brainiac conspiracy

Okay, Forget About the Birth Certificate . . .

For now we know that he was brought forth to summon locusts and frogs, to wreak famine and pestilence, and wailing and moaning and bottles of Bud Light gnashing of teeth, from the biblical land of Gog and Magog. Or Maui and Sumatra. Or Eagle Rock and Hyde Park, take your pick. Bwahahahahaha!!!

Let it not be said the Baron won't at least give the Devil his due.

This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.

Until now. One can hope.

---Vitelius

Another Compelling Reason Why Bipartisanship is a Pointless Waste of Time

Because if Republican political figures aren't making shit up, their astroturf operatives are:

As U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello was considering how to vote on an important piece of climate change legislation in June, the freshman congressman's office received at least six letters from two Charlottesville-based minority organizations voicing opposition to the measure.

The letters, as it turns out, were forgeries.

"They stole our name. They stole our logo. They created a position title and made up the name of someone to fill it. They forged a letter and sent it to our congressman without our authorization," said Tim Freilich, who sits on the executive committee of Creciendo Juntos, a nonprofit network that tackles issues related to Charlottesville's Hispanic community. "It's this type of activity that undermines Americans' faith in democracy."

The faked letter from Creciendo Juntos was signed by "Marisse K. Acevado, Asst Member Coordinator," an identity and position at Creciendo Juntos that do not exist.

This was not an isolated incident:

After being notified of the bogus Creciendo Juntos letter, staffers in Perriello's office realized that the wording of the letter sounded familiar.

The staffers dug through the stacks of thousands of letters, e-mails and faxes Perriello received about the bill -- the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 -- and found five more forged letters, these purportedly from the Albemarle-Charlottesville branch of the NAACP.

M. Rick Turner, president of the local NAACP branch, said he checked his organization's roster and found none of the five people who signed their name to the five faked letters.

The gang behind these letters have a long and storied history running this kind of operation:

Bonner & Associates wants legislators across the country to think average people fear the proposals will lead to higher prescription drug prices and fewer choices.

By joining with Bonner & Associates, the Consumer Alliance gets money and organizational help to spread its message. In exchange, PhRMA gets to hide its agenda behind a group that legislators might think is made up solely of consumers.

"It is seed money to work on this project, and it comes from the drug industry, and that is fine with us," said Donald Rounds, founder of the Consumer Alliance. "They saw we were working on this issue, and they said, 'Hey, can we work together on this issue and combine resources?' "

The campaign works like this:

From Washington, staffers at Bonner & Associates send faxes on Consumer Alliance letterhead to people identified from various databases. The letters do not mention the pharmaceutical industry or specific legislation but warn that signatures are needed to protect "poor children, adults and seniors."

The signatures, which were to be faxed to Bonner's Washington office, will be placed on petition letter to legislators.

Bruce Lott, a PhRMA spokesman, said the campaign is designed to educate people on the legislation. He denies that the pharmaceutical industry is trying to hide behind nonprofit organizations.

"There is no effort to disguise these things," Lott said. "It is just one tool you use in the process."<.p>

But when a reporter called the contact listed on the fax, Adam Rothwell, a receptionist answered the phone, "Grass-roots mobilization hot line."

When asked, Rothwell denied that he worked for Bonner & Associates and said the Consumer Alliance employed him. Bonner later acknowledged that Rothwell was one of his employees.

"It's low ball, and it's not playing by rules," said state Sen. Thomas L. Bromwell, a Baltimore County Democrat who sponsors one of the bills PhRMA opposes.

Yes, it's not playing by the rules. And in the case of the Perriello letters, it is also clearly against federal law.

Whoever, for the purpose of conducting, promoting, or carrying on by means of the Postal Service, any scheme or device mentioned in section 1341 of this title or any other unlawful business, uses or assumes, or requests to be addressed by, any fictitious, false, or assumed title, name, or address or name other than his own proper name, or takes or receives from any post office or authorized depository of mail matter, any letter, postal card, package, or other mail matter addressed to any such fictitious, false, or assumed title, name, or address, or name other than his own proper name, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

Attorney General Holder, your move.

Update: Think Progress has the full monte on these crooks. Once you've digested it, maybe it's time ask AG Holder why he shouldn't be looking into federal RICO violations as well.

