Symptoms of the conservative crack-up

Symptoms of the conservative crack-up
President Obama's recent trip to Europe, Turkey and Iraq was a fairly bland freshman outing in foreign affairs, notable for the enormous good will it generated toward the U.S., along with some practical achievements and a few minor errors. It lacked the drama of the untested young Kennedy grappling over Berlin with the wily old Khrushchev in Vienna in 1961. On the American Right, however, Obama's trip produced a hysteria not seen since radio listeners mistook Orson Welles's 1938 radio production about an invasion from Mars for the real thing, and crowded the highways, heads wrapped in wet towels, to escape the poisonous miasma of the onrushing aliens. The weeping and trembling of Sean Hannity, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh and William Kristol underlined once again that the rightwingers are playground crybabies who kick and scream and faint whenever they do not get their way.

The outrage began when Obama greeted Saudi King Abdullah by leaning into a double-handed handshake. Sean Hannity at Fox Cable News sputtered, "We got this video of Barack Obama bowing to the Saudi King Abdullah. Now look, watch how low he gets. Way below the shoulder." Camille Paglia denounced from her own little papier-mâché Mount Olympus "the jaw-dropping spectacle of a president of the United States bowing to the king of Saudi Arabia." The critics missed the point; far from being obsequious, Obama's double-barreled handshake violated the protocol for greeting royals. When singer Kylie Minogue similarly clutched Prince Charles's hand, the London tabloid press noted it as a faux pas that only a celebrity could get away with. But in any case surely George W. Bush's sycophantic cheek-kissing and hand-holding of Abdullah was far more offensive to the political Right? Apparently not. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) called the greeting "shameful." She also darkly warned, "we're still finding out what happened during that G20 summit. I think that there may have been agreements made behind closed doors that we aren't even aware of, that could be ceding American sovereignty."

Most conservatives had little trouble with the part of Obama's address to the Turkish parliament in which he declared that the U.S. is not at war with Islam. Those conservatives only wanted to emphasize that George W. Bush had said the same thing. But there were notable, clownish exceptions.

Radio personality Rush Limbaugh challenged the president, saying that if we are not at war with Islam then the Somali pirates must not be Muslims. Perhaps, the rotund one suggested with his world-famed gift for subtle wit, the Somalis are actually Orthodox Jews. But Obama had explicitly said that the U.S. is at war with some Muslims, to wit, al-Qaida, and had merely exempted the broad religion of Islam as an object of enmity. When the U.S. went to war against the Serbians over Kosovo, it was presumably not involved in a war on Christianity, even though the Serbs are Eastern Orthodox Christians. Moreover, Islamic law forbids piracy, so the Somalis are not acting out of religious motives. The fevered irrationality of such diatribes, on the part of someone recognized as the leading voice of the contemporary Republican Party, points to the party's dire intellectual straits.

Obama's address to the Turkish parliament also managed to enrage Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, who blew a chance to prove wrong the adage that he is always wrong about everything. He complained to Brett Baier of Fox News on April 6, "Look . . . We have defended Muslim nations against terrorists. It would have been nice if President Obama could have said a word about the young Americans who went to Afghanistan . . . and . . . Iraq. But could Barack Obama say something that would be mildly unpopular to an audience [to] which he was speaking? No."

Somehow Kristol seems to have missed the part of Obama's speech where he emphasized that Turkey and America were fighting a common enemy, side by side, in Afghanistan. "Finally," said the president, "we share the common goal of denying al-Qaida a safe haven in Pakistan or Afghanistan. . . Turkey has been a true partner. Your troops were among the first in the International Security Assistance Force. You have sacrificed much in this endeavor. Now we must achieve our goals together." In other words, Obama said precisely what Kristol alleged that he did not. Kristol, the mighty Casey of rightwing punditry, struck out yet again, for a lifetime batting average of .000.

