On Friday, Fox News' Monica Crowley informed Hannity's audience that President Obama and his administration have an "ideology of control" just like communist, socialist, and fascist regimes of times past.

Over the weekend, we heard comparison after comparison of the IRS so-called scandal to Watergate. Even David Gregory chimed in on that chorus by legitimizing the claims rather than forcing the squawkers to justify their claims.

Similarly, Paul Ryan's claim that connection between the IRS and Obamacare is somehow sinister and threatening is yet another dog whistle to the Tea Party masses.

Meanwhile, Rand Paul is trumpeting the fanfare over Benghazi and trying to flog Hillary Clinton with it. Of course, it's not just intended to flog Hillary, but also to serve as a clarion call for the masses to rise up this summer yet again.

On the extreme side of things, we have radio hosts claiming Obama is really the first openly gay president who hasn't come out of the closet yet. Um, okay. But wait! There's more.

According to Virginia's Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate, winger pastor EW Jackson, Democrats are slave masters and Obama is really a Muslim. Did I mention that Mr. Jackson happens to be black?

What we have here are the beginnings of a long, hot summer, with tons of manufactured discontent. Unlike 2009 and 2010, wingers don't have Obamacare to kick around anymore even though they think they do. They've had control of the House since 2010 but haven't done anything with it other than repeal ObamaCare 37 times, block every job bill that had a chance of actually improving the lives of Americans, and thump their chests about Benghazi and other stupid inventions.

All of the noise is, as Katrina Vanden Heuvel called it, deployment of weapons of mass distraction, sacrificing real issues and governance for political point-scoring, brewing a summer with town hall meetings full of angry elderly white people shaking their fists at evil Democrats for scandals Republicans caused.

Over the weekend I watched The Billionaires' Tea Party, which is an updated version of AstroTurf Wars made during the health care town halls. It includes footage from American Majority training sessions where participants are instructed in the fine art of gaming everything from Amazon reviews to social media. It was a good review in anticipation of what they plan for this summer and 2014.

The Occupy movement and all activists should be prepared to take them on this time. They do not get to benefit from the element of surprise. Most people who aren't insane know there's an effort afoot to gin up everything they possibly can to keep this president and Democrats from doing anything worthwhile, but we don't have the Villagers on our side, nor should we ever expect to.

If I were you, I'd put those local town hall dates in my planner and plan to attend, if only to counterbalance the insanity they're about to unleash on us all.

As voters head to the polls, the conventional wisdom states that a red wave will wash over the United States. While political statistician extraordinaire Nate Silver concluded a Republican takeover of the Senate is unlikely, he estimates GOP gains in the House could reach 55 seats. That's in line with a 50-60 pick-up forecast by Charlie Cook. But the extent of the carnage for Democrats hinges on the much-hyped "enthusiasm gap." And the early, if anecdotal, evidence of strong voter turnout suggests that may not be coming to pass as predicted.

That at least is the word from locations around the country. In a round up of early voting, the Huffington Post reported "shocking" turnout. In Massachusetts, "State and local election officials were already predicting possibly record voter turnout today." In Pennsylvania and Louisiana, too, larger than expected numbers of voters are arriving to cast ballots. At one St. Louis polling place, "election judges said the first two hours had been just as busy as two years ago, when voters formed long lines to cast a ballot in the presidential election."

If so, that would be a surprise, and a welcome one for Democrats. As the data show, over the last decade voter turnout in midterm elections has been as much as 20 points lower than in presidential contests:

Based in part on early voting results so far, the United States Election Project forecasts a 2010 nationwide turnout of 41.3%, the same level when Democrats regained control of the House and Senate in 2006. In absolute numbers, that would nevertheless represent a new record:

Dr. Michael McDonald, who tracks election turnout at George Mason University, projects that a record-breaking 90 million people will cast ballots for 2010 candidates, the largest number of voters to date in a midterm election.

The current midterm record was set in 2006, when 86 million voters went to the polls.

Still, that turnout probably wouldn't be enough to produce happier alternative scenarios for Democrats of the kind envisioned by Nate Silver or HuffPo's Mark Blumenthal. (After all, the Republican Revolution of 1994 saw turnout at 41.1%.) Final polling shows a Republican lead among likely voters ranging from 1 point (NBC/Wall Street Journal) to 15% (Gallup). That gap virtually disappears among registered voters, as the Gallup (R+4) and NBC (D+3) surveys reveal. To overcome the GOP edge, President Obama's party likely needs the share of eligible voters casting ballots to reach 43% or higher.

For Democrats hoping to avoid a midterm bloodbath, that is probably the last, best hope.

(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)

In the down-ballot races, you find the real damage done to American government and culture when sane, rational people fail to vote. I can't think of a better example than the Texas State Board of Education. At Netroots Nation this year, I met two women, Judy Jennings and Rebecca Bell-Metereau, who aim to take that institution back this cycle. More after the jump...

