Infrastructurist: Conservative mag tells conservatives why they should care about public transit

The Mahablog: No cause, just movement

Climate Progress: Judge rules against Cuccinelli's witch-hunt aimed at Michael Mann and climate science

Blog of Rights: If the government thinks you should be dead, it should at least tell you why

Economist's View: Economists of all stripes will descend upon Robert Barro over the next 36 hours.

Vagabond Scholar: Engaging the opposition, and a wingnut checklist

Over 20,000 Seriously Wounded

Unbelievable news blogged by Raed In The Middle .

There is absolutely nothing this administration will not lie about. But we are not surprised by now. Raed cites an article in today's Stars and Stripes which reports that 20,802 wounded soldiers have been treated at Landstuhl, Germany alone from injuries received in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.

The official number of US soldiers wounded in Iraq that was announced by the US DOD (Department of Defense) is 8458 in Iraq and 423 in Afghanistan.

So the number treated in Germany is over twice what the official reports claim. The injuries have to be severe for the soldiers to be flown to Germany.

These numbers are just for the US soldiers that were moved to Germany. There are other thousands that were injured inside Iraq and Afghanistan and treated in small local military clinics and hospitals, or moved to other US military hospitals.

The official number of US soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan is 1375 and 144. I wonder what the real numbers are

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Janet Napolitano is probably getting some satisfaction from the fact that reality has proven the bulletin issued by her Homeland Security department last year -- warning that the nation was about to be hit by a fresh wave of right-wing extremism and its attendant violence -- all too prescient.

Especially the part where it warned that these extremists were working hard to recruit military veterans:

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

At the time the bulletin was issued, the right-wing media put up a hue and cry claiming that DHS was smearing veterans as potential terrorist threats, and demanding Napolitano's head. And even though Napolitano rebutted their nonsense, the conventional-wisdom talking point out of the affair was that DHS had unfairly smeared folks in the military.

Now it's clear that the Pentagon is aware that it has a problem: From Stars and Stripes:

The Pentagon is cracking down on extremism in its ranks with a new set of rules restricting servicemembers from participating on the Web sites of supremacist groups.

A new Defense Department directive on dissident and political activity issued on November 27 — the first since 1996 — says servicemembers “must not actively advocate supremacist doctrine, ideology, or causes.” This includes writing blogs or posting on Web sites.

... Last July, Stars and Stripes reported that 130 members of newsaxon.org, a social networking Web site affiliated with the National Socialist Movement, had listed “military” as their job in “Facebook”-style user profiles. Swatsikas, Nazi symbolism and militant imagery emblazon the site.

...

Army and Defense Department officials said at the time that extremist activity was not considered “an Army-wide issue.” And there was confusion, Potok said, about what defined “active participation.” Previously, membership alone in an extremist group was not enough for disciplinary action, though banned activities included distributing materials and demonstrating.

“The one worry here is that enforcement of these regulations may be very uneven. It leaves the decision up to local commanders and we’ve really yet to see how that’s going to work,” Potok said. “The hope is that this clarifies that even advocacy of these kinds of ideas is not consistent with being in the military.”

The arrests of the Hutaree militia made clear that the concern was full grounded in reality. As Newsweek observed in its report on the rise of right-wing extremists:

The rambling rants of the Hutaree might seem funny, in a sick sort of way, but they are far from harmless. The FBI busted nine members last month for allegedly plotting to trigger an "uprising" against the government by assassinating a local police officer and then ambushing colleagues who attended the funeral by blowing up improvised explosive devices. They may have had some professional instruction: one of the men in the group, Michael Meeks, is a Persian Gulf War veteran who served four years in the Marines and was a decorated rifle expert, according to Marine Corps records. Another member, Kristopher Sickles, is an Army vet (discharged "under other than honorable conditions," according to prosecutors).

