Mitt Romney believes that his best line of attack is making the claim that he has not spent a moment as a D.C. politician while his two main opponents, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, are the combined epitome of the Washington insider. Yesterday, he added to this by pointing out that Speaker Gingrich and Senator Santorum both had a spend, spend, spend approach to governing thereby making the two lawmakers  “the very Republicans who acted like Democrats.”

This prompted a HuffPo reader to ask a straightforward question.

You mean… Newt and Rick believe in helping the middle class and poor, protecting the environmen­t, creating jobs, building our nation’s infrastruc­ture, improving education for our kids and basing science and history on actual truth?

To which I add; are truth and logic not beautiful things?

Of course they are.

(The source image for this illustration is a Creative Commons licensed image from photographer Gage Skidmore.)
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Frank Luntz, master of political communication professional liar, told a meeting of Republican Governors how deeply concerned he was about the impact Occupy Wall Street is having on political discourse and American’s view of capitalism. Imagine having people realize that capitalists don’t always have their best interests at heart. That would do serious damage to that ‘job creators’ image conservatives have so carefully crafted over the last while.

Luntz outlined his strategy on how conservatives should best deal with lie to and about the movement.  Chris Moody has the full list.

• Don’t say ‘capitalism.’:  “I’m trying to get that word removed and we’re replacing it with either ‘economic freedom’ or ‘free market,’ ” Luntz said. “The public . . . still prefers capitalism to socialism, but they think capitalism is immoral. And if we’re seen as defenders of quote, Wall Street, end quote, we’ve got a problem.”
• Don’t say ‘taxes the rich’:  “If you talk about raising taxes on the rich,” the public responds favorably, Luntz cautioned. But  ”if you talk about government taking the money from hardworking Americans, the public says no. Taxing, the public will say yes.”
• Don’t say ‘middle class’:  “They cannot win if the fight is on hardworking taxpayers. We can say we defend the ‘middle class’ and the public will say, I’m not sure about that. But defending ‘hardworking taxpayers’ and Republicans have the advantage.”
• Don’t say ‘entrepreneur’:  “Use the phrases “small business owners” and “job creators” instead of “entrepreneurs” and “innovators.”
• Blame Washington for everything:  Tell them, “You shouldn’t be occupying Wall Street, you should be occupying Washington. You should occupy the White House because it’s the policies over the past few years that have created this problem.”

Noam Chomsky, co-author of the 1988 book – Manufacturing Consent, understands only too well propaganda of this sort.

The question is whether privileged elite should dominate mass communication and should use this power as they tell us they must — namely to impose necessary illusions, to manipulate and deceive the stupid majority and remove them from the public arena. The question in brief, is whether democracy and freedom are values to be preserved or threats to be avoided. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than values to be treasured; they may well be essential to survival.

It all comes down to corporate interests (by way of media and politicians) manufacturing knowledge as a means to shape public opinion.  With the help of shameless politicos like Luntz, Republicans have mastered the art form.

On the bright side, the fact that Republicans feel they need a plan as manipulative and deceiving as the one outlined by Luntz tells you that OWS is making a difference.  The big boys are worried…and that’s a good thing.

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The Crusades – “valiant struggle” for a noble cause or a barbaric act of aggression against Muslims and Jews?  Rick Santorum knows where he stands on the issue.

“The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical,” Santorum said in Spartanburg on Tuesday. “And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom.”

“They hate Western civilization at the core. That’s the problem.”

No, the problem has to do with people like Santorum who have hijacked an entire religion and turned it into a political tool. Idiotic comments (“left hates Christendom” as if Christian liberals are non-existant) might sound good to an audience of dolts who learn about the world from the likes of Fox News but the words are little more than rhetorical dung eaten up with great joy by a base too clueless to know they’re being served shit.

As for Santorum’s thoughts on the Crusades, the only thing that is “anti-historical” is his comment.  The Crusades were an act of aggression lasting a few hundred years which targeted and killed thousands of non-Christians. Along the way, large numbers of Christians who were deemed to have served under Muslim rule were also slaughtered. The purpose of the Crusades had little to do with promoting or defending Christianity and everything to do with enriching both the Church and the ruling European nobility who sanctioned the killing and pillaging and plundering of thousands of innocent people.  The Crusades were one of the most despicable acts in history.

Having Santorum defend the Crusades is not unlike hearing people today defend the Iraq war as a noble mission of freeing an oppressed people. Yeah, right. Tell that story to the hundreds of thousands of innocent dead Iraqis who paid the ultimate price so Dick Cheney could have one of his orgasmic wet dreams fulfilled.

