The Tea Party's Pretty Hate Machine

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva's office has received multiple threats over a new state immigration measure. Grijalva says he's opposed to the bill that would make it a crime under state law to be in the county illegally and would allow police to demand identification from anyone they suspected of being potentially illegal (ie: skin color).

The Arizona Daily Star reports that Grijalva spokesman Adam Sarvana released a statement Friday saying that the congressman's office received "some pretty scary calls," including one from a man "who threatened to go down there and blow everyone's brains out then go to the border to shoot Mexicans."

According to the Daily Star:

Grijalva staffer Ruben Reyes said the office has been flooded with calls all week about Senate Bill 1070. About 25 percent are "very racist" in nature, Reyes said, characterizing some as "telling that tortilla-eating wetback to go back to Mexico."

I'm willing to bet that the callers weren't A) black B) Hispanic C) Democrats

The Republican Governor's Association, led by Mississippi Governor, Confederate History Month pooh-pooher (slavery controversy "doesn't amount to diddly"), and possible 2012 candidate Haley Barbour, has embraced British terrorist Guy Fawkes. You know, the guy who tried to assassinate the king by blowing up Parliament. Sounds reasonable.

'But', you say, 'it's just rhetoric'. Really? Explain this guy (via ThinkProgress) and tell me the GOP isn't trying to mobilize guys just like him.



A truck, parked in a disabled person parking spot, emblazoned with a large Confederate flag, and featuring a picture of the World Trade Center burning. The text on the truck reads, “Everything I ever needed to know about Islam I learned on 9/11″:

Think Progress

While most sites focused on the offensive text and imagery all over the truck, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) noticed that the license plate contained a coded Neo-Nazi white supremacist message. CAIR alerted the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), which prohibits placing offensive messages on vanity plates but had missed this one in its normal authorization process. Upon review, the DMV concluded the plate did indeed contain a coded hate message, and recalled the plate:

The number 88 stands for the eighth letter of the alphabet, H, doubled to signify “Heil Hitler,” said CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper. “CV” stands for “Confederate veteran” — the plate was a special model embossed with a Confederate flag, which Virginia makes available for a $10 fee to card-carrying members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. And 14 is code for imprisoned white supremacist David Lane’s 14-word motto: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Cesca

And then there's the photograph of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11. I've never been able to figure out the wingnut worship of those buildings on fire with people falling to their deaths. But then to print this particular photo on the back of a pick-up truck seems remarkably disrespectful and, dare I say, unpatriotic. Yep. Nothing says "sweet decoration" like a photo showing the deaths of thousands of people on one of the bloodiest days in American history.

By the way, the Virginia DMV pulled the license plate number once they discovered what it meant.

This, this whole movement, is sedition.

The GOP runs on race because it apparently works

Not all of the anti-Obama sentiment is race-based. Just most of it.

Look at the Tea party complaints and the lack of truth behind them and then ask yourself, 'if this is a red herring, what's the real reason for the opposition?':
1) Taxes
TRUTH) Obama lowered them for 95% of working families

2) Health care
TRUTH) You can debate a states rights version of government power here (though the right has not), but the truth is that it's ridiculous for most tea partiers to oppose health care because, even by the worst objective numbers, we pay 1% more to cover 34 million more people (via Ezra) and reduce overall health care costs. Many of the beneficiaries of this coverage are tea partiers. Tea partiers who also, by the way, accept government run Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

TRUTH) It's NOT a government takeover. This is being done through private companies and if anyone thinks they're in danger, look at their stock prices post HCR

3) Subverting the Constitution
TRUTH) Where specifically? As the interviews with the Tax Day protesters showed, many cannot articulate their positions beyond "socialism". When questioned about what, exactly, this President is doing to endanger this country, they cannot answer.

Where were the protests when Bush launched an illegal war, based on lies and without a formal declaration of war? Where were the tea partiers when Bush gutted Due Process and the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus? Where were the demonstrations when Bush rolled back posse comitatus, allowing the Federal government to use the military in the streets of America to act as law enforcement?

Where were they then?

Given the lack of answers to these questions, the Tea Partiers inability to articulate their reasons for opposition and their failure to act when their rights were really being taken away, we have to conclude that their are other reasons for their opposition to Obama.

Look at this graph from the Washington Post via The Electoral Map. Look at where McCain's support came from.


In every state that was a part of the Confederacy, McCain won a greater share of white votes than he did nationally.

Given conservatives general dissatisfaction with McCain as a candidate I'd suggest that this is at least partially a referendum on Obama. As a black man.

Michael Steele, the chair of the RNC, acknowledged last week that the Southern Strategy is real. The Southern Strategy, cooked up by Richard Nixon and Pat Buchanan, was designed to appeal to southern whites by practicing racially-divisive politics in the post-Civil Rights era to build a reliable Southern bloc for the the Republicans. The GOP has denied this for years. Until Steele:

The Plum Line

“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties. Their parties walk away from them.

