Sometimes I feel as if Rush Limbaugh isn't entirely to be trusted

Another day, another act of lone-wolf right-wing terror. In what is sure to a standard-issue argument from the right, Republican Party Leader Rush Limbaugh claims that the attacker was inspired by the American left. According to Limbaugh, you can make this connection because:

He hated both Bushes...he hated neocons...he hated John McCain...he hated Republicans, he hated Jews, as well. He believed in an inside job conspiracy of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything...

Unfortunately for Rush, it does not take long to find von Brunn's connections to the world of right-wing extremism (emphasis mine):

(Von Brunn's) book, "Kill the Best Gentiles," is a screed against the Talmud and is dedicated to Revilo Oliver, a well-known denier of the Holocaust. Von Brunn's writings condemning "Negroes" and Jews were prolific...

...Todd Blodgett, a former Reagan White House aide who later worked with several extremist groups, met regularly with von Brunn in the 1990s and early 2000s.

"Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people," Blodgett said. "He had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be Jews."

Blodgett was part-owner of Resistance Records, which distributed music by white racist groups, and worked for Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby, a radical right group...

...Von Brunn apparently supported himself through much of the 1980s and '90s by distributing copies of the Spotlight, the Liberty Lobby's racist newspaper. "A lot of people like Von Brunn made some good money taking those around to senior homes, restaurants, gun shows and places like that," Blodgett said.

Unless the political scene has altered greatly, I don't believe aides to the Reagan administration, owners of white racist record companies, and frequenters of gun shows distributing racist literature are people regularly associated with the left wing, at least not since the Southern Strategy during the Nixon era.

Then there is this:

On Dec. 7, 1981, he (von Brunn) walked into the Federal Reserve headquarters on Constitution Avenue NW with a handgun and threatened to take members of the Board of Governors, including then-Chairman Paul A. Volcker, hostage.

Police said he had an 11-page document, which he characterized as an exposé of an "international bankers' conspiracy to rule all nations from one central seat of government." Court records said he intended to place them under citizens arrest and charge them with treason.

At his trial, von Brunn said that his goal was to "deport all Jews and blacks from the white nations" and that statistics on IQs of black and white Americans "proved that there is one race that is better than another." He also testified that "Jews were the greatest liars that have ever afflicted mankind."

This conspiratorial obsession with the Federal Reserve is a well known facet of right wing extremists, a much discussed and disseminated belief amongst right-wing "Patriot" groups and considered to be a key part of rule by ZOG (the so-called Zionist Occupational Government). These groups are right wing, consider themselves "real" Americans by virtue of the "organic" Constitution, and amongst other things, often believe the paper money printed by the Federal Reserve is counterfeit, part of a general belief about the sovereignty of America being usurped by outside (usually Jewish) forces long associated with the right wing in groups like the John Birch Society and the Posse Comitatus. It's the same belief system that explains the far right's obsession with leaving the United Nations, or their obsession with Mexico reconquering southwestern America.

Rush is, as usual, very careful in his choice of examples, focusing on targets-the Bushes, neocons, an inside job on 9/11-that are often associated with anger on the left, which can make his claim seem plausible on first hearing it. And that's the point-by weeding out the larger context of von Brunn's belief system and only focusing on a few disembodied, cherry-picked items, he can make it seem like this was an act of left-wing extremism, if you are inclined or wish to think it so. However, right-wing extremists were always suspicious of the internationalist Bushes, the mostly-Jewish neocons, and Israel. This by no means makes such people leftists.

Mitt and His Magic Moment

I wanted to write something witty and clever about Mitt's so-called "Kennedy Moment." However, since I lack cleverness or wit, I'll defer to the great Charles Pierce, who crystallizes my thoughts exactly:

Hey, Mitt. They think your religion is a cult and they think you're pretty much a foof. They're always going to think that, even when and if you're the nominee and some of them beg their Personal Lord And Strength Coach for permission to vote for you. Ain't going to be pretty, son. I feel for my former governor. I truly do. He's taking an unfair rap for his religion, and an unfair rap for his gardeners, all in the same week. However -- and it is a big However -- he's the one who decided to run for the nomination of a party that has enthralled itself to shoeless fundamentalist rubes and anti-immigration yahoos. He could have gone two ways. He could have stood against this and argued, correctly, that the GOP is on its way to becoming a regional, racialist-based, minority party. (The approach John McCain briefly tried on in the aftermath of the 2000 South Carolina primary, but which he thereupon abandoned for the next seven years.) He could have done us all a favor and Souljah'ed the lunatic portions of his base. He had the money and the record to do it. Instead, he pandered, over and over again, to the crazy people, and now the crazy people are acting like crazy people act, and all the chickens are coming home to roost on his handsomely chiseled head.