That in the same speech Obama praised Turkey's modern founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and that country's "strong, vibrant, secular democracy," irked unemployed theocrat Karl Rove. Rove complained that Obama had declared that the U.S. is not a Christian nation and had sympathized with Turkey's separation of religion and state. The notorious betrayer of CIA agents opined to Sean Hannity on April 8, "Yes, look, America is a nation built on faith. I mean we can be Christian, we can be Jew, we can be a Mormon, we can be -- you know, any variety of things. . . And to somehow go to Turkey and in order to sort of identify yourself with this Turkish secular movement that began in the early part of the previous century and try and somehow make Turkey and America equivalent is to deny each nation's reality." Like Kristol, Rove apparently didn't bother to read or listen to Obama's remarks in full before criticizing them. In the speech, Obama urged greater acceptance of religion in public life in Turkey and the reopening of the Eastern Orthodox Halki seminary.

Rove also forgot to coordinate with neoconservative Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, who told Baier on the 6th, "I think he did all right in his speech to the parliament in Turkey. I thought there was an overemphasis in the second half on how it's a Muslim nation. But in the first half . . he stressed the fact that it's a secular democracy. And I thought that was a good approach." This clash of interpretation showed up the fissures in what is left of conservatism, between the proponents of Christian Reconstructionism (religious rule) and the generally secular neoconservatives. What it does not do is damage Barack Obama, who obviously managed to navigate the minefields of secularism versus religion, both in the Turkish and the American context.

Aside from complaining that their pleas for Christian state-making have been ignored by the president, conservatives were reduced to alleging that Obama was just doing and saying all the same things as W. had, but was getting more credit for it. Some even seemed to hope for redemption through apocalypse, since they kept coming up empty in their histrionics. Bill O'Reilly said on April 6, "there's no question . . . that the Islamic world likes Barack Obama better than President Bush. Okay, fine. . . But before it's all over, they may hate Barack Obama . . . We get hit again, Barack Obama's going to have to wipe out a few countries. Okay?" Of course, it is not actually true that replying to a strike by a small asymmetrical terrorist organization would require wiping out whole countries, nor even that it would require enmity between the U.S. and the broad Muslim world. And if the possibility of such an attack is all Republicans have left to cling to, it is a sad state of affairs.

More hot air was vented on the Right in making elementary errors of logic, and more verbiage spent condemning the bow to King Abdullah, than in discussing any of the meatier issues broached during Obama's trip abroad. The ever greater concentration on minutiae, and the investment of more and more passion in matters of no moment, signals the bankruptcy of conservative philosophy. Its proponents have stared transfixed as the ruthless implementation of their most cherished principles produced a series of economic, social and foreign policy calamities from which it may take decades to recover. The spectacle of their spokesmen misunderstanding English, hyperventilating over dark suspicions of surrender of sovereignty or reeducation camps, condemning a Muslim country like Turkey for setting a bad example by being insufficiently theocratic, and engaging in mock auto-da-fes to illustrate their inner rage, raises the question of whether the Republican Party is having a collective nervous breakdown. Meanwhile, Obama and the rest of the country have begun seeing "glimmers of hope."

-- By Juan Cole

Reprinted for educational purposes.

Fox News Sponsors and Promotes Crude Populist Tea Craziness, Then Denies it

Fox News Sponsors and Promotes Crude Populist Tea Craziness, Then Denies it
To quote Gregg Levine, "What Part of “FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES” Don’t You Understand?" But I guess we're going to have to dive once more in to the obvious.

Glenn Beck:

I'm going to also -- and we'll announce this later today -- I'm going to do a fundraiser for them. I'm going to try to squeeze in a speech for lunch. So you can come and you can have lunch with me. And I think -- I don't know any of the details, but I've heard it's like $500 a plate or something like that.

Reynolds says "if heavily-promoted coverage is the same as 'financing' then the MSM 'financed' Obama’s campaign." Did I miss those $500 a plate fundraisers that Keith Olbermann and Brian Williams were throwing for Obama and promoting on air? Somebody shoot me a link.

Media Matters:

TaxDayTeaParty.com lists Fox News contributors Michelle Malkin and Tammy Bruce as "Tea Party Sponsors." The sponsors section also lists American Solutions for Winning the Future, whose general chairman is Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich. Gingrich filmed a video "invitation" to attend the April 15 protests.

