Arianna Huffington -- who represents the "professional left" about as well as anyone -- says the president is "not all that into" the middle class. I don't think she's being very original or very funny. Worse, I put that sort of rhetoric in the firebagger category, as it isn't useful. There is nothing anyone can do about the president until 2012 at the earliest -- and as I have said consistently throughout the body of my work, Congress is where most of the blame lies for any progressive disappointment.

Sorry if you're turned off by the music in the video; it's loud and angry because I want the righteous anger of the just focused where it belongs, which is not on the man least responsible for legislative reform. Much more after the jump...

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Last month, Governor Jan Brewer sparked national controversy by signing Arizona's new "papers please" immigration bill into law. Her justification has been that Arizona's border has supposedly been "overrun" with violent crime. Turns out crime in Arizona is down and border security is way up, so the "secure the border" mantra being parroted by Brewer and her friends at FOX has much more to do with empty election-year rhetoric than reality. Even Arizona cops can tell you that.

Well, yesterday Governor Brewer was in Washington, DC to meet with President Obama, and hundreds of picketers took to the streets in front of the White House to say "no" to what is happening in Arizona and "yes" to real, federal immigration reform that actually gets to the heart of solving our immigration crisis -- not exploiting it.

Watch video of one protester -- a woman holding a banner that reads, "We Are All Arizona:"

She argues, "SB 1070 is unacceptable. It puts racial profiling into law."

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This post is a reprise of last year's remembrance, except that there's a lot more going on for the 40th. Michael Moore has a day-long livecast, you can follow slain student Allison Krause's sister Laurel on Twitter, and news media coverage is likely to be farther and wider. It's important that people also remember the events of Jackson State, a predominantly black college at which police killed 2 students and wounded 12 on May 14-15.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the anti-war protests at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. For those of you under 40, May4.org has the history recap:

On May 4, 1970 the Ohio National Guard opened fire into a busy college campus during a school day. A total of 67 shots were fired in 13 seconds. Four students: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, William Schroeder, and Sandra Scheuer were killed. Nine students were wounded.

Although I was in the first grade on May 4, 1970, I can't forget what happened in Kent, Ohio on that day.

I was there.

Not on campus, I was in first grade. In Kent, Ohio. My father and my mother's father were both faculty members at Kent. By 1970 my grandfather had retired from the Math Department. When he retired in 1968 he was the only math professor on record as opposing the War in Vietnam.

My dad, on the other hand, was in the Art Department. Nuff said.

We were rushed home from school that day in a panic of police sirens, smoke, and confusion.

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This morning, on the 15th Anniversary of the Oklahoma City mass murder, I drove from Washington, D.C. across the 14th Street Bridge to get on the George Washington Memorial Parkway and attend an "open carry" gun rally at Fort Hunt, Virginia.

On my way, I passed the Holocaust Museum, where a deluded Neo-Nazi, in a final act of vengeance for having been born, chose to spray bullets into the flesh and bone of a security guard whose only crime was trying to earn a paycheck. Off in the distance, you could almost see the Pentagon, where John Patrick Bedell wreaked havoc after being declared mentally unfit to possess a firearm by the state of California--because he simply bought one with no questions asked at a Nevada gun show. Bedell took advantage of the gun-show loophole to shoot those serving our country at the Pentagon, because of his hatred for it.

Finally, we arrived at Fort Hunt, to see a bevy of mostly middle-aged white men compare the United States of America to Nazi Germany, the Ku Klux Klan and a slave-state (among other niceties) while carrying assault weapons and dressing like they were auditioning for the remake of Red Dawn. A highlighted speaker was Mike Vanderboegh (seen in the video above), an Alabama militia leader who most infamously encouraged his followers to throw bricks through the windows of local Democratic Parties.

In a very different reality, Tom Mauser, whose son was gunned down in the Columbine massacre, and families of those murdered at Virginia Tech, today called on our leaders to lead on an issue where 86% of gun owners (including 69% of NRA members) agree with the rest of us, according to known liberal Frank Luntz: That we MUST close the gun show loophole. We must do more to stop criminals, terrorists and the mentally unfit from getting their hands on weapons that kill.

To protesters at the Fort Hunt rally, the federal government, a health care bill and their personal interpretation of the Constitution are reasons for everyone to be armed and ready to do battle (although, interestingly, during the Bush Administration's assault on the Constitution with the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, turning Gitmo into, well, Gitmo, rendition, etc., we didn't hear much from this crowd). Losing an election is just another justification for political violence.

