Whether it's the bronze bull encountered by those occupying Wall Street, the fixation with a Chris Christie presidency not to be, or the ex post facto transformation of Ronald Reagan into Kratos by middle-aged Republican Congresspersons who practically start to giggle and spontaneously pulsate just upon hearing his name, there is one thing you can expect to encounter a lot of on the right side of the political spectrum these days: Golden Calves.

Sure, that Bible thing conservatives claim to have read and revere strictly admonishes those who take to idolatry. But then again, it also doesn't wish death upon 30-year-olds because they lack health insurance or a poorly conceived bowl-cut by a former Speaker of the House who's running just about even with the hantavirus in Republican presidential polling.

So even the Bible is fallible.

These Golden Calf conservatives have taken impulses that have been long ascendant on the Right, and way-too-present in American culture overall, and transformed their entire belief system into the Cirque de Soleil of idol worship. These days their leaders bow down before personality, mythology, ideology, theology and an unregulated market economy. These are revered in much the same manner anti-gay Republicans seem to hold a particular passion for the most quickly available RentBoy, or Kelsey Grammar does divorce court.

If you think I exaggerate, ponder what has brought the extreme right to public ecstasy over the last few months, and the right's obsessions in general, and tell me core members of the tea party brigade aren't addicted to symbol over substance. Think about it ... Rick Perry. Paul Ryan's unworkable budget plan. Chris Christie. Guns. The Constitution (at least their mistaken reading of it). Socialism. Bigger guns. Wall Street. American Exceptionalism. Really, really big guns.

This tendency to idolise people and objects makes it all the more amusing when loudmouth right-wing preachers start in with all the "cult" talk about Mitt Romney's Mormonism. So let me get this straight, Romney's version of Christianity is cultish, while those who handle snakes, speak in tongues and ask their arena-based parishioners for their very last dime, so they can erect Mammon-on-Earth, are not?

When one lacks practical, reasonable answers to the myriad problems this country is facing, from a continued economic debacle to ongoing civil liberties abuses at home and abroad to who Carly Simon's singing about in "You're So Vain," the only thing left to do is turn to symbolism. For those on the Right that means trusting Jesus will just work things out for them, or Reagan needs to be on the $10 bill, or obsessing over the Founding Fathers, you know, such as John Quincy Adams, Alan Cumming and Darth Plagueis The Wise.

This is not to say some Democrats have not fallen into this same trap. Again, grasping at symbols, especially charismatic individuals, is encoded in human DNA. There are those who would stick with President Obama were he to break every campaign promise he made during the 2008 election (so far I am gonna guestimate about 82 percent). But overall, education and civic engagement tend to lessen this tendency. Hence, it is not only a much more interesting, but foreboding phenomenon on the right.

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"Reagan," Vice President Dick Cheney famously declared in 2002, "proved deficits don't matter." Unless, that is, a Democrat is in the White House. After all, while Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush doubled it again, each Republican was rewarded with a second term in office. But as the Gallup polling data show, concern over the federal deficit hasn't been this high since Democratic budget balancer Bill Clinton was in office. All of which suggest the Republicans' born-again disdain for deficits ranks among the greatest - and most successful - political double-standards in recent memory.

The triumph of the GOP messaging machine is reflected in a new Washington Post/Pew Research poll. In just the four months since the Republican majority took control of the House, the percentage of Americans believing the budget deficit is a major problem which must be addressed now catapulted from 70% to 81%. But even more revealing is an April Gallup survey which showed the deficit (17%) rivaling the unemployment (19%) and the overall state of the economy (26%). And as it turns out, those cyclical swings in budget angst reflect the complete victory of the conservative deficit narrative.

As predicted at the time, Reagan's massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Ultimately, Reagan was forced to repeatedly raised taxes to avert financial catastrophe, including the last major bipartisan tax code overhaul in 1986. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan nonetheless more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It's no wonder the Gipper cited the skyrocketing deficits he bequeathed to America as perhaps his greatest regret.

Of course, President George H.W. Bush would come to lament them even more. Despite his legendary 1988 campaign pledge of "read my lips - no new taxes," Bush the Elder just two years later was forced to break his promise. As PBS recounted:

This "could mean a one term Presidency," he confided to his diary, "but it's that important for the country."

