ban outright access to affordable contraception (as just one example).

I would argue instead that the purpose of proposing those two simulations for conservative male legislators is to provide them a very physical and emotionally visceral, physical understanding of a challenging uniquely female experience as a means to open their hearts and minds to a broader and deeper change of belief about women than only pregnancy and giving birth. I would argue that after experiencing even a brief exposure to simulated childbirth, a conservative legislator would be less likely to find it plausible that poor women become pregnant just to get a free 'Obamaphone'. Of course, there is no such thing as a free Obamaphone; rather a Bush era program continued under Obama where reconditioned phones are provided by corporations with limited minutes on them for the purpose of job hunting, with use monitored and availability strictly means tested, including a requirement for actual job hunting. But those facts are immaterial to the conservative narrative -- as most facts appear to be ignored by conservatives in favor of their ideology narrative against women.

Let me provide you an example from the right - specifically the religious right.  This is a term that has been widely used on right wing media, including (but not limited to) Fox News, via Boingboing back in 2012, although it continues into 2015.  It is not only misogynistic, and anti-sexuality, it is additionally some of the most ugly kind of racism; but this goes a long way towards explaining conservative legislation:

"The Democrats tried to make this election about a single issue: The right to slut. Or more precisely, the right to slut without the responsibility of consequences."
"One thing one has to remember about women, especially slutty ones: They usually don’t make decisions based on reason," he writes, after explaining that sluts want to get abortions so they can be slutty and childless, but that they also want to leech off of welfare to raise welfare babies, which is of course a totally reasoned flow of logic.
"This election cycle shows that the Slut Vote is real, and Republicans lose because they discount the existence of original sin in women," writes B-Skillet. "Abortion is often called the 'third rail of American politics,' but in truth, the third rail is a woman’s right to slut (with cash and prizes)."

The famous “gender gap” isn’t really a gap based on gender. The right overwhelmingly wins older and married women. The “gender gap” should more accurately be called the slut vote.
Women make up about 54% of the electorate. It is very hard to win without winning that segment, or at least losing it only narrowly while winning men big. While the right usually wins married women, the fact is that married women constitute an ever-decreasing share of the female population. Women want to delay marriage as long as possible so they can “have it all,” and usually “have it all” means “have as much hot alpha sex as possible without any consequences.” And thus, less married women and more sluts (not that these two groups are mutually exclusive, per se)
And that’s where the Democrats come in. Contrary to common belief, the primary reason the Democrats own the black vote has nothing to do with civil rights. The Democrats were only partially supportive of civil rights in the 60′s (with southern Democrats advocating “segregation forever”). Lincoln was a Republican, and Republicans in the House and Senate voted for civil rights legislation in the 60s.
Rather, Democrats have won the black vote because the black community is dominated by illegitimacy, and the Democrats are willing to subsidize and support that illegitimacy (as well as provide access to cheap abortions) so as to take away from sluts the consequences of their actions. Consequently, young black people grow up on the dole and not only never realize there might be something wrong with that, but eventually come to believe that’s the way it should be. The Democrats have won the black vote by first “empowering” single black mothers.
This is now beginning to happen in white suburbia, except unlike women in the urban black community, white suburban sluts start from a place of relative wealth and privilege (daddy’s little princess). Thus, food stamps–and increased rewards for having illegitimate kids while on food stamps–don’t (yet) appeal to them.
So instead Obama appealed to rich white sluts by forcing someone else (the Catholic church, in this case) to pay for their birth control, and by scaring them about alleged threats to their ability to take advantage of Planned Parenthood’s services (Planned Parenthood being conveniently located in the minority part of town, of course, so as to provide anonymity to visiting white girls whose white girl friends never go over there–except to visit Planned Parenthood themselves). This created a wedge issue in the suburban community that allowed Obama to play more strongly there than he might have if the election ended up purely about the economy or the national debt.
One thing one has to remember about women, especially slutty ones: They usually don’t make decisions based on reason. So all the Obama administration had to do was scare them that Mitt Romney was going to take away their birth control and their access to abortion. The fear for them is that, without birth control and abortion, they might actually get pregnant and have to give birth. That is scary not simply because of the economic burden of having a child (since, hey, they can get all kinds of cash and prizes if that happens), but because if that happened then everyone would know they’re sluts, and their image as daddy’s pure little snowflake princess goes out the window.
The right loses the female vote primarily because so many of them still operate from a feminist world-view: Women are pure, perfect, kind, and altruistic, and the only reason they “get into trouble” is that some evil, conniving, manipulative man tricked them into sleeping with the entire football team.

Conservatives are broadly anti-abortion, and they have attempted at all levels of government to ban abortion, by claiming it is killing babies. At the same time, they promote policies which actually DO kill babies, not just clusters of cells at the embryonic and fetal level of development which have no established moral, legal or scientific standing as human beings.

This is not exclusively an issue of pregnancy or giving birth however, but part of a larger view of women as the enemy, especially to the degree that women fail to conform to submission to men and conformity to a pre-1950's style of puritanism. This is a worldview of women as a threat, to male dominance and by extension to a rigid social hierarchy which in the view of conservatives equates to order and stability, 'the right(AKA right-wing) way' of doing things.