---Vitelius

Why Bipartisanship is a Pointless Waste of Time

Because a majority of Republicans are Southerners. And a majority of Southerners are utterly batshit crazy.

This post from Cole was operational when it was written six months ago, and it's still operational today.

I really don't understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.

---Vitelius

Thursday Night Recipe Blog: The Baron'sSmoked Tasmanian Trout With Blueberry Sauce& Chipotle-Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

Sometimes I even amaze myself.

For The Sauce:
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 medium shallots, finely chopped
1 cup zesty red wine, such as a zinfandel
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup fresh blueberries

For The Potatoes:
1/4 cup chipotle chiles in adobo, juices reserved
1 tbsp oregano
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
1 lb Russian or banana fingerling potatoes, sliced into 1/2-inch cubes
Chopped cilantro for garnish

For the Fish:
4 medium Tasmanian trout or salmon filets, approx. 6 oz apiece
2 tsp alder wood chips
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped fresh dill for garnish

To make the sauce, add 1 tablespoon butter and the olive oil to a small saucepan over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the shallot and cook until translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the wine and vinegar, salt and pepper, and simmer over medium-low heat until reduced to a quarter cup, 15 minutes. Add the extra tablespoon butter and the blueberries; turn down the heat, and simmer gently until the butter has melted and the berries have heated through, 2 to 3 minutes.

To make the potatoes, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Add the chile and adobo sauce, oregano and lemon juice to the bowl of a food processor. Blend to a puree, adding the olive oil in a slow drizzle to form an emulsion. Correct the flavor as desired with salt and pepper. Place the potatoes in a roasting pan. Pour the adobo mixture over potatoes and toss thoroughly to coat all the pieces. Place the roasting pan on the middle rack in the oven and cook, turning every 5 minutes, until the potatoes are fork-tender, 20 minutes. Remove and allow to cool 2 minutes before serving. Garnish each portion with a cilantro spring or two at table as desired.

To make the fish, add the wood chips to the bottom of a stovetop smoker. Cover with the drip pan, then with the roasting rack. Position the smoker over two burners and turn the heat to high. When wisps of smoke can be seen rising from beneath the sides of the drip pan, season the fish with salt and pepper, and place skin-side down on the roasting rack. Cover, then reduce the flames on both burners to very low, smoking the fish until firm to the touch, 20 to 25 minutes. Serve the fish with a spoonful or two of the red wine-blueberry sauce, and garnish with the chopped dill. Serves 4 as a main course.

---Vitelius

Hump-Day You-Are-What-You-Vote Blog

For the life of me, I simply cannot understand the priorities of a legislative body that would require a two-thirds vote to pass a piece of food-safety legislation that:

Requires each food facility to: (1) conduct a hazard analysis; (2) implement preventive controls; and (3) implement a food safety plan.

Requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to: (1) issue science-based performance standards to minimize the hazards from foodborne contaminants; (2) establish science-based standards for raw agricultural commodities; (3) inspect facilities at a frequency determined pursuant to a risk-based schedule; (4) establish a food tracing system; (5) assess fees relating to food facility reinspection and food recall; and (6) establish a program for accreditation of laboratories that perform analytical testing of food for import or export.

Authorizes the Secretary to: (1) order an immediate cessation of distribution, or a recall, of food; (2) establish an importer verification program; and (3) quarantine food in any geographic area within the United States.

Defines the term "color additive" to include carbon monoxide that may affect the color of fresh meat, poultry products, or seafood.

Requires country of origin labeling on food and annual registration of importers.

Provides for unique identifiers for food facilities and food importers.

Deems a food to be adulterated if an inspection is delayed or refused.

Requires the Secretary to establish a corps of inspectors dedicated to inspections of foreign food facilities.

Sets forth provisions governing the reorganization of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) field laboratories and district offices.

Gives the Commissioner of Food and Drugs subpoena authority with respect to a food proceeding.

Establishes whistleblower protections.

But of course that's what happened, and naturally it fell just shy of the two-thirds vote needed for passage. Why was this done? So Democrats could seek bipartisan consensus with people like this?

"We don't need more government to create safe food," said California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes. "I think we've already proven that growing the government doesn't work."

Uh huh. Shrinking the government in the middle of a severe recession worked out so well the last time we tried it.