Further, the endless fake parallels to John F. Kennedy's speech to the Baptist ministers are as ahistorical as they are clumsily drawn. Kennedy was addressing a still-extant cultural anti-Catholicism in the South and nativist Know-Nothingism in the North that had remained virulent within his lifetime. He was addressing his speech to the entire country and, if you read it very carefully, you discover that he essentially was telling the Baptist ministers to go to hell, that they were crackpot religious bigots whom he very subtly marginalized from a changing political process. Most of what he told them they didn't really believe, and he knew it, and they knew it. Kennedy wasn't appealing for their support. He was warning them that their stale religious prejudices were being left behind in the New Frontier. As is plain from the text to everyone except, apparently, David Brooks, Romney's speech was narrowly aimed at garnering the support of an important slice of the base he needs to win his party's nomination. The deliberate misreading of the Constitution. The Meacham-esque blathering about the religiosity of the Founders. The monumentally indiscreet -- and philosophically risible -- equation of freedom with public god-babbling. This is all nothing except more pandering. And shouldn't someone making this facile comparison point out that Romney is a Mormon bishop and is thus tied more closely to his church's power structure than Kennedy ever was? I mean, Jack wasn't even a very good Catholic. Gene McCarthy was right about that.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. That Mitt would say there should be no religious test, then would basically turn around and say that there should be a religious test and that he passes! is basically what I expected. This parallels the immigration debate, where Bush was hoping that he could bring the more socially conservative Hispanic vote to the Republican party and add to his base, forgetting that the odious Republican base doesn't like people who don't shimmer with lily whiteness, which, of course, is how the Republicans wanted it. They built their base, in large part, on racial and religious bigotry, and they still want to use it when it's convenient (like when there are Muslims afoot). Maybe this nonsense still speaks to them enough for Mitt the Duplicitous to win the primary (I doubt it, but what do I know? Little). But the coalition of pricks has been showing signs of fraying lately.

Christianist Third Party Possibilities

I agree with Mr. Matthew Yglesias here. It is my half-cocked opinion that pressure groups and special interest groups value their role as kingmakers more than they do as policy influencers (not an actual word, I know). The power (and money) they get from their supporters comes from their ability to get their chosen politicians to heel. Pro-choice cross-dressing serial cheaters/divorcees who win Republican presidential nominations obviously aren't counting on the fundamentalist vote, and if one Republican can win without them, it opens up the floodgates for all Republicans to win without them. Though this would hardly render them powerless in the future, it would prove once and for all that it is not necessary to kowtow to them to win, making them simply one more chattering voice in a crowd of them, instead of the all-important Leviathan they built themselves into over the years. Judging from the grassroots popularity of McCain in 2000, there might be a lot of Republicans who would like to boot the fundy vote if they could. Not that this will help the Republican party for the time being-losing that voting bloc will derail their party for a long time to come.

From another angle, it would seem that Rudy's Clash-of-Civilizations-Crusades nuttery isn't appeasing the Christianists, which would be his best hope of making them happy.

Confidence!!!

"I don't think Hillary will have me."

— Former Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson, in response to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's question about whether he would want to serve in the next president's cabinet.

An Opportunity Denied

I see that Newt Gingrich is declining to run for President. That's too bad indeed.

As a committed lefty blogger of no consequence, I am truly disappointed. A Newt Gingrich Presidential run is a Christmas gift for those on the left. For me, it combines all the personal animosity I feel for his hand in foisting the Monica Lewinski "scandal" on me with the opportunity to rip apart his colossal ideas that the media is so infatuated with. He has it all, in abundance-hypocrisy, lunacy, cliche right-wing ideas masquerading as innovation, jowls-a lefty blogger's wet dream. If he had won the nomination, and been thumped as solidly in the general election as I'm certain he would have been, it would have left a whole pile of "conservative ideas" mouldering as a dung pile for years and years to come. As soon as I heard he was publicly making a play for the nomination, I started gathering ammunition. I know I was not alone.

And now it's over. Curse you, Newt!

As for this:

Rick Tyler said Gingrich realized he couldn't run a political action committee -- his American Solutions group -- and form an exploratory committee to run for president as well.

This sounds an awful lot like horseshit to me. Newt's self-regard is boundless. If he felt that he could manage to win, he wouldn't give it up to keep a comparatively small-time position leading a political action committee.

I think it probably has more to do with this. Scroll down and check out Newt's numbers. Newt may want to kiss himself, but the rest of the country will politely decline. I think his handlers got wind of the political realities and, realizing he might outdo even Fred Thompson for a sluggish campaign, put an end to things, lest this embarrassment give Newt's ego a terminal hematoma.

9/11 Forever

So, when Rudy takes a dump, is it because of 9/11?