“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”

There's nothing illegal about admitting you're voting on race. True, I believe that it makes you an anachronism, but it's not illegal. But it is completely dishonest, intellectually and otherwise, to try to hide your true opposition behind charged code words. Obama is not a socialist. He's not a Muslim. He is black.

Just admit it.

Dave Grohl starring in: FRESH POTS!!!!

Reid moves forward on reform: “The games of stalling are over”

Politico

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) placed a bet Thursday: call the roll on a Wall Street reform bill and at least one Republican will say aye.

Emboldened by public anger toward Wall Street, Democrats set the first key vote for Monday on a bill to rein in the financial industry — even though Reid lacks a bipartisan deal or any guarantee that he’ll get the crucial 60th vote needed to break a filibuster.

And if no Republican cracks, and the bill goes down, Reid is calculating that would be politically devastating for the GOP, because it would look like they’re standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the same Wall Street bankers many Americans blame for the recession.

“We have the upper hand,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Senate Democratic leadership.

“I’m not going to waste any more time of the American people until they come up with some agreement,” Reid said. “The games of stalling are over.”

Connecting foreclosures and CDO's

via Chris Hayes

Great info graphic showing the the connection between one foreclosure and a toxic CDO

The politics, truth and lies of financial reform

Speaking in Manhattan today, President Obama addressed financial reform.

CNN
"Ultimately, there is no dividing line between Main Street and Wall Street. We will rise or we will fall together as one nation," the president said in a speech aimed at the financial industry.

Obama said the goal of Wall Street reform is to ensure that taxpayers never have to pay for bailing out a firm considered "too big to fail."

Obama rejected a claim by opponents of reform proposals before Congress that the changes would lead to future bailouts.

"That may make for a good sound bite, but it's not factually accurate," Obama said. "In fact, the system as it stands is what led to a series of massive, costly taxpayer bailouts. Only with reform can we avoid a similar outcome in the future. A vote for reform is a vote to put a stop to taxpayer-funded bailouts. That's the truth. End of story."

Obama said that while the American economy is showing signs of improvement, "until this progress is felt not just on Wall Street but Main Street we can't be satisfied."

"That crisis was born of a failure of responsibility -- from Wall Street all the way to Washington -- that brought down many of the world's largest financial firms and nearly dragged our economy into a second Great Depression," the president said.

The president reiterated five key principles he wants to see in Wall Street reform legislation.

They include ending the idea of a bank being too big to fail, enacting the Volcker rule -- named for former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker -- that limits the risks banks can take, making complicated financial trades known as derivatives more transparent, creating a consumer financial protection agency and allowing investors to have more say in the compensation of bank company executives.

"The only people who ought to fear the kind of oversight and transparency that we're proposing are those whose conduct will fail this scrutiny," he said.

Obama ended his speech by quoting a Time magazine article quoting bankers saying if reform passes it will be a disaster.

Then he pointed out that the article was from the 1930s -- during the fight over creation of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Herein lies the problem: the only people who should be concerned about this are banks still engaged in the activities that almost killed us last time.

Republicans, eager to say "no" to anything that his administration puts forward, are pushing back with nonsense. Frank Luntz, the GOP"s Word Doctor, published a paper suggesting Republicans defeat this bill by casting it as a bailout, implying, of course, that under this bill taxpayers will again be forced to foot the bill for Wall Street"s excesses. All the while, the GOP is opposing any kind of reform, leaving us vulnerable to a repeat of the Collapse of 2008. (view Luntz"s document below)


Language of Financial Reform -

Dave Weigel

Just how tightly are Republicans clinging to Frank Luntz's argument that they should portray the $50 billion fund in the current version of financial reform as a permanent bailout" On his Sunday appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used the word "bailout" five times, including once in this exchange.

CROWLEY: But that bailout is funded by the banks themselves, is it not" It is not a taxpayer bailout"

MCCONNELL: Well, Robert Reich, who was Bill Clinton's secretary of labor, says it is a bailout fund.

Washington Independent

Of course, the "bailout fund" is no "bailout fund." The idea is that banks would fund a $50 billion pool; were any to get into trouble, regulators would fire every member of management, wipe out shareholders, split the company up and sell the pieces, and tap the $50 billion fund to pay for the process and ensure the orderly dissolution of the firm. Companies like Citigroup were given bailouts during the crisis. This would be an execution (or, as Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) likes to say, a "death panel").

Ezra explains how the liquidation works:

Here's how the liquidation fund works: A year after the bill is signed, the secretary of the Treasury begins taxing banks based on the risk they pose to the financial system. This tax must raise $50 billion and last for at least five years but no more than 10 years. So first, that's where the fund comes from: a tax on too-big-to-fail banks, which has the added bonus of giving a slight advantage to smaller banks that won't be laboring under this tax.

