enlargeCredit: The Other 98%

h/t Nicole Belle. The Supreme Court building gets Occupied. More photos here. Open thread below...

Title: Sparkle CityArtist: Shuggie Otis

It's Monday, but Shuggie's here to make it alright. Mellow out to these sweet sounds and Friday will be here before you know it..

Also our sister site Newstalgia has The Specials in session from 1979.

Whatcha listening to this Monday evening?

Inspiration Information Artist: Shuggie Otis Price: $49.99 (As of 01/23/12 05:11 pm details)

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Ardem at Blue Arkansas reports a horrifying case (with graphic pictures of the cat, may not be safe for children):

Last night, I got the most chilling phone call I have ever received. It was Jake Burris, Ken Aden’s campaign manager. Last night, Jake and his four kids had come back to their Russellville home. As they were getting out of the car, one of his children discovered their family cat dead on the front porch. One side of the animal’s head had been bashed in and an eyeball was hanging out of its socket. But there was something even more horrifying to be found on the corpse.

Written across the animal’s fur in black marker was the word “LIBERAL“.

It does make you wonder if the perpetrator of this act has himself one of those "Liberal Hunting Licenses", doesn't it?
Scott Keyes at Think Progress reports:

Pope County, where Burris lives, is a highly-conservative area of Arkansas. Aden has been running for the 3rd congressional district seat, currently held by Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR), since August 2011. He released a statement on the matter this morning: “To kill a child’s pet is just unconscionable. As a former combat soldier, I’ve seen the best of humanity and the worst of humanity. Whoever did this is definitely part of the worst of humanity.”

Ken Aden is a Blue America candidate, so go read more about him.

As Ardem observes:

This is terrorism. There’s no other word for it. A police report has been filed. Jake said the kids seem to be handling it okay. The one that discovered the cat was too young to be able to read and Jake had quickly gotten the others into the house before they saw it. Pope County is an insanely conservative area and the Aden campaign has been shaking things up even there and it looks like another right wing sociopath with a taste for violence has come crawling out of the woodwork in response. I asked Aden for a comment on the record:

“This is sickening. To kill a child’s pet…I’m at a loss for words…I’ve seen the best and the worst of humanity, but this is something else.”

Both Ken and Jake though made it clear that they weren’t going to back down on the campaign trail, both agreeing that caving to this kind of behavior would only make things worse.

“I’ve got a gun and I know how to use it.”, Jake said. “If I have to protect my kids I’ll do it without hesitation.”

Most of you know I've written at length about this kind of right-wing behavior, especially in my book The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right. Unfortunately, the book's publisher went belly up in the past year, and it's currently hard to obtain, though we are working on at least making it available in Kindle form.

In any event, I thought I'd include some relevant passages, all from the Introduction:

These incidents – the nasty personal encounters, the ugliness at campaign rallies, the violent acts of “lone wolf” gunmen – are anything but unique. If you’re a liberal in America – or for that matter, anyone who happens to have run afoul of the conservative movement and its followers – you’ve probably heard it. Anecdotally, hundreds of Americans have similar tales to tell – unexpected and brutal viciousness, coming from otherwise ordinary, everyday people, nearly all of them political conservatives, nearly all directed at their various “enemies”: liberals, Latinos, Muslims, and just about anyone who disagrees with them.

This kind of talk – voiced sometimes as inchoate rage, and at others as perverse “humor” – is not aimed at public discourse, but its very antithesis: threatening and intimidating and, ultimately, eliminating opponents. It does this by framing them as the Enemy, verminous scum, disease-ridden and disease-like cancers on the body politic who deserve not dialogue but simple purgation.

This is called eliminationism: a kind of politics and culture that shuns dialogue and the democratic exchange of ideas for the pursuit of outright elimination of the opposing side, either through complete suppression, exile and ejection, or extermination.

Rhetorically, eliminationism takes on some distinctive shapes. It always depicts its opposition as simply beyond the pale, and in the end the embodiment of evil itself -- unfit for participation in their vision of society, and thus in need of elimination. It often depicts its designated "enemy" as vermin (especially rats and cockroaches) or diseases, and loves to incessantly suggest that its targets are themselves disease carriers. A close corollary -- but not as nakedly eliminationist -- are claims that the opponents are traitors or criminals, or gross liabilities for our national security, and thus inherently fit for elimination or at least incarceration.

Eliminationism is often voiced as crude "jokes", the humor of which, when analyzed, is inevitably predicated on a venomous hatred. But what we also know about this rhetoric is that, as surely as night follows day, this kind of talk eventually begets action, with inevitably tragic results.

Two key factors distinguish eliminationist rhetoric from other political hyperbole:

• It is focused on an enemy within, people who constitute entire blocs of the citizen populace, and
• It advocates the excision and extermination, by violent means or civil, of those entire blocs.

Eliminationism -- and particularly the rhetoric that precedes it and fuels it -- represents a kind of self-hatred. In an American culture which advertises itself as predicated on inclusiveness, eliminationism runs precisely counter to those ideals. Eliminationists, at heart, really hate the very idea of America.

It has its origins, like slavery and war, in some of man's most ancient and most savage impulses: the desire to dominate others, through violence if necessary. However, in contrast, it goes largely unnoticed and largely unexamined, perhaps because it is a side of human nature so ugly we prefer not even to recognize its existence -- so much so that only recently have we even had a term like "eliminationism" with which to frame it.