Now I realize the Dingell bill does not represent the Best of All Possible Worlds, that there are legitimate concerns regarding the potential cost of new regulations to be borne by small farmers and organic growers (not to mention concerns about the new FDA adviser who may be consulting Commissioner Hamburg on enforcement protocols), and that a two-thirds vote for passage precludes the possibility of watering down the legislation with an endless array of amendments. But H.R. 2749 is a big step in the right direction for food safety, so if the Republicans want to spam up the bill with amendments, let them. Pelosi, Hoyer et al can limit debate on each amendment to a very short time, vote all of them down, then get on to a simple majority vote. Now they will have to slog through an obstructionist GOP amendment-fest next week anyway that will surely be aimed at running out the clock until the summer recess.

And there are some amendments, come to think of it, that are altogether worthy of debate, and outright passage. So why not get it over and done with today?

---Vitelius

Question of The Day

I wonder which part of himself Barack Obama hates.

---Vitelius

Not Dead, Just Smelling Funny

This column is really revealing, though not in the way its author surely intended:

There was a time when I would have jumped at the chance for an exclusive interview with the president of the United States and would have watched with immense interest or great anxiety if his visage appeared on the screen. It meant war or price controls or maybe a refusal to seek another term. Presidents once were awesome figures, and just to interview one of them was enough to win a Pulitzer Prize.

In truth, I did not seek an exclusive interview with the president of the United States not only because I wanted to write something that would be noticed but also -- actually mainly -- because I feared that if I did get an exclusive interview I would be expected to ask him something about health-care reform, about which I know next to nothing. What was worse, despite reading six newspapers a day, watching cable news shows, network news shows, the News Hour and being online all the livelong day, I could not fathom what the president wants to do with health care. I suppose this is all my fault since, I learn from reading my e-mails, almost everything is.

As far as I could figure out, the president turned over health-care reform to about 24 committees of the House and about eight committees of the Senate, and they have all come up with plans that simultaneously sell out to the private sector and yet somehow socialize medicine . . . as we know it. They are also partisan, nonpartisan, bipartisan (don't ask, don't tell) and in the out years -- and at the end of the day -- mind-numbingly boring. I am thinking outside the box here.

Well golly. This Obama guy and all his complex and nuanced policy stuff, it's all soooooo boring. Only a fool or a Frenchman -- or a guy who's young enough to be my grandkid -- would care enough to actually spend some time trying to learn something about a complicated subject, and use the power of the written word to attempt to explain it to a bamboozled readership in search of some answers. I'm confused, you're confused, copa-copa, eh?

Just remember: journalism is hard work. And those rogue bloggers are an affront to honest reporting.

Exhibit B for lowering the mandatory retirement age:

Americans are familiar with -- if not altogether comfortable about -- unelected officials exercising great authority over our lives. The nine justices on the Supreme Court and hundreds of other jurists exert their power from the bench. The economy is managed by the Federal Reserve Board, though no one ever forced Alan Greenspan or Ben Bernanke to campaign for a vote.

If President Obama has his way, another such unelected authority will be created -- a manager and monitor for the vast and expensive American health-care system. As part of his health-reform effort, he is seeking to launch the Independent Medicare Advisory Council, or IMAC, a bland title for a body that could become as much an arbiter of medicine as the Fed is of the economy or the Supreme Court of the law. . .

Congress will have to decide if it is willing to yield that degree of control to five unelected IMAC commissioners. And Americans will have to decide if they are comfortable having those commissioners determine how they will be treated when they are ill.

I can't imagine anything more undemocratic, can you? This smacks of the kind of totalitarianism, the loss of our rights, the freedom to choose our own doctors that Beck and Rush have been warning us so fervently about. I say, let freedom ring!

So, Mr. President, I write to you with this demand: we are not a socialist country, one which believes the health of its citizens should come without the proper profit-loss determinations. I believe that my healthcare decisions should be between me, my insurance company plan, my insurance company's list of approved doctors I am allowed to see and treatments I am allowed to get, my insurance company's claims department, the insurance company doctors who have never met me, spoken to me or even personally looked at my files, my own preexisting conditions, my insurance company's crack cost-review and retroactive cancellation and denial squads, my insurance company's executives and board of directors, my insurance company's profit requirements, the shareholders, my employer, and my doctor.

And remember, my friends: bloggers will be the death of respectable journalism in this country.