Bush 41 was right on both counts.

For his part, Bill Clinton faced a double-whammy on the deficit issue. He was, after all, a Democrat. And in 1992 and again in 1996, Clinton was confronted with the third party candidacy -and the pie charts - of Ross Perot. But when President Clinton proposed boosting the top tax rate to 39.6% to help close the yawning Reagan/Bush budget gaps, every single Republican in the House and Senate voted no. While then Rep. John Kasich (R-OH) told Clinton and the Democrats, "your economic program is a job killer," Dick Armey looked into his crystal ball to claim:

"Clearly this is a job killer in the short run. The revenues forecast for this budget will not materialize; the costs of this budget will be greater than what is forecast. The deficit will be worse, and it is not a good omen for the American economy."

Most dramatic of all was Texas Senator Phil Gramm. The same man who led the 1990's crusade to gut regulation of Wall Street and the IRS and later called America a "nation of whiners," boldly - and wrongly - predicted:

"I believe hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs...I believe Bill Clinton will be one of those people."

As it turned out, not so much. In 1996, Bill Clinton buried Bob Dole. Then in his second term, he buried the budget deficit as well.

Then came George W. Bush, who promised in his 2001 message to Congress:

At the end of those 10 years, we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.

Instead, President Bush produced red ink as far as the eye can see. After inheriting a federal budget in the black and CBO forecast of a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years, President George W. Bush quickly set about dismantling the progress made under Bill Clinton. Even with two unfunded wars and the similarly unpaid Medicare prescription drug benefit, Bush's $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a $550 billion second round in 2003, accounted for half of the yawning budget deficits he produced. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, if made permanent those Bush tax cuts if made permanent, would add more to the national debt over the next decade than the impact of Iraq, Afghanistan, the recession, the stimulus and TARP - combined.

During his presidency, Republicans in Congress voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling, the last to $11.3 trillion. By the time George W. Bush ambled out of the White House, he left his successor a $1.2 trillion budget deficit for 2009.

Barack Obama inherited two wars, a doubled national debt, and that $1.2 trillion deficit from George W. Bush. (As Orrin Hatch described the Bush years, "it was standard practice not to pay for things.") But one thing was new: Republican concern about the budget deficit.

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Perhaps you're familiar with Clarence Thomas, the Long-Dong-Silver-loving US Supreme Court Justice. With a new term recently beginning on The Court, he passed the five-year mark for not only saying nothing of value while hearing cases, but nothing at all.

Yes, you read that correctly--while no US Supreme Court Justice in over two centuries has gone even a single term without speaking from the bench during arguments, Thomas has managed to do it for five in a row.

To quote Stephen Colbert, "the man is a rock...in that he could be replaced by a rock and I'm not sure anyone would notice."

Sadly, it shouldn't really come as much of a surprise that if someone were going to set this record, it would be Justice Thomas. He certainly never even approached being "the most qualified" person in the land to sit on the Supreme Court, as President George H.W. Bush, who nominated him to the High Court, said after offering his name.

I'm quite sure that Bush didn't even believe that himself, unless he was limiting the field of competition to Thomas, then-vice president Dan Quayle, and his namesake offspring. But if he was clearly unworthy then--and he was--he is now about as appropriate a judge as Newt Gingrich is a marriage counselor.

While he doesn't seem to even want to participate in his day job, Thomas certainly does engage in the kind of partisan politicking that is not only unseemly, but sets a terrible precedent in a democracy. And at least in theory, the judiciary is supposed to be impartial, and therefore above politics.

Yet, in only the past few weeks, a number of embarrassing episodes have not only turned this legal tracheotomy into a punch line for late night comics, but have quite honestly raised questions about whether any fully-functioning democracy would allow him to continue rendering judgments so important in deciding not only the law, but values of our society.

First, there was the fact that Thomas, whose wife has earned almost $700,000 for--as far as I can tell--being his wife, finds government disclosure forms so difficult to fill out that he accidentally put $0 where $700,000 was supposed to be under "spousal income."