The term's first significant use came from historian Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in his controversial text, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, where it appears extensively and plays a central role in his thesis that "eliminationist antisemitism" had a unique life in German culture and eventually was the driving force behind the Holocaust. In the text, Goldhagen never provides a concise definition of the word, but rather constructs a massively detailed description of the eliminationist mindset:

The eliminationist mind-set that characterized virtually all who spoke out on the "Jewish Problem" from the end of the eighteenth century onward was another constant in Germans' thinking about Jews. For Germany to be properly ordered, regulated, and, for many, safeguarded, Jewishness had to be eliminated from German society. What "elimination" -- in the sense of successfully ridding Germany of Jewishness -- meant, and the manner in which this was to be done, was unclear and hazy to many, and found no consensus during the period of modern German antisemitism. But the necessity of the elimination of Jewishness was clear to all. It followed from the conception of the Jews as alien invaders of the German body social. If two people are conceived of as binary opposites, with the qualities of goodness inhering in one people, and those of evil in the other, then the exorcism of that evil from the shared social and temporal space, by whatever means, would be urgent, an imperative. "The German Volk," asserted one antisemite before the midpoint of the century, "needs only to topple the Jew" in order to become "united and free."

Hitler's Willing Executioners is an important and impressive piece of scholarship, particularly in the extent to which it catalogues the willing participation of the "ordinary" citizenry in so many murderous acts, as well as in the hatemongering that precipitated them. And his identification of "eliminationism" as a central impulse of the Nazi project was not only borne out in spades by the evidence, but was an important insight into the underlying psychology of fascism.

The eliminationist project is in many ways the signature of fascism, partly because it proceeds naturally from fascism's embrace of what Oxford Brookes scholar Roger Griffin calls palingenesis, or a Phoenix-like national rebirth, as its core myth. And the Nazi example clearly demonstrates how eliminationist rhetoric has consistently preceded, and heralded, the eventual assumption of the eliminationist project – indeed, it has played a critical role in giving permission for it to proceed, essentially creating the cultural and psychological conditions that enable the subsequent violence.

Goldhagen's focus is almost solely the Holocaust and the virulently anti-Semitic form that took root in Europe prior to the Second World War. However, as a principle, we can see eliminationism playing a role in human history through the ages -- including its special role in American history and the shaping of American culture, right up to the present day.

I noticed this in part because, at the time that I read Goldhagen’s text, I was engaged in a historical research project involving the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and was struck by the similarity of what Goldhagen was describing regarding the buildup to Nazi power to both the rhetoric and the behavior of Americans not only during the nadir of that horrific episode, but over the course of the forty years and more that had preceded the event, toward Asians generally and the Japanese specifically.

But a familiarity with the darker corners of American history tells us the phenomenon has not been restricted to Asians. Eliminationist rhetoric, followed and accompanied inevitably by an actual campaign of often-violent eliminationism, has been a specter hanging over our most shameful episodes: the destruction of the native American people; the subjugation of African Americans, from slavery to Jim Crow, the “lynching era,” and “sundown towns”; and the nativist anti-immigrant campaigns of various eras targeting ethnic minorities from the Irish to the Germans to Italians, Asians, and today, Latinos. It lives today in the form of hate crimes and hateful rhetoric directed toward gays and lesbians, Muslims, and various minorities.

More recently the eliminationism has also come to be directed at not merely these minorities, but the “liberals” who are perceived as their enablers – antiwar activists, environmentalists, civil-rights guardians. Which means that the hateful rhetoric and its poisonous consequences are starting to spread.

I began observing this phenomenon back in 2003 at my blog Orcinus, almost as an offhand observation at first, but I asked readers to chip in and tell me their own experiences, as well as to link me to stories that fell into this category. It was like tapping into a high-voltage power line. Comments poured in to my blog, and there were as many if not more e-mails.

Incidents like these are difficult to catalog or quantify. Only on occasion (as in the Van Der Meer case) do matters ever reach the level of being reported in the press – indeed, it’s rare that police are even called or involved. But judging from the outpouring at Orcinus and elsewhere, it seems clear that, as far as many progressives are concerned, eliminationist rhetoric has so deeply infected the popular discourse that it is now almost pervasive, and indeed poisoning how we treat each other in our daily lives.

...

Eliminationism has become an endemic feature of modern movement conservatism – not bothering to argue the facts or merits of issues but to simply demand outright the suppression or violent oppression (and ultimately the purgation) of elements deemed harmful to American society. It is aimed not merely at Latinos and Muslims – the current major targets – but also its historical targets: blacks and Indians, gays and lesbians, Jews and other religious minorities. But perhaps most commonly and generically, and most casually, its target is the common liberal.

This kind of rhetoric doesn’t constitute actual discourse, but rather its opposite – it is, in effect the death of discourse itself. Instead of offering an opposing idea, it simply shuts down intellectual exchange and replaces it with the brute wish to silence and eliminate.

As we’ve seen from the preceding examples, a lot of eliminationist talk occurs on a small, personal level, often during chance encounters with other drivers or shoppers or diners-out. But it is not occurring in a vacuum. Much of this kind of talk in fact has been publicly encouraged by a steady patter of similar talk from prominent right-wing media and political figures. It's being promoted at the highest levels of movement conservatism, by everyone from media figures to religious and political leaders.

It can be heard not just in bizarre road-rage incidents and ugly exchanges among former friends, but from the very fonts of public information that are the mass media. Figures like Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and Glenn Beck routinely engage in it and inflame it with bogus stories -- nonsensical conspiracy theories and outrageously inflammatory misinformation – derived from fanatical far-right sources. What happened to Timothy Burke is becoming a commonplace because it’s being openly encouraged by major figures in the conservative movement, both in the media and in officialdom.

...