---Vitelius

Monday Night Foodie Blogging:The Baron's Deconstructed Paella

Yes, amigos, there are more ways to cook this classic Spanish dish than the typical method of toss-the-meat-and-veggies into the pot, add rice, liquid, stir, rinse and repeat. There's a whole new breed of chefs in Espana these days, as you surely know, who do all kinds of wild and wacky things with their native grub, so I thought I'd take my own stab at an original, though I owe a certain debt of gratitude to the CIA for the inspiraton behind this one. No, not that CIA.

THE BARON'S DECONSTRUCTED PAELLA

24 medium prawns, peeled and deveined
Juice of 8 medium limes
3 tbsp chipotle chile powder

1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 medium plum tomatoes, stemmed and loosely chopped
1 large yellow onion, peeled, ends removed, cut into thin half rings
1 large clove garlic, unpeeled

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup diced jamon serrano
1 cup arborio, bomba or oher short-grain rice
Pinch of saffron
3 cups spicy red wine, such as a good quality Rioja
1/4 cup frozen peas, defrosted
1/4 cup fresh or frozen corn, defrosted
Salt and pepper to taste

24 medium prawns, shelled and deveined
12 medium asparagus spears, trimmed, lower parts peeled, cut in half crosswise
1 medium sweet bell pepper, peeled and seeded, cut lengthwise into thin strips

Diced pimentos and cilantro for garnish

Place the prawns, lime juice and chile powder in a glass bowl. Stir to combine. Then cover and allow to marinate 45 to 50 minutes while you cook the remainder of the dish.

In a small saucepan, add the tablespoon of olive oil, then the onions. Cook over low heat until the onions have turned golden brown, 5 minutes. Add the tomatoes and garlic clove, and continue cooking, uncovered, over very low heat until the tomatoes and onions have cooked down to form a sofrito, approximately 30 minutes. Set aside. Remove the garlic clove and allow to cool.

In a paella pan or wok over medium-low heat, add the 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Add the ham and cook, stirring frequently, 5 to 7 minutes or until the ham has started to brown. Peel and slice the reserved garlic clove into thin slices and add to the pan, stirring until fragrant, 1 minute. Add the rice, then the sofrito, and stir to combine until the rice has absorbed all the liquid in the pan, approximately 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste along with the saffron. Add the wine, bring to a boil, then turn the heat down to low and cook, uncovered, 20 minutes or until the rice has absorbed all the liquid, approximately 20 minutes, stirring occasionally as needed. Add more liquid as needed if the rice seems too toothy to the taste. Two minutes before serving, add the corn and peas, folding in to heat through.

10 minutes before serving, preheat a charcoal grill or griddle pan. When very hot, add the asparagus spears and pepper slices. Grill, turning occasionally, 5 to 7 minutes.

Drain the prawns from their marinade, pat dry, then add to the grill, cooking 3 minutes per side until nicely browned.

To assemble the dish, place spoonfuls of the rice mixture in a timbal or small mixing bowl to form a circular mound, then set face-down on a dinner plate. Arrange the prawns and grilled vegetables around the rice. Garnish with pimentos and cilantro. Serves 4 as a main course.

---Vitelius

The Origin of Feces

Millions of words have been composed, and countless megabytes of RAM consumed, by intelligent and perceptive folks such as Greenwald, Digby and countless others (self included) on the subject, but this fella distills all of it down to base metal in only five minutes---reminding us that the Birthers, like the Swift Boaters, Gore-bashers and Whitewater fantasists who came before them, could not have survived and thrived as they have without the aid of a complicit and lazy national newsmedia. Something tells me Charles Peters won't be back on MSNBC anytime soon.

---Vitelius

Pest Control Made Simple

I've had plenty of gripes with Chris Mathews over the years, but it certainly seems as though he has taken it upon himself in recent days to wage a principled smackdown campaign against the Birther Brigade, and more power to him if he keeps it up. This beautiful exchange shows exactly how you deal with felonious little cockroaches like G. Gordon Liddy: you can spray, you can fumigate, you can set out traps, but the only proven way to get rid of the pests is to stomp them. CNN, are you paying attention?

---Vitelius

Gotta-Read of the Day: Racial Profiling Edition

This really is home-run blogging, the kind of thing that makes you say, Damn, I wish I'd have written this:

Isn't it notable that six months into his presidency, the most prominent advocacy President Obama has done on behalf of minorities mistreated by police is to stand up for his Ivy League buddy? Somehow I imagine that Professor Gates would've fared just fine absent help from Harvard's most prominent alumnus.