This is about changing all thinking and beliefs about women, from the minimum wage (which affects women more than men, to pay and pay equality, and as a result affects poverty levels more for women than for men) to health care (including the increased availability of health care through the ACA), to nutritional supplement levels like WIC and SNAP, to the funding of programs like Governor Dayton's pre-K, to the demeaning of single women as a demographic that votes for Democrats more than Republicans being characterized as the 'slut vote', to the belief that women, especially single women, use pregnancy as an ATM card through the social safety network of welfare benefits, to the attitudes about rape which blame the victim not the rapist.

I would ague that it requires a fairly strong, if not drastic solution, when we even see a recurring theme of conservatives figures claiming that women should not have the vote, and when we have a Justice on the Supreme Court who publicly asserts that the U.S. constitution does not prohibit gender discrimination (Scalia, here).

Conservatives do not want to force women back into the bad old days of the 1950s. Conservatives, led by predominantly white males at all levels of governance and politics, want to force women bac to the very bad old days of the 1850s. We need to push back against that -- and push back hard. That I believe requires thinking outside the box of methods we have tried to date, and which have failed. That I believe may require an approach that is not exclusively a logical argument of dry facts which are easily ignored or denied.

As an FYI, since I try to be conscientious about fact checking what I publish, I looked to see if Thom Hartmann had his numbers right -- he did.

From last September, via CBS news and the CDC:

More babies are dying before they turn 1 year old in the United States than in most of Europe and several other developed countries, a new U.S. government report says.
A greater proportion of premature births and deaths of full-term babies are driving the higher rate, which puts the United States below 25 other countries, according to the report, released Sept. 24 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I think we've known for a long time that the U.S. has a higher preterm birth rate, but this higher infant mortality rate for full-term, big babies who should have really good survival prospects is not what we expected," said lead author Marian MacDorman, a senior statistician and researcher in the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.
The infant mortality rate refers to the percentage of babies born alive who die before their first birthday.
The report compares infant mortality rates in the United States to those of European countries plus Australia, Israel, Japan, Korea and New Zealand in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available.

It looks as if Thom Hartmann may have UNDER reported the data for maternal mortality rates.  From the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals:

Maternal Mortality in the United States: A Human Rights Failure

With 99% of maternal deaths occurring in developing countries, it is too often assumed that maternal mortality is not a problem in wealthier countries. Yet, statistics released in September of 2010 by the United Nations place the United States 50th in the world for maternal mortality — with maternal mortality ratios higher than almost all European countries, as well as several countries in Asia and the Middle East.^{1, 2}
Even more troubling, the United Nations data show that between 1990 and 2008, while the vast majority of countries reduced their maternal mortality ratios for a global decrease of 34%, maternal mortality nearly doubled in the United States.¹ For a country that spends more than any other country on health care and more on childbirth-related care than any other area of hospitalization — US$86 billion a year — this is a shockingly poor return on investment.^{3, 4}
Given that at least half of maternal deaths in the United States are preventable,⁵ this is not just a matter of public health, but a human rights failure.⁶ The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “every human being has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including medical care and necessary social services”.⁷ This means that the United States health care system must provide health care services that are available, accessible, acceptable and of good quality.⁸ In addition, the health care system must be free from discrimination, must be accountable and must ensure the active participation of women in decision-making. Yet, instead, too many women in the United States face shortages of providers and facilities and inadequate staffing; financial, bureaucratic, transport and language barriers; care that is not culturally appropriate or respectful; a lack of opportunity for informed decision-making and the lack of a system to ensure that all women receive high-quality, evidence-based care.

In this larger context, of actual death and suffering, I don't think demanding our legislators voluntarily expand the horizons of their experience to include an exercise in empathy building and consciousness raising.  I certainly do not think that it is reasonable, in this age of popular novel trilogies like 50 Shades of Gray, and at the other end of the spectrum, actual torture of unwilling victims who have no control over what is done to them, for such a demand to be regarded as advocating the torture of men.  I would argue rather that this is one possibility to consider in reversing policies and ideology that are literally killing women and children in this country, and causing a level of suffering that is not adequately known or acknowledged.

We desperately need greater awareness, greater knowledge, and a helluva  lot greater empathy from conservatives, particularly the male conservatives who are the primary initiators of the destructive and damaging legislation, albeit with some level of support from both men and women in their base.  If it takes a bit of abdominal contraction to expand that empathy, so long as it is within their control and voluntary, then that is not abusive, and it is certainly not advocating torture of anyone., but rather it is advocating for women and infants to live and thrive, and as a result, to benefit the nation, to improve the country for all of us.

Ronnie Ray-gun, and the Right Wing Hypocrisy about Iran

Remember when? History shows the right has been the party that were bad when it came to Iran.

Ah, the stink of right wing hypocrisy! Remember this, the next time you see those claims about Obama 'shredding the Constitution' or being EeeeeeeeeeeVIL for dealing with Iran.

It will be sweet to see what the documents show Reagan knew, when those documents are finally declassified.  He is clearly a liar; the only remaining question is how incompetent he was if he did NOT know what was going on in his own administration.

And the Wall Came Tumbling DOOOOWWWWWWNNNNNNN!!!!!