The problem with eliminationism isn’t that it is simply unpleasant or ugly or even uncomfortable discourse, which is what can often be fairly said of the left’s frequently charged rhetoric. The problem, as we already noted, is that it implies the death of discourse, as well as its dissolution into violence and the use of force.

These are not mere jokes, even when they’re presented as such. The humor in them – whatever might be funny about them – is entirely contingent on an underlying attitude about conservatives’ fellow Americans that not only demonizes them, but reduces them to subhuman level, prime targets for violent elimination. The people telling them and repeating them may think they are mere jokes, and perhaps in their own minds, they are. But they have a concrete real-world effect -- because inevitably members of their audience (particularly the more hate-filled and mentally unstable types) will eventually act them out.

...

It is by small steps of incremental meanness and viciousness that we lose our humanity. We have the historical example of 20th-century fascism to remind us of this. The Nazis, in the end, embodied the ascension of utter demonic inhumanity, but they didn't get that way overnight. They got that way through, day after day, attacking and demonizing and urging the elimination of those they deemed their enemies. They did this by not simply creating them as The Enemy, but by denying them their essential humanity, depicting them as worse than scum -- disease-laden, world-destroying vermin, in desperate need of elimination. But that kind of behavior has hardly been restricted to the Nazis; indeed, it has a long history in America as well.

This is why eliminationism is such an acute warning sign: It has historically played the role of creating permission for people to act out their violent impulses against its targets. More than any other facet of para-fascism, it poses the greatest specific danger of transformation into the real thing.

This is why there is a special quality to eliminationist rhetoric. It has the distinctive odor of burning flesh. And when it hits our nostrils, that is a warning we dare not ignore.

enlargeCredit: SomeECards

A senior vice-president at NBC (yeah) actually said,

[W]e look forward to hosting a substantive and stimulating forum for the candidates to make their case to the voters in this crucial state and the whole country.

Or we could have a drinking game.

Live stream at NBCPolitics.com at 9 pm Eastern. NBC plans to tape delay the debate on the West Coast until 9 Pacific.

Open Debate Thread below...

Three cheers for Ryan Lizza. On "Morning Joe" on Monday morning, he refuted the conventional Beltway wisdom that "both sides" are to blame for the political gridlock in Washington.

MEACHAM: What does the White House, I should say attribute the polarization to at this point and if the identified the problems can they do something to solve them?

LIZZA: I think two things that aren't that complicated, polarization, two parties moving to the left and right, but it’s not just polarization and I think where a lot of reporters have trouble describing this phenomenon accurately. Frankly, you have one party that has gone much farther to the extreme than the other. The Republican party has been pushed much farther to the right than the Democratic Party. So we don't have polarization, we have asymmetric polarization.

SCARBOROUGH: I just want to state for the record -- let the record reflect, I disagree. Go ahead. This is your time.

LIZZA: I think there’s some pretty, if you look closely at some of the political science behind that – I think you’d have a hard time making the case that the Democrats in Congress have gone as far to the left as the Republicans have gone to the right.

Scarborough lamely tried to refute Lizza’s point by suggesting that what unnamed Democrats said about George W. Bush was just as bad as what Glenn Beck is saying today about Obama. That’s nonsense, of course – there were no elected Democrats comparing George W. Bush to Hitler on the floor of the House or calling him a racist on national television.

But political rhetoric isn’t what Lizza was talking about.

As Nate Silver demonstrated with hard data, the Democratic Party is still a party primarily of moderates, and the GOP is totally dominated by conservatives. And even that doesn’t take into account how far right the scale has been titled over the past 30 years.

Back in the '50s, an era conservatives romanticize, Dwight Eisenhower presided over a 91% marginal rate on the wealthy and launched the biggest public works project in US history -- which was paid for by tax increases.

During the '80s, another favorite decade of the right-wing, Ronald Reagan raised taxes 12 times -- including one of the largest tax increases in U.S. history -- and signed a bill that provided a path to citizenship for immigrants. Both of which would be unthinkable in today’s GOP.

Today, we live in an era in which a 35% tax on the highest earners constitutes tyranny, a $787B emergency measure to stave off a second Great Depression – over a third of which was tax cuts – is characterized as a historically unprecedented spending binge -- and the GOP's answer to immigration is to forcibly deport 12M people. Not to mention the fact that Senate Republicans have used the filibuster more than any other minority in history -- and that now it's commonplace for Republican presidential candidates to argue that the most popular programs of the New Deal and the Great Society should be eliminated.

Lizza should be applauded for getting this right. This “both sides have become equally extreme” stuff is just lazy and uninformed -- and should be throughly refuted every time it comes up.

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Despite the fact as was noted yesterday on Chris Hayes' Saturday show on MSNBC, that Newt Gingrich's national favorability ratings nationwide are absolutely terrible, that didn't stop Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Gov. Haley Barbour from trying to put their best positive spin on his win in the South Carolina Republican primary race.

Gingrich may be winning over Republican primary voters with the race baiting and a repeat of Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy, but that doesn't necessarily translate well to a national election. I'm sure Graham and Barbour are well aware of that, but that didn't stop them from trying to paint South Carolina Republican primary voters as being typical of the mainstream of the rest of the country.

Transcript via CBS.

SCHIEFFER: All right, if you can help me and call Governor Romney, I think we can make this work. Senator Graham, what happened down there? Did-- is-- is South Carolina just too conservative for Mitt Romney or is there a problem here that goes deeper than that with his campaign?