Whereas if President Obama spoke up at a press conference on behalf of people wrongly imprisoned due to "testimony" by police dogs, or advocated for those sexually assaulted by an officer, or spoke against prosecutors who block access to DNA testing, or called out the officer who choked a paramedic, or objected to the practice of police killing family pets, or asked the Innocence Project for a clear cut case of injustice to publicize...

The cynic might also add, "and spoke out on behalf of inmates held indefinitely without charge and subjected to torture at Bagram." But I digress.

Friedersdorf wraps it up:

I understand, of course, that Pres. Obama was asked about Henry Louis Gates, which is also part of the problem. Wrongly arrest a black men who happens to be a Harvard professor, release him without filing charges, and the national press corps asks the president to comment. Wrongly imprison for years on end a black man who happens to be working class and without celebrity, and the national press corps continues to utterly ignore a criminal justice system that routinely convicts innocent people. Apportioning blame for this sorry state of affairs isn't as important as recognizing that the news we get on these matters reflects a value system that is seriously flawed, and that news consumers bear blame for too.

---Vitelius

Wager of The Day

I've got a fiver says that somebody at the AP or Politico reminds us before the newsweek is out that this is more bad news for Democrats. Because it always is.

---Vitelius

Suppose They Gave a Tax Hike and Nobody Cared

Conor Friedersdorf, pinch-hitting for Sullivan this week, weighs in with a modest proposal on the "tax the rich" debate:

Rather than raise taxes on the richest Americans, why not pass a law that freezes them out of receiving federal largesse?

Whether measured by income or net worth, those falling above a certain threshold could be means tested out of Social Security, Medicare, farm subsidies, the ability to deduct interest paid on their mortgage, federal higher education grants and subsidized loans for their children, NEA grants, vouchers to subsidize the cost of transitioning to digital televisions, etc.

That’s a terrific idea, as far as it goes, and one that Democrats in Washington should be emphasizing with greater frequency than simply “tax the rich.” I’ve never understood why so many Democratic leaders have been so averse to the possibility of establishing a “means test” for entitlements such as Social Security. Does a guy like Warren Buffett, for instance, really “need“ an $1,800 Social Security check each month? The answer has always seemed obvious to me---it certainly makes more sense, and is a helluva lot more humane, than raising the retirement age to 67 (the other most commonly suggested "fix" for Social Security).

On the other hand, I doubt whether very many wealthy people have needed federal aid to convert their 30-year-old rabbit-ear TV sets to receive digital signals.

What the real issue boils down to, I think, is how we frame the taxation argument---more accurately, what kinds of taxes we choose to raise, and how we explain this to the average voter. Income taxes are, along with the gas tax, probably the one federal tax that everyone can relate to since nearly everyone pays at least some tax to the feds from their income. And since the difference between the top and bottom brackets simply isn't all that vast anymore, a upper-margin increase on the wealthiest quintile of wage-earners---those 39-percenters---is easy for Republicans to portray as a looming threat to the livelihoods of all those middle-class wage-earners who are doling out 28 percent.

On the other hand, there are other types of taxation that are not going to be perceived by most people as being as directly invasive and threatening as an income-tax increase because (1) most people never need to worry about paying them, and (2) we’re not really talking about “raising” taxes here, merely restoring them to their historical (pre-Bush era) levels. The estate tax, for instance, affects only 2 percent of all inherited wealth, and merely rolling back the estate tax to 2001 levels would raise an estimated $45 billion in revenues each year. Yeah, that's nearly half of what it would supposedly take to implement the Waxman-Markley plan, all by itself. Also, since income on capital gains and dividends---which form a larger percentage of personal income among the extremely well-off---is taxed at a much lower rate (15%) than income, simply restoring the pre-Bush (20%) rate on capital gains would yield another $10 billion annually.

Neither of these taxes are singularly intrusive on the lives of most Americans---that's why repeated GOP ploys to abolish them over the years have largely fallen on deaf ears. And if Democrats merely re-frame the argument over these tax adjustments as rolling back the Bush tax cuts which gave us record deficits, rather than simply taxing the rich, it's going to be that much harder for Republicans to defend keeping them down, particularly when Democrats remind the voters (ahem) that the people who are most affected by these increases---and in the case of capital gains, almost the only people affected---are the same folks who are awarding themselves multimillion-dollar performance bonuses on Wall Street right now.

