Consider this post a follow-up to the one below.

The message reproduced to the right comes from Zero Hedge. One can, of course, find many similarly inane comments scattered throughout blogland.

This particular example of inanity stands out because the outrageous contradiction on display here illustrates a much larger problem. This fellow considers himself a "Born Patriot" yet identifies himself with an image of the Confederate flag.

Ron Paul has, at times, spoken in favor of secession. If ever he were to provide "aid and comfort" to any serious attempt to bring about secession, he should be tried and executed under Article Three, section 3 of the United States Constitution. Yet his supporters label themselves patriots.

At this writing, Paul will probably win second place in the New Hampshire primary. I don't expect much from the Republicans -- but is it really too much to ask the party of Lincoln to favor the concept of maintaining the union under any and all circumstances? Apparently so. (As we shall see, some alleged "liberals" also have no problem rationalizing Paul's treasonous instincts.)

What have we come to? What would Honest Abe think about Paul's popularity?

Modern conservatives are a contradictory bunch: They continually threaten to upend the very ideals they claim to cherish.

A few days ago, we looked at the ultra-conservative wing of the Catholic church. We noted that the people who bray loudest about their loyalty to the papacy are also the ones who, if they don't get their way, are the likeliest to join a schismatic movement. Similarly, the tea partiers proclaim their loyalty to the founding fathers even as they continually threaten to take up arms against an elected government, should that government do things unapproved by the libertarians. Sometimes the baggers make that threat in a sly and subtle fashion; sometimes (as in the case of Sharron Angle), they can be overt. But the threat remains, always there, lingering in the air.

Let's give this threat its proper name: Fascism.

The Confederacy -- revered by the Paulites -- was the first attempt at a fascist government: A one-party plutocracy founded on slavery and fueled by appeals to the most irrational aspects of the human psyche. The libertarians who molded Ron Paul's thinking admired fascists like Mussolini and Pinochet. These ideologues also tend to admire Joe McCarthy, who came to prominence by defending the Nazi perpetrators of the Malmedy massacre, and whose political mentors had pre-war records as fascist sympathizers.

Yet libertarian propagandists try to convince naive youngsters that FDR was pro-fascist...!

On the left side of the aisle, the situation is almost as bad. I loathe and decry the recent attempts by Glenn Greenwald, Matt Stoller and others to make Ron Paul palatable to liberals. Stoller is a particularly vile revisionist historian:

As the New Deal era model sheds the last trappings of anything resembling social justice or equity for what used to be called the middle class (a process which Tom Ferguson has been relentlessly documenting since the early 1980s), the breakdown will become impossible to ignore.

My god. What an absurdity. What indefensible and ludicrous propaganda.

FDR, following in the footsteps of the preceding generation's progressive movement, created the middle class. You can't hold the New Deal responsible for the attacks on the middle class that began only after Reaganites did everything they could to dismantle the New Deal. That's like blaming Sharon Tate for the Manson family murders.

Stoller claims that the New Deal was based on "warmongering." Back in FDR's day, that idea would have made sense only to someone like Robert McCormack. Or to William Randolph Hearst. Or to the Bund. Or to the fascist sympathizers who later went on to found the John Birch Society. Yes, Naked Capitalism is flirting with Birchism, and there's no point in pretending otherwise. Even as he extols the virtues of Paul, the young and ambitious Stoller (who was, of course, a fervent Obot just three short years ago) trashes the memories of Lincoln, FDR and and Woodrow Wilson in terms that would make perfect sense to a Glenn Beck aficionado.

Stoller blames World War II on Roosevelt and the Civil War on Lincoln. Not so long ago, one would have encountered these sentiments only in pro-fascist fringe periodicals. How much distance separates Stoller from, say, William Dudley Pelley? Or George Lincoln Rockwell? Or Eustace Mullins (who also wanted to end the Fed)? Or the folks who gave us The Thunderbolt and Angriff Press? Stoller may not be a racist, but his penchant for fascist-friendly historical revisionism places him in evil company.

Hell, even The Spotlight played it more coy. Perhaps I should revise my "flirting with Birchism" remark: Comparisons to the JBS are too soft to describe what Stoller is up to. I've read some back issues of American Opinion. Absurd as they were, they weren't this absurd.

Yet this guy gets published in The Nation...!

It is true that one wing of the fractured libertarian movement denounced Bush's atrocious war in Iraq. That factor explains why so many lefties have come to sympathize with Paul. But even in 2004 and 2005, I warned anti-war liberals against making common cause with the libertarians. What the followers of Ludwig von Mises want to do to the U.S. (and to the rest of the world) would make Dubya's attack on Baghdad seem comparatively gentle and kind.

Too many alleged leftists claim to be "too liberal for Obama" while simultaneously attacking the New Deal or offering rationalizations for libertarianism (which is just another word for plutocracy). Just like our friend "Born Patriot," these people have twisted themselves into living contradictions. Permalink

These days, saddled as we are with a lousy president who calls himself a Democrat, I find it hard to come up with reasons to call myself a Democrat.

Perhaps my motivation for continuing to use that label comes down to this: Most Democrats still feel comfortable in the real world. If you talk to a Democrat about an Obama policy you find detestable -- the refusal to renegotiate NAFTA, the continuation of a hopeless war in Afghanistan -- your verbal sparring partner will probably accept your premise, even if he or she does not agree with you. The two of you will share a foundational reality.

Moreover, your verbal sparring partner probably will not attempt to distract you with myths, anti-issues and hallucinated pseudo-problems. A blinkered Obama supporter (yes, there are a few left) may make you grit your teeth and clench your fist, but at least he won't start talking about a war on Christmas.

By contrast, consider these words from Skydancing:

Yes, it’s that time of year when Republicans try to convince us that everything old, disproved, and thrown out is shiny, patriotic and new again. Angry sky gods, debunked scientific hypotheses, and myth trump rule of law, science, and reason.

The Economist must feel that we are so confused about the role of religion in the founding of our country, that they must to show us and the rest of the world that our founding fathers weren’t fundamentalist crusaders. They have a special Religion in America section up about how the founders were trying to avoid having Rick Santorum moments.

Modern fundamentalists are rewriting history in the same way they like rewriting science. They place dinosaurs and modern people in their garden of Eden panoramas. Some now argue that the founders didn’t like “Darwinism” which wasn’t even around at that time Of course, that doesn’t stop Texas putting that kind’ve nonsense in textbooks. This also explains Michelle Bachmann’s odd notion that the founding fathers fought against slavery.

Well put. (Except for that "kind've.")

Another example of reheated nonsense popping up in the current Republican primaries is Ron Paul’s obsession This is a completely debunked set of economic philosophies and musings roughly associated with Fredich Hayek who had a few good ideas about the pricing mechanisms of the market that were completely contorted by some fascists. If you ever hear any one say anything about Mises, cover your ears. It’s basically akin to learning astrophysics from a flat earther who denies the theory of gravity. No amount of historical data deters these people.