To the victims of gun violence, who realize we aren't living in some Wyatt Earp fantasy land, perhaps getting guns out of the hands of those who fetishize violence and commit crimes and terrorist acts is just a tad bit more important. This likely includes some of those paranoid souls listening to the speakers at the Fort Hunt rally, perhaps planning to be the next one to shoot someone at the Pentagon or fly an airplane into an IRS building.

Which world do you live in on the 15th anniversary of an American tragedy? And which one do you want to live in?

Disclosure: I consulted for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV) on this project

Shopping find of the day: a Pat Robertson voodoo doll is being sold on Ebay, 100% of proceeds to benefit the Red Cross:

After an exclusive deal with devil, we are finally able to bring black magic into your very own home! The lucky winner of this auction will attain the soul of Televangelist PAT ROBERTSON in a handheld figurine comprised of the finest straw, cloth, and other organic natural materials! BID NOW to own your very own physical representation of the dark, dark soul of Pat Robertson.

As of this writing the bidding is up to $520.00.

h/t James Jolly (00Bama), who is still waiting to hear from his relatives in Haiti. Our thoughts are with you and your family, James.

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It's not exactly clear why the folks at Tea Party Express are buying up so much ad space on Fox News these days. They could save themselves a whole lot of money by just waiting for Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity to their inevitable "reports" on the event and do the publicity for free.

Of course, said reportage will emphasize the current Fox narrative -- that these teabaggers are just a bunch of "ordinary Americans" who happen to be easily inspired by hysterical right-wing propaganda. What could be more "grassroots" than that?

Incidentally, this "Tea Party Express" event is being sponsored by the "Our Country Deserves Better" PAC, an offshoot of Move America Forward. It's chaired by Howard Kaloogian, the erstwhile Republican congressional candidate from California.

You may remember the "Our Country Deserves Better" folks. A little while back, they ran a series of ads comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler.

This PAC was organized specifically to oppose Barack Obama while he was still in the Democratic primaries, and its entire website is devoted to opposing all things Obama.

So much for the claims that these "tea parties" are all about "ordinary Americans" who aren't just compulsive Obama-haters prone to comparing his presidency to the Nazis.

(video courtesy of Think Progress)

CNN's Don Lemon interviewed two astroturf town hall protesters in Atlanta Monday, and when one of them claimed that no "real Americans" spoke at Obama's town hall meetings, Don shut him down instantly -- and didn't let up:

Lemon:...At least the president is trying to reform health care, so where did the outrage suddenly come from?

Hardage: Don, this is the second town hall he's done in the last week that I actually saw real Americans get up and ask questions, it wasn't a pre-selected group or a -

Lemon: Hang on, before you do that - Real Americans - that's another term that sets people off. We're ALL real Americans, everybody.

Hardage: Anybody can get in, anybody can ask questions, you've seen a completely different tenor in the town hall he held on Tuesday and today than townhalls we've been seeing so far in this debate. That's what I mean by real Americans.

Lemon: You know what, that whole real Americans thing, can we lose that real Americans? Because everybody in the country who is a citizen is a real American. We're all real Americans and that's part of the issue that really sets people off and divides people, so let's get rid of that "real American." I'm a real American, you're a real American, conservative, liberals, independents, we're all real Americans."

How refreshing to see on a corporate news channel.

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There's nothing new under the sun, especially when it comes to the frothing at the mouth right-wing rage over health care reform. But thanks to the 24/7 media's transformation of politics into just another form of entertainment, delusional Birthers, deceitful Deathers, raging Teabaggers and town hall intimidators are dominating press coverage of the debate. And it's all a recurring symptom, Rick Perlstein argues in the Washington Post, of a nation in which "crazy is a preexisting condition."

In his instant classic Nixonland, Perlstein documented how Richard Nixon, "a serial collector of resentments," fanned the flames of racism, anti-communism and the budding culture war not only to take power in his time but to help produce a bitterly divided America in ours. Now in his Washington Post op-ed, Perlstein makes clear that we've been here before.