This seemed a worthwhile lead in to a piece on the Berlin wall, since the Biblical account of the fall of Jericho and the archeological version of events seem to have some significant points of difference -- including the archeological evidence that the events of the Jewish captivity and subsequent Exodus from Egypt never took place. Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, November 9th, the Berlin wall came tumbling down.  That is, more or less -- mostly less. Badly educated Americans, at least some of them, have bought into the revisionist history/propaganda and mistakenly give credit for this event to Ronnie Ray-gun. They might as well give the credit to Ronald McDonald. The reality of the Reagan speech is very different than the myth. The Guardian newspaper in the UK does an excellent job of urban myth-busting:

From Reagan to Hasselhoff: 5 people who didn’t bring down the Berlin Wall From Ronald Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’ speech to David Hasselhoff’s bizarre ‘looking for freedom’ serenade, countless urban myths have sprung up about who was really responsible for the fall of the wall. Do any have any merit? "...One popular theory says that while the collapse of the iron curtain may have looked inevitable, it took the intervention of some great minds to provide the crucial nudge. Never mind Polish trade unionists, Soviet politicians or East German dissidents, it was British and American politicians and popstars who made all the crucial interventions, right? 1) Ronald Reagan The words went down in history: “Mr Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” And lo and behold: soon after the US president Ronald Reagan had voiced his bold demand to the Soviet president in front of the Berlin wall, the borders opened. As John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, has put it: “One cannot ignore how [Reagan’s] powerful conviction ended the cold war by firing a verbal salvo, an oratorical demand to let freedom prevail.” But one also shouldn’t ignore that Reagan gave his speech on 12 June 1987, a good 29 months before the actual fall of the wall. And there is little evidence that it had much impact on the dynamics of the dissident movement in East Germany, or on Soviet politics at the time. Some 45,000 Berliners witnessed Reagan’s wall speech, compared to the 450,000 people who attended John F Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963 – in other western parts of the city, there were demonstrations against the US president’s visit. Coverage of the event was only published in the back pages of the major international papers. German weekly Die Zeit did not even quote his request to Gorbachev.

Reagan had made similar speeches before, in 1982 and 1986. The only new element was him addressing Gorbachev directly. Reagan had been losing support domestically, so this show of strength may above all have been directed at an American audience. In that respect, it undoubtedly did the job.

------------- It is unlikely that Gorbachev ever knew of the challenge Reagan nominally directed at him, in a blatant display of American-oriented political theater. Also, NO, the wall really didn't come down on November 9 1989; more on that in the Chicago Tribune piece. Gorbachev, NOT Reagan, was quite properly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, for his courageous actions in the USSR/Russia and Europe. Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for consolidating some of the myths about the Berlin Wall, and then busting them. The entire piece deserves a widespread read. But to specifically address the part about Reagan :

Many Americans believe that Ronald Reagan's June 1987 speech in Berlin ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!") led to the wall's fall in 1989. However, Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms in the Soviet bloc were far more important than Reagan's speech, as were the actions of the East Germans themselves. When the wall started to fall on Nov. 9, it was a mistake. In the face of mass protests against the regime in 1989 and thousands of East Germans seeking refuge at West German embassies in Eastern Europe, East German leaders waived the old visa rules stating that citizens needed a pressing reason for travel, such as a funeral or wedding of a family member. East Germans would still have to apply for visas to leave the country, but they would supposedly be granted quickly and without any requirements. Yet the Communist Party official who announced these changes, Guenter missed most of the key meeting about the travel procedures and went unprepared to a news conference on Nov. 9. In response to reporters' questions about when the new law would take effect, he said, "Immediately, without delay." Schabowski left the impression that people could immediately cross the border, though he meant to say they could apply for visas in an orderly manner. Over the next several hours, thousands of East Berliners gathered at checkpoints along the wall. Since the country's leaders hadn't intended to completely open the border, the supervisors at the crossing points had received no new orders. The chief officer on duty at the Bornholmer Street checkpoint, Harald Jaeger, kept calling his superiors for guidance on how to handle the growing mass of increasingly angry East Berliners expecting to be let through. Jaeger finally gave up around 11:30 p.m. and allowed people to pass through en masse. Guards at other crossing points soon followed suit. The East German regime never fully regained control.

Don't expect the correct version of events to appear in any Tea Party school board dominated history books; they call it being un-American if you tell the truth.

Eric Holder Ferguson success ENRAGES Right

now

then [c.1970]

I've been watching the response from the radical right to the events in Ferguson, Missouri, particularly since the visit Wednesday by Eric Holder.

Those who protest the apparent murder of Michael Brown have spoken out quite positively about how they feel after the visit by AG Eric Holder.

They are more positive, more hopeful, and more encouraged, and that has been reflected in the more peaceful tone in the town (along with the literal dampening effect of a night of rain).

Holder is promising to look into a specific investigation into the possible violation of civil rights of Michael Brown. Further, Holder has promised to look at a broader pattern of civil rights by police as well.


That positive result in the town of Ferguson has sent conservatives off the deep end where they live, on the fringe.


In response, the right dredges up an old smear -- another fact-averse smear, of the propaganda model loved by conservatives. I've made a habit here and elsewhere of pointing out that conservatives consistently believe things which are factually false, which are lies, which are ugly propaganda.

Propaganda is manipulative, emotional rather than rational, and dishonest.


The big lie about Holder is that he is a dangerous, violent extremist, who has somehow nefariously risen to be the first African American AG in our history. They claim that when he was at Columbia University, he was the leader of an armed group of black power radicals who took over a building and held off authorities.


Of course, the REALITY, the FACTS are nothing like that.

According to Columbia, Holder was never armed, or acted inappropriately. Holder and a group of other black students approached the administration about using an empty, unused part of a ROTC building.  They went ahead and used the space, while waiting for formal approval from Columbia which came a few days later.