...in all my years of education, I would never believe that so much debunked tripe would form the central arguments of so many people running for president.

Since we're on tripe alert, take a look at the video I embedded at the top of this post. What we have here is a 2007 Romney commercial with a laugh track added. The guffaws help us to understand that the Mittster was lying out of his ass when he warned us about the great plot to install a "caliphate" that would rule the entire globe. The claim flies in the face of all evidence, and he knew it.

Although Bin Laden was (and his pals still are) evil bastards, you can't point to a single authentic text, audio or video in which Bin Laden says: "Here's what we're fighting for: The establishment of a caliphate in the United States." Bin Laden's goals were always pretty clear. He didn't like Israel, he didn't like the American bases in Saudi Arabia, he considered the Saudis and other Arab potentates to be corrupt lackeys of the west, and he wanted to turn existing Islamic nations into salafist nightmares (just as Christian dominionists want to establish a fundamentalist nightmare in the U.S.). But to the best of my knowledge, Bin Laden never talked about establishing a caliphate in the U.S. or in any other non-Islamic country. If Bin Laden had said such a thing, the quote would have been repeated endlessly.

Alas, the "caliphate" myth has established a hammerlock on the right-wing imagination. Millions of people believe it to this day.

That 2007 campaign commercial isn't the point of this post, because even Republicans know by now that Mitt is an insincere opportunist who will say pretty much anything to get elected. (He's the Mormon Obama.) The ad is, however, symptomatic of a larger problem. Democracy can't work if half the country insists on battling ghosts and leprechauns. Democracy can't work if the facts of history, science and economics must do continual battle with fairy tales and fakelore. Permalink

The "Bush bulge" controversy/mystery/national running gag of 2004 began on this very blog. Although I never took the matter very seriously, this site spent an enormous amount of time talking about the whatzit on Bush's back. How could I resist? The whole thing was just too much fun.

Times have changed, and the world situation keeps finding new ways to become dire. In 2012, focusing attention on such an issue seems downright silly and irresponsible.

But...what the hell. In times like these, we need some fun.

I've embedded a TPM-produced video of the Republican debate in 100 seconds. It offers a couple of telling Mitt Romney moments. In particular:

"I understand that President Obama and people of his political persuasion would like to take more money. From the American people."

Mitt delivers the line in exactly that fashion: He inserts a period into the sentence prematurely, then opens it up again for the remaining bit. (Dubya used to do that sort of thing all the. Time.) A similar oddity crops up when Romney recounts his father's advice.

(Added note: Is it permissible to address the substance of Romney's hilariously fractured statement? Obama's much-misunderstood stimulus package cut taxes for 95 percent. Of the American people. Since tax cuts were the largest item in that package, those who say that the stimulus didn't work are also saying that tax cuts don't work. I'd like Romney to name the occasion when Obama has taken money. From the American people.)

Back in 2008, various writers accused Romney of using an earpiece. I didn't pay much attention to the brouhaha because the Mittster clearly wasn't going anywhere and my attention was on Obama. Nevertheless, the stories floating around at that time were intriguing.

Everything hinges on how you interpret this video clip. Somehow, a debate mic picked up the whispered words "He raised taxes" just before Mitt said something similar. NBC later explained that their microphone actually caught someone in the audience. That excuse is ridiculous: You never hear such whispers when game shows and sitcoms are taped in front of a live audience.

Armchair investigators posited a number of alternative theories, summarized here.

(The person who uploaded the above-linked YouTube video says that Mitt was protected by a communist conspiracy. If people consider Mitt Romney a bolshie, then this nation really has gone loony.)

Directly after that 2008, this appeared:

A blogger at Red State says that on another occasion Romney's staff said to him that Romney wears an earpiece that his staff uses to talk to him...

During Gov. Romney’s speech, one of his handlers mentioned to one of our staff people that any time Gov. Romney needed to wrap things up, he would be happy to let Gov. Romney know through the ear-piece that he wore.

The quote links to a bygone Redstate post which has disappeared from the net. Fortunately, what I presume to be the bulk of that post is preserved here. The person making the claim was Jerry Zandstra, chair of Americans for Prosperity of Michigan. Zandstra goes on to say:

Being unfamiliar with whether or not presidential candidates wear Jack Bauer-like ear pieces, I simply assumed this was common practice.

Zandstra seems sincere enough. I don't know if he had any affiliation with a competing campaign.

We can't have a post on such a topic without a good, old-fashioned "back bulge" shot for everyone to examine and squabble over. Oddly, it is not easy to find dorsal images of Mitt Romney via Google images. However, we do have this, from which I have extracted the accompanying enlargement. I have not adjusted or sharpened the picture. Is that a rectangular something on his back? You be the judge. It's very subtle -- but to my eyes, something seems amiss.

The possibility of a Romney earpiece places this story from a few days ago in a new perspective:

Mitt Romney aides made a sudden decision to remove teleprompters from the hall at his Des Moines victory party because the candidate wanted to "speak from his heart," said Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior Romney official.

We even know the brand of teleprompter Romney prefers. When he doesn't use one, he tends to look like a slightly mis-programmed version of a Disneyland robot pirate.

It's pretty clear that Obama uses an earpiece as well. The following clip puts that claim in cement:



As this writer puts it:

Actually, both candidates' hesitancy and quick changes of topic, often within the same sentence, are consistent with their being whispered to. I challenge you to sound coherent when someone's talking to you and you have to not repeat what they say but reformulate it into something that sounds good, while they're still talking.

Permalink

The neocons are resurgent, and they're going after Iran. Right now, the weapons are economic. Alas, that weapon could just as easily destroy us. This brilliant article explains how a needless confrontation with Iran could destroy our delicate recovery.

A key amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act signed by United States President Barack Obama on the last day of 2011 - when no one was paying attention - imposes sanctions on any countries or companies that buy Iranian oil and pay for it through Iran's central bank. Starting this summer, anybody who does it is prevented from doing business with the US.

Once again displaying a matchless capacity to shoot themselves in their Ferragamo-clad feet, governments in the European Union (EU) are debating whether or not to buy oil from Iran anymore. The existential doubt is should we start now or wait for a few months. Inevitably, like death and taxes, the result has been - what else - oil prices soaring. Brent crude is now hovering around $114, and the only way is up.

Add to it Tehran's threat to block the Strait of Hormuz, thus preventing one-sixth of the world's oil and 70% of OPEC's exports from reaching the market; no wonder oil traders are falling over themselves to lock up as much crude as they can.

Forget about oil at an accessible $50 or even $75 a barrel. The price of oil may be destined to soon reach $120 a barrel and even $150 a barrel by summer, just as in crisis-hit 2008. OPEC, by the way, is pumping more oil than at any time since late 2008.

Even if you manage to get a job, will you be able to afford transportation to the workplace?

