DOWNLOADS: (796)

PLAYS: (1043)

Embed

Republican demagogues like Newt Gingrich are always faced with the dilemma of how to deal with reality, which as Stephen Colbert suggests, has that nasty liberal bias. Their favorite trick in recent years has been simply to invert reality on its head -- turn victimizers and predators into victims, and vice versa, make up into down, wrong into right.

So last night on Greta Van Susteren's Fox show, Gingrich -- confronted with the cold reality that Latino voters are fleeing the GOP in droves, thanks to the Republicans' championing of racist laws the just-passed police-state-inducing SB1070 in Arizona -- decided it was all President Obama's fault:

Gingrich: Well, look, I assume that somewhere after he [Obama] attacked Arizona, engaged in what I think was a racist dialogue to try to frighten Latinos away from the Republican Party, stood next to the president of Mexico and said borders don't matter because we have strong bonds, had the president of Mexico get a standing ovation from Democrats for attacking an American state, and has his own State Department apologize to the Chinese for the Arizona law -- somewhere in that process his pollster came in and said, 'You know, maybe you're positioned a little bad on this issue.'

No doubt Gingrich had a look at the grim numbers:

For the Republican Party, politically, there's good news and bad news in our new NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo poll on the subject of immigration. Let's start with the good news: The Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, passed by a GOP-led legislature and signed by a GOP governor, has been a short-term political winner. The poll shows that 61% of the public supports the law, and a Republican congressional candidate who backs the law beats a Democratic candidate who opposes it, 40%-26%. But here's the bad news: Latinos, once a semi-swing group of voters, now have swung overwhelmingly for President Obama and the Democratic Party, and younger Hispanics are moving to the Democrats in even greater numbers."

*** Latinos aren’t swing voters anymore: For example, 68% of Latinos approve of Obama’s job (compared with 48% of overall respondents and 38% of whites), and they view the Democratic Party favorably by a 54%-21% score (versus 41%-40% among all adults and 34%-48% among whites). And their views of the Republican Party? In the poll, the GOP fav/unfav among Latinos is 22%-44%. What’s more, Latinos think Democrats would do a better job than Republicans in protecting the interests of minorities (by 58%-11%), in representing the opportunity to move up the economic ladder (46%-20%), in dealing with immigration (37%-12%), and in promoting strong moral values (33%-23%). The only advantage they gave Republicans was in enforcing security along the border (31%-20%). And Latinos remain a sleeping -- yet growing -- political giant: 23% of them aren’t registered voters (compared with 12% of whites and 16% of blacks), and

*** Dropping like a rock: It didn't use to be this way. In 2004, George W. Bush, the former governor of Texas, won some 40% of the Latino vote. But in 2006, that percentage for Republicans dropped to 30%, and it was 31% in '08. And check out these party identification averages among Latinos that our Hart (D)/McInturff (R) pollsters put together from our past NBC/WSJ polls; this chart puts together the YEARLY average of all Hispanics surveyed for each year (approximately 900 respondents are included in each yearly sample):

-- In 2004, Dems held a 22-point edge in party identification among Latinos (49%-27%)
-- In 2005, it was 24 points (48%-24%)
-- In 2006, it was 26 points (50%-22%)
-- In 2007, it was 30 points (52%-22%)
-- In 2008, it was 35 points (57%-22%)
-- In 2009, it was 31 points (50%-19%)
-- And so far in 2010, it has been 36 points (58%-22%).

See, Gingrich's problem is a real-world one: Every Latino voter in the country -- which is to, every Latino citizen -- who does not live in Arizona, and particularly anyone with an accent, knows full well that if they travel to Arizona, they'll need to bring their citizenship papers or birth certificate or some other certificate proving their citizenship -- otherwise they risk being caught up in a Kafkaesque law-enforcement and potentially deported.

Gingrich and the other defenders of SB1070 keep pointing to the fig leaf of the law's wording prohibiting racial profiling -- they don't want to cop to the realities of how police go about their work, which inevitably will mean that they will catch up Latino citizens in their snares.