No weapons. No stand-off with authorities. No violence. No radical extremists, no black power group.

It's an old lie. It's been published in the Daily Liar, er, Daily Caller.  It's been spread in the Blaze.  It's been smeared around like feces in Before It's News.
There are endless examples of other right wingers who have promoted the smear, the lie, the propaganda.

Now the conservatives who live by emails sent by other crazy conservatives, and the lies promoted by Faux News, have revived it.

It was entertaining to watch conservative heads explode (figuratively speaking) when confronted with the FACTS about Holder's career.  No, not his career at Columbia; they won't be dissuaded by any factual information about that, including from the University.  No, I'm talking about the rise of Holder to his current position -- which is not the first time he's headed up the DoJ.

Think about it for a moment; who is the dead conservative MOST idolized by a majority of Conservatives?

No doubt about it - that would be the late President Ronald Reagan, or more colloquially, (secular) St. Ronnie Ray-gun.  Yes, THAT is who gave Eric Holder his entrance into a prominent role in the Judiciary.  In 1988, Ronald Reagan appointed Eric Holder to the Superior Court bench for the District of Columbia.

In 1988, he was selected by President Ronald Reagan to be an associate judge of the Superior Court for the District of Columbia. In 1993, he became the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. In 1997, President Bill Clinton named him deputy attorney general, the first African-American to hold that position.

Holder briefly served as acting AG for George W. Bush, during the confirmation process for AG Ashcroft as well.

He [Ashcroft] later met with Eric Holder, who had served as acting attorney general since President Bill Clinton left office Jan. 20. Ashcroft thanked Holder, previously the deputy attorney general, on his last day at the Justice Department.

And of course, Holder has a few other rewards and acknowledgements that he is an excellent attorney, very qualified, influential.


But either you believe that NEITHER Ronald Reagan, while president, NOR the Senate, which approves judicial appointments to the Superior Court D.C. bench, NOR George W. Bush while President vetted Eric Holder, and chose to overlook ----- ALL OF THEM ---- such radical armed violence at Columbia, OR...........you have to concede that the Columbia story of guns and extremism is false.

Confronted with the facts, Conservatives fall silent.  They cannot relinquish the hate, the smear, the ugly propaganda.  But they are caught in a double bind, a kind of check-mate of comment.

Conservatives believe things which are not true.  Conservatives embrace and celebrate and disseminate lies.  The facts are not their friends. And there is no mystery why so many people view conservatives as racists; this is a perfect example of why.

There is something uniquely tragic about the political orientation that so loves to pat themselves on the back for their superior values, which is nothing more than holier-than-thou hypocrisy, that supports and promotes this kind of deliberate dishonesty.  There is something uniquely ugly, hateful and un-patriotic about people who WANT FAILURE of people in our government trying to intervene in a painful and chaotic situation, no matter how much misery, damage, and injury might result from failure.

A President Dealing with the Taliban? Scandalous......

The Right doesn't like to face this - our debt and deficit, both, are their fault

Raggin' on Reagan - the Reality of His Legacy versus the Revisionist History

Reagan Worshippers,
image by Mike Licht,
Notions Capital
http://notionscapital.
wordpress.com/2011/02/05/
reagan-worshippers-to-
celebrate-centennial/
Well done Mr. Licht, you've
captured it perfectly - and a thanks
to Mike B for helping me find this.

On his 100th birthday, could Ronald Reagan, the secular, political patron saint of the right gotten elected in the era of the tea party and right wing culture warriors?

Let's take a look: Ronald Reagan raised taxes.  Not just once either, but 11 times. While some might protest that NPR is a lefty source for an opinion, you won't find any criticism, much less factual reporting on the Reagan era on the right at all.  Per an  NPR news interview:

Former Senator ALAN SIMPSON (Republican, Wyoming): Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration. I was here. I was here. I knew him. Better than anybody in this room. He was a dear friend and a total realist as to politics.

HORSLEY: Simpson's recollection is spot on, says historian Douglas Brinkley, the editor of Reagan's diaries.

Professor DOUGLAS BRINKLEY (Rice University): Ronald Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes. He knew that it was necessary at times. And so there's a false mythology out there about Reagan as this conservative president who came in and just cut taxes and trimmed federal spending in a dramatic way. It didn't happen that way. It's false.

Time to Put People First, Part 2

(This was reposted by Dog Gone - thanks DG - on my behalf) - Penigma

by Penigma...

Since 1981, incomes for the upper 5% of the nation have quadrupled.

Since 1975, incomes for the middle class have NOT been part of the "rising tide lifting all boats". They've either fallen slightly, or risen slightly, or even fallen sharply, depending upon how you measure.

Productivity has increased 50 PERCENT!

Increased production and a highly cash-rich upper class could have, should have led to a 'trickle' down, according to supply-side economic theory.

So, why didn't the incomes of the middle-class go up?

We have larger homes, but our parents had color TV's and refrigeration, new labor saving appliances, standard vacations and pensions, Social Security and cars, and there were more single income families. We are now in the computer age, but our parents got jet travel, interstate highway systems, nuclear power, and went to the moon winning the 'space race'.

The real measurement of the success of economic theory and taxation philosophy HAS to be income. It must include leisure time / total time worked to achieve that income, to have any fair measurement of the 'good jobs' we were all promised by the trickle down economic theory and tax philosophy.