Welcome to the new economy. Cars are now for living in, not for driving. Permalink

As many of you know, this blog ran a series a few years back on Obama's possible family connections to the CIA. Wayne Madsen -- a writer untrusted by many -- took up my research leads (without crediting me) and came up with new material. Some of his finds are genuinely intriguing, while other parts...well, I don't know what to make of it all. That's Madsen for you.

Yesterday, a friend to this blog directed my attention to this review of two new books: Sally Jacobs' biography of our president's father, titled The Other Barack, and A Singular Woman, Janny Scott's biography of Stanley Ann Dunham. As it happens, I have both books. (Well, sort of: Library card + scanner = free pdfs. Is a poor person allowed to do this?)

Neither book addresses the CIA allegations directly, but both are worth reading. So is the afore-linked piece from the London Review of Books, which offers a good summary of both volumes.

Sally Jacobs' work left me with a genuine admiration for Barack Obama Sr. -- in fact, I probably like him better than Jacobs does. True, Obama had serious problems with alcohol, and he mistreated the women in his life. Many readers will, on those grounds, consider the man beyond redemption.

I disagree.

The elder Obama simultaneously justified and ruined his life when he took a principled stand. To be specific: He wrote an influential article which called for African economic independence. In that piece, Obama clearly hoped to set the economic course for all of post-colonial Africa, not just for Kenya.

Alas, his recipe was NOT what the Americans wanted to hear. His insistence on Africa-for-the-Africans helped to insure that the CIA would eventually choose the autocratic and corrupt Jomo Kenyatta over Tom Mboya, Obama's patron. Up until 1968 (or thereabouts), the Agency preferred Mboya, who was more stable and more popular; Kenyatta was considered erratic.

After that fateful article came out, BO Sr. was -- not to put too fine a point on it -- fucked. He lost his huge-paying job, his big car and his impressive home. In short: He made a headlong plunge into schlub-hood. He always remained an arrogant schlub, to be sure, but he became a schlub nonetheless. Although he had started drinking heavily in college, the problem became much worse as his prospects dimmed.

The above-linked reviewer does not see fit to mention that Barack Obama Sr. witnessed the assassination of Mboya. Had Obama identified the killer, he probably would have been killed himself. The man was brave but not stupid.

There are still those in Kenya who insist that the elder Obama was murdered. True, he had previously established a record of drunk driving incidents, a couple of which which had put him in the hospital. Not long before that final, fatal one-car accident -- a collision with a tree -- he gave his wife a rather morbid harangue on how best to raise the children in the event of his death. Make of that what you will.

We can interpret the elder Obama's life as a lesson in what happens when you play along versus what happens when you rock the boat. I think that our president learned this lesson pretty well.

Did the CIA ever directly approach Barack Obama Sr.? Probably not -- at least, not in any noticeable way. I don't think there was ever an occasion when someone in a crisp dark suit sidled up to the barstool next to Obama and said: "Hi, I represent Certain Interested Americans. We want to pay you X amount of money to perform the following services..."

Nevertheless, there are plenty of indications that, early on, the Company kept tabs on him. They would have been idiots not to. Obama was, arguably, the most brilliant economist in post-colonial Africa, and he came very close to charting a course for the entire continent. Though not a communist, he had a degree of guarded sympathy for the USSR; he even studied Russian. Of course the CIA would have opened a file on a guy like that; that's what the taxpayers paid the Agency to do.

Although Obama gave himself the title "Doctor" on his return to Africa, the State Department had (unfairly) kicked him out just before he could complete his PhD. Harvard never allowed him to acquire that degree. There's an argument to be made that The Powers That Be gave him the bum's rush when they realized that this impulsive, brash and domineering young man had an independent streak beyond their ability to tame.

Janny Scott's book about Stanley Ann Dunham is more difficult to assess. To be candid, a small part of me suspects that it was written in bad faith, or at least with one eye blind. The allegations that the CIA recruited our president's mother have, by this point, received sufficient publicity to justify at least some sort of response, if only a sneering one. Yet Scott never mentions those allegations.

A later post will offer a fuller reaction to A Singular Woman. For now, let me simply state that nothing in this volume has quelled my suspicions that Stanley Ann Dunham was spookier than Caspar.

Both of the men she married turned out to be people whom the CIA would have wanted watched and, if at all possible, brought on board. Happenstance? Well...maybe. But how often does such a thing happen in your family?

Dunham took lessons in Russian at a time and in a school where intelligence recruits often studied that language. She worked for AID and the Ford Foundation, both notorious for offering CIA cover. She became an anthropologist and a world traveler, always visiting political hot spots. No one can deny that the CIA made a special effort to enlist the aid of anthropologists. (Google the words CIA and anthropology. All sorts of interesting stuff will turn up.)

Some researchers (Madsen in particular) have even linked Ann Dunham's parents to the intelligence services. Of particular interest is the photo above, which shows Barack Obama Sr. receiving the traditional lei upon his entry into Hawaii. Also in the photo: Stanley Ann's father, Stanley Armour Dunham -- very recognizable from other images. He allegedly served in an intelligence capacity during his military service, which, I admit, does not mean a whole lot. At the time this photo was taken, he was supposed to be on the mainland, selling furniture. Yet here he is in Hawaii, standing next to his future son-in-law, well before Stanley Ann met the young African up-and-comer.

Yeah, that is intriguing. Don't pretend otherwise.

Madsen and others have alleged that our president's grandmother -- the woman who actually raised our president -- had some connection to the Rewald scandal. If you don't know about Rewald -- well, it's a very long story which I once knew in detail but now can recall only hazily. Short version: It was a CIA money thing. Alas, the allegations tying Madelyn Dunham to Rewald are iffy and vague. If Madsen has evidence, he has been very coy about making it public.

Unfortunately, most of the websites discussing CIA ties to the Dunham clan are wacky right-wing "birther" joints. Not for the first or last time, conspiracy-crazed sickos have worked hard to decredibilize legitimate research into the intelligence community.

These reactionary pseudoresearchers seem convinced that the elder Obama was brought into the United States by a cabal of Marxist fifth columnists masterminded by -- get this! -- the Unitarian Church. And how do they know that the Unitarians were in league with Moscow? Because the Unitarian Church decried racism in the 1950s and '60s. (That's why the Birchers never liked the Unitarians.) Yes, folks, we're dealing with the dreaded Unitarian conspiracy!

I'm not kidding: That's their argument.

They also think that Barack Obama's mother is still alive.

And there you have it. Whenever someone tries to look into what the intelligence agencies may or may not be up to, the audience soon divides into two camps:

1. The nothing-to-see-here camp. These are the insufferably arrogant and dull conformists who insist that you must never bring up such topics, lest they regale you with ever-so-clever references to tin foil chapeaus.

2. The raving loony camp. These are the frothing-at-the-mouth paranoids who never shut up about birth certificates, controlled demolitions, flying saucers at Roswell, the third secret of Fatima, the Illuminati, and god-knows-what-else.