These defenders keep claiming that only non-citizens are affected, because only they are required to carry their papers. But Latino citizens will constantly come under suspicion for being non-citizens, and their papers demanded of them too.

Latinos are perfectly cognizant of this reality. Which is why they're fleeing Gingrich's little up-is-down Bizarro World in droves.

See, in that Bizarro World, it's only "racist" when a Democrat decries racism. Otherwise, actual racism doesn't exist.

The Republican Party has planned two big initiatives this week. They are set to filibuster an extension of unemployment benefits for the tens of thousands of Americans who can't find work.

At the same time they've launched their rebranding effort ahead of the 2010 elections. The effort is called "America Speaking Out." It's a fairly expensive campaign with a new website, produced videos, integrated voting tools and an expensive set at the Newseum to launch the effort.

The whole thing would be fine and Democrats could just spend their time mocking the odd platform ideas (like repealing Section II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964) if it was being paid for by a party committee like Michael Steele's RNC. Except that Republicans don't want Michael Steele anywhere close to their election platform. They decided to run the entire project from their minority offices in the House of Representatives.

That means that everyone reading Crooks & Liars is paying for the Republican Party's 2010 election re-branding efforts and helping foot the bill for the Party's platform in 2010.

They can't even claim that the effort isn't about the 2010 election. Kevin McCarthy, the NRCC's recruiter for 2010, said it was all about the 2010 elections in an appearance on ABC News this morning.

"There are a number of seats that you get just by being 'no,'" Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican spearheading the effort, told ABC News. "But you don't get a majority by just being 'no'. You've got to say what you're for."

Eric Cantor, the GOP's No. 2 in the House, said this about their new effort:

"Look, we understand we were fired in 2006 for a reason," Rep. Cantor said in an interview. "We have learned and we have grown. The election gives us a chance to say we get it."

Here's the deal. The RNC is going broke. The national committee is bleeding staff. The RNC's online operation is actually the worst political effort in politics at the moment, their website is actually still in Beta and they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to build it. They don't have the experience or the money to launch a Party re-branding effort. And Republicans in Congress hate and distrust Michael Steele. They don't want him to anywhere near their 2010 message.

And because of that taxpayers have to pay for the GOP's 2010 re-branding effort. By my estimation, the cost of the website, the video, the staff time, and the glitzy launch today at the museum may have cost taxpayers at least $100,000 -- and it's only the first day.

All that taxpayer money because the House Republicans don't trust Michael Steele and the RNC.

The Republican Party thanks you for bailing them out.

DOWNLOADS: (4314)

PLAYS: (17235)

Embed

Normally, I'd cut this video down from its full 19 minutes, but truly, to appreciate the wonderfulness of Maddow's approach and the sidestepping Rand Paul attempts to avoid the corner Maddow in which deftly places him, you really must watch the whole thing.

And boy, does Rand Paul squirm under the surgical questioning of Rachel Maddow. He never answers her questions, and how can he? His stance makes no sense. Taylor Marsh:

It's the nakedness and naïveté of Mr. Paul's views on civil rights laws, that legislation should not impact businesses, that is not only evidence that he's unfit for Congress, but that he's actually dangerous. To think that the United States would no longer require laws to protect minorities is just ignorant and lacking in experience in the real world.

As for his anti-women's rights views, especially on individual freedoms, it's absolutely discriminatory against women. It's appalling in this day and age that a doctor would believe that women should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term against her will. The editorial board found his views "repellent" and they are correct. To say that the unborn has "equal" rights to the woman is simply wrong.

I think Taylor hit it on the head: his naïveté is dangerous. Like many--if not most--"isms", libertarianism may make sense on an academic level, but only when conceived in vacuum of intellectual exercises. In the gritty friction of the real world, the exercise falls apart. To say that only publicly owned entities should be legislated from discriminating ignores centuries of oppression and injustice. Glibly dismissing any real examples such as the Woolworth's lunch counter by claiming his "abhorrence of racism" and saying that people would vote with their dollar to not patronize those business is laughably naive.