Some statistics from the 1950's tell the story (courtesy www.thepeoplehistory.com/1950s.html

If you have $100 Converted from 1950 to 2005 it would be equivalent to $835.41 today
In 1950 a new house cost $8,450.00 and by 1959 was $12,400.00
In 1950 the average income per year was $3,210.00 and by 1959 was $5,010.00
In 1950 a gallon of gas was 18 cents and by 1959 was 25 cents
In 1950 the average cost of new car was $1,510.00 and by 1959 was $2,200.00

What this means is that since 1950 we've seen roughly 830% inflation, an 8 fold increase, in the value of dollars. Average income in 2005 is more than 8 times the 3200, but less than 8 times 5,000.00 (average income is $28k - roughly).

The average car costs $27,700 now, MUCH more than eight times the $1,500 it cost in 1950, and much more than eight times $2,200. Meaning, while we have more cars, they also consume far more of our incomes. It isn't that cars are cheaper, and much more affordable; anything but.

The same for homes, the average house is WAY over $70,000 (8 times $8450). By 2005, a new home cost $180k. So it's not that housing is cheaper, it is that we spend far more of our income, go far deeper into debt. Yes, homes are larger, but we also borrow far more. I don't believe it is the people are less or more responsible, people borrow what they can and are generally allowed to borrow, but an income of $5010 wouldn't allowed someone to buy a $25,000 house in 1959, yet an income of $40,000 in 2005 DID somehow qualifiy someone to buy a home of $180k.

The simple answer is this, money at the top end was happy enough to lend, and earn interest on loans which 45 years earlier would never have been written. The speculation was driven by ever increasing expectations of return.

Accumulation of wealth at the top-end drove changes in lending practices and encouraged and supported the movement of money upward through bigger houses and bigger loans. We don't LIVE better, we BORROW more and the wealthiest are damned glad of it. That doesn't make them evil, far from it, it makes them human. They want to accumulate wealth like all of the rest of us.

But it does do one other thing, it explodes the myth that they are ready and happy to give it out as pay to US workers in US factories if they simply get to keep more of it.

If they get to keep more of profits then they WANT TO KEEP MORE OF PROFITS. They want to employ cheap labor overseas while getting US workers to borrow more so that they can again KEEP MORE of the overall wealth. It's frankly just that simple. We do not live better today, we have bigger homes and another car, but our fathers and grandfathers had better overall incomes (against costs) than we do, despite the fact that we're more productive AND that taxes are at their lowest in 60 years.

In fact, since 1981, we've changed the way we measure unemployment, no longer counting those who simply give up looking, but who are still unemployed. If we had measured that as we had during the 1970's, a time when many conservatives complain about high unemployment, high inflation and interest rates, our unemployment figures in the middle 80's - and now - would be STARKLY higher. We might be at 15% unemployment right now, certainly we'd be at 12%. This despite having a decade of perpetual tax cuts, including even steeper tax cuts for the uber-rich and on capital gains. The vast majority of dollars areno longer paid in taxes going to that same upper 5%.

What we HAVE seen, however, is that same 5%, when they DO invest, invest off-shore, building factories and creating 'jobs' in places where they can obtain effective slave wage rates. They HAVE invested in highly speculative things like the default swap bond market. They HAVE sought to bring down barriers like Glass-Steagal. We have seen the effects, high energy prices due to spot market speculators, huge profits by oil and drug companies, but not vast numbers of new jobs in the US.

It has been US wealth building factories in China or India, and US consumption of the "discount produced but still sold at a premium products" filling the accounts of the new uber-rich elite, the new Carnegies and Hearsts. We have seen this slowly, inexorably weaken the middle class. We have seen college become a cost so steep that most parents will never pay off the debt. We have seen union pay go the way of the dinosaur, benefits become mocked by calling companies who provide them things like "Generous Motors" - though their Japanese counter-parts provide similar benefits. This exposure to free or nearly free labor has destroyed our economy and our ability to pay for government. All of the supposed investment in factories on-shore, never materialized.

No, the only real period of investment in the US was the middle-90's, when the Internet/Silicon Valley boom reinvigorated the labor pool, with higher technology sector wages driving up wages nation-wide. And you know what happened??? That investment also resulted in more tax revenue, higher property values, and federal budget surplus.

Investment on-shore wasn't dependent upon upward "gifting", nor did it rely upon the unbelievably asinine idea that people's nature is to give money away once they've acquired it. It simply rested upon what has always been true. When consumer spending increases the economy does MUCH better and THAT spending relied upon people, investors, municipalities etc.. deciding that a sector of the economy really could provide sustainable growth and jobs. To do that, there had to be a belief that DEMAND not supply, would exist. Building supply without demand is the province of fools, and no one does it, nor did anyone during the 80's or the 90's. There also was more than enough money to create those jobs, despite large tax increases by GHW Bush and Clinton.

The upshot of all of this is, is that tax cuts aren't "job creators" any more than tax increases are "job killers." Companies seek out skilled labor at the cheapest possible cost. Normally areas with low taxes have historically also had low amounts of skilled labor, because their educational systems and infrastructure were substandard.

If we want to see our nation do well, we must accept that we cannot simply shift all of the wealth upward. It does NOT trickle down, it does not create supply - simply for that supply to go un-purchased. It does not create production unless there is a real market, and it surely doesn't do so if veritable slave labor can be found elsewhere.

We have engaged on a 30 year race to the bottom since 1981, reducing the value of labor, killing off benefits, jobs, arts programs, schools, virtually everything that a well-invigorated labor sector used to support.