When it comes to saving failing banks, $50 billion isn't a lot of money. Think of the $700 billion TARP fund. Or even look at the House bill, which has a $150 billion resolution fund. But then, the $50 billion isn't there to save banks. It's there to liquidate them.

Here's the chain of events: A bank is judged failing. The FDIC submits a plan for the bank's liquidation -- which includes firing management, wiping out shareholders, handing losses to creditors, and selling off the firm -- and gets it approved by the Treasury secretary. Then the FDIC takes over the banks. The $50 billion fund is used to keep the lights on while all this happens. It's there to prevent taxpayers from having to foot the bill for the chaos that will occur between when we recognize a bank is failing and when we shut it down.

Whatever you want to call this, it isn't a bailout. It's the death of the company. And the fund is way of forcing too-big-to-fail banks to pay for the execution.

Of course, spineless Democrats are talking about letting the fund go, as that seems preferable to defending it against an outrageous lie. Which is exactly what the GOP wanted.

Mark Halperin and Austan Goolsbee pointed out the following on Morning Joe:

The Plumline

HALPERIN: They are willfully misreading the bill or they are engaged in a cynical attempt to keep the president from achieving something.

GOOLSBEE: Everybody knows a consultant just handed them that line and they"re just reading it. It doesn"t matter what"s in the bill. It could be a bill about breakfast cereal and they"re going to say this is a bailout bill.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell has come under intense fire for meeting with Wall Street bankers and enlisting their help in the November elections in exchange for helping to stop financial reform.

These are your Republicans, folks.

Public Trust in Government: 1958-2010

You really should check out the interactive Pew Poll, but here's a snapshot. I don't think commentary is necessary.

Tea Party voters are low-information who want a salve, not a solution; GOP leaders are just obstructionists

Paul Krugman

Via Matthew Yglesias, Gallup finds voters not that eager to crack down on large banks and financial institutions — but substantially more eager to crack down on “Wall Street banks.”

Republicans account for most though not all the difference, leading Yglesias to suggest that it’s dislike of New York that does it. Maybe; but I think what it really tells us is how little voters — and, I dare say, Republican voters in particular — understand the issues. My bet is that a lot of people really don’t realize that when we use the shorthand of referring to Wall Street, we’re actually talking about high finance in general. Scary — and it’s a lack of understanding that the likes of Mitch McConnell are happy to exploit.

And it extends farther. It extends to dubious statements by elected officials like Bobby Jindal who, in criticizing government spending, asked why the government would want to spend.... just read:



It's nonsense, it's selling balms and salves instead of solutions. It's Sarah Palin proving herself to be an idiot.

Steve Benen

Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower "whether we like it or not," saying she was taken aback by his comment.

"I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said. "I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."

As Benen points out:

Reading comprehension isn't one of the former half-term governor's strengths, so perhaps it's not surprising that Palin is badly misquoting, and deliberately misunderstanding, what the president said.

Palin, who is painfully, conspicuously unintelligent, wasn't quite sharp enough to understand the president's remarks. Perhaps he should have chosen words with fewer syllables.

He didn't say there's a potential problem with the U.S. being a superpower; he said it's important for Americans to appreciate the global responsibilities that come with that power when conflicts arise, and the sweeping effects of these conflicts on the country's global interests.

It's Republicans, so eager to rip Obama for anything, that they'll attack their own sacred cow in a fit of hypocrisy.

As Obama signs a deal to reduce nuclear arms, and as he hosts 47 world leaders to secure loose fissile material to prevent it from falling into their own hands, he's being ripped by the right. But Obama's actions are an extension of Reagan's dream:

Progress in Action

Ronald Reagan said that nuclear weapons are “totally irrational, totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing, possibly destructive of life on earth and civilization.” … “[F]or the eight years I was president,” he wrote in his memoirs, “I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind.” … “We live in a troubled world, and the United States and China, as two great nations, share a special responsibility to help reduce the risks of war. We both agree that there can be only one sane policy to preserve our precious civilization in this modern age: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. And no matter how great the obstacles may seem, we must never stop our efforts to reduce the weapons of war. We must never stop at all until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of this Earth.”

It's outright obstruction on 101 non-controversial nominees just to hold up progress. It's about saying "No".



And finally, it's the individual Tea Partiers who obviously don't even understand what they're protesting. Maybe they should just say "we don't like black Presidents". Disgusting.

Jon Stewart on Goldman Sachs, Bernie Goldberg and Fox News, with the "Go Fuck Yourself" choir

Rep. Johnson: U.S. Military could cause Guam to tip over and capsize

You are not reading that incorrectly.