I think that -- on occasion -- the truth lies in a no-man's land situated between those two camps. Only a few dare to explore that territory.

Wanna come with...? Permalink

Although he probably won't be able to overtake Romney, Rick Santorum is making headlines again by pushing the gay marriage button. He did this in front of ninth graders. I don't have kids, but if I did, I'm not sure I would want a political candidate to come to my child's school and encourage a discussion of gay sex. Guess that makes me a fuddy-duddy.

Speaking at a college, Santorum conjured up the image of a marriage involving five people. I'm trying to imagine what the bedroom must look like: Do they push together two king-sized beds? Who sleeps in the middle? Thank you, Rick Santorum, for giving us that visual.

Quite a few denizens of blogland have been debating the question: Did Rick Santorum's wife Karen abort a doomed child to save the life of the mother? I am persuaded by this view, offered by Blue Lyon, a sometime friend to this blog, and no admirer of Santorum's politics. She argues that one cannot apply the term "abortion" to what happened on that occasion.

Bostonboomer, at Skydancing, offers a somewhat different take. I guess the controversy all comes down to the Pitocin injection. Does the administration of this drug to speed labor constitute "abortion" in any meaningful sense of the term? I don't believe so.

I think part of the squeamishness that I feel -- and I’m probably not alone -- is that the Santorums chose to share their experience with the public.

The squeamishness is understandable. Call me old school, but I prefer to keep certain very personal matters outside the realm of public discussion. The only decision made by Karen Santorum which I would -- very tentatively -- call into question was her decision to write a book about her sad experience. Permalink

Today is the 600th birthday of one of the many French lasses who have captured my heart over the years: Jeanne d'Arc -- Joan of Arc to you.

Like Mark Twain (who wrote a gushing but accurate biographical novel about her), I have long considered Joan the most admirable creature produced by the human race during the past thousand years. She is the only non-artist of my trio of personal heroes -- Leonardo da Vinci, Gustav Mahler and Joan of Arc.

Then again, maybe she was an artist. Her medium was kicking ass.

When I was young, I read every English-language biography of Joan, and even some of the French material, back when my French was a lot better. I even came across (in the recesses of a UCLA library) an exact photographic reproduction of her trial transcript, which the notaries had verified with cool red bloodstains.

The best of the bios (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise) remains the one written by Vita Sackville-West. Although superbly written, the book has made many enemies over the years because Sackville-West -- the lover of Virginia Woolf -- implies, but never states, that she recognizes something in Joan that transgressed then-current sexual norms.

The evidence is intriguing, though hardly conclusive. There was a boy in Joan's life early on: He sued her for breach of promise, she won her case, and that's pretty much all we know about the matter. Joan wore male clothing throughout her career, and not just to go into battle -- most people forget that she spent many frustrating months on inactive status in the court of Charles VII. (Her costumes were costly, and she owned more horses than did the king. All saints have their weaknesses.) She slept with women whenever possible. Her male comrades-in-arms reported that she was comely and had nicely-shaped breasts (which they just happened to notice), yet she never aroused any sexual feelings. One soldier did try to cop a feel. You can guess her reaction.

Interpret all of that as you will. Shaw called her "the queerest fish among the eccentric worthies of the Middle Ages," and I suspect that he was right in more ways than he knew.

Joan's life teaches us that it is possible for anyone -- absolutely anyone, however unlikely -- to act in this world. She teaches us that it is possible to couple a genuine humility with an almost-infuriating level of self-confidence. Had she not lived, the Hundred Years' War would have turned out differently.

Neither arrogance nor self-regard had any place in her heart; she was pure action. She specialized in deeds, not reflection. I once hoped to be like her in that. Reflection, alas, can be the worst of habits.

I still don't know how she did what she did. The uncrowned King -- properly called the Dauphin -- granted her an audience mostly as an amusement. Speaking in private, she told him a Big Secret. Neither party ever revealed that Big Secret. Whatever it was, it convinced "Charlie-boy" (as Shaw called him) to give her control of the entire French army.

On a feminist note: Arguably, we should call her not Jeanne d'Arc but Jeanne Romée. The rules of nomenclature were still in flux; in her part of Europe, women retained the matronymic. Her mother Isabelle was named Romée, indicating that she had made a pilgrimage to Rome at some point.

Joan never referred to herself as Jeanne d'Arc; later writers gifted her with her father's name. The father may have come from Arc. We can't even be sure what his name was: Various documents from the time give it as Darc and Tart and Day and Dare and several other variations.

Joan always referred to herself as La Pucelle -- the Maid -- which was her nomme-de-guerre. Sort of like Bruce Wayne calling himself Batman.

In fact, she may be the closest thing to a comic book superhero that real life has ever offered. She had a cool name (cool by the standards of her day), a costume (the "white" armor, which wasn't really white), a putatively magic ring (sort of like the Green Lantern) and allegedly spooky powers. Although many feats of what we would now call ESP have been attributed to her, I can't offer hard proof that she ever did anything truly supernatural.

But she did once take a 70-foot fall out of a tower window -- and survived. Didn't even break a bone. So, like, there's that.

The finest modern Johannaphile writing in English is the famed medievalist Bonnie Wheeler; anything she has to say is worth your time. You may also want to look up an old book by Guy Endore, who also wrote Werewolf of London. The biographical chapters are pedestrian, but the 100 page "Discussion" at the end addresses the many bizarre rumors that Joan's legend has inspired over the years, and it is all great weird fun. W. S. Scott's bio is also worth reading.

Finally: I doubt that January 6 (the feast of the Epiphany) is her real birthday. The document which gives that date is filled with romanticized silliness. But tradition is tradition. Of all the onscreen Joans, the actress who most resembles the real thing is probably Jane Wiedlin, who played her in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. She was also in the Go-Gos. Permalink

This is the best piece I've seen on our new Republican superstar. As you might have guessed, Rick Santorum has a history of corruption as long and rich as that of any other politician.

I can guess your two-word response: Ho and hum. You expected as much.

Still, check out the article. I think you'll learn about scandals previously unfamiliar to you -- fake charities, misappropriations of funds, livin' large off the taxpayer teat, the K Street project, and all of the rest of it. Like most other Republicans, Santorum seems to define "morality" purely in terms of how one should and should not use one's wee-wee. Ethicists have no business talking about money.

The following paragraph deserves special attention:

Santorum has frequently insisted that his political values are guided by his religious values, and that John F. Kennedy's famous 1960 speech describing a separtion between the two had done "much harm" in America. But despite inviting such scrutiny, there's been little discussion of Santorum's ties to ultra-conservative movements within the Roman Catholic Church Santorum's comments about JFK were made in Rome in 2002 when he spoke at a 100th birthday event for Jose Maria Escrivade Balaguer, founder of the secretive group within the church known as Opus Dei. Although Santorum says he is not a member of Opus Dei -- which has been criticized by some for alleged cult-like qualities and ties to ultra-conservative regimes around the world -- he did receive written permission to attend the ultra-conservative St. Catherine of Siena Church in Great Falls, Va., where Mass is still conducted in Latin and a long-time priest and many parishioners are members of Opus Dei, mingling with political conservatives like Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and former FBI director Louis Freeh.