We can continue to put capitalism first, but if we do, we will be putting people last.

We can continue to put the wealthiest of us ahead of the interests of the country and a sustainable democracy, and we will continue to see flat wages and rising costs AND declining standards of living.

We must, we HAVE to recognize that lowering taxes didn't work, nor did giving the money to people who only took it offshore, instead we must put the interest of the average American first and we must require business to invest on shore, and in our own people rather than those they can pay $5/day. To do otherwise is to kill the now sickly golden goose, to do otherwise is to abandon our country, to say the hell with patriotism, it is ME first, last and always.

It's Time to Put People First, Part 1

Almost 30 years ago, Reagan took the Presidential oath. I remember the day after his election like it was yesterday.

Mr. Lauritzen, the "cool" U.S. history teacher, came to class with a new, much shorter hair-cut. He had gotten his hair cut to fit in with the new mindset in the country. The recognition by academia of the sea-change sat well with my upper middle class classmates; not so much with me.

My father, a Republican-turned-liberal, reacted to Reagan's election differently. Always politically savvy, he'd predicted Reagan's landslide, and the subsequent course of Reagan's Presidency. He said Reagan's inaugural claim, to be able to balance the budget while spending vastly more on defense, was simply impossible; the debt would explode. The national debt quadrupled during Reagan's eight years.

My father predicted Reagan's squabbles with Paul Volker, the Federal Reserve Chairman who killed inflation, caused a recession, but rescued the country from "malaise." He predicted the destruction of not only EPA's ability to regulate because of the cozy, symbiotic private-public-private revolving door between private companies and regulatory agencies,but that such relationships would render oversight, including oversight of oil drilling, effectively nul.

My father understood supply-side economics was a farce, a useless, horribly ineffective economic model which was not designed to stimulate the economy, but rather to put the tax code back sixty years - back to the gilded age, back prior to the Great Depression. My father understood the reason for 70% or 90% tax rates on high income was NOT to confiscate wealth, but rather to prevent the accumulation of vast fortunes in the first place.

We had seen the impact of that kind of economy. We had seen 80% of people lived paycheck to paycheck, where the upper tier of the lower class (defined by means standards) were barely able to survive working 80 hours per week. Children worked beside parents, who were both employed full time. That U.S. was a mostly agrarian nation with inefficiencies of production. There were a wealthy few: Rockefellers, Morgans, Hearsts, Roosevelts, and Carnegies. People who lived in huge mansions, attended by staffs of servants. We were also a nation of smaller but still substantial Victorian homes, but only for a very small middle class.

After the Great Depression, this country recognized bankers had risked locally saved money on the stock market, in speculative, highly leveraged margin-based buys. Investors lost the fortunes of not just the middle-class and the poor, but also of the highly affluent, resulting in shuttering factories, destroying lives, towns, homes, and futures. The nation responded, "never again" after the revelations of reckless financial misadventure revealed in the 1932-34 Pecora Commission hearings.

In response to the lessons learned, barriers, like Glass-Steagal, and like 90% tax rates on incomes above $3M were put in place. Not because anyone hated the rich, not because they wanted to confiscate money or "redistribute the wealth." They understood what harm came from over-concentration of wealth in the hands of a few powerful men and a very few women. They understood making it harder for the owners of industry to personally accumulate wealth would result in owners instead investing their profits in production lines, in better pay for their workers, and NOT in worrying quite so much about stock price as the end-all, be-all measure of a robust working economy.

We enacted barriers between investment and banking to protect banks from profit competition with Wall Street, and Wall Street from having to provide security like a bank, but also to offer local investment money locally. We started Fannie Mae to ensure a secondary sales market would exist for home loans, and started FHA and VA after WWII to ensure funds would exist to offer those loans.

We enacted income taxes on corporations at rates unheard of, undreamed of, during the "Roaring 20's." Tax rates which would bring about claims of "Communism" if they were tried today, or worse yet, cries of "Job Killers!" After all of these sweeping, broad and mostly egalitarian changes, the nation lived at it's highest level of productivity and prosperity. We had high employment, high home ownership, and a high standard of living. Companies stayed in business, people enjoyed more free time and job security. There was a shorter distance between the lower class and the middle class, and a MUCH shorter distance between the middle class and the upper class.

That was not against paying the bright and gifted well, they WERE paid well. There WERE millionaires, there just weren't many BILLIONAIRES. Companies put money into pension funds. Not everything was idyllic, but we were more thoughtful, better educated, and more forward-looking, living better, enjoying life more, than at any other time in our history.

We were in part the recipients of good fortune that our economy hadn't been wrecked by WWII. We had gone into WWII with 50% of the world's productive capacity, and ended with 75%, as much of the European and Japanese production capability was destroyed. This lead to the easy life of the 1950's and 1960's, but by 1965, W.E. Demming had been to Japan. The Japanese had begun to compete with us.. but we still had jobs, productivity here in the US was very strong, and we were generally doing well. The lack of U.S. mega-rich billionaires was not the catalyst for Japanese competitive success. Our tax rates didn't disable us and enable the Japanese, our barriers between banks and the stock market didn't make it so that WE couldn't invest while our competitors, like Taiwan, or Japan, or France could.