After all, as we explained at the time, the DHS report's assessment of the situation vis a vis veterans was if anything understated:

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This is a lesson that LTG Benjamin Mixon, commander of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), should not have had to be told. It's one thing to be a conservative-minded knuckle-dragger like USMC General James Conway and say, my personal opinion is that I don't like gays. It's entirely another thing to use one's command influence to encourage others to support your position and to print that statement in the Stars and Stripes.

The recent commentaries on the adverse effects of repeal of the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy were insightful.

It is often stated that most servicemembers are in favor of repealing the policy. I do not believe that is accurate. I suspect many servicemembers, their families, veterans and citizens are wondering what to do to stop this ill-advised repeal of a policy that has achieved a balance between a citizen’s desire to serve and acceptable conduct.

Now is the time to write your elected officials and chain of command and express your views. If those of us who are in favor of retaining the current policy do not speak up, there is no chance to retain the current policy.

Amazingly, SecDef Bob Gates really didn't find this advice as helpful.

Gates and [ADM Mike] Mullen denounced Mixon’s letter during a Pentagon press conference.

“I think that for an active duty officer to comment on an issue like this is inappropriate,” said Gates.

"I feel the same way and actually it is being addressed inside the chain of command in the Army,” Mullen added. “I’ve spoken specifically to [U.S. Army chief of staff] Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., about this. And Gen. Mixon specifically is – the issue is being addressed with him."

Mixon, reached via email Thursday, would not comment on the matter. "You will have to address all your questions to Army (public affairs)," he said.

This was a bone-headed statement from a general officer who should have found a better way to leave active duty service. The conservative bloggers have already started blaming Gates and Mullen as the villains in this drama, and no doubt more claims of the DOD favoring "political correctness" over the morale of our troops will surface. But the short of it is this - no one in the Pentagon cares if you support or don't support gays being allowed to serve in the military (for the record, I do). You don't, however, contradict the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a public forum on a politically radioactive topic such as this. Although Mixon had a strong professional career and was (one can guess) a smart officer, for some reason he made a really bad decision here. You can expect LTG Mixon's notice of resignation any time soon, I would expect.

And of course, these people with the deep pay cuts still have the mortgages they took on when they were making a lot more money. But we won't talk about that, it might depress people:

MECHANICSVILLE, Va. — The dark blue captain’s hat, with its golden oak-leaf clusters, sits atop a bookcase in Bryan Lawlor’s home, out of reach of the children. The uniform their father wears still displays the four stripes of a commercial airline captain, but the hat stays home. The rules forbid that extra display of authority, now that Mr. Lawlor has been downgraded to first officer.

He is now in the co-pilot’s seat in the 50-seat commuter jets he flies, not for any failure in skill. He wears his captain’s stripes, he explains, to make that point. But with air travel down, his employer cut costs by downgrading 130 captains, those with the lowest seniority, to first officers, automatically cutting the wage of each by roughly 50 percent — to $34,000 in Mr. Lawlor’s case.

The demotion, the loss of command, the cut in pay to less than his wife, Tracy, makes as a fourth-grade teacher, have diminished Mr. Lawlor, 34, in his own eyes. He still thinks he will return to being the family’s principal breadwinner, although as the months pass he worries more. “I don’t want to be a 50-year-old pilot earning $40,000 a year,” he said, adding that his wife does not want to be married to a pilot with so little earning power.

In recent decades, layoffs were the standard procedure for shrinking labor costs. Reducing the wages of those who remained on the job was considered demoralizing and risky: the best workers would jump to another employer. But now pay cuts, sometimes the result of downgrades in rank or shortened workweeks, are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.

State workers in Georgia are taking home smaller paychecks. So are the tens of thousands of employees in California’s public university system. The steel company Nucor and the technology giant Hewlett-Packard have embraced the practice. So have several airlines and many small businesses.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not track pay cuts, but it suggests they are reflected in the steep decline of another statistic: total weekly pay for production workers, pilots among them, representing 80 percent of the work force. That index has fallen for nine consecutive months, an unprecedented string over the 44 years the bureau has calculated weekly pay, capturing the large number of people out of work, those working fewer hours and those whose wages have been cut. The old record was a two-month decline, during the 1981-1982 recession.