Obviously, the tea party adulation, in all its authoritarian and uncritical glory, did not prepare Rand Paul for prime time. He's clearly uncomfortable with follow up questions and being confronted with his own stances. Even though he brought it on himself by telling the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR that he thought the Civil Rights Act should be done away with, Paul whines about "red herrings" and that the act is forty years old, so why is anyone asking him about it? Joan Walsh:

You've got to watch the whole interview. At the end, Paul seemed to understand that he's going to be explaining his benighted civil rights views for a long, long time – but he seemed to blame Maddow. "You bring up something that is really not an issue…a red herring, it's a political ploy…and that's the way it will be used," he complained at the end of the interview. Whether the Civil Rights Act should have applied to private businesses – "not really an issue," says Tea Party hero Rand Paul.

Methinks Paul better get used to having to answer for his tacit endorsement of racism and oppression of minorities, especially if Tweety's outrage is any indication of the larger media response. That may play well with the teabaggers, but they're not going to win Paul the elections. If I was Jack Conway, I'd be smiling right now.

UPDATE: John Amato:

My own quick and not quite perfect transcript of 'Baby Paul' trying refusing to answer Rachel Maddow.'s simple questions..

Maddow: Do you think a private business has the right to put up a 'Blacks Not Serverd Sign?'

Baby Paul: Well the interesting thing is if you look back to the 1950's, 1960's, that the problems we faced, there were incredible problems. The problems had to do with voting...blah, blah, blah.

Madow: I don't want to badger you, but I do want an answer on this sir, do you think a private business has the right not to serve black people?

Baby Paul: I'm against all discrimination of any kind, I wouldn't join a club .(my golf club is cool, though) but I think what's important about this debate is not to get into any gotcha on this but asking the question. What about freedom of speech. Should we limit speech. Should we limit racists from speaking?

Maddow: I'm asking straight you forward questions. Do you realize that businesses wouldn't let black people use the bathroom?

Baby Paul: I abhor racism. Am I a bad person because I hate racism?

Maddow: I'm asking you a yes or no question, Baby Paul. What about lunch counters? It's not a hypothetical.

Baby Paul: I'll give you a hypothetical. What about the owner of the restaurant? Should the government tell him that AK-47's aren't permitted in his place of business? That's when we're in a slippery slope, Rachel.

Maddow: This isn't a debate about the second amendment. People were beaten to death trying to stand up against racism at Woolworth's.

Baby Paul: I think you're conflating the issue...

(h/t TPM)

Glowing in the news of a resurgence of his approval rating, President Obama tried to pass some of that popularity onto his party and tried to remind supporters that the upcoming midterm elections do have consequences. Frustration at the incumbency shouldn't mean giving Republicans the wheel again:

After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. You can't drive. We don't want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.

Damn straight, we can't afford to go into that ditch again.

I completely understand the level of frustration; I feel it too. But I also know that the choice to sit this election out or to go to third party candidates (and I say this as a registered third-party voter) is to hand the keys of the car back to the same guys who drove us into that ditch.

Man, the comedy keeps writing itself:

Breaking news on Twitter from Politico's Mike Allen -- the 2012 Republican National Convention will be held in Tampa.

Florida has been a fiercely contested "swing state" in recent presidential campaigns, and Barack Obama's victory there in 20[08] was the Democratic Party's first since 1996.

The Politico is right--Florida is a critical "swing" state. There are some high visibility and politically strained battles going on there (I'm looking at you two, Crist and Rubio). But somehow I suspect that there was another element factored in to the choice of Tampa:

A reputation can sometimes be hard to shake and the city of Tampa has a reputation it would probably like to eliminate. For the past decade some have called Tampa the lap dance capital of the world.