The repeated outbreaks of "black helicopters" in the 1990's, the National Indignation Convention in 1961, cries that the Civil Rights Act would "enslave" whites and countless other episodes of seeming conservative madness, Perlstein reminds us, result from the combustible combination of authentic fear and manufactured outrage:

So the birthers, the anti-tax tea-partiers, the town hall hecklers -- these are "either" the genuine grass roots or evil conspirators staging scenes for YouTube? The quiver on the lips of the man pushing the wheelchair, the crazed risk of carrying a pistol around a president -- too heartfelt to be an act. The lockstep strangeness of the mad lies on the protesters' signs -- too uniform to be spontaneous. They are both. If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

But Perlstein's cautionary tale is not merely one of the more things change, the more they stay the same. In its pursuit of entertainment over objective truth and conflict over common sense, he suggests, today's media environment rewards extremist claims and behaviors it once shunned:

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Are the Obama people really that dumb? They were "surprised," "caught off guard" by the massive dirtstorm unleashed on healthcare reform?

These are the geniuses of 11-dimensional chess? Puhleeze. I think they've started to believe their own press. Obama the Healer, Obama the Post-Racial Lincoln. What a bunch of damned dopes.

Dick Polman, the Philadelphia Inquirer political reporter, is also astounded at just how unprepared Team Obama was for the attacks on healthcare reform:

During the 1993-4 health care reform battle, the Clinton White House was outmaneuvered by the Republican right and their corporate allies, who swayed the electorate with all kinds of devious hyperbole. And, more recently, in the 2004 presidential race, John Kerry and his advisers sat back and did nothing for three crucial summer weeks, absolutely convinced that voters would never believe the Swift Boat attacks on his Vietnam record. That strategy worked out pretty well.

And now we have the Obama people, waking up to the idea that maybe it's not politically wise to sit mute and allow themselves to be tarred as fascists who would euthanize granny, ration health care, and slash Medicare benefits. (It's priceless to hear the Republicans portraying themselves as the defenders of Medicare, given the fact that, if they had been in charge back in 1965, they never would have enacted Medicare in the first place. But I digress.)

The Republican right understands the power of the visceral; it knows how to stoke emotions at the expense of civility. This is not exactly a fresh observation, yet it's amazing how flat-footed Democrats seem always to discover it anew. They seem forever convinced that the power of high ideals should be sufficient for victory - that, in the present case, Americans should simply be convinced, on the merits, that health care reform is preferable to the dysfunctional status quo. As Howard Paster, Clinton's health care guy in 1993, told The Times this morning, "The expectation (among the Obama people) was that things have gotten so bad in the last 16 years that there would be a consensus on the need to act this time."

But that's not how the other team plays the game. Indeed, numerous Democratic strategists and commentators have been trying to make this point for a long time. A couple years ago, for instance, radio host and ex-California Democratic chairman Bill Press offered this advise to his brethren: "In politics, if somebody slaps you on the cheek, you punch him in the nose. Then you punch him in the gut. Then you kick him in the groin. Then you crack a chair over his head. Then, just to make sure, you jump up and down on top of him with both feet...The only way to win is to fight back. Hard and tough. If they don't, they don't deserve to win."

Press was characteristically a tad over the top, but his basic point was that Democrats should stop being surprised to learn that politics ain't beanbag. This is not to suggest that Obama should retaliate by retailing lies equal in virulence to those being spewed by his opponents; if he was to conduct himself as his opponents are doing, he would be promptly attacked for failing to change the tone in Washington.

His best option is to do what he probably should have done months ago: find an attractively repeatable health reform pitch that can fit on a bumper sticker, something that can appeal to positive emotions. (Perhaps if Obama had done that during the spring, he could have at least partially preempted the nabobs of negativity.) Indeed, there are reports today that Obama will now pitch his plan as a vehicle for ending unfair insurance practices, for protecting the millions of Americans who have pre-existing health conditions.

Maybe a positive emotional pitch can still work - unless it is too little, too late, and insufficient weaponry for an alley fight.

America Honors Leaders -- Not Politicians:

In this picture provided by the environmental group Greenpeace, Greenpeace climbers rappel down the face of Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, S.D. on Wednesday, July 8, 2009 to unfurl a banner that challenges President Obama to show leadership on global warming. Obama is at the G8 meeting in Italy to discuss the global warming crisis with other world leaders. A federal prosecutor says a dozen people were taken into custody on Wednesday after the incident.

Open thread below...