“What this means,” said Thomas J. Nardone, an assistant commissioner at the bureau, “is that the amount of money people are paid has taken a big hit; not just those who have lost their jobs, but those who are still employed.”

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[H/t Gavin.]

Rep. Brian Baird of Washington (whose district includes Olympia and Vancouver) has announced that, rather than run the risk of intentional disruption by the teabagging invaders at recent town-hall meetings, he is going to take another approach:

Instead of appearing in person, where "extremists" would have "the chance to shout and make YouTube videos," Baird said Wednesday, he's holding what he calls "telephone town halls" instead.

Baird said he's using the new system because he fears his political opponents may be planning "an ambush" to disrupt his meetings, using methods Baird compared to Nazism.

"What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics," Baird, D-Vancouver, said in a phone interview. "I mean that very seriously."

Baird's acute observation set off all kinds of predictable whining from the usual suspects on the right.

Indeed, the response from the right-wing media -- particularly on Fox -- so far to suggestions that extremists are manipulating these "tea party" protests has been to snort and roll their eyes.

Of course, these are the same right-wingers who had a conniption fit over a Homeland Security bulletin about right-wing extremism by somewhat tellingly conflating its contents to include them -- only to have those warnings come starkly true. The same right-wingers who have been doing their damnedest to whitewash out of public view the very existence of these same far-right elements.

The reality is that, in western Washington, there is very much a substantial presence of right-wing extremists with whom Baird has had to deal over the years. Including, yes, neo-Nazis and skinheads of various stripes.

More frequently, however, it's come from the far-right "Patriot"/militia movement -- descended but distinct from white supremacists -- whose presence in the region appears to be resurging in recent months. This is the same element that came surging to the fore in the last go-round of "Tea Parties" on July 4 nationally.

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Along with their extremist beliefs -- including a bevy of conspiracy theories and scapegoating narratives, as well as an unmistakable racial animus -- the violent and thuggish tendencies of the Patriot movement is a matter of well-established public record. So it is not a surprise to see such behavior bubbling up whenever and wherever they are involving themselves.

A prime example of this is the video above. It's a 10-minute rant advocating a "Second Civil War" if President Obama is able to enact his "socialist" agenda, delivered by a man named Ron Ewart, a King County resident who runs an outfit called the National Association of Rural Landowners, which has been built off the bones of the organizations left behind by the late crackpot Aaron Russo.

NARLO, you see, is not only a big "Tea Party" supporter, it is also a major sponsor. It's listed by ResistNet as one of the sponsors of the Sept. 12 "Tea Party" in Washington, D.C.

In addition to calling for open, armed revolt against the Obama administration, Ewart and NARLO have produced videos such as the one below, which indulges a number of ugly racial stereotypes in attacking President Obama as "the essence of evil" and a man who intends to "destroy America."

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We've already seen evidence, particularly from the last round on July 4, that the "Tea Party" movement was attracting a significant bloc of extremists of various stripes: conspiracy theorists (particularly Birthers), xenophobes, anti-government radicals, gun nuts. And they're not just filling the ranks -- they're taking leadership roles, particularly in speaking at their events.

When this bloc starts taking over, you have to start wondering where all this is going. Because you know it's not going to be a healthy direction.

Greta Van Susteren last night featured a segment on an incident in St. Louis in which the local teabaggers came out in force to "hijack" a public forum on health care hosted by Sen. Claire McCaskill's office. She and her guest, Dana Loesch, were eager to applaud the "hijacjking," but the whole thing was actually pretty disturbing.

A couple of things stood out: First, the pretense that "this isn't about political parties" is manifest nonsense. These events are about stopping Barack Obama, the newly elected president, from enacting the very policies he campaigned for and was indeed elected to enact.