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There is simply no understanding the prevalence of gun violence in America - as evidenced by the recent attempted assassination of a congresswoman during a mass shooting - without discussing the nefarious role played by the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Once an organisation primarily concerned with the education and training of sportsmen, in a coup that came to be known as the Cincinnati Revolt in 1977, hardliners took over the leadership and believed that any gun regulation would take us down a slippery slope to Khmer Rougism.

In the years since, unlike the US in the wake of the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy - or for that matter Australia after the Port Arthur Massacre - the response to senseless gun violence has been to discuss everything from the rhetoric on our airwaves to the weather outside.

But any public conversations regarding restricting who has access to guns has been considered verboten (although, thankfully, this time some cracks are beginning to show).

This is largely because the NRA's duping its own members, which we'll discuss below, and coming to the realisation that the real money was in actually protecting the rights of gun manufacturers, which we'll discuss in Part II of this series.

If the NRA leadership is not radical, they certainly see the benefit in playing radicals on TV in order to enrich their financial benefactors who produce and sell the weaponry of death.

In the 1990s, in a climate of fear and paranoia that produced the Oklahoma City bombing, they were all too happy to refer to the government authority that tries to enforce gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), as "jack-booted thugs". This led former president George H.W. Bush to resign his membership.

They then decided to up the ante by accusing former president Bill Clinton of murder and saying he "had blood on his hands" - all for the crime of supporting background checks at gun shows - which is among the many legislative proposals to reduce gun violence that they have repeatedly blocked.

Others include a ban on high-capacity magazines, banning sales to those on terrorist watch lists, and fully funding the aforementioned ATF (think about the latter when they say they want to "strengthen existing gun laws" after each new tragedy).

In fact, just a few days after the mass shooting in Tucson it was reported by Ryan Reilly from TPMMuckraker that a "jihadist" in America who was... "a moderator and contributor on Islamic extremist web forums, posted songs praising suicide bombers, discussed his jihad fantasies in the open..." was able to get an AK-47, no questions asked.

Emerson Begolly, the "jihadist" in question, responded when queried about this with laughter and facetiously exclaimed that "someone at the FBI showed up to work drunk". Perhaps, but if they were, it was only because the NRA forced them to do keg stands.

More...

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Smearing Patriots Altercation

There aren't enough hours in the day to keep up with all the theories and counter-theories, plus the spin and propaganda being thrown out in the hopes of deflecting attention from the actions of the Rove/Novak diabolic duo. One thing worth keeping in mind is the quality of the people they are seeking to smear. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were both life-long public servants. Wilson, whom the right is seeking to smear as a partisan-minded Democrat—not that he wouldn’t have the right to be if he chose—contributed to the presidential campaign of George H.W. Bush, and took many hazardous and unpleasant duties on behalf of his country. When the CIA sent him to Niger, he knew that the politically smart—and self-promotional course to take would be to hew to the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Perle line without gumming up the system. Instead he told the truth and they came after him.
Valerie Plame, meanwhile, lived her entire life under cover—no small or easy thing—in the service of her country. (How many journalists and Republican pols or consultants can say the same?) And for her trouble, she has seen her cover revealed and both herself and her husband smeared across the land. Her former colleague, Larry Johnson, writing in TPM Café, tells you what kind of person and patriot she was, here.
Can you spell “desperate?”  They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that.  Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical.  Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.”  Read the whole thing.

How We'll Know                     Rain Storm

Since Donald Rumsfeld has never been able to come up with a way to measure whether or not we are winning the global war on terror (GWOT), one of my fellow army veteran's is willing to suggest one:Can you spell “desperate?” They are now even spreading rumors, believe it or not, that Wilson was the source who blew his wife’s cover, if you can believe that. Also, the Rove camp's claim that Matt Cooper "burned" his source is nonsensical. Boy are these guys grasping at straws.
Meanwhile, Murray Wass reports here that “Fitzgerald is looking seriously at conspiracy or obstruction charges against Rove et al. and perhaps even Novak himself.” Read the whole thing.

In a somewhat understandably soft ball interview with Chris Wallace, former President George H.W. Bush defends what is by most accounts his son's epic failure of a presidency and defers to "the Google" when asked about which things W could be "fairly criticized for."