And let’s not forget the corporate income tax, either. Corporate revenues constitute only 7.4% of all federal tax receipts, a historic low not equaled since 1934 and only 1.3% of total GDP. Simply re-adjusting the corporate tax upward to a level of 2% of GDP---as it was throughout the 1990s, which, last I can recall, wasn’t too bad a decade for business---would yield some $70 billion in added annual revenues.

And, oh yeah, we can also get the hell out of Iraq before 2011. Annual cost savings: $80 billion.

The money to pay for universal health care is there. It's been there all along. What's needed is the courage to rustle it up, and the ability to explain to the American people that a 20-percent rate on capital gains won't turn America into some Socialist hellhole. It will be interesting to see how Obama tries to reset the debate tonight.

---Vitelius

I Saw the Worst Minds of My GenerationDestroyed By Madness, Starving Hysterical NakedDragging Themselves Through the Negro Streets

This really bears watching. The victim speaker at the podium is Mike Castle, an uncontroversial Republican Congressman from Delaware who was fielding questions from constituents at a town hall in Georgetown.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. Think Progress has a longer excerpted video of the event here, and among other "questions" put to Castle were:

Do you have any idea what that cap and trade tax thing, bill that you passed is going to do to the Suffolk County poultry industry? That's how chicken houses are heated, with propane. It outputs CO2. I mean, I'm outputting CO2 right now as I speak. Trees need CO2 to make oxygen! You can't tax that!

I showed you, I had in my email to you numerous times there are petitions signed by 31,000 scientists that that know and have facts that CO2 emissions have nothing to do and the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with global warming. It's all a hoax! First of all, I cannot for the life of me understand how you could have been one of the eight Republican traitors!

The [swine flu] virus was built and created in Fort Dix, a small bioweapons plant outside of Fort Dix. This was engineered. This thing didn't just crop up in a cave or a swine farm. This thing was engineered, the virus. Pasteur International, one of the big vaccine companies in Chicago, has been caught sending AIDS-infected vaccines to Africa. Do you think I trust -- I don't trust you with anything. You think I'm going to trust you to put a needle full of dead baby juice and monkey kidneys? Cause that's what this stuff is grown on, dead babies!

John Cole sees it as a evidence of reactionary withdrawal pangs.

I am concluding that something is going on in the wingoverse. I don't know if it's that they've gotten more rabid now that they're out of power or if they just feel freer to express their crazy ideas now that they're out of power. There's no question that having no power and thus no responsibility gives you a sense that you can say any loony thing you want with no repercussions. But at the same time, feeling that you're powerless can increase your actual crazy quotient.

Marc Ambinder, via Cole, sees it as a potentially enormous problem for the GOP:

Rush Limbaugh claimed today that Obama "has yet to prove that he's a citizen." Republicans have to be extra careful. If they give credence to the birthers, they're (not only advancing ignorance but also) betraying the narrowness of their base. If they dismiss this growing movement, they might drive birthers to find more extreme candidates, which will fragment a Republican political coalition.

This is true enough, as far as it goes, but considering how much ammo and how many guns these fruitcakes are gobbling up---combined with a not-so-stealthy GOP gambit to enshrine concealed carry as the law of the land---I think these people pose a potentially huge political problem, and an equally huge national security problem, for all of us for the foreseeable future. For now, they may be easily marginalized, but if some charismatic dingbat with ready access to the national newsmedia should become their anointed TV spokesmodel, God help us all.

Needless to say, I hope my fears prove to be utterly groundless, but we have been here before, with a major political party in jeopardy of being overrun by crazy people and being driven to a state of mass hysteria---and the last time we traveled this road, things didn't end too well.

---Vitelius

Wingding Talking Point of the Day

President Obama: Gutting our military. How long do you think it'll take 'em to get it in circulation?

As it turns out, not long at all.

---Vitelius

He Also Knew What the Hell He Was Talking About

Robert Wright, pinch-hitting for Andy this week, weighs in on Cronkite:

I think one reason Cronkite looks so appealing compared to todays' anchors is that he got into TV news at a time when everyone who was getting into TV news had come from some other medium (both print and radio in Cronkite' case). As a result: (a) they, and he, hadn't been admitted to the journalistic profession on the basis of looks, and so didn't have the oddly credibility-sapping attractiveness of some modern anchors; (b) having come from radio, Cronkite looked like a guy who was just un-self-consciously reading the news, as opposed to a guy doing a slightly oversized impersonation of someone reading the news. Of course, he had a quasi-captive audience--he was one of only three choices in the known universe (and the one always chosen in my household)--and that probably made it easier to feel secure in his authenticity.