GRAHAM: John McCain won, Bob Dole won. Not the most conservative people in the world but good-- good Americans who impressed South Carolina in sobriety, Newt won. The debate Monday night in Myrtle Beach was probably the best explanation of conservatism in a bold fashion coming from Newt Gingrich I've heard in decades. And Newt not only won the debates. He convinced people that he could beat Barack Obama and electability was the issue before South Carolina primary, during the primary and on voting day. And Newt won. He's the guy that we saw forty percent of us, the best to go into the arena and beat Barack Obama. Governor Romney did fine. Rick Perry did very well. He had some stumbles by Romney. We had six hundred thousand people vote. The largest Republican primary in history occurred yesterday. And people were energized. They were looking close and they picked Newt. This was Newt winning more than anybody else losing.

SCHIEFFER: Are you ready to endorse him that sound, those were very complimentary words.

GRAHAM: Well, here's what I am willing to say. That Newt Gingrich has changed a lot in a positive way. This immigration issue is tough for our party, tough for our country. And Newt is putting on the table an idea that once you secure your borders and control who gets the job and you have to deal with the twelve million, we're going to have a rational system, most of them will have to go back. But if you've had a lady who has been here twenty-five or thirty years and has done nothing but be part of the community, committed an immigration violation, we're going to give her a second look. She'll have to learn English, pay a fine. She can have legal status, not citizenship. That's a-- that's a way of thinking that I think will help our party because she may have a young son or grandson who is in the Marines in Afghanistan. And I don't want a party who says to Sergeant Gonzalez, congratulations, you just won the Purple Heart. Unfortunately, we're going to have to deport your grandmother. I hope you get home before she leaves. Newt's putting on the table real solutions in a way today that he wouldn't have done in 1994. And that kind of maturing and thought I think is going to help the party and help him.

SCHIEFFER: Well let me turn to Governor Barbour here. Governor, you heard Newt Gingrich. He is painting Mitt Romney as the candidate of the Republican establishment. What I'm wondering, what is the Republican establishment these days?

BARBOUR: Well, of course, the Republican Party is a conservative party of the United States. The Democratic Party is the liberal party becoming more liberal daily under the Obama administration. But ours is a very diverse party, you have got economic conservatives, social conservatives. About sixty percent of the people who voted in South Carolina are like me they're Evangelical Christians. But I was interested and Lindsey touched on this. Two thirds of them said in the exit polls their first criteria was to vote for the person who had the best chance to beat Obama. And I think that's what most Republicans want. They're looking for the candidate as-- as Bill Buckley used to say years ago, we want the most conservative person who can win in November. And Newt was really helped by the fact that lot of people who maybe didn't think he could win three months ago have come to that conclusion. Of course, if we would have said three months ago that Bob, that Mitt Romney was going to win the South Carolina primary, we'd all laughed at that too. So a little of this was according to Hoyle, but I think Newt has-- Newt had a great week and debates really help him because as Lindsey says he can make it very plain why we're for the right things.

SCHIEFFER: Well let me ask you this. Do you now agree with the majority of those who said that they voted for-- for-- for Newt Gingrich that he is the one now who has the best chance of beating Obama? Do you think that?

BARBOUR: I think that-- I think that remains to be seen, Bob. Newt-- Lindsey mentioned Newt has become a much better candidate. He is a-- he is tremendous in debate. He's the best debater by far, not close. Romney strengths are more managerial and Lord-- there are a lot of people in the United States who understand we need some management after watching this administration for the last three years. We need somebody that knows how to get things done. Romney has in my opinion been very courageous to tackle the entitlement programs of the-- of the Obama administration. When the President makes his state of the state address this week, I predict he's going to say we need bigger government. We need more of people to be paid for the-- by the government. We need more people to be taken care of by the government. And Romney's had the courage to say now that's a losing proposition in the long-term. America is not based on an entitlement society but an opportunity society. So I think both of them have something really strong to offer. A long primary season, I think, is healthy in many ways as it gets personal. That's negative. But not nearly as negative as the Democrats are going to be, I mean, Obama can't run on his record--

SCHIEFFER: Let me.

BARBOUR: --so he's going to make the Demo-- he's going to make the Republican, whoever it is, somebody that his grandmamma wouldn't recognize or vote for.

Seriously, is it likely that such a murky enterprise was set up without being approved by someone higher up the food chain, like Tenet? Of course not. The question is, did the authorization reach even higher?

The top lawyer at the CIA never approved sending one of its officers to help the New York Police Department create a domestic spying program, raising the possibility that the agency may have violated a ban on domestic spying.

Last August, the Associated Press reported that the CIA had violated that prohibition when it “played a key role in transforming the New York Police Department’s intelligence unit into a cutting edge spy shop dedicated to gathering information on Muslims.”

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly insisted in October that the arrangement was legal under a 1981 presidential order, which allows the CIA to provide local law enforcement with “specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel,” provided the guidelines are spelled out in advance and the agency’s general counsel approves of the arrangement.

The AP is now reporting, however, that according to intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, neither of those things was done in 2002 when then-CIA director George Tenet sent a veteran officer to set up “spying programs that transformed the NYPD into one of the nation’s most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies.”

An internal CIA investigation launched in September by newly-appointed Director David Petraeus concluded there had been no wrongdoing, but the AP report casts fresh doubt on that conclusion.The AP story points out that the role of CIA officer Lawrence Sanchez — and of a second, unidentified, CIA officer who succeeded him in 2010 — was “murky,” which enabled US officials to claim his presence did not violate the ban because he was never directly instructed to help set up the spying programs.“Officially, he is there on a sabbatical to observe the NYPD’s management,” the AP story notes.

enlargeWhile I don't believe all white voters in South Carolina are racist, those who are racist are mean, nasty, anything-goes racists. This is how badly the racists want Barack Obama out of the White House.