Bush: He's gonna come home with his head high, knowing he ran a clean operation and he kept this country strong and free after an unprecedented history attack of 9/11. He'll have a lot too be proud of and he can start by his mother and father being very proud of him...and we always will be.

Wallace: You said there earlier there are some things he could fairly be criticized for. Would you like to tell me any of those?

Bush: "No. You can go back to your, what do you call it.... Your Google, and you figure all that out."

On some level you gotta feel sorry for Papa Bush. It's pretty clear that he always wanted his other son, Jeb, to be the second Bush President.

The trailer to Oliver Stone's upcoming film about President George W. Bush, draws on his "heavy partygoer" days.

CBS:

The movie appears to portray the young Mr. Bush as a beer-drinking, hard-partying screw up who looks chastened during a lecture from his father, George H.W. Bush.

"If I remember correctly, you didn't like the sporting goods job," the elder Bush says in the trailer. "Working in the investment firm wasn't for you either, or the oil rig job. You didn't exactly finish up with flying colors in the Air National Guard, junior."

Though Stone's depiction seems sure to draw some criticism, Bush has "openly admitted to past drinking problems" and to having done "things as a youth that he was not proud of." Despite a few appearances that could plausibly suggest otherwise, Bush has long claimed to have gone "cold turkey in July 1986" and not had a drink since.

Also, you may recall a couple of weeks back when two members of the cast of Stone's movie, including Josh Brolin, the actor playing "W," were arrested following a bar fight in Shreveport, Louisiana that apparently began after "a couple of good 'ol boys" taunted Brolin and co. with a "few profanity-laced barbs about Stone, his politics and the reported anti-Bush tone" of the film.

A publisher I know once told me that most really wealthy and powerful people are smart enough to know that it pays vast dividends beyond the cost of salaries to treat their employees well, especially in the age of tell-all books. And then, there are those like the Bushes....

SF Gate:

Pool boys are supposed to conduct torrid affairs with lonely pool owners. James Razsa has passionate feelings about his client, but not the kind likely to turn romantic.

Razsa cleans former President George H.W. Bush's pool, in Kennebunkport, Maine.

An enduring American figure, the pool boy has long stood for one lowly half of the nation's class gulf. When the pool owner happens to have been the most powerful man on the planet, and the pool boy happens to be one of the planet's great despisers of power, the metaphor explodes into 1,000 points of light.

"If every American had to pool-boy for these people for a day, you'd have a revolution on your hands," is how he sees things. Read on...

Now to be fair, Bucky Bush has not been accused of any wrongdoing. I just find it sadly ironic that a Bush is making so much money from illegal acts by defense contractors.

LA Times:

President Bush's uncle William H.T. "Bucky" Bush was among directors of a defense contractor who together reaped $6 million from what federal regulators say was an illegal five-year scheme by two company executives to manipulate the timing of stock option grants, court documents show.

The youngest brother of former President George H.W. Bush, he is the second Bush family member whose name has surfaced in stock options scandals this month.

He was an outside, nonexecutive director of Engineered Support Systems Inc. of St. Louis, a supplier of military equipment and electronics that financially benefited from the Iraq war. [..]In a civil suit filed Tuesday, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused the former chief financial officer and former controller of enriching themselves and others with backdating.

Bush and the other board members were not accused of any wrongdoing.

Bush made about $450,000 in January 2005 by exercising his company stock options and selling shares, his SEC filing shows. When questioned by a Times reporter about the sale at the time, he said he had not pulled any strings in Washington to win Iraq war contracts.

[..]Last week in an unrelated case, Marvin Bush, the current president's youngest brother, was named as a defendant in a suit charging that officers and directors of HCC Insurance Holdings benefited from backdated options.

Bush 41 shed some tears for his son Jeb.

Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Former President George H.W. Bush broke down in tears as he cited his son, Gov. Jeb Bush, as an example of leadership.Bush was addressing lawmakers, his son's top administrators, and state workers gathered in the House chamber Monday for the last of the governor's leadership forums.

He said he was proud of how his son handled losing the 1994 governor's race to popular incumbent Democrat Lawton Chiles and vaguely referred to dirty tricks in the campaign....read on

(h/t Scarce for the video)