While there's obvious validity to the "captive audience" argument---sources of news in Walter's heyday were far more limited than they are today---I think this post misses the larger and most salient point. It should be remembered that Cronkite came to TV (and radio) originally by way of print---specifically the United Press, for which he wrote as a war correspondent and, later, as an overseas reporter, for over a decade before going into radio. Which is to say, he was a news writer before he became a news reader. He wrote most of his own copy for the Evening News at CBS for years; he edited the work of nearly every other reporter whose work appeared on his broadcast; and as managing editor, he was tasked with deciding what ran, and what didn't, and what length each story merited in airtime. These facts alone set him apart from virtually every network news anchor working today.

David Gregory isn't a shitty and shallow anchorman because he's handsome---he's a shitty and shallow anchor because his profession no longer requires people like him to spend years of their time cultivating the intellectual rigors, the powers of discernment, and the acuity of judgment that in Cronkite's time were prerequisites to promotion to a major-league anchor chair. That's not Gregory's fault per se---he's merely a reflection of the shifting priorities of his chosen profession, which no longer perceives TV news as meritorious in its own right but only as an adjunct of a network entertainment division. When you start recruiting your anchors from the Today Show or CBS This Morning instead of, oh, say, a newsroom, lightweights like David Gregory are the inevitable result.

---Vitelius

They Saved Reagan's Brain

The ever-steadfast and resolute Steve Benen has a marvelous post up at the Monthly today chronicling the conservative movement's 50-year struggle to boil down the complex and multilayered debate over health care reform into one simple aphorism, to be repeated ad nauseum until the end of all times: The passage of liberal social legislation will mark the end of our freedoms.

Ahhh, but in 2009, such lines of logic aren't only elucidated over health care. Take the stimulus package, for instance:

In Obama's new stimulus package, $600 million to address -- and I'm quoting -- to address shortages and prepare our country for universal healthcare. This goes back to what I told you before: They are going to take this country by dribs and drabs. If you want to have an open debate about healthcare, then let's do it. If you want to say, "I want to be a socialist country," then let's have that conversation. But that's not the way it's happening. They are just taking it from you at night. Your freedoms, your economic freedom, the idea of capitalism, the idea that you control your own life and you make your own decisions, it's all going away . . .

The Fairness Doctrine? Yep, the death of liberty as we know it.

So you see that wherever you look, whether it's global warming, whether it's the Fairness Doctrine, it doesn't matter, there is an all-out attempt here to snuff out as much individual liberty as possible. It's been going kind of slow, like a trickle effect so that people haven't really noticed it. The people losing their liberty have. But it's been very, very gradual over years. This is going to be a giant grab of federal power, if these people get everything they want in the upcoming election.

The AmeriCorps program?

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

That's what's scary about the the Birther people, as laughable as their agenda is. They have a lot of well-connected company in today's Republican Party.

---Vitelius

Birth of a (Paranoid) Notion

Good to see this bit of journalistic pushback this morning from Dave Weigel at the Washington Indepedent today, putting the onus for the psychotic Birther Movement on the proper group of people. I also couldn't help but notice this bit of Grade-A concern trollery contained in it:

The urban legend has become too pervasive for Republicans to avoid. In February, Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) introduced a much-mocked bill that would require presidential campaigns to provide "a copy of the candidate's birth certificate." While Posey initially said that he disbelieved conspiracy theories about the president's birth, he told the host of an Internet radio show that he'd discussed the possibility of Obama being removed from office over "the eligibility issue" with "high-ranking members of our Judiciary Committee." As of July 15, nine fellow Republican members of Congress were backing the bill. While Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) has said that he supports the bill because he didn't know whether Obama was a citizen, other sponsors say that they weighed in to pour cold water on the conspiracy theories.

"It's a good idea," said John Donnelly, a spokesman for Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.), who became one of the bill's co-sponsors this month. "If candidates provided that information to the Federal Election Commission you wouldn't have all this hullaballoo. You don't want to needlessly expose presidents to crazy conspiracy theories. (Emphasis added.)