Via the Washington Post:

Across South Carolina on Saturday, voters had said they liked Gingrich’s aggression in debates — believing it would make him the best Republican to take on President Obama in the fall.

“I think Mitt Romney is a good man,” said Harold Wade, 85, leaving a polling place in this picturesque seaside suburb outside Charleston. “But I think we’ve reached a point where we need someone who’s mean.”

That was Gingrich, he said.

“What we need is someone who’s got some brains,” Wade said, explaining his vote for the former speaker. “And we need someone with some guts.”

In the spirit of Newtie, Rick Santorum's honorary Florida chairman said "Gays make God want to vomit," on Sunday, and another Santorum religious fanatic pastor supporter trashed Mormons at a Santorum rally calling them racist. This may not be untrue, but I'm fairly certain Rick Santorum isn't exactly an open-minded, "love everyone" kind of guy either.

Bottom line? Mr. Wade is going to get his wish. I predict that all candidates' gloves will be off. No more Mr. Nice Mitt. No more meek Ricky. Newtie will swagger onto Monday's debate stage wearing everything but the white hood.

They want mean? I think they're about to get it.

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Former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum was greeting supporters after his loss in the South Carolina primary when an activist greeted him with a burst of glitter.

Via:

As Santorum closed his speech focusing on building strong family values, a gay rights activist said: "Except when you're gay" and threw a handful of glitter in the air.

Members of the Occupy Charleston group joined in with chants of "Rick, Rick, Rick, bigot, bigot, bigot" and singing "Santorum, Santorum, you're a bigot." As police escorted the group out, they shouted about Jesus preaching love.

The police escorted many members of the movement off-campus and would not allow them to retreive their vehicles parked there. But there were no arrests or incidents.

This isn’t the first time Santorum was glitter-bombed, he was also targeted during his final campaign event in Iowa late in December.

Santorum is frequently targeted by gay activists because of his never-ending anti-gay rights rhetoric.

Newt really likes the attack-the-media tactic, using it whenever and wherever an uncomfortable question is posed. But I imagine he never thought he'd have to use those tactics against his former employers, Fox News. Unfortunately for him, Roger Ailes' morning memo to his on-air talent was to take on fully the accusation that Newt Gingrich really isn't a conservative (like St. Ronnie himself could stand up to the GOP purity nowadays) and that he's saddled with corruption and ethics violation baggage that will hurt his general election viability. This gang up by the second string Fox & Friends group is more than little Newtie can handle:

He then took a sharp turn to attack the hosts, offended that he had been asked to “take seriously” Romney’s demand. “Even in the news media, you ought to have some sense of balance. As a reporter, don’t you have some sense of balance? Isn’t ‘fair and balanced’ part of Fox News?” Briggs jumped in to defend Morris’s question, explaining that he was giving Gingrich a chance to respond, not legitimizing any claims. He also expanded the question to propose that it was up in the air whether “any of this mattered. Gingrich responded that “if there is something wrong, we deserve to know” with Romney’s taxes only because of the “billion dollar Obama campaign” that would crush him if there was something wrong there– as opposed to Gingrich’s ethics investigation, which had “been covered for 20 years; it’s all out in the open.”

So why did Gingrich blow up at Morris’s question? It felt, at least on Gingrich’s part, somewhat forced, as if he was waiting for any opportunity to bash them. And that wouldn’t be surprising in light of some peripheral evidence that not all the Fox & Friends hosts were 100% on his side during that testy exchange with CNN’s John King– particularly Briggs, who tweeted his support of King (and Fox’s Neil Cavuto in defending him) that his question about Gingrich’s affair with his now-wife Callista was “fair game” (the twist to this is that Morris, who actually got clawed here, seemed fine with Gingrich’s reaction to King’s question while it happened on Thursday). Either that, or Gingrich had a bullet in his barrel for the media today that was ready to land no matter where, since the strategy is clearly working, and the Romney tax issue felt like the right moment to strike.

I have to believe that this tactic is going to wear thin fairly soon. The news media is not exactly an industry of shrinking wallflowers. There are a number of egos in the media that rival Gingrich's and at some point, they may get sick of being attacked for giving Newt the free publicity he craves.

By the way...that assertion that Newt made that all he was exonerated of all ethics charges? Not so much.

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From this Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary coverage on MSNBC, former McCain adviser Steve Schmidt was asked what would happen were Newt Gingrich to win the next primary race in Florida as well and it didn't bode well for the Republican Party and the potential for a bit of a civil war among their ranks.

SCHMIDT: Look, I think, not only are we not moving towards a coalescing of support by the Republican establishment for Newt Gingrich, we're probably moving toward the declaration of war on Newt Gingrich by the Republican establishment. And if Newt Gingrich is able to win the Florida primary, you will see a panic and a meltdown of the Republican establishment that is beyond my ability to articulate in the English language.

People will go crazy and you will have this five week period until the Super Tuesday states which is going to be as unpredictable, tumultuous as any period in modern American politics. It will be a remarkable thing to watch should that happen in Florida.

As Schmidt pointed out Gingrich's negatives are so high with one hundred percent name recognition establishment Republicans are terrified he's not only going to lose them the presidential election should he win their primary race, but he'd potentially cost them the House and the Senate as well. If Schmidt's predictions are true, look for things to get very ugly over the next month or so.

Can you believe this is the same man who got an endorsement from NARAL in 2002, because he said the pro-choice organization needed "a friend like him" in office? Boy, was that a big flip flop from today:

Romney made the following statement on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

“Today marks the 39th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history, when the court in Roe v. Wade claimed authority over the fundamental question regarding the rights of the unborn. The result is millions of lives since that day have been tragically silenced. Since that day, the pro-life movement has been working tirelessly in an effort to change hearts and minds and protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Today, we recommit ourselves to reversing that decision, for in the quiet of conscience, people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America.”