The primary complaint of conservatives was our 'socialist' tendencies would lead us into a Communist style take-over, not into financial ruin, not a failure to compete. They didn't complain about a lack of good jobs, nor did they complain about "job-killing" proposals. Reagan, in "The Speech" in his 1964 run for the California Governor's seat, evoked images of rampant socialism. Reagan in the cold war era stoked and painted fears of Communism taking over the country. Reagan minimally objected to unfairness in social programs like Medicare or Social Security, for good reason. The mood of the country wasn't it was "unfair" to keep the elderly from starving or the poor from being homeless so that the rich could instead be super rich.

Fast forward, 1964 to 1981. In 1981 and 1982 Reagan and a conservative majority in congress enacted steep tax cuts for the rich. Marginal tax rate for the highest incomes dropped from 70% to 36%, then 33%, then rose again in the face of alarmingly rising deficits.

The Republican majority enacted cuts and loop-holes for industry. Taxes on the middle-class were cut initially, but then increased in 1987 to pay for a significant increase for Social Security. The increase was forced on Reagan by Claude R. Pepper, powerful southern Senator from Florida, the leading voice for the elderly in Congress. Reagan was advised by idealistic wunderkind David Stockman "supply-side" or "trickle-down" economics they had relied on for success had NOT been effective.

The nation engaged in VAST spending, gorging itself on debt and real-estate speculation. When the credit-driven element of the economy was factored out, what was seen was that factories were closing instead of being built by "supply-side" money. The money being amassed by the wealthy were instead invested in real-estate speculation. In the late 80's, the real-estate market crashed. The Savings and Loans after lobbying a friendly Congress to remove S&L limits on types of loans they could offer, followed real-estate down the rat-hole of economic collapse. The same collapse in S&L's occurred in the 1980's that we are seeing today in banks, for much the same reasons.

Real-estate was artificially inflated by too much money chasing too few good property. This included investment from newly affluent Japan. The collapse of the S&L's (iirc) resulted in the shut down of almost 80% of the S&L's amid scandal. It resulted in a "bail-out" by Reagan and then GWHBush, through a 1930's era solution, an RTC (Resolution Trust Corporation). They relied on the "big gov'mint" fix to purchase "toxic assets", then liquidating them once they stabilized and a real value was established.

The Right Words

"If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds."
- J. B. Phillips
British Biblical translator, writer, clergyman
1906 - 1982

"In a sense, words are encyclopedias of ignorance because they freeze perceptions at one moment in history and then insist we continue to use these frozen perceptions when we should be doing better."
- Edward de Bono
Maltese physician, inventor, professor, author and consultant; originator of the concept of lateral thinking
1933

"Deception is a cruel act... It often has many players on different stages that corrode the soul."
~ Donna A. Favors


On Thursday evening March 4th comedic genius Stephen Colbert presented an especially cogent mini 'Tip of the Hat' segment on the Colbert Report in which he demonstrated the kind of extreme editing and outright fakery used by James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles in creating the false and misleading 'ACORN' sting videos. That it also made fun of the folly of Sean Hannity of Fox News on Hannity's own set added to the effectiveness of the send up, while emphasizing the underlying truth of Colbert's criticism of both O'Keefe and Hannity.

www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265498/march-04-2010/tip-wag---james-o-keefe---sean-hannity

Saturday evening, March 6th, at the California Republican Assembly Convention, an event that the late President Ronald Reagan called "the conscience of the Republican Party", James O'Keefe and his partner in crime, Hannah Giles, were to be presented with the Ronald Reagan Freedom Fighter Award for their videotape 'stings' of ACORN. This can reasonably be construed as a 'right wing' gala event, the 'right' of the title of this essay 'Right Words', which is all about wrong words, lies, deceptions, fraud and misrepresentations.

So, why reward O'Keefe and Giles, not only with this award, but with wider spread right wing adoration?

For the same reason that so many other right wing prominent political figures have come out against ACORN. They hate ACORN for having been effective in registering voters from lower income and disadvantaged areas who vote largely Democratic, and for the support of associated causes.

The criticism of ACORN for a number of problems, both with internal issues including embezzlement of funds, and with a very small percentage of their voter registration drives, criticism by both the left and the right, is well deserved. Some of the ACORN voter registration drive efforts were badly supervised, and I personally have a serious objection to funds going to an organization that has a past of covering up embezzlement. But I don't believe that ACORN has been proven to have altered the outcome of elections, or many of the other claims against it.

Overall, about 5 to 7% of ACORN's voter registrations have had to be further checked, with about 1% actually being rejected as either duplicate or false. That percentage is higher than the success rate for other voter registration groups, but not excessively so. Those 'bad' voter registrations are caught through the various cross referencing methods used to validate the voter registration data base in every state. Anyone who wants to know exactly what the validation methods are in their state can determine that with a quick phone call or email to their own state administration for that data base. It is a matter of public record, and I encourage people to make their own inquiries.

The RNC has sent out many fund raising solicitations over the signature of chair Michael Steele, both by email and snail mail, incorrectly claiming voter fraud, not just voter registration fraud or failures by ACORN. The RNC and a number of prominent conservative politicians, media talking heads, and bloggers all claim an unprecedented and unprosecuted theft of elections from the right by this voter fraud. They specifically blame ACORN, they specifically target ACORN because they need someone, something, to blame for their losses.