Time for a long digression. I promise to bring this post back to Santorum eventually. Until then, bear with me.

Many view the Catholic Church as a monolith. Most Americans think that Catholics are Robots From Rome who all think, act and worship in the same way.

Nonsense. There is far, far greater room for variety, even creativity, within Roman Catholicism than you'll find within, say, the Southern Baptist tradition. True, Rome tries to keep its worldwide flock on the same page concerning the most basic issues of theology. But I think it's a losing battle.

Take, for example, the issue of keeping abortion legal: Within American Catholicism, opinion is split almost 50-50, a division which roughly mirrors the divergence besetting the country as a whole, give or take a few percentage points. By contrast, roughly 90 percent of Baptists insist on reversing Roe vs. Wade.

You'll never see the equivalent of a Karl Rahner or an Archbishop Romero within any fundamentalist or evangelical Protestant denomination. There are many Catholics who question the literal truth of the Bible, and some even view the Gospel story itself as a kind of divine metaphor. Even a conservative Catholic scholar like Luke Timothy Johnson can admit, grudgingly, that the New Testament contains contradictions, historically problematic material, and iffy Greek grammar. Evangelicals never allow themselves to state that obvious fact.

Politically, there have been communist Catholics and Nazi Catholics and everything-in-between Catholics. This country has Catholics who call themselves Republicans, Democrats, conservatives and liberals. Any political ism you can think of will have at least a few Cat-lick representatives.

But the fact that Catholicism contains both liberal and conservative wings should not blind us to the fact that the Church's conservative faction is freaky. And scary.

Alas, the ultra-conservatives have learned that they can get their way by continually threatening to leave the Church -- a threat they mutter under their breath while braying about their devotion to the papacy.

Most of you have not heard of the sedevacantist movement. Those of you who know the word probably learned about it from profiles of Mel Gibson, the world's most famous sedevacantist.

That impressive-sounding Latin term means "vacant seat." Sedevacantists think that the seat of St. Peter has been vacant since Vatican II, and possibly since the election of John XXIII. (The splitters differ on just when the rot set in.) What about those popes we've seen in recent decades? They're really anti-popes. False leaders. Freemasonic conspirators. Maybe even outright Devil worshipers.

I'm not kidding. That's what sedevacantists like Mel Gibson believe.

(Does Gibson still think this way? I heard that he has been going through some weird shit lately. Something about a Russian woman. I haven't been keeping up.)

Bill O'Reilly made me giggle when he interviewed Gibson around the time The Passion of the Christ came out. O'Reilly kept going on and on about how much the Pope (supposedly) loved the movie, while Gibson kept squirming and trying to change the topic. The director didn't want to harm boxoffice receipts by saying anything about the Pope being a freemasonic diabolist. For those in the know, O'Reilly's display of cluelessness was freakin' hilarious.

Here's the really funny part: Sedevacantists like Gibson broke from the Church because they disagreed with the Vatican II ruling that non-Catholics can go to heaven. The schismatics have many other complaints, especially concerning the Latin Mass. But what the ultra-conservatives really demand is a "No Prots allowed" sign over the gates to paradise.

(Also "No Jews Allowed." But that goes without saying.)

The protestant fundamentalists who made Gibson wealthy still don't understand that Mel Gibson thinks they're going to hell. He broke with Rome because Rome declared that protestants are not going to hell, at least not necessarily. Sedevacantists will not tolerate tolerance.

High Weirdness abounds in the realm of the schismatics. Like protestant fundamentalists, they love miracle stories and conspiracy theories. For example, the schismatics think that Vatican conspirators killed Fatima visionary Lucia dos Santos in 1959 and replaced her with an imposter. Spain has a rather impressive schismatic movement known as the Palmarian Catholic Church, run by Pope Gregory XVIII, who speaks with Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a regular basis. The Palmarians don't call themselves sedevacantists, since they believe that the seat has been re-occupied.

You may now be wondering: What does all of this have to do with Santorum? Is he a sedewhatzit?

No. But here's the thing: The schismatic movement, though numerically small, wields great power as a lingering threat. Conservative Catholics never come right out and say to the pontiff: "Any more of this liberalization crap and we will schism so fast your little white beanie will spin." But the possibility is always there.

That's why the Vatican puts up with behavior which once would have been considered beyond the pale. Rome does not want to see further schisms. The threat of a widening breakaway movement is the primary reason why we cannot expect to see any changes regarding, say, the ordination of women. Not within our lifetime.

The traditionalist parish of St. Catherine of Siena, in Great Falls, insists on a Latin Mass, as do the schismatics and the Lefebvrists. Opus Dei members are not necessarily traditionalists -- that is, many of them will attend Mass in the vernacular. Nevertheless, there is enormous overlap between Opus Dei and the traditionalist movement.

Opus Dei members are not schismatic -- indeed, they would claim to be the Pope's most fervent defenders. Moreover, sedevacantists are as paranoid about Opus Dei as they are about everything else.

Nevertheless, all of these strains -- Opus Dei, the Lefebvrists, the traditionalists, the sedevacantists, the Palmarians -- arose out of the mondo bizarro weltanschauung of Catholic ultraconservatism. Although these groups and subgroups bicker among themselves, they resemble each other more than their adherents may care to admit.

An unnerving strain of anti-Semitism occasionally surfaces within the traditionalist community. For example, traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson was excommunicated after he declared that the Holocaust never happened. In 2009, Williamson was reinstated -- a show of leniency which, I suspect, owes much to the threat of schism.

Williamson belongs to the Lefebvrist faction, known as SSPX (Society of St. Pius X). This is the best-known traditionalist group. There is some debate as to whether Archbishop Lefebvre effected a proper schism, but he did state that Rome had "lost the faith." Pope Benedict has tried to bring SSPX back within the fold:

The answer, of course, is that Benedict and his associates simply misjudged the degree of extremism and manic conspiracy theory circulating in the SSPX. The sect's eccentricity went further than simply holding quirky or reactionary views. Lefebvre and his immediate circle reacted radically and fundamentally to the Vatican's 1960s reformism. Theirs was not simply suspicion of modern decadence, but rather a fundamental belief in the evil forces subverting the modern world -- which included the Jews.

Pope Benedict erred in seeing the Lefebvrists as simple traditionalists or reactionaries whose views slotted into the right wing of the acceptable European political spectrum. Some, at least, were far more extreme, and the Vatican's attempted embrace of them will probably cause lasting damage both inside the church, and in relations with other faiths.

Some Lefebvrists consider Opus Dei too squishy-secular and modernistic -- a view which will surprise those observers who consider members of Opus Dei (yes, the same folks you read about in The Da Vinci Code) to be downright medieval in their thinking.