Lowlifes like Santorum love to chant that all men are created equal. What they leave out of their message is that “men” implies white, Christian and American. How dare them god-hating liberals cast the slaughter of brown people in a bad light. Aggression, you say? What aggression?

What’s next on the list for Santorum? Will he soon be defending the Inquisition and decrying how the left’s anti-historical, anti-Christendom and anti-Western civilization ideology has given death by burning a bad rap?

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How long before Republicans start asking for funds to have Ronald Reagan’s face carved out of granite alongside Lincoln’s on Mount Rushmore?  Conservative politicians appear unable to give a speech these days without mentioning the holy trinity of divine truth and wisdom: Reagan, God and the Founding Fathers.

A piece in yesterday’s Washington Post (Five myths about Ronald Reagan’s legacy) should be required reading for all conservatives.

…much of what today’s voters think they know about the 40th president is more myth than reality, misconceptions resulting from the passage of time or from calculated attempts to rebuild or remake Reagan’s legacy.

So what might some of those myths be?

1. Reagan was one of our most popular presidents.

His average approval rating during his eight years?  52.8 percent – lower than Lyndon Johnson, H. W. Bush and Clinton.

2. Reagan was a tax-cutter.

He raised taxes in 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987.  Who  got screwed? You guessed it – the middle class who “paid a higher percentage of their income in taxes when Reagan left office than when he came in.”

3. Reagan was a hawk.

He bombed Libya in 1986.  Before that?  Nothing.  After that? Nothing.

4. Reagan shrank the federal government.

Under Reagan…

a) Spending grew by an average of 2.5 percent a year.

b) National debt when Reagan took office: $700 billion. National debt when Reagan left office: $3 trillion.

c) Number of federal employees when Reagan took office: 2.8 million. Number of federal employees when Reagan left office: 3 million.

Ronald Reagan has to be the most over-rated president in American history. The man was a conservative with charisma, charm and a Hollywood background who would be unable to get the backing of today’s Tea Party. Reagan was weak on immigration, he tripled the national debt, raised taxes and grew government – not quite your teabagger’s cup of tea.

As for what the Reagan years represented, Bill Clinton had it figured out in 1991.

“The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

In the words of the Great One, tear down those myths!

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Conservative media, being led by those diligent “newshounds” at Fox, now feel they have the goods on the proposed Islamic center’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf for this remark he made in 2005.

“We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than Al Qaeda has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims,” said Imam Fiesal Abdul Rauf, speaking at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center during a question and answer session dedicated to what sponsors say was a dialogue to improve relations between America and the Muslim world.

“You may remember that the U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations,” said Rauf, who called himself a spokesman for Islam.

C&L’s David Niewart responds.

Now, one may or may not quibble with Rauf’s example — namely, the prewar sanctions against Iraq that Saddam indeed used as an excuse for letting his people starve.

But there’s no doubt that we have innocent Iraqi blood on our hands. At last count, the toll stood between 97,000-106,000 civilians killed in Iraq because we visited war on their country. In 2009 alone — a year in which the toll decreased — there were 4,644 civilian deaths recorded. So much for comparisons to the 3,000 killed on 9/11.

The American Prospect’s Adam Serwer further notes:

It’s very clear what Rauf is saying–that U.S. policies have contributed to misery in the Middle East and South Central Asia and that misery is a key ingredient in a very complicated stew from which radicalism spews forth. That conclusion is entirely uncontroversial in military and intelligence circles.

Niewart and Serwer are right but the damage has been done.  Led by Beck, Pamela Geller, Limbaugh and Fox, the right has set aim on destroying Rauf’s image as a moderate, bridge building Muslim.  It’s no longer a question of how close the Islamic center is to Ground Zero.  It’s now all about the integrity of the Imam himself.  They have cast Rauf as a jihadist villian, intent on destroying their beloved country.  Former Republican senator Rick Santorum…

My thinking was all along if he made the statements that he made, he probably had a lot more that are going to be found out. This man is not a moderate Muslim. This is someone who believes the United States has blood on their hands, that the United States is responsible for this. He is a jihadist, he’s just not a violent jihadist. That does not make him a moderate.

Rauf is a jihadist.  Obama is a Muslim.  Death panels are real.  ACORN stole the 2008 election.  Climate change is a hoax.  Islam is evil.  Up is down.  Down is up and pigs fly.