What a load of crap, pardon my French. The "pro-life" movement has done nothing to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, because they do nothing to educate mothers, they do nothing to raise the circumstances of these babies they demand must be born, they offer nothing to help the family. They hold the fetus in higher regard than the mother and ignore the child once it's born.

That is the very opposite of being pro-life. I wonder if any of these Republicans have learned the lessons of what happened in Romania after Nicholas Ceausescu outlawed abortion and all forms of contraception and sex education. Hint: it didn't turn out too well for him.

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I keep hearing this ridiculous canard in Republican debates and now from John Boehner about the alleged jobs bills the Republicans have passed that the "Democrat Senate" refuses to act upon. Since I watched the better part of their activity in real time, I know this is a lie. But most people aren't obsessive-compulsive about government and politics and might not realize just how much of a lie it is. So without further ado, let me debunk this claim made by the disingenuous Speaker of the House.

WALLACE: Question -- how will you counter that line of attack?

BOEHNER: Chris, 30 jobs bills passed over the last year in a Republican House of Representatives that are sitting in the United States Senate -- thirty.

Our focus over the last 12 months has been on jobs. Our focus over the course of the next 12 months is going to be on jobs.

The president asked us to extend the payroll tax credit, to make sure that we extended unemployment insurance with reforms, and make sure that doctors that dealt with Medicare patients were adequately reimbursed. And he asked us to do it for a year. We did it for a year. It was the United States Senate who decided, we're just going to do it for two months and we can't agree on how we're going to offset these costs. And so, we'll just kick the can down the road.

To make sure they back up their public claims with what might appear to be "fact", they've built a page on the House of Representatives site with a list of their so-called jobs bills, which number 27 and not 30 as the Speaker claims. What follows is a list and a brief explanation of why they are not jobs bills. Feel free to share it widely with your friends who might be inclined to believe Mr. Tobacco Lobbyist Check Distributor without questioning it.

HR 3630 - The Middle Class Tax Relief & Job Creation Act of 2011 - This bill does indeed extend the "docfix" and unemployment insurance for a year, but with a hefty price.

• In addition to freezing federal workers' pay for three years, it requires issuance of a permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline in advance of the proposed routing by Nebraska, suspends the newly-issued mercury regulations and extends 100% expensing of business equipment (including private jets). Another so-called "jobs bill", HR 1938, was passed giving a November 1, 2011 deadline for the Keystone pipeline.
• With regard to unemployment insurance benefits, it cuts the 99-week maximum down to a 59-week maximum by mid-2012, allow states to drug-test UI recipients, and allow states to reduce state unemployment benefits and substitute federal funds. It also cuts funding for key provisions of the Affordable Care Act coming online, and adds the requirement to welfare payments that EBT cards cannot work in strip clubs, liquor stores and casinos.
• Provisions were included to auction more broadband spectrum and reclassify the 700mhz D Block as public safety broadband use only, which would be a huge payoff to Verizon Wireless lobbyists, who won that block with requirements that it remain open, after Google challenged the auction process.
• It would force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to pay increased guarantee fees similar in scope to those due from large banks as a part of the Dodd-Frank Act, means-tests unemployment insurance benefits and food stamp programs and increases Federal employees' contributions to their retirement system by 1.5% while freezing pay, so their pensions take a double-whammy.
• Finally, it repeals the new timing rules for estimated corporate tax payments for companies with assets of $1 billion or more so that they can use payments of estimated taxes as a timing tool for fourth quarter profit declarations.

None of the provisions outlined above create jobs. They called it a jobs act, but it was really just an act.

HR 1633 - Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011

This bill prevents the EPA from issuing or finalizing regulations revising air quality standards under the Clean Air Act, and excepts farm dust from all references to "particulate matter."

No jobs there, but if anyone has ever suffered from Valley Fever, they might object to exempting dust, particularly farm dust, from the definition of particulate matter.

HR 10 - Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny (REINS) Act of 2011

Guts the regulation process by mandating that every regulation promulgated by approved by Congress after an onerous submission process, while exempting any Congressional finding from judicial review. Call this one the Carte Blanche For Congress To Kill All Regulatory Authority Bill.

What it is not: A jobs bill.

HR 3010 - Regulatory Accountability Act of 2011

HR 3010 is a modified, somewhat less onerous version of HR 10, setting guidelines for whether any regulations are warranted at all even if called for under a statute. Calling an anti-regulatory statute a jobs bill is a little like calling a half-built bridge infrastructure. So again, not a jobs bill.

HR 527 - Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act of 2011

Ostensibly, HR 527 would reduce regulatory requirements on small businesses by forcing an impact study with specific focus on small business before regulation is adopted. It would limit EPA, OSHA and CFPB regulations while presumably protecting "small" closely-held Subchapter S corporations like Koch Industries. Not a jobs bill.

HR 3012 - Fairness for High-Skilled Immigrants Act of 2011

HR 3012 would expand job immigration beyond current limits by eliminating employment-based immigrant visa caps and raising the percentage of total visas granted to 15% from 7%. For this one, I'll say it IS a jobs bill, but not a jobs bill for American workers. It is the "Elite Immigration Jobs Bill of 2011".

HR 3094 - Workforce Democracy and Fairness Act

HR 3094 redefines collective bargaining units and makes significant changes to election procedures, including one intended to intimidate employees: an employer-supplied list of eligible voters with contact information provided by the employee.