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The more things change, the more they stay the same. On the eve of midterms elections that could make him House Speaker, John Boehner announced, "This is not a time for compromise." His lieutenant Mike Pence (R-IN) echoed that line, declaring that with a new Republican majority "there will be no compromise" with President Obama and the Democrats. Of course, with their record-setting use of the filibuster, unprecedented obstruction of presidential nominees, and unified no votes on almost every major piece of legislation, the past performance of Congressional Republicans is a guarantee of future results.

Even before Barack Obama took the oath office, Republicans leaders, conservative think-tanks and right-wing pundits were calling for total obstruction of the new president's agenda. Bill Kristol, who helped block Bill Clinton's health care reform attempt in 1993, called for history to repeat on the Obama stimulus - and everything else. Pointing with pride to the Clinton economic program which received exactly zero GOP votes in either House, Kristol in January 2009 advised:

"That it made, that it made it so much easier to then defeat his health care initiative. So, it's very important for Republicans who think they're going to have to fight later on on health care, fight later on maybe on some of the bank bailout legislation, fight later on on all kinds of issues.."

And so, as the table above reveals, it came to pass.

On issue after issue, even when President Obama extended his hand, Republicans showed him the back of theirs. Despite dedicating 40% of the $787 billion stimulus package to tax cuts (making it, as Steve Benen noted, the "biggest tax cut ever"), Obama got no GOP votes in the House and only three in the Senate. Months of painful concessions to supposedly moderate Senate Republicans only served to produce a watered-down health care bill - and no GOP support.

Time after time, President Obama could count the votes he received from Congressional Republicans on the fingers (usually the middle) of one hand. The expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) to four million more American kids earned the backing of a whopping eight GOP Senators. (One of them, Arlen Specter, later became a Democrat.) Badly needed Wall Street reform eventually overcame GOP filibusters to pass with the support of just three Republicans in the House and Senate, respectively. This summer, it took 50 days for President Obama to get past Republican filibusters of extended unemployment benefits and the Small Business Jobs Act. As for the DISCLOSE Act, legislation designed to limit the torrent of secret campaign cash unleashed by the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling, in September Republican Senators prevented it from ever coming to a vote.

And when they weren't showing up to vote no on President Obama's initiatives, Senate Republicans blocked voting altogether.

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Over this pre-election weekend, CNN will air a special called, "Boiling Point: Inside the Tea Party." Whether or not its right-wing fury brings a conservative wave to Washington, the network insists, "the Tea Party has earned a place in history." But even more than its decibel level, none-too-thinly veiled race-baiting, casual incitements to violence and perfection of a corporate-backed grassroots façade, the rise of the Tea Party marks the triumph of delusion in American politics. Simply put, never has a modern political movement been so utterly wrong on basic matters of fact.

And as a new Bloomberg poll on taxes and economy revealed Friday, the know-nothingism is contagious:

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don't believe it.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won't be recovered.

Of course, from the very beginning the cries of the "No Taxation without Representation" and "Taxed Enough Already" flew in the face of reality. President Obama and his Democratic allies as promised delivered tax relief to over 95% of working households. As Steve Benen noted, that $282 billion, two-year tax cut was the "biggest tax cut ever." By May 2010, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported, "Federal, state and local taxes -- including income, property, sales and other taxes -- consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950."

Nevertheless, a CBS poll in February found that only 12%o of respondents thought that the Obama administration had already lowered taxes, while 53% believed they remained unchanged. But among the boiling-over Tea Baggers, the cognitive dysfunction was almost total:

Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.

It's no wonder, as former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett lamented, "For an antitax group, they don't know much about taxes."

Or just about anything else.

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I can usually sort out the decisions made by "leadership" in different areas to understand the logic behind them. But in the case of the DCCC and Chris Van Hollen, I truly have no clue. Here are some of his recent decisions, via Howie Klein:

The big buys the DCCC made this week were once again mostly for reactionary Blue Dogs and fellow travelers. Keeping him close to the #1 most supported incumbent is Bobby Bright who got an additional $225,000 (bringing his total so far to $1,128,188.33). Another dirt bag Blue Dog they spent big on this week was Chad Causey, a corporate shill looking to replace Marion Berry in AR-1 and whose $315,000 IE has pushed his race's total to $1,175,709.11 from the DCCC-- while having spent exactly zero for tested progressive Joyce Elliott in AR-2.

Meanwhile, they abandon Alan Grayson (FL), Mary Jo Kilroy (OH), Suzanne Kosmas (FL), Steve Kagen (WI) and a couple of blue dogs. I'll let them have the BlueDogs, but Grayson? Kilroy? Really? What are they thinking?

These decisions make no sense. Take Alan Grayson. Here's a guy who has raised more money without any "party faithful" help than most of the ones they are helping together. Meanwhile, Mary Jo Kilroy has worked tirelessly for her district and jobs. Yet even as I write, her opponent is putting up ads that are such blatant lies they should be sued for false advertising. Check this one out, claiming the stimulus created jobs in China:

Oh how rich it is to have a Republican attack a jobs-committed Democrat over jobs in China. Mr. US Chamber-of-Commerce Stivers must be suffering whiplash to twist his neck that hard. Of course, it's all about ringing a bell that can't be unrung. He knows it's a lie, but once it's out there, it's fact to some voters.