Paul Allen, the founder and publisher of NightMoves magazine, says he hears about the city's reputation all the time. He believes the shear number of strip clubs in the Bay area has undoubtedly contributed to the city's rep.

"In greater Tampa Bay, I think the last count is around 56 different clubs that are adult-oriented," he said.

Another reason for the reputation is the city's role in the adult industry. "If you own a club in Oshkosh, Wisconsin and you want to book a feature (dancer) to come to your club, there's basically four people you can call. Three of those four companies are based right here in Tampa," Allen said.

You can't write comedy as gold as what the RNC does all on its own.

Utah Senator Bob Bennett's bid for a fourth term was summarily dismissed today at the Utah Republican Party convention. Bennett was a distant third to financier Tim Bridgewater and teabagger Tea Party darling Mike Lee.

Bennett's unforgivable Senate sins were, according to local party hacks officials, daring to consider any form of health care reform, his TARP vote and other ideological votes around constitutional issues like the flag burning amendment. Despite Mitt Romney's endorsement, party purists coalesced around the money and the tea party take-no-prisoners doctrine, respectively.

The winners

Mike Lee is the former head of Ron Paul's Utah operation, Glenn Beck darling, and Tea Party faithful. Along those lines, Lee had received FreedomWorks' endorsement along with Tea Party creator Dick Armey's personal endorsement. That PR move was further augmented with the endorsements of Mark Levin, Erick Erickson, and far-right conservative state legislators.

Yet, Mike Lee still lost to Tim Bridgewater in round two, even with all that Tea Party mojo. Who is Tim Bridgewater, other than a guy with a whole lot of money?

Tim Bridgewater is chairman and founder of Interlink Capital Strategies, a businessman and venture capitalist with ties to Neil Bush and the more mainstream faction of the Republican party. He received the highest number of votes in the second round of voting, but did not receive Tea Party endorsements.

The Utah convention exposes a deep rift slicing right down the center of the Republican Party between the hard-core Ron Paul/Tea Party group and the more traditional pro-business anti-tax group. While it appears that the more traditional conservative values are ahead by a small percentage of the party faithful, there is an unmasked canyon of differences threatening to divide the Republican Party and drive it farther to the right than it already is.

Stay tuned for the primary on June 22nd. It's probably a good idea not to count Bob Bennett out, either. He hasn't ruled out the idea of a write-in campaign, which could make things even more interesting, given the poll numbers pointing to a Bennett win in an open primary.

Update: Senator Jim DeMint has now endorsed Mike Lee, completing the Tea Party Triumvirate. Why did he wait until after Bennett had been eliminated?

Bill Hennessy is co-founder of the St. Louis Tea Party, self-published political guru and a sales guy who also works in tech. He's also an angry man with a message: Blame "the left" for everything wrong in the world. Hennessy has a platform and a voice and he's not afraid to use it, particularly in furtherance of his primary goal, which he lays out in a post castigating fellow Tea Party agitators for failing to put a stop to a sales tax increase:

The tea party is out to destroy the left in America. If we’re not going to do that—if we’re going to just wave yellow flags and wear clever t-shirts—then let’s go back to our regular programming.

Seriously, ask yourself not what you believe, but what you will DO. The time for standing in a park shouting is over. It’s time for action.

Ordinarily Hennessy's threat would be a shruggable event. The politics of personal destruction don't play all that well on the main stage, and the idea of "destroying the left" reeks of John Bircherism with a large dose of indoctrination by right-wing anti-taxers.

Except for this: Bill Hennessey, right-wing radio pundit Dana Loesch, and Big Government publisher Andrew Breitbart are using Kenneth Gladney's bogus injuries as their proxy for race-baiting and union bashing to leverage gains in the upcoming midterm elections.

After all, war is war. When you're out to destroy people, truth just doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. It doesn't seem to matter that Gladney's injuries didn't come close to matching up with what he claims was done to him, or that his original "lawyer" was also his employer, or that the whole dustup began over insulting imagery on buttons he was handing out at a town hall meeting. For these folks, and Hennessy in particular, it's war. All-out, scorched-earth kind of war.