And of course there's Hannity:

Hannity has frequently promoted the April 15 protests by providing on-air information about the protests and encouraging viewers to "join us." Hannity has also encouraged viewers to "send us your 'Tax Day Tea Party' videos," which he said may be posted online or on-air.

Republican Tax Plan is Regressive

Rep. Paul Ryan: GOP Tax Plan Is ‘Progressive’
If by “progressive,” Ryan means “overwhelmingly favoring the rich while hurting the middle class,” then yes, the GOP plan is indeed “progressive.” As the Citizens for Tax Justice found, the GOP plan would slash taxes for the richest Americans while poorer families would have to pay more:

–Over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010.

– The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average, in income taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the Democratic plan in 2010.

– The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan…would cost over $225 billion more than the Democratic plan’s income tax policies in 2010 alone.

Indeed, the GOP’s “progressive” plan would give the average CEO a $1.5 million tax break. What’s more, the poorest Americans would be forced to pay more taxes under the GOP plan.

Republicans in Desperation Over Obama Releasing More Bush Torture Memos

Republicans in Desperation Over Obama Releasing More Bush Torture Memos
By Scott Horton, The Daily Beast
Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

Barack Obama entered Washington with a promise of transparency. One of his first acts was a presidential directive requiring that the Freedom of Information Act, a near dead letter during the Bush years, was to be enforced according to its terms. He specifically criticized the Bush administration’s practice of preparing secret memos that determined legal policy and promised to review and publish them after taking office.

But in the past week, questions about Obama’s commitment to transparency have mounted. On April 2, the Justice Department was expected to make public a set of four memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, long sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations in a pending FOIA litigation. The memos, authored by then-administration officials and now University of California law professor John Yoo, federal appellate judge Jay Bybee and former Justice Department lawyer Stephen Bradbury, apparently grant authority for the brutal treatment of prisoners, including waterboarding, isolated confinement in coffin-like containers, and “head smacking.” The stakes over release of the papers are increasingly high. Yoo and Bybee are both targets of a criminal investigation in a Spanish court probing the torture of five Spanish citizens formerly held in Guantánamo; also named in the Spanish case are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other Bush lawyers. Legal observers in Spain consider the Bush administration lawyers at serious risk of indictment, and the memos, once released, could be entered as evidence in connection with their prosecution. Unlike the torture memos that are already public, these memos directly approve specific torture techniques and therefore present a far graver problem for their authors.

The release of the memos that the Senate Republicans want to suppress was cleared by Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counsel Greg Craig, and then was stopped when “all hell broke loose” inside the Obama administration, according to an article by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. Newsweek attributes internal opposition to disclosure of the Bush-era torture memos to White House counterterrorism adviser and former CIA official John O. Brennan, who has raised arguments that exposure of the memoranda would run afoul of policies protecting the secrecy of agency techniques and has also argued that the memos would embarrass nations like Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, which have cooperated closely with the CIA in its extraordinary renditions program. Few informed independent observers, however, find much to credit in the Brennan objections because the techniques are now well-known, as is the role of the cooperating foreign intelligence services—any references to which would in any event likely be redacted before the memoranda are released. Moreover, the argument that the confidence of those engaged in torture—serious criminal conduct under international and domestic law—should be kept because they would be “embarrassed” if it were to come out borders on comic.

The Justice Department source confirms to me that Brennan has consistently opposed making public the torture memos—and any other details about the operations of the extraordinary renditions program—but this source suggests that concern about the G.O.P.’s roadblock in the confirmation process is the principle reason that the memos were not released. Republican senators have expressed strong reservations about their promised exposure, expressing alarm that a critique of the memos by Justice’s ethics office (Office of Professional Responsibility) will also be released. “There was no ‘direct’ threat,” said the source, “but the message was communicated clearly—if the OLC and OPR memoranda are released to the public, there will be war.” This is understood as a threat to filibuster the nominations of Johnsen and Koh. Not only are they among the most prominent academic critics of the torture memoranda, but are also viewed as the strongest advocates for release of the torture memos on Obama’s legal policy team.

A Republican Senate staffer further has confirmed to me that the Johnsen nomination was discussed at the last G.O.P. caucus meeting. Not a single Republican indicated an intention to vote for Dawn Johnsen, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas was described as “gunning for her,” specifically noting publication of the torture memos.