Trying to pretend that it's anything else simply doesn't wash any longer. Anyone who can say with a straight face that they voted for Obama but oppose what he's doing with health care -- when in fact he openly and significantly campaigned on promises he would enact just this kind of program -- is a pretty good liar, but a liar nonetheless.

More disturbing, I thought, was the way the teabaggers used their numbers to shout down their opposition and generally intimidate the town-hall nature of the forum. What was supposed to have been an open discussion of the issues instead became a pushy shoutfest. That's not how democracy works. It's ugly when the left does it, and it's ugly when the right does it too.

Is this what the Tea Parties are morphing into? Street theater for the right, becoming increasingly extremist in nature, and increasingly prone to disruptive tactics? The disenfranchised right is getting desperate, and this sure looks to be the direction they're heading.

In his "about me" section, "SoldatAMG" describes himself as a "Sergeant in USMC stationed at Camp Lejeune. I recently returned from my 3rd trip to Iraq. I fight every day to stem the tide of multicultturalism and to ensure that my children have a better world. SIEG HEIL!" -- Stars and Stripes

Why, it feels like only yesterday that every right-wing talker on the planet -- from Michael Savage to Greta Van Susteren -- was denouncing the Department of Homeland Security for supposedly "smearing our veterans" by issuing a bulletin for law-enforcement officers warning that right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis intended to recruit members of the military and returning veterans.

Well, we've already seen just how prescient the bulletin actually was -- after Richard Poplawski, Scott Roeder, and James Von Brunn all proved its point.

Now Stars and Stripes is reporting on just how far, indeed, neo-Nazis have infiltrated our military ranks:

It is Facebook for the fascist set, and the typical online profiles of its members reveal expected tastes.

Favorite book: “Mein Kampf.”

Favorite movie: the Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the Will.”

Interests: “white women.”

Dislikes: “anyone who opposes the master race.”

But there’s one other thing that dozens of members of newsaxon.org, a white supremacist social networking website, have in common: They proudly identify themselves as active-duty members of the U.S. armed forces.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Montgomery, Ala.-based watchdog group that tracks extremist hate groups, has compiled a book containing the online user profiles of at least 40 newsaxon.org users who say they are serving in the military, in apparent violation of Pentagon regulations prohibiting racist extremism in the ranks.

The military has been shrugging this off. So the SPLC is going to take the matter up with Congress:

On Friday, the SPLC will present its findings to key members of Congress who chair the House and Senate committees overseeing the armed forces and urge them to pressure the Pentagon to crack down.

“In the wake of several high-profile murders by extremists of the radical right, we urge your committees to investigate the threat posed by racial extremists who may be serving in the military to ensure that our armed forces are not inadvertently training future domestic terrorists,” Morris Dees, SPLC co-founder and chief trial counsel, wrote to the legislators. “Evidence continues to mount that current Pentagon policies are inadequate to prevent racial extremists from joining and serving in the armed forces.”

Added Mark Potok, editor of the Intelligence Report, a magazine produced at the law center: “The Pentagon really has shrugged this off and refused to look at this in any serious way.”

We've been reporting on this trend for some time now, and have discussed especially the ramifications of this development.

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I wrote about a rather insipid piece by the LA TImes Jim Newton on Kenneth Starr a couple of days ago. It was a twilight zone moment in op-ed writing to say the least. I guess Ed Mirmak wasn't too thrilled either.

"Starr hasn’t changed his stripes"

Ed saw substantially the same things I did, including the Bong Hits 4 Jesus case that Starr took. Take that. Mr. Newton....

Randy Newman -- A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

Rolling Stone Magazine named Newman's song the 2nd Best Song of 2007

Now in my 40s, I cheerfully cede my need to stay on top of popular music to my children and their generation. So I've never heard of M.I.A., whom Rolling Stone has placed on the top of their list of Top 50 Albums of 2007. However, I did love The White Stripes (#17), Youssou N'Dour (#30) and Maroon 5 (#32), so at least I knew a few on the list.

What music stood out to you last year?