Not a jobs bill. A union-buster bill.

HR 2930 - Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act

HR 2930 exempts startups raising less than $1 million in venture capital from small investors from SEC registraiton and oversight.

Not a jobs bill. An anti-regulatory bill.

HR 2940 - Access to Capital for Job Creators Act

HR 2940 repeals prohibitions on solicitation or advertising of a securities offering. It's a companion to HR 2930, and is intended to allow people with no relationship to a startup company to invest in it without any oversight by the SEC. Let's call this and its evil twins HR 2930 and HR 1965 the "Ponzi Scheme Coverup Acts of 2011"

HR 1965 - Securities Laws Amendment

HR 1965 changes the shareholder threshhold for SEC registration from 500 to 2000 shareholders. It's not a jobs bill. It's a "hide from the SEC" bill. Its companion, HR 1970, would exempt SEC registration of public offerings under $50 million rather than the current $5 million threshold.

Many More EPA Acts

So many they don't deserve to be broken down individually. HR 2273 removes coal ash regulation from the EPA and hands it to the states. HR 2681 would put a legislative stay on cement manufacturing emission standards. HR 2250 would put a legislative stay on EPA boiler MACT rules. HR 2401 would require analysis of all EPA regulations relating to air, waste, water and climate change. HR 2018 would restrict EPA from issuing any revisions to existing water standards or issuing a new standard for a pollutant if the state has already adopted one or there is an existing standard in place. In other words, ignore any new scientific research after an initial standard has been set. HR 2021 amends the Clean Air Act to open oil and gas exploration off the Alaska coast. HR 910 strips the EPA of authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, a direct assault on efforts to limit man-made contributions to climate change. HR 872 expands the use of pesticides, fungicides and rodent without EPA approval.

Many More Oil and Gas Drilling Acts

There is HR 1231, which would require the Administration to allow offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration in order to meet set domestic production goals, effectively forcing the moratorium on offshore drilling to be lifted to meet goals. HR 1229 requires the Energy Secretary to consider any offshore drilling permits within 30 days of receiving it and provide application denials in writing within 60 days of the application. Another "forced moratorium lift" bill. HR 1230 forces sales of oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Outer Continental Shelf of Virginia. It also lifts requirements for environmental impact statements and grandfathers in a 2007 document as authority for environmental impact.

Special Interest Legislation, or Pandering to Corporate Interests

• HR 1904 proposes an exchange of land so that Resolution Copper, LLC can mine copper on what is now part of the Tonto National Forest.
• HJ Res 37 is a resolution of disapproval on net neutrality.
• HR 2587 prohibits the NLRB from restricting where an employer can locate. This is in response to the NLRB's objection to the Boeing plant relocation to South Carolina, a right-to-work state.

These would fall under the anti-labor, anti-environment categories, but not particularly effective job creators. In fact, in Boeing's case, the jobs lost would hurt the economy more than jobs created in a right-to-work state where employers are not obligated to adhere to industry standards on contracts, safety or other issues.

Moyers & Company Show 102: On Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

Bill Moyers and former White House budget director David Stockman on the all-too-cozy relationship between Washington and Wall Street.

This weekend, continuing its sharp multi-episode focus on the intersection of money and politics, Moyers & Company explores the tight connection between Wall Street and the White House with David Stockman – yes, that David Stockman — former budget director for President Reagan.

Now a businessman who says he was “taken to the woodshed” for telling the truth about the administration’s tax policies, Stockman speaks candidly with Bill Moyers about how money dominates politics, distorting free markets and endangering democracy. “As a result,” Stockman says, “we have neither capitalism nor democracy. We have crony capitalism.”

Stockman shares details on how the courtship of politics and high finance have turned our economy into a private club that rewards the super-rich and corporations, leaving average Americans wondering how it could happen and who’s really in charge.

“We now have an entitled class of Wall Street financiers and of corporate CEOs who believe the government is there to do… whatever it takes in order to keep the game going and their stock price moving upward,” Stockman tells Moyers.

Full transcript here.

Click here to view this media

CNN's Howard Kurtz chastised the big media companies who have failed to disclose their conflict of interest and their support of the controversial Internet privacy bills, SOPA and PIPA which they finally covered when there was a blackout by a large number of Internet companies in protest of the legislation.

I'm glad Kurtz at least decided to mention that they should have been more open about their conflict of interest, but less than one minute with no mention of the names of the bills at the end of his show hardly qualifies as anything that really informed his viewers of what those conflicts are. It's a step in the right direction, but a pretty lame one at best.

Now if we could get them to disclose their conflict of interest with the Citizens United ruling that allows corporations to pour unlimited amounts of money into campaigns anonymously and the fact that the big media companies don't want to fix the mess since they're the ones benefiting from all that money flowing into the advertising on their networks.

I expect that to happen about the time hell freezes over. They only covered this blackout because they were forced to because too many people who use the Internet were wondering what was going on or were about to and they would have looked like incompetent buffoons to have completely ignored the story. And Kurtz's complaints here ring pretty hollow when there was a virtual blackout on the story for months while Congress hoped to get it passed with no one noticing.

KURTZ: A strange thing happened this week that transformed the complicated Congressional debate into something that, if you own a computer, was impossible to miss.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN WILLIAMS, NBC ANCHOR: Gone blank. Tonight, the big fight behind what happened to some big names on the Web today and why they went away.

DIANE SAWYER, ABC ANCHOR: You may have noticed today if you happened to go to Google or Wikipedia, the popular Web sites were blacked out in protest over proposed new crackdown on the Internet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KURTZ: These and other opponents say the heavy hand of government regulation could ruin the Internet. They are taking the fight to the big media companies and the Motion Picture Association, which say new restrictions are needed to crack down on online piracy.