When Rick Santorum decried the separation of church and state, he spoke at a function honoring Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei. (I refuse to call him a saint, although the Church has canonized him, mostly as a sop to the far right.) Many writers have alleged that Escrivá favored the fascist dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet, although some Escrivá apologists now claim that Franco mounted fierce attacks on the Opus Dei movement. (Both statements may be true.) From Wikipedia:

During Escrivá's beatification process, Monsignor Vladimir Felzmann, who had been Escrivá's personal assistant before Felzmann left Opus Dei and became a priest in the Archdiocese of Westminster and an aide to Basil Cardinal Hume, sent several letters to Fr. Flavio Capucci, the postulator (i.e., chief promoter) of Escrivá's cause. In his letters, Msgr. Felzmann claimed to have personally witnessed Escrivá make controversial statements in defense of Adolf Hitler. The alleged statements by Escrivá include: "Vlad, Hitler couldn't have been such a bad person. He couldn't have killed six million. It couldn't have been more than four million", and "Hitler against the Jews, Hitler against the Slavs, this means Hitler against communism"... Msgr. Felzmann claimed that Escrivá made those remarks to him in 1967 or 1968, in Rome, during the intermission to a World War II-themed movie. Felzmann has also said that these remarks should be put in the context of Catholic anti-communism in Spain, and said that all of the male members of Opus Dei (who then numbered about fifty) volunteered in 1941 to join the "Blue Division", a group of Spanish and Portuguese volunteers who joined the German forces in their fight against the Soviet Army, along the eastern front.

Although Opus Dei denies that Escrivá ever said these words, I can't think of any reason for Felzmann to have lied.

Is there really that much difference between Rick Santorum and Bishop Williamson? Permalink

Here's an interesting story indicating that Michele Bachmann was undone by sexism.

I know what you're thinking: No, she was undone by her own nuttiness, and by the bad publicity generated by her insane statements. Yes (says the author of the aforelinked piece), she was indeed wacko, but the Republican voter of today wants wacko. Craziness is no longer considered a disqualifier -- in fact, crazy makes you popular.

Ownership of a vagina is, on the other hand, a genuine problem.

It’s tempting, then, to think that part of what finally defeated Bachmann was sexism. There have been plenty of hints that some on the right were uncomfortable with the notion of a female president. “I’ve noticed that when her name is mentioned sometimes that there’s a lot of men that wouldn’t vote for a woman,” one Iowa county GOP chair told the Associated Press on Monday. Patricia Murphy also quoted Iowans who liked Bachmann but wanted a male candidate. One woman told her she’d initially been for Bachmann, “But then I just started thinking about being presidential and I don’t know that we’re ready for a woman for president.” It’s not a stretch to imagine that the Christian right’s patriarchs, many of whom explicitly preach female submission, felt the same way.

Good lord. Have we really come to this? In the 1980s, Republicans could not praise Margaret Thatcher highly enough. Now, it seems that they want women to return to housecleaning.

There was a dust-up back in August when a journalist had the temerity to inquiry whether Bachmann's run for the presidency conflicted with fundamentalist teachings on female submission. At the time, the question was considered rude; now, it seems germane.

Here's what Julie Ingersoll said in August:

After all, in the conservative Christian world there is a spectrum of views on how these texts are to be read. Evangelical feminists argue that the Bible actually teaches mutual submission between men and women. But Reconstructionists, some of whom have influenced Bachmann, have suggested that, given the biblical order for families, women probably shouldn’t be voting. I wrote about Reconstructionist biblical patriarchy here.

While Christians traditionally hold that God is beyond gender (even while often using masculine language for God), in “The Tenets of Biblical Patriarchy,” Doug Phillips asserts that God is male, and explicitly not female; that the human male is the “image and glory of God in terms of authority, while the woman is the glory of man.” That is, men are in the image of God in terms of authority over their households; women are created in God’s image in a decidedly different way, sometimes called “reflected glory.”

And here's a view from a "Biblical" blogger:

Women should submit to their husbands. Michele Bachmann should submit to hers. Submissive wives probably won't get to be president.

The world mocks the Bible. It mocks God's design for the family. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God's Words will not pass away. The Bible will stand. God's design will stand. Submission does not demean women. Perversion of God's Word is not a better way. Whatever mess we're in is because we haven't paid attention to Him. And if we allow someone who says she is a Christian to get away with it, it's not going to make it better. It's going to get worse.

Bachmann, you may recall, once said that she became a tax lawyer -- a job she professed to loathe -- because her husband ordered her to do so.

Well. That's one good thing about being the bottom: You always have someone to blame. I believe that in the BDSM world, that's called Topping from below. Permalink

An interesting email popped into my box. It came from these people; they want an amendment which would overturn the Citizens United ruling which grants corporations unlimited rights to donate money to political candidates.

According to an NBC News-Marist poll, at the beginning of December, Newt Gingrich was the GOP front-runner in Iowa, with 26% of likely voters. However, after the Super PAC, Restore Our Future, spent $2.8 million on negative ads attacking Gingrich in Iowa, Gingrich’s Iowa support was cut in half to 13% percent by the end of the month, contributing to Gingrich’s lackluster fourth place finish in this week’s Iowa caucuses.

“By spending millions and millions of dollars without any form of accountability, Super PACs are now capable of completely changing the dynamic of our elections, shifting even more power to a wealthy elite and away from the voting public,” said John Bonifaz, director of Free Speech For People. “The GOP campaigns in Iowa present a clear example of the damage done by Super PACs, and they further demonstrate how important it is to overturn the Citizens United ruling and restore democracy to the people.”

“Who is funding these Super-PACs?” adds Bonifaz. “Who decides to "take out" a candidate and for what reasons? In the Citizens United world we all live in now, we're not allowed to know. All we can do is look ahead to New Hampshire and wonder how a few more million dollars worth of negative ads will effect the field.”

The counterargument is obvious: This is Newt Gingrich we're talking about here; he did himself in by...well, by being Newt Gingrich.

But Newt really is not the point, is he? The point is this: It is clear the Republican leadership wants Romney and that the rank and file wants someone, anyone else. So the leadership is willing to spend an agonizing amount of money to convince the hoi polloi to behave. Trouble is, these efforts are rather obvious, and they are bound to piss off a lot of people.

This issue goes way beyond Newt, and even beyond this particular election. We're talking about the possibility of bipartisan pressure to amend the Constitution.

And that possibility, my friends, is intriguing.

Fun fact: Did you know that the better-funded candidate wins 94% of the time? Everyone pretends to mistrust and dislike the media, yet everyone is far more open to media manipulation than they like to think. Our minds are clay sculpted by advertising. I'd like to see a new attitude take hold in this country: A vote for the underfunded candidate should convey an aura of cool.

Of course, if that view had held sway three-plus years ago, John McCain would be president.

The same batch of email also brought me a message from Free Press, which wants transparency in identifying attack ads.