The Hill

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) is afraid that the U.S. Territory of Guam is going to "tip over and capsize" due to overpopulation.

Johnson expressed his worries during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the defense budget Thursday.

Addressing Adm. Robert Willard, who commands the Navy's Pacific Fleet, Johnson made a tippy motion with his hands and said sternly, "My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize."

Willard paused and said: "We don't anticipate that."

Like other islands, Guam is attached to the sea floor, which makes it extremely unlikely that it will tip over, even if there are lots and lots of people on it.

Go to 1:20 in the clip.

Dems in Disarray! Aaaaaaarrrrghhhh!

Dave Weigel

Click Tweet to see the poll, and please note it's from Rasmussen, which means this is REALLY bad news since they usually spot the GOP 4-6 points to begin with.

Greatest. Cartoon. Ever.

Anti-government gun-toting wingnuts to rally against government in national park

A group called Restore the Constitution will be holding an open-carry rally in sight of the Capitol. Protesting what they call "President Obama's insistence on and the Democratic Congress's capitulation to a "totalitarian socialism" that tramples individual rights", they'll be there will the full cooperation of the U.S. Park Police, through which they applied for a permit.

Washington Post

When they stand on the river banks Monday and preach an activism that sounds to some like sedition, the armed demonstrators will have the full support of the federal government they fear, carefully detailed in the 26-page event permit , complete with the existing gun regulations of both Virginia and the Department of the Interior and a commitment to provide snow fencing, barricades and bike racks for the event.

"We handle tens of thousands of demonstrations of a First Amendment nature annually," said Dave Schlosser, spokesmen for the U.S. Park Police, "and we are handling this event no differently than any of the others. We assess what their needs are to allow us to facilitate a safe and successful demonstration, so they can exercise their rights to free speech and free assembly without interference."

Right.

Because the revolutionaries at Lexington and Concord first applied for permits - while presenting valid ID - to use Lexington Green on April 19th from 2 until 7 am. And they also asked the British troops to kindly set up fencing and bike racks. And porta-potties.

Viva la Revolution!

Limbaugh: Volcanic eruption in Iceland is God’s reaction to health care’s passage

Think Progress

You know, a couple of days after the health care bill had been signed into law Obama ran around all over the country saying, “Hey, you know, I’m looking around. The earth hadn’t opened up. There’s no Armageddon out there. The birds are still chirping.” I think the earth has opened up. God may have replied. ....Earth has opened up. I don’t know whether it’s a rebirth or Armageddon. Hopefully it’s a rebirth, God speaking.

Cesca

Um.

I give you the Leader of the Republican Party.

Quick Quiz: What's big and round, made of stone and blows a shitload of smoke across multiple continents?



Do volcanoes also wear ugly ties that look like they lost a bet?

Andrew Sullivan: Tea Party is "not a political movement. They are cultural vents"

Andrew Sullivan

Over the last decade, it is surely evident that big government has come back with a vengeance. And one has to grasp that part of the tea-party anger is pent up from the Bush years. Most of the rational tea-partiers accept that the GOP has been as bad - if not worse - than the Democrats on spending, borrowing and the size and scope of government in recent years. They repressed this anger during the Bush years out of partisan loyalty. Now, they're taking it all out on the newbie. It's both fair and also unfair.

It's fair because Obama is a liberal who believes government can and should help the poor and disadvantaged and has proven it by providing access to insurance for the working poor. But it's unfair because Obama's fiscal and governing record is massively distorted by the impact of the bank meltdown, the steep revenue-killing recession, and the stimulus. Until its last months, the Bush administration could claim no such excuses for its awful debt-management.

(D)espite my own deep suspicion of big government, I remain unmoved by the tea-partiers. Their partisanship and cultural hostility to Obama are far more intense, it seems to me, than their genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. And this is largely because they have no genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. They seem very protective of Medicare and Social Security - and their older age bracket underlines this. They also seem primed for maximal neo-imperial reach, backing the nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, favoring war against Iran, etc.

So they are truly not serious in policy terms, and it behooves the small government right to grapple with this honestly. They both support lower taxation and yet bemoan the fact that so many Americans do not pay any income tax. They want to cut spending on trivial matters while enabling the entitlement and defense behemoths to go on gobbling up Americans' wealth. And that lack of seriousness is complemented by a near-fanatical cultural alienation from the modern world.

...The abstract slogans against government, the childish reduction of necessary trade-offs as an apocalyptic battle between freedom and slavery, and the silly ranting at all things Washington: these are not a political movement. They are cultural vents, wrapped up with some ugly Dixie-like strands.

When they propose cuts in Medicare, means-testing Social Security, a raising of the retirement age and a cut in defense spending, I'll take them seriously and wish them well.

Until then, I'll treat them with the condescending contempt they have thus far deserved.

In steps SNL with Bill Hader as James Carville