Anything and everything is possible in Wingnuttia.  It just needs to be repeated enough times.  And when the sheep start bleating loud enough, the deed is done.

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Rasmussen (the “Republican polling outfit” as Andrew Sullivan refers to them), put out another of their twisted polls which allowed them to make the following claim:

“Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide favor repeal of the recently passed health care law, including 49% who Strongly Favor repeal.”

In fact, this is what the poll of polls looks like when all polls by the key polling firms (including Rasmussen) are combined.

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Of course your typical poorly misinformed conservative joe will only hear about the Rasmussen poll and have no idea that it is the work of a fraudulent conservative stooge.  He’ll walk around thinking he’s got the lowdown on public sentiment regarding the health care plan.  He’ll tell his coworkers, family and friends while others will spend time on the blogs spewing out their nonsense.  They’ll get positive reinforcement from Fox, Republican politicians and all the regular suspects who will repeat the lie and within no time, the lie will be fact within conservative circles.

As unscrupulous as it all is, it works for them.

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The so-called liberal mainstream media is a funny bunch; ridiculed so frequently by the right, they bend over backwards in pursuit of false equivalence. Enter the B.P. Spill. The “Obama’s Katrina” theme did not have a long shelf life in the liberal mainstream, but the coverage maintains all of the same tones, asides, and recriminations that Katrina coverage created for Bush. And this friends, is completely ridiculous.

Let’s put this in context again; Katrina (and her full potential scope) was forecast some 10 days prior to the event. Competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA, should have begun preliminary assessments and identification of the assets needed for a worst case scenario. Katrina (and her full probable scope) was predicted 72 hours prior to landfall. At this point, knowing that the Gulf Coast between Eastern Texas and Pensacola were going to be hammered, competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA, should have begun assigning assets to teams, and begun the assembly of relief equipment and supplies at transshipment centers in range of the likely disaster areas. Katrina (and her actual scope within order of magnitude) were known by everyone watching the Weather Channel 24 hours prior to landfall. Competent management by the Presidential appointee in charge of FEMA would have the full mobilization of all assets, and reports to the President for mobilization of Guard units and other National Security assets should have been sent.

None of this happened.

When the Deepwater Horizon blew up on April 20, the fears were in regards to the 700,000 gallons of diesel on-board. Two days later, the world still thought that the wellhead was secure. Later, B.P. refused for several weeks the release of video monitoring the wellhead. Even so, assets of the U.S. government were on scene the day of the disaster. Their primary mission was the lives of the workers, with the secondary mission being the security of the environment. But this isn’t what the “liberal mainstream” is telling us. Obama, we are told, is ambivalent to the disaster. The President, we are informed, is refusing the help of foreign nations. He is every bit the elitist professor that we were warned about in the election. The story linked here, is a good example of the kind of libelous bullshit the media has been reporting. Read it carefully; under a headline and bullet describing Obama’s refusal of aid, and well past further descriptions of Obama’s refusal of aid, we find that OBAMA DID NOT REFUSE AID. The ability of some conservatives, and ALL conservative media outlets to lie is amazing to me. But, unfortunately, only slightly less amazing than the ability of the “liberal mainstream” to go with the theme. How hard is it for someone in the media to do this:

Should these two clauses be in the same story?

Four weeks after the nation’s worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

Later;

In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico’s marshes and beaches…In late May, the administration accepted Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway

Its all part of the same disingenuous line of thinking that has dominated the last few years in U.S. politics. The President has not been perfect, and some of his tactics are a mystery to me, but most of the headlines scream about stories with no basis in fact. And now we have a real disconnect between those who criticize the President, and the critics’ own motives. I have no problem with liberals who choose to complain about the President’s inability to fix the regulatory regime in his first 18 months. I think it is unrealistic and naive, but there is an integrity to the complaint that can’t be denied. Liberals, after all, WANT the government of we the people, to intervene in the marketplace. Conservatives, on the other hand, don’t want Big Brother in their business.

Conservatives need to shut their friggin mouths!