Adam at St. Louis Activist Hub has put together a timeline of false accusations, outright lies, and machinations to promote Gladney's case and discredit not only the Obama administration, but anyone whose politics fall to the left of, well, just about anyone. It's pretty damning, no matter how many blustery posts they write claiming otherwise.

Still. I could shake my fist in the air and write it all off as more of the same, but there's this one thing that keeps nagging at me. Andrew Breitbart, Bill Hennessy and Dana Loesch are also associated with American Majority. American Majority is funded by the Sam Adams Alliance. The Sam Adams Alliance has a newly-established relationship with close Dick Armey associate and former chief of staff Denis Calabrese. Denis Calabrese is also founder and principal of The Patriot Group, a lobbying firm established with the goal of "lobbying with backbone."

Hennessy's most recent post links to the American Majority 'grassroots summit' in Kansas City this weekend. One of the featured speakers is Eric O'Keefe, Chairman of the Sam Adams Alliance, also on the board of Wisconsin Club for Growth and a former director of Americans for Limited Government. ALG has been associated with Howard Rich and Grover Norquist.

Scroll down a bit further on the page and you'll find the Koch connection through the Americans for Prosperity Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska sponsorships.

So it goes once again. These so-called grass roots activists are really all just part of the thug wing of the Republican party. If we were to analyze the DNA of the St. Louis Tea Party, we'd find Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Charles Koch, and a bunch of College Republicans on the main strand.

This September 11th, Tea Party organizers will commemorate that American tragedy not with a plea for shared sacrifice and national unity, but with a partisan shindig. But what they are calling the "Woodstock of tea parties" has only one thing in common with the legendary 1969 gathering in upstate New York. Like the throngs at Yasgur's farm, the Tea Baggers are hallucinating, just without the acid.

From the Des Moines Register comes the latest word from the Tea Parties who turn on Fox News and tune out the truth:

An event described as the "Woodstock" of tea parties is planned for Sept. 11 at the Monona County Fairgrounds in Onawa in western Iowa.

Craig Halverson of Griswold, who is helping to organize the event, said supporters hope to attract at least 1,000 people from Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota and other states. He said they are inviting prominent conservative speakers and plan to have bands perform patriotic music

The event will have a "Take back our country" theme, Halverson said. Although the activities will occur on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he said organizers don't plan to spend the day reflecting on those events.

Of course, reflection has never been a strong suit of the Tea Parties. Even without the herb, acid and peyote, the Tea Party movement has been a non-stop 18 month hallucination. Just by getting high on Glenn Beck, the assembled Birchers, Birthers, Deathers and Deniers wrongly believe Barack Obama is a Muslim who wasn't born in the United States, that Medicare isn't a government program and that 70,000 marchers at a DC event spontaneously morphed into 2,000,000. Only two percent of Tea Baggers are even aware of the Obama tax cuts that 95% of them received. Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin, the Joan Baez and Janis Joplin of Tea Partistan, claim the hard-core conservatives masquerading as independents are anything but reliably Republican voters.

While details of the event remain sketchy, the theme song of the September 11 Woodstock event should be Procul Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale." Regardless, the coming desecration of the 9/11 disaster is just the latest manifestation of the bad acid trip that is the Tea Party movement.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

Sarah Palin has placed her lipstick-red kiss of death on Carly Fiorina in her latest Facebook post:

Please consider that Carly is the conservative who has the potential to beat California’s liberal senator, Barbara Boxer, in November. I’m a huge proponent of contested primaries, so I’m glad to see the contest in California’s GOP, but I support Carly as she fights through a tough primary against a liberal member of the GOP who seems to bear almost no difference to Boxer, one of the most leftwing members of the Senate.