No decision was taken at that Republican caucus meeting whether to filibuster or not, though Cornyn was generally believed to support filibustering Johnsen and potentially other nominees. Johnsen has met recently with moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, both of whom are being lobbied heavily by colleagues and religious right groups to oppose her nomination.

Both Koh and Johnsen are targets of sustained attacks coming from right-wing lobbying groups. The Daily Beast previously reviewed the attacks on Johnsen, while Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has catalogued the recent attacks on Koh. Former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson recently endorsed the Koh nomination, calling the Yale dean “a man of great integrity.” But connecting the Obama nominations to the Bush torture memos escalates the conflict toward a thermonuclear level.

Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media

Glenn Beck and the rise of Fox News' militia media
After a night of drinking, followed by an early-morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared a Pittsburgh apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic disturbance call his mother had placed. When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.

In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Specifically, Poplawski, as one friend described it, feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon." (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was "going to see the end of our times."

We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the website of 9-11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that's the name of Jones' new documentary DVD) and how President Obama is bound to destroy America.

Who's Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a "freak" who's popular with "the tin foil hat crowd." Like with Poplawski, apparently.

Jones might be a "freak," but he has recently been embraced -- and mainstreamed -- by Fox News, as part of the news channel's unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America's democratic demise under the new president.

During a March 18 webcast of FoxNews.com's proudly paranoid "Freedom Watch," Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about "what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away." And with that, he welcomed onto the show "the one, the only, the great Alex Jones," who began ranting about "exposing" the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging "global government."

"I appreciate what you're exposing," Napolitano assured his guest.

Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News webcast viewers about Obama's "agenda" for "gun confiscation" and the new president's plan to "bring in total police-state control" to America.

Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News' Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. "It is great!" cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that "the Second Amendment is under fire.") Concluding the interview, Fox News' Napolitano announced "it's absolutely been a pleasure" listening to Jones' insights.

We don't know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones' star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on? By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.

Will Geithner Fire Corporate America

Will Geithner Fire Corporate America
Tim Geithner said on Sunday's Face the Nation that the Treasury might fire the heads of big banks that depend on financing from the federal government, just as it summarily deposed Rick Wagoner, the former CEO of General Motors -- and before Wagoner, the heads of AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac. "Where that requires a change in management and the board, then we will do that," said Geithner.

I suppose it's comforting to know our government stands ready to fire corporate executives and directors whenever taxpayer money is on the line. But I suspect Geithner's new tough line is mostly designed to reassure a public that's lost all faith in the wisdom of bailing out Wall Street.

For the sake of the argument, assume he's sincere. What criterion will an axe-wielding Geithner be using? If precipitous loss of shareholder value is enough to "require a change in management and the board," presumably every CEO and director of every big bank now being bailed out should be fired, starting with Ken Lewis of Bank of America.

If the criterion is diversion of taxpayer money to uses other than Congress intended when it first authorized the $700 billion bailout, the list of soon-to-be-fired CEOs is a bit shorter but still large. Surely it includes all the bailed-out banks that continue to fly their executives around the world in company jets, award them extraordinary pay packages, and run junkets at fancy resorts. Citigroup's Vikram Pandit (who collected $38.2 million for his taxpayer-subsidized services in 2008) comes immediately to mind.

Why stop there? Perhaps Geithner intends to fire executives and directors of any company that's dependent on taxpayers and is now losing money. Just think of the corporate house-cleaning this will mean. Hundreds of agribusiness executives are now at risk as are scores of military contractors. Hell, the whole pharmaceutical industry depends on taxpayer support (research subsidized by National Institutes of Health, sales subsidized through Medicare and Medicaid), and it's doing badly, so their executives and directors will be gone soon, too.

All told, about one out of every five large American companies depends on government contracts, and a majority of these firms are losing money right now.

Are Republicans Blackmailing Obama

Are Republicans Blackmailing Obama
If the president releases the Bush torture memos, Republicans are promising to “go nuclear” and filibuster his legal appointments. Scott Horton reports on a serious threat to Obama’s transparency.

Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principal reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.

Not a single Republican indicated an intention to vote for Dawn Johnsen, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas was described as “gunning for her,” specifically noting publication of the torture memos.

Barack Obama entered Washington with a promise of transparency. One of his first acts was a presidential directive requiring that the Freedom of Information Act, a near dead letter during the Bush years, was to be enforced according to its terms. He specifically criticized the Bush administration’s practice of preparing secret memos that determined legal policy and promised to review and publish them after taking office.

But in the past week, questions about Obama’s commitment to transparency have mounted. On April 2, the Justice Department was expected to make public a set of four memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, long sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations in a pending FOIA litigation. The memos, authored by then-administration officials and now University of California law professor John Yoo, federal appellate judge Jay Bybee and former Justice Department lawyer Stephen Bradbury, apparently grant authority for the brutal treatment of prisoners, including waterboarding, isolated confinement in coffin-like containers, and “head smacking.” The stakes over release of the papers are increasingly high. Yoo and Bybee are both targets of a criminal investigation in a Spanish court probing the torture of five Spanish citizens formerly held in Guantánamo; also named in the Spanish case are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other Bush lawyers. Legal observers in Spain consider the Bush administration lawyers at serious risk of indictment, and the memos, once released, could be entered as evidence in connection with their prosecution. Unlike the torture memos that are already public, these memos directly approve specific torture techniques and therefore present a far graver problem for their authors.

The release of the memos that the Senate Republicans want to suppress was cleared by Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counsel Greg Craig, and then was stopped when “all hell broke loose” inside the Obama administration, according to an article by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. Newsweek attributes internal opposition to disclosure of the Bush-era torture memos to White House counterterrorism adviser and former CIA official John O. Brennan, who has raised arguments that exposure of the memoranda would run afoul of policies protecting the secrecy of agency techniques and has also argued that the memos would embarrass nations like Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, which have cooperated closely with the CIA in its extraordinary renditions program. Few informed independent observers, however, find much to credit in the Brennan objections because the techniques are now well-known, as is the role of the cooperating foreign intelligence services—any references to which would in any event likely be redacted before the memoranda are released. Moreover, the argument that the confidence of those engaged in torture—serious criminal conduct under international and domestic law—should be kept because they would be “embarrassed” if it were to come out borders on comic.

The Justice Department source confirms to me that Brennan has consistently opposed making public the torture memos—and any other details about the operations of the extraordinary renditions program—but this source suggests that concern about the G.O.P.’s roadblock in the confirmation process is the principle reason that the memos were not released. Republican senators have expressed strong reservations about their promised exposure, expressing alarm that a critique of the memos by Justice’s ethics office (Office of Professional Responsibility) will also be released. “There was no ‘direct’ threat,” said the source, “but the message was communicated clearly—if the OLC and OPR memoranda are released to the public, there will be war.” This is understood as a threat to filibuster the nominations of Johnsen and Koh. Not only are they among the most prominent academic critics of the torture memoranda, but are also viewed as the strongest advocates for release of the torture memos on Obama’s legal policy team.

A Republican Senate staffer further has confirmed to me that the Johnsen nomination was discussed at the last G.O.P. caucus meeting. Not a single Republican indicated an intention to vote for Dawn Johnsen, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas was described as “gunning for her,” specifically noting publication of the torture memos.

No decision was taken at that Republican caucus meeting whether to filibuster or not, though Cornyn was generally believed to support filibustering Johnsen and potentially other nominees. Johnsen has met recently with moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, both of whom are being lobbied heavily by colleagues and religious right groups to oppose her nomination.

Both Koh and Johnsen are targets of sustained attacks coming from right-wing lobbying groups. The Daily Beast previously reviewed the attacks on Johnsen, while Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick has catalogued the recent attacks on Koh. Former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson recently endorsed the Koh nomination, calling the Yale dean “a man of great integrity.” But connecting the Obama nominations to the Bush torture memos escalates the conflict toward a thermonuclear level.

Scott Horton is a law professor and writer on legal and national-security affairs for Harper's magazine and The American Lawyer, among other publications.