Oh goodness no, we'd never resort to such paranoid conspiracy-mongering. We just want to clear the air.

Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) is still tilting at windmills, or large fruit as it were. Burton, whose infamous conspiracy theories during the Clinton years earned him the nickname "Watermelon Dan," is at it again.

Last night he tried to offer one of the wackier amendments to the legislative branch appropriations bill -- a measure that would order a cost benefit analysis of building a transparent shield around the House chamber to protect members from getting killed.

"What this bill does is it would authorize a study to look at enclosing the chamber, the gallery chamber, with Plexiglas so that somebody can't throw a bomb down on the floor and kill a lot of us," Burton explained in testimony before the House Rules Committee.

The committee, which sets debate time and decides which amendments may be made in order to legislation on the House floor, rejected Burton's measure despite the terrifying, albeit remote, possibility he described.

In making his case before the Rules Committee, Burton laid out in great detail - in a public meeting, for the record -- how a terrorist "could come in and kill half of the members of Congress right now."

First, he said, you strap 10 pounds of explosives around your waist. "You could take a detonating device that looks like a watch so you could get through the metal detector," Burton said. "And when everybody was on the floor, as many as you wanted, you could put that into the plastic explosive, toss it out on the floor, and there is no way you would lose half of us if we were on the floor, at least, or more. I don't know how much damage it would do" . . .

Burton, for those who don't recall, is the lawmaker who was so determined to prove Vince Foster was murdered that he reenacted the crime he imagined, with a gun in his backyard and a cantaloupe standing in for Foster's head. And this is where we'd like to correct the historical record once and for all.

Many accounts of the incident say Burton used a pumpkin; others say it was a watermelon. But a former aide to the congressman assures the Sleuth that Burton used a cantaloupe to try to disprove Foster's suicide, which makes sense, since the melon is much closer to the size of a human head than either a watermelon or a pumpkin.

Before you start chuckling too heartily, go out and score a copy of Dave Niewert's The Eliminationists. In it, he describes in fairly comprehensive detail the process by which paranoid right-wing propaganda memes get transmitted from the Patriot fringe through selected media arms and into our mainstream discourse---in this case, the US House of Representatives. It is happening again with the Birthers and their thinly veiled message of a foreign takeover of our government, and we will need more coverage such as Dave Weigel's---and from our major dailies and networks, too---if we're ever to keep these clowns relegated to the fetid, .50-caliber fever-swamp from whence they emerged. As Digby reminds us:

This sideshow is ridiculous, of course. But it would be foolish to forget that the Paula Jones case was too.

---Vitelius

What It Took

How network news anchors used to cover their stories:

We were in Hue after a ride in on open truck full of replacements through very much contested territory during which one young marine looked up, saw Walter in flak jacket and helmet and said as only a Marine could, "Fuck, if Cronkite is here, this must be big." When it came time to bed down, the question was where? I said I was taking the film crew to the safest place I knew which was the stone basement of Hue University. Be a helluva rocket to get us there was clear but it was going to mean a stone floor for a bed and Meals Ready to Eat coffee heated in canteen cups for breakfast. Our military escorts (Walter was very well escorted) offered up a tent with cots and blankets in a relatively secure somewhat rear area that came with a hot breakfast.

Walter had none of it. "You guys," he said to his more senior producers, "can go, but I'm going with those guys" meaning us and he did. Slept on the floor. Flinched at the sound of incoming and outgoing with the rest of us. Hated the coffee but thanked us for it and he experienced the war at the Grunt's level and it made his reporting what it was as did the only ride possible out of Hue. It was on a Marine helicopter the crew and I helped load with dead Marines. He wanted to experience it and wasn't afraid to do what it took.

How network news anchors cover stories now:

If Walter Cronkite had worked under today's code of broadcast ethics, he'd never need to leave New York, he'd never need to spend a minute learning the particulars of foreign policy, and he'd be practically compelled to make snarky asides about Kosygin and Brezhnev while Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

---Vitelius

Profound Insight of The Day

In the course of my lifetime, we have gone from Cronkite and Chancellor and Peter Jennings, to Wolf and David Gregory and Chris Wallace. If that sound you hear wheezing out of the back of your teevee reminds you of the death rattle of network news, that's because it is:

Update: Greenwald, as always, nails it.

---Vitelius