This is a claim even more loudly advanced by Minnesota 6th District Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who has elevated hatred for ACORN into an obsession as unique in intensity as it is inaccurate factually. ACORN is a frequent icon for terrorizing her doner base in Bachmann's fund raising efforts, and a regular target for Bachmann's legislative efforts on behalf of the right. Hannah Giles has included similar completely false, unsupported allegations in the three page solicitation letters she sent out to raise money for her legal defense. There is a lot of money to be made in peddling fear, and anger, and the sting of losing majority power. Further, the right needs a distraction from their own years of bad government when they had that majority power.

Even the December 22, 2009 Report to the Congressional Judiciary Committee prepared by the Congressional Research Service, determined that ACORN has not had a single instance of actual voter fraud resulting from their voter registration efforts (page 1, item number 3).
http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/CRS-ACORN091222.pdf
The CRS report was only one of the more recent examination of the charges of voter fraud to find no evidence to support the charges against ACORN by the right; it is not the only report to do so.

So, while there may be a few jokers who fill out a voter registration card as Minnie Mouse or Donald Duck, or even Goofy, none of those people have tried to vote under those registrations. An equal or greater proportion of the problem registrations have been simple duplicates, where there was no attempt to use a fictitious identity. None of the investigations to date have found any pattern of deliberate fraud to alter elections. Problem voter registrations are a nuisance, in some instances they are a crime, but they have never EVER been demonstrated to be significant in the outcome of elections.

But that hasn't stopped the continuing efforts of the right against ACORN. Readers may recall that the New Mexico US Attorney, David Iglesias, lost his job for refusing to prosecute ACORN in that state because there was insufficient evidence of any crime, during the Bush administration attempt to politicize the Department of Justice. The efforts by O'Keefe and Giles are only the latest attack on ACORN by the right.

The latest award to O'Keefe and Giles comes at the end of the week that saw the announcement by the Brooklyn, New York District Attorney at the conclusion of an extensive investigation that there was no basis for any prosecution of ACORN. This despite the attempts by O'Keefe and Giles to portray the Brooklyn ACORN office, and a number of other ACORN locations, as engaging in not just any criminal activity, but child prostitution, in a calculated attempt to engage the emotions of the public. Mere voter registration issues are too boring to get a reaction. They needed to 'sex up' the perception of problems with ACORN.

Except that like the false accusations of voter fraud, there do not appear to, have been any instances of criminal activity, either aiding prostitution or money laundering, by ACORN identified to date. There are other investigations into the activities of both ACORN AND O'Keefe and Giles, resulting from these videos, including one by the California Attorney General. There is a very real possibility of criminal felony indictments resulting from those investigations - charges against O'Keefe and Giles.

There has been a huge media smear of ACORN, but no charges, no proof. To date, only O'Keefe and Giles, and now the Brooklyn, NY District Attorney have seen the uncut, unedited version of the events. O'Keefe and Giles, and their boss Andrew Breitbart have insisted across the internet, and across pretty much the entirety of Fox News and some mainstream media, and social utilities like Youtube through their videos and interviews that their heavily altered and partially faked videos portrayed ACORN assisting them to try to set up a brothel providing the sexual services of underage illegal immigrant girls.

In response to the investigation by the Brooklyn DA, the right has tried to fly the accusation of conflict of interest, along with the usual factual errors they resort to with ACORN claims. One of the best analyses of New York prostitution and money laundering laws explaining factually why the Brooklyn DA did not prosecute ACORN was written by prominent New York attorney Michael J. Gaynor at www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=100305 where he breaks down the applicable statutes line by line as they apply to what ACORN did - and did not do.

There have been multiple investigations, and now there are law suits against O'Keefe and Giles being filed. There may be criminal indictments as well resulting from their videos of ACORN, and appropriately so as they appear to have possibly violated not only the laws of a number of states including Maryland and California, relating to recording without consent, but also possibly the federal statutes against recording people for either tortious or criminal purposes. Some states make a particular point of singling out for penalty not only recording people with or without their consent with the intent of then making the recordings public after altering them to reflect false and negative images, which would seem to be a big problem for O'Keefe and Giles.

Fox News which promoted O'Keefe and Giles is suddenly very quiet on the subject. Andrew Breitbart who employed O'Keefe and Giles, accepted awards with them, and widely promoted them across the media is now claiming he never saw the unedited 'raw' footage, and that he was deceived by O'Keefe and Giles.

I wonder when more of the right is going to catch on that the jig is up. I wonder if the California Republican Assembly will eventually try to take back their Ronald Reagan Freedom Fighter Awards.

I wonder what the Right words on ACORN, O'Keefe, and Giles will be then.

Intellectual Honesty

An opinion article in the Financial Times tells some unspoken truths about the 'mystical' Reagan years...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/01/business/financialtimes/main6256362.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionContent.10

"Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government's books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology. Reagan debased all these ideas - and modern American conservatism is still suffering the consequences.

The tabular content relating to this article is not available to view. Apologies in advance for the inconvenience caused.

The most damaging idea propagated by the Reagan myth is the cult of the idiot-savant (the wise fool). "

Certainly Ms. Palin (and a host of other conservatives who deny things like Evolution or Global Warming) is/are intelligent, even clever, but they frequently quote ill-researched, often veneer thin factoids, while eschewing vastly better supported research supporting the position they don't prefer. In her case, she is highly ambitious, and it seems her power base for election and support is to appeal to a social/political stance which doesn't prefer the scientific outcome/researched positions, consequently, she adopts such a position, and claims it is simply 'common sense' that, for example, that Global Warming isn't happening.