These ads will swallow up more air time in 2012 than campaign coverage on local television newscasts. The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed countless millions of corporate dollars for spending on campaign ads. But broadcasters aren’t using this newfound revenue to beef up news operations and ensure in-depth coverage of candidates and election-year issues.

Instead, companies like News Corp., Viacom and the Sinclair Broadcast Group are lining their pockets with ad money from benevolent-sounding front groups like Concerned Taxpayers of America, Make Us Great Again and Citizens for a Responsible Government. And they rarely inform viewers about the wealthy individuals and corporations that fund these groups.

The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to make this financial information available online. But the agency won’t act unless it hears from you:

The FCC already requires broadcasters to keep information about political advertising in "public inspection files" that people can examine. These files contain the names of groups that purchase political advertising time, the cost involved and the names of executives at these organizations. But these files are often tucked away in dusty cabinets at news stations and are difficult for the public to access. The FCC is now weighing whether to make broadcasters transfer this information to the Internet, where anyone can find the data.

Media companies are projected to rake in more than $3 billion in revenues from political ads in 2012. But they are reluctant to take this basic step toward transparency.1

In a recently filed comment to the FCC, the National Association of Broadcasters urged the agency to drop its effort to make it easy for the public to ferret out this information online. Another group of broadcasters warned the FCC against any effort “to stimulate such examinations” of public files...

In the past, before Citizens United, some Republicans offered a trade: Unlimited corporate and private donations in exchange for transparency regarding the donors. I always presumed that transparency did not offer much of a threat, because only political junkies would care about who funded what.

Maybe we're all political junkies these days...? Permalink

Uemura Yasuhiro was an official in the small rural town of Kowaura in the Mie Prefecture. (News stories incorrectly say that he came from a city called Kowaura Minamiise Machi Mie.) After Fukushima, he became an anti-nuke activist. On January 3, around 10:30 in the morning, he drove out to his farm, bringing along a shotgun to scare some crows -- or so we are told. He was found in the car, his chest blown out, and the shotgun outside the vehicle.

A lot of people are questioning how that can happen. Physically, the tableau doesn't seem very likely.

If you check out the area on Google Earth, you'll see that the town is surrounded by trees and hills. Plenty of places for a sniper to hide -- and a subsequent shotgun blast would disguise an entrance wound made by a rifle. Of course, for this scenario to work, the killer would need to know ahead of time that the target was going to bring that convenient shotgun to the scene.

So far, I've seen no indication that Uemura Yasuhiro was important enough justify the effort, expense and risk of hiring a hit man. Yes, he lectured against nuclear power -- but so do others. Was he having a massive impact on the national dialogue?

Added note: Temps are in the 30s in the Mei Prefecture right now. How likely is it that the victim would drive around with an open window?

Perhaps he opened the window to speak to someone. In which case, I'm no longer thinking in terms of a sniper but a small handgun at close range. What about footprints? We need to know if the car was on a paved surface.

Would a man intent on suicide by shotgun sit in the car, twist his torso, and hold the gun out the window? Permalink

Iowa does not really pick the winner -- McCain did not even campaign there in 2008 -- so why the excitement? Ron Paul is too creepy to have a chance. (Greenwald's sorta-pro-Paul argument was one of that writer's few false moves.) Perry is more or less out, Bachmann is also heading toward the exit door, Newt is fading. So it all comes down Romney versus Santorum.

I like what Paul Begala said:

You gotta love a party in which Mitt Romney can do no better than virtually tie with the guy who compared gays to "man on dog" sex and thinks contraception is evil.

I should consider Santorum the lesser of these two evils, given his working class Eye-talian background. On social issues, his old school Catholicism will outrage many progressives, but I can't take his rhetoric seriously. It's just rhetoric; the country will go on as it has been.

What counts is Santorum's attitude toward war.

The guy is itching to go after Iran. Conservatives have increased their war-cries, even though, at this writing, Iran has done nothing to us, and has been at peace for many years. The good folks at Judicial Watch sent me an email broadside yesterday which made the shameless recommendation to "nuke Iran." Frightening stuff.

The Republicans would have to be foolish to allow the main issue of 2012 to become war or peace with Iran. Americans are sick of war. We've ruined our economy paying for two needless conflicts. Deep down, we did not want war with Iran even in 1980; we certainly aren't screaming for blood now.

If Santorum runs as The War Guy while Obama runs as The Peace Guy, Obama will win.

We still haven't finished cleaning up after Dubya's bloody mess. It's too early for the GOP to think of running another neocon.

The more interesting question: How will the party's power elite react?

I've long said that the real behind-the-scenes battle in this country is between those who want to save America through military Keynesianism and those who want to profit from strip-mining the country's assets. Santorum represents the former; Romney represents the latter. Permalink

You probably want to read about the Iowa caucus results right now. God knows why; the whole business strikes me as rather less significant than the pundits pretend.

Right now, I'd like you to chew on a moral conundrum which may or may not have political implications.

The video featured in the post below inspired me to visit various web sites in order to scoop up "Alan Moore stuff." As you probably know, Moore has been engaged in a decades-long battle with DC comics over the rights to his most famous work, Watchmen, which he never wanted to see adapted as a film. DC now wants to churn out sequels and action figures and god-knows-what-else, all to be created by hirelings.

In the interview here, Moore reveals that he might have earned a couple of million dollars had he signed over all rights to Watchmen.

His refusal of this rather impressive offer strikes me as an honorable decision. Downright saintly.

Then again: What would be the saintly decision?

Think of the families living in cars who might be able to get into homes if that money were put to charitable purposes. Think of people who need medical treatment...

On the other hand: If all artists refused to take a stand for integrity, then the entire world of art would become like that nightmarish town in China (I forget the name) where thousands of "artists" working under slave-like conditions produce fake Old Master canvasses for Israeli "students" (wink) to sell in America.

In the interview, Moore details how he allowed a friend of his named Steve Moore (no relation) to write a computer game version of Watchmen. He gave his assent only because Steve Moore needed the work and his brother had a serious medical condition. Basically, the company used the friendship between the two Moores to perform a rather obvious bit of emotional blackmail. It all ended badly, of course.

Now, I think that Alan Moore has made the correct decision in not taking that two million dollar payoff. Correct for him.

The existentialists -- remember them? -- used to place great weight on the concept of authenticity. Situations often arise in which one cannot hope to perform the morally correct action, because any choice will have a serious downside. Under certain circumstances, one can only act in an authentic fashion -- that is, according to a personal code. Think of Bogie at the end of The Maltese Falcon.

The classic example goes back to World War II. You're a young man working on a farm in France; your father is dead, your mother is old, your sister is quite young. The Nazis invade. A friend asks you to join the Resistance. Do you go underground?

If you do, your mother and sister will endure enormous hardship. They may not survive. But when you offer this excuse, your friend sneers: If everyone refused to fight the Nazis on such grounds, the Resistance would not exist.