Palin's endorsement tells more about Palin than it does Fiorina. Fiorina nearly destroyed Hewlett-Packard during her tenure, and walked away with millions in stock and cash while thousands lost their jobs. HP has yet to recover from her evildoing there. Yet Palin endorses her not because of Fiorina's politics, but because she "has the potential to beat" Barbara Boxer. This is Sarah Palin at her most basic level: win at any cost, no matter what damage is done along the way.

It's also clear that Palin intends to use gender as the new wedge in politics. There's no question in my mind that Palin's politics are as far-right fringe as they can be, which would make Chuck Devore the logical candidate from an ideological standpoint. If Fiorina were a man, I'd bet Palin wouldn't make any endorsement here at all.

Palin's endorsement is great news for Democrats. It further marginalizes Campbell, who could possibly be a more difficult candidate for Boxer. If Fiorina wins the primary, Boxer will have a far easier time than she would with Campbell.

Go Sarah, go! Maybe she'll even come out and campaign for Carly. That ought to be interesting, given that she's not even selling out small stadiums in the heartland.

Update: It seems that Palin's constituents are a bit aggravated over her decision. Earlier today her original Facebook announcement was updated to include this extra justification:

Carly has been endorsed by the National Right to Life, the California Pro-Life Council, and the Susan B. Anthony List. She is pro-life, pro-traditional marriage, pro-military, and pro-strict border security and against amnesty. She is against Obamacare and will vote to repeal it and prevent the government takeover of private companies and industries. Carly is also a strong supporter of the Second Amendment. Like me, she is a member of the NRA, has a 100% NRA rating, and she and her husband are gun owners. She is pro-energy development and believes as I do in an all-of-the-above approach to energy independence. She is against cap and tax. And most importantly, Carly is the only conservative in the race who can beat Barbara Boxer. That’s no RINO. That’s a winner.

Hmmm. NRA ratings haven't been released yet, and Carly Fiorina hasn't held elective office for them to even rate her. Worse yet, Fiorina supported cap and trade legislation before she opposed it.

Hey, a common-sense decision -- unanimous, no less -- from a Texas appeals court. Via Austin Legal:

The Austin appeals court erred in deciding that the state’s money-laundering statute - used to prosecute associates of former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay - did not apply to transfers made via checks, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled today.

The court’s 9-0 decision also upheld the state’s election laws prohibiting corporations from making political contributions to candidates. DeLay’s associates - John Colyandro and Jim Ellis - had challenged the law as an unconstitutional infringement on First Amendment right.

Nice to know there are limits somewhere on First Amendment rights. I can almost understand the logic behind the Supreme Court's ruling about issue-based contributions, but candidates? Not so much. Glad to see it fail.

The issue in this case centered around a big check exchange between the RNC and a candidate's PAC. Here's what they did:

Colyandro and Ellis also were charged with money laundering by transferring $190,000 in corporate contributions to the Republican National Committee by a check, with a similar amount later returned to the state organization.

The law prohibits corporate contributions to candidates. That's why there are PACs, and that's why PAC contributions are limited to $5,000 for any one candidate. These two buddies of Tom Delay's argued that corporations OUGHT to be able to give directly, but since they didn't, it's not money laundering if the transactions weren't in actual bags of cash.

They almost got away with it, too. The definition of proceeds of criminal activity (the direct donation of money to a candidate) was a little bit vague, in that it didn't specifically say checks. It also didn't specify PayPal or EFT transfers, but I doubt anyone wouldn't consider those to be money.

In 2008, the appeals court ruled that the money-laundering law did not apply to Colyandro and Ellis because it did not specifically refer to checks.

The appeals court evidently also figured it out pretty quickly.

The appeals court had no authority to determine that the law only applies to cash payments, Keller wrote.

Keller also noted, however, that the statute could also be read to apply to checks, Keller wrote, noting that “foreign bank notes” operate on the same principle as checks.

The only thing that could make good news like this great? Discovering Tom Delay right smack dab in the middle of a check swap scheme like this.