This is where one would expect a national organization to come to the rescue, and yet, they've written off Mary Jo Kilroy as a lost cause. In this election cycle, I made the decision not to contribute to DCCC but to direct my contributions to candidates who needed my support and were fighting for the real values Democrats have always stood for via Blue America.

We really need your help to help these candidates hold onto their hard-won seats. When I finish writing this post, I'm going to make another donation, because I don't want teabaggers to take over Congress. It's really that simple. Join me? Alan Grayson's page is here, and Mary Jo Kilroy's page is here, or you can get a list of all the Blue America candidates here.

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On Monday, the New York Times asked, "What if a president cut Americans' income taxes by $116 billion and nobody noticed?" As it turns out, that question neatly sums up the sad dynamic at play in the 2010 midterm elections. On the one hand, President Obama and his Democratic allies have utterly failed to tout the tax cuts delivered as promised to 95% of working households. On the other, Republican mythmaking and Tea Party fury have succeeded in drowning out both the Democrats' message - and the truth.

Stephen Colbert famously declared that "reality has a well-known liberal bias." But not, the New York Times explained, when no one is paying attention to it.

In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed.

In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, "This was the tax cut that fell in the woods -- nobody heard it."

Of course, it was impossible to hear about what Steve Benen deemed the largest two-year tax cut in American history over the jet-engine decibel level of right-wing rage, a cacophony willingly amplified by the media. Among the almost endless Tea Party delusions about Obama's birth, his religion, death panels, "keeping government out of Medicare" and so much more, the Tea Bagger fraud that income taxes have gone up under President Obama is perhaps the most successful.

Another CBS News poll in February revealed the mass delusion of the American people in general and Tea Baggers in particular when it comes to the Obama tax cuts. A quarter of respondents said the Obama administration increased taxes while 53% said they were unchanged. Only 12% rightly answered that federal income taxes had come down under President Obama.

But among the confused Tea Party crowd, the belief is akin to asserting the sun orbits the earth:

Of people who support the grassroots, "Tea Party" movement, only 2 percent think taxes have been decreased, 46 percent say taxes are the same, and a whopping 44 percent say they believe taxes have gone up.

It's no wonder that former Reagan Treasury official Bruce Bartlett aptly concluded, ""For an antitax group," Bartlett aptly concluded, "they don't know much about taxes."

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Despite what you might expect, Alabama's fifth congressional district features a tight race between two very different candidates -- with no "enthusiasm gap" among Democrats. In the left corner is Steve Raby, local business leader and former Legislative Aide and Chief of Staff for the late, great U. S. Senator Howell Heflin, last lion of southern liberalism. In the right corner is Mo Brooks, former state legislator, former Madison County District Attorney, current County Commissioner, and local shock-talk radio favorite at WVNN (where Brooks himself once filled-in for none other than Sean Hannity).

I went to Huntsville last week to visit the Democratic and Raby campaign headquarters. What I found there -- and at Steve Raby's rally two nights later -- suggests the major media narratives are not simply incorrect, but actually fly in the face of what has always been commonly accepted electoral practice. As usual, more after the video and a jump:

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Frames are beginning to take clear shape for the midterms, and yes, Social Security will be under attack. While Republicans won't necessarily push privatization, they'll try to make points with the usual fear tactics about how the "Social Security Crisis" will bankrupt the country. Paul Krugman has some things to say about that.

The math is wrong and so is their attitude

Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.

What crisis?

So where do claims of crisis come from? To a large extent they rely on bad-faith accounting. In particular, they rely on an exercise in three-card monte in which the surpluses Social Security has been running for a quarter-century don’t count — because hey, the program doesn’t have any independent existence; it’s just part of the general federal budget — while future Social Security deficits are unacceptable — because hey, the program has to stand on its own.

What's really going on here?

What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic.

There's much more to Krugman's article, all worthy of attention. Bottom line is easy: Social Security should not be on the table. At all.

Whatever you may believe about the 111th Congress, they have been more productive than not in the past 20 months. Among their accomplishments: ARRA, health care reform, financial regulatory reform, and credit card reform.

It is also true that these legislative accomplishments were less than the ideal envisioned by many in 2008. After round after round of Republican obstruction, stalling, and Conservadem enabling, they were hammered compromises, imperfect. Still, they represent forward movement toward some restored prosperity for the middle class.

This is the 111th Congress. Midterms will bring the 112th, which can be better than the 111th, or infinitely worse. The Republicans are working hard to push us back into the feudal age, where a few overlords control the wealth, land, and power and the rest of us are at their mercy. They almost succeeded until 2008, when the agenda was interrupted. They mean to resume that agenda in 2010 with the single goal of discrediting the President and dispiriting Democrats, liberals and progressives at the same time.

Anti-American is the new black

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