There is no morally correct choice. There is no holy book which tells you "Under circumstance X, perform action Y." There can be only an authentic decision. A decision that is right for you but not necessarily for the next person.

So. Let's say that you are a talented writer. You have created a novel or a comic book or -- how I hate this word! -- a property that Hollywood wants to adapt. They offer a million bucks. You have every reason to believe that, no matter how cleverly you try to structure the deal, they will rape your work bloody in every conceivable hole.

On the other hand: Think of the good deeds you can do with that money.

(For the purposes of this thought experiment, you are not just a talented writer but a saint, or at least an incredibly wonderful person.)

What is the morally correct thing to do?

If you can't answer that question -- and I doubt that you can -- then try this: What would be the authentic thing for you to do? Permalink

"Thought for the Day" runs on British radio. Usually, a conventional cleric takes this time spot to say some rather conventional things. On New Year's Eve, the thought came from Alan Moore.

After hearing this brief but potent disquisition, I decided that it was the Single Greatest Thing Ever. I will hold to that opinion steadfastly for at least another hour or two. I was so impressed that I felt compelled to use Moore's statement of faith as the basis for this video.

For some reason, religion has become a popular topic on the blogs I read. Well...top this. Permalink

Steve Benen offers a fascinating response to a 60 Minutes profile of Eric Cantor, who -- on camera -- absolutely refused to believe that Ronald Reagan raised taxes to combat a recession. Even though Reagan did just that; his tax raise was massive. I recall it well; people like Richard Viguerie thought Reagan had turned commie. (Incidentally, Jimmy Carter lowered taxes, a move which did much to create that recession.)

Why do Cantor, his press secretary, and Republicans everywhere deny what is plainly true? Because reality is terribly inconvenient: the GOP demi-god rejected the right-wing line on always opposing tax increases; he willingly compromised with Democrats on revenue; and the economy soared after Reagan raised taxes, disproving the Republican assumption that tax increases always push the nation towards recessions.

It gets worse than that. The top tax rate was lowered as Reagan left office, which led to the recession that assailed Bush the elder. Clinton raised the top tax rate; not only did that move get our government out of the red (remember when the big issue was how to spend the surplus?), it initiated the longest period of prosperity we've known during the past five decades.

Here's another reality check: When you ask conservatives to defend the ludicrous notion that Obama is a socialist, they invariably will point to the stimulus package. But by far the largest item in that package was tax cuts.

If you say that the stim package did not work, you're saying that tax cuts don't work.

To make that admission is libertarian thoughtcrime. Many people prefer to rewrite history, to rewrite their own memories.

Libertarian theology is the constant triumph of hallucination over experience. Libertarians are stage magicians who keep thrusting their hands into an empty hat because their beloved theory -- which they can never allow themselves to question -- demands that a rabbit must be in there somewhere.

To be fair, though, this old-school libertarian was willing, back in 1987, to tell a few important truths about Reagan -- truths which modern conservatives like Cantor prefer to wish away.

Benen's article evinced a comment worth repeating, and even savoring.

I'm seeing the denial of reality in recent history, too. In response to the news that GM and Chrysler are planning to invest nearly $1BN in new plants and equipment in Ohio as the US auto industry rebounds, people are still trying to claim the bailout was a bad thing.

In particular, I'm hearing "if GM was such a good gamble, why didn't the private market loan them the money?" Which made me livid - these jack@sses have already forgotten that their precious markets were horribly, frighteningly broken lo those three years ago.

In all the "Obama is a Wall Street hating soshulist" garbage is one of the biggest real-time rewritings of history: the Kenyan communist saved capitalism's sorry butt. Big time.

But that cannot be the national narrative. Democrats must always be the party of government and Republicans the party of markets, even if the facts utterly support the opposite.

Permalink

Not long ago, Crooks and Liars published a good piece on those now-notorious Ron Paul newsletters. Even though Paul profited from those publications, he now disavows all knowledge of their content. C&L author David Neiwert correctly notes that Ron Paul's proposed new order of libertarian "freedom" would translate into the removal of governmental protections that stop the affluent few from enslaving the impoverished many.

Everyone is talking about the racist content of those old newsletters, which I suppose is a natural response: Slavery and genocide are the foundational sins of this country. But I prefer to focus on the paranoia.

Conspiracism has become this nation's second-most popular religion. When you question that religion, its adherents always counter: "So, you're saying that conspiracies don't exist?" No. I'm saying that what passes for argument in the conspiracy theorist subculture is often risible.

To illustrate the point, let's have a look at this page from one of those long-ago newsletters. Judging from the internal evidence, these words were published in late 1991. The subject is the Trilateral Commission.

The real goal of the Trilateral Commission is to merge the U.S., Japan and Europe into one centralized Megastate.

Wow. Quite a sweeping statement. Since this article follows a quasi-scholarly format, one would expect the author to back up this bold assertion with, say, a quote from a Trilateralist publication. Something like this: "Hey-diddly-ho, my fellow Trilateroonies! You know what would be a really good idea? One centralized Megastate!"

Instead, the author (who was not Ron Paul -- honest Injun, not him, blame someone else, anyone but Ron Paul) gives us the following proof for this Megastate thing:

Their 1977 report "Toward a Renovated International System" argues that "premise of a separation between the political and realm" should be made "obsolete" (Trilateral Task Force Report, 1977). Such a global corporate state would be a monster and a death blow to our liberty.

Wait a consarned minute here, Mr. Not-Ron-Paul! You have not established that the Trilateral Commission wants a global state. You have offered a gerrymandered quote which speaks to something else. I'm not sure what the author of our quote-within-a-quote means when he talks about the separation of the political and economic. (Some of us feel that such a separation was always an artificial construct -- hence the traditional term "political economy.") But one thing is certain: The quote-within-a-quote tells us nothing about any plans to create a Dreadful One World Gummint.

And yet, for that generation of conspiracy believers, the existence of Trilateralist plans to create a D1WG became an article of faith.

I'm not against research into possible conspiracies. I'm against poor argumentation. I'm against anyone who applies insanely low standards of evidence to important questions. I'm against people who draw 5X worth of inference from 1X worth of data. I'm against writers who make statements when they should ask questions. I'm against researchers who put conclusions at the beginning of an investigation instead of saving them for the end. I don't mind speculation -- even outlandish speculation -- but I mistrust those who fudge the distinction between the posited and the proven.

The world being what it is, I can't blame anyone who feels paranoid. But let's have paranoia with standards.

Side note: So who did write those newsletters? Lew Rockwell has been mentioned. But I would note that in this same time period, Ron Paul had on his staff a conspiracy-oriented lecturer named Craig Hulet, who operated under the name K.C. DePass. Under that name, he got a lot of play on KPFK, which is part of the left-wing Pacifica radio network. I heard his rap. Near as I could tell, he was no racist -- but he was kind of off-the-wall. He taught me that the sneakier libertarians know how to clamber over the walls and scamper around LeftyLand.

Wonder what he's up to these days? Permalink