This disaster is the result of conservative philosophy. “Stay out of the market!” they screamed; for years. They fight regulations (at the federal level at least; conservatives love, as a rule, regulations at the state and local level), and when they can’t beat the regulations, they make sure the rules have no teeth. How many fines did Massey Energy either stall on appeal or pay out of petty cash? How many regulations did SEC and Fed regulators let slide leading into the collapse of the housing bubble? How much porn were regulators watching instead of inspecting the work done on Deepwater Horizon? No, I refuse to accept the bullshit that conservative talking heads are tongue-shoveling these days. Enough is enough!
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Michael Chase publiishes The Rational Middle

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We’re now at a time in political debate where asking a politician to clarify a controversial position they have taken on an important issue is immediately referred to as a “gotcha” tactic.  A number of conservatives have criticized Rachel Maddow for her Rand Paul interview.  Apparently, they feel that Maddow asking Paul to explain the statement he made on the limits of government in respect to the Civil Rights Act was unfair.

$arah Palin:

So you know, one thing that we can learn in this lesson that I have learned and Rand Paul is learning now is don’t assume that you can engage in a hypothetical discussion about constitutional impacts with a reporter or a media personality who has an agenda, who may be prejudiced before they even get into the interview in regards to what your answer may be — and then the opportunity that they seize to get you.

You know, they’re looking for that gotcha moment. And that’s what it evidently appears to be that they did with Rand Paul, but I’m thankful that he was able to clarify his answer about his support for the Civil Rights Act.

Palin’s comment is ludicrous.  First of all, Rand clarified nothing.  He made a statement he was unable and unwilling to defend.  Period.  Secondly, Palin is a woman who believes that a gotcha moment is being asked “what newspapers do you read” so her credibility on this topic (or any topic, really) is nil.

The bottom line here is that Paul made a statement to a newspaper which he wishes he never made – not because he doesn’t believe it but because he’s been made aware that it was controversial.  Radical beliefs have their consequences in national politics as Paul is now discovering (just ask the Arizona state legislature).  Trying to divert attention from loony tune beliefs by making ridiculous claims of unfair ‘gotcha’ moments only works on dimwits.  Which of course makes Palin’s comments on Fox totally effective.

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On the Wingnut Scale, (10 = Glenn Beck – hopelessly ignorant, 1 = David Frum – intelligent and reasonably sane), I give Joe Scarborough a 3.1.  He can crank out the right-wing talking points with the best of them but you also get a sense he’s a committed conservative you can actually talk to at times in a calm, rational manner.

Here’s Scarborough’s take on the Gulf oil spill being Obama’s Katrina.

“This Katrina analogy is absolutely obscene.  Anybody who draws that analogy is an idiot, and they’re obviously lurching for political points against an administration that’s given them many political points to take.”

Political points?  Of course!  When it comes to right-wing criticism of President Obama it’s almost always about political points.  It’s as if there’s a need to throw back at Obama every awful thing liberals ever said about Bush, whether it’s warranted or not.  They don’t care.  Just sling the muck and hope that some sticks.  Foxism, if you will.

Anyway, good for Joe on speaking some truth.

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John Cole runs down a partial list of right-wing beliefs.

-stem cell research is murdering babies

-Al Gore is a greater threat to America than climate change

-John Kerry is a war criminal and George Bush is a war hero

-liberals want to teach your kid to be gay

-liberals want to abort your baby

-the estate tax is the greatest infringement on human liberty ever-we can drill our way to energy independence

-you have to torture people in order to keep America safe

-liberals want to release terrorists into our cities

-only the second half of the first amendment and the second amendment count

-the more you cut taxes, the more money the government will take in

-free markets will handle everything

-evolution is just a “theory”

-liberals hate America

-ACORN stole the 2008 election

-lying about a blowjob is a serious crime, lying about a war is not

-Obama is a socialist Muslim Kenyan

While I’ll freely admit that not all conservatives adhere to every one of these beliefs, no one could honestly argue that prevalent conservative thinking, at least among the rank and file, is centered around these very notions.

So what does all this say about conservatives in general?  The easy response would be to label them all as bleepin’ morons – but that would be disingenuous.  As Cole points out, decades of right-wing BS by the conservative establishment in combination with a wingnut media whose very existence is based on distorting every issue liberals rally around, has led to a conservative base of badly informed individuals.  We saw it last summer at town hall meetings and we see it today at tea party hate-fests.  These sadly pathetic people are ignorant of the truth. They just don’t know it.

When Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are where you turn to for information, then you are doomed to live in a world where up is down and a liberal bogeyman hides behind every corner.  You are doomed to a world of ignorance and close-mindedness which has little room for either logic or compassion.  In essence, you have doomed yourself to a dark world of self-imposed autistic delusion.

It can’t be fun living in an alternate universe where unfounded hate, criticism, fear and distrust are the principles which guide your very existence.

I feel for you.  I really do.

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