And it worked. Public pressure forced congressional leaders to put the bill on hold. But here's the thing - when "Good Morning America," "CBS This Morning" and the "Today" show first covered the blackout, they didn't mention that ABC, CBS and NBC have lobbied hard for the restrictive legislation, although the "Today" show did take note of it during a subsequent interview.

No initial disclosure as well on CNBC. The "New York Times" says that CNN has been, quote, "relatively diligent" in disclosing that parent company, Time Warner, supports the legislation.

This is an important story about online freedom and thievery. And it's just plain embarrassing that the networks didn't fess about the very clear financial interests of the companies that own them.

I can't lie, I'm a little teary from that video. Read this as I pull myself together:

Representative Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona whose unlikely recovery from a shooting last year stirred her colleagues and the nation, said Sunday that she would resign from Congress to focus on improving her health.[..]

Ms. Giffords’s decision to step down throws the race for her seat representing Arizona’s Eighth District into chaos. She barely fought off her Republican challenger in 2010, but was expected to be a shoo-in for re-election had she decided to run this year. The remainder of her term will be filled by the winner of a special election on a date to be determined by Gov. Jan Brewer.

Under Arizona law, a governor has 72 hours from the day the vacancy is declared to name the dates for special elections; the primary must take place 80 to 90 days from date of the vacancy followed by a general election 50 to 60 days after that.

Giffords' recovery thus far is nothing short of miraculous, considering that she was shot point blank in the head. She had been widely considered a shoo-in for re-election if she had opted to campaign again, but the exertions of a campaign and fundraising are not the kinds of things she needs to focus on. Arizona Democrats-- perhaps looking at John McCain and John Kyl in the Senate and Jan Brewer in the Governor's office--are naturally worried about losing this strong Democrat in the House and Gifford's husband, Cmdr Mark Kelly (ret.), was approached to run for his wife's former seat, but it looks like Kelly is not interested.

Giffords will reportedly attend the State of the Union speech on Tuesday before officially vacating her seat.

Angry Liberal: who could have predicted that a white male, ignorant of history and racist at his core would win the South Carolina GOP primary?

Instaputz: who could have predicted that the idiots at RedState would worry that the GOP is stupid enough to run a twice-divorced serial liar against Obama?

TurleyBlog: who could have predicted that the GOP would lie, cheat, and steal to prevent people from voting for Democrats?

Whiskey Fire: who could have predicted that conservative columnists would bemoan the failure of GOP failures like Mitch Daniels and John Kasich to step up and school the GOP's racist base?

Balloon Juice: who could have predicted that the Villagers would get turgid at the idea of a brokered convention when the Republicans convene in August?

blogenfreude delights in the stupid sh*t conservatives post on the intertubes at stinque.com - if you've got something good, email him at mbru@crooksandliars.com - AND YOU WILL BE JUDGED. :D

On this day in 1973, Walter Cronkite announces the death of LBJ. Note the landline phone, analog watch, pencil and paper, and apparent lack of teleprompter. How times have changed.

Open thread below....

Title: High On JesusArtist: Kinky Friedman

Happy Sunday!

Sold American-30Th Anniversary Price: $9.49 (As of 01/23/12 06:00 am details)

The whole field of private equity has taken a hit in the reputation department, thanks to the Republican ads against Mitt Romney. Honestly, if you had told me in 2008 that I would ever type that sentence, I would have said you were crazy, but here we are. I doubt very much if most Americans had really thought very much about the field, until Super PAC ads started showing up in their states, blaming the loss of jobs to greedy vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney during his tenure with Bain Capital.

However, it's key that the one percent protect their own, so Fareed Zakaria-- with his multiple degrees from Yale and Harvard, sitting board member of Yale University, the Trilateral Commission the New America Foundation and the Council of Foreign Relations--gives the fluffiest of softball interviews to David Rubenstein of The Carlyle Group.

Rubenstein assures us that private equity is really not so bad, honest. They don't cut jobs...that would cut down on productivity and therefore profit, right? Well, not always:

Do private-equity firms create jobs, destroy jobs or neither?

The best empirical evidence says the answer is that private equity both creates and eliminates jobs. After a buyout, employment in existing operations tends to decline relative to other companies in the same industry by about 3 percent. (This may mean employment actually grows, but just by less than at other companies). At the same time, employment in new operations tends to increase by more than other companies in the same industry by more than 2 percent. Net job losses were relatively greater in retail buyouts. This is not surprising, given that Wal-mart and Amazon have put a great deal of pressure on retailers over the past 20 years. If retail buyouts are not included, it is likely that net employment growth was positive. In other words, there does not seem to be a large net employment effect. That is not to say, however, that some people do not lose jobs. The overall pattern suggests that private-equity firms make firms more productive. They make cuts or grow more slowly when that makes sense, and they invest and grow more quickly when that makes sense.

The goal of a private equity firm is not to keep people employed. It's to net the highest profit possible for their shareholders. They leverage these companies to the hilt and then they get out. So yes, it's possible to say that the jobs are there while they are managing the companies. But that debt stays once they move along and it is then that these companies file for bankruptcy, losing ALL the jobs in the process. Think Progress looked at some of Bain Capital's acquisitions and the resulting job losses:

Bain Capital, was in the business of buying up distressed companies, slashing them to bits, and then selling them off, resulting in lots of job losses:

– In 1992, the firm acquired American Pad & Paper. By 1999, the year Romney left Bain, two American plants were closed, 385 jobs had been cut and the company was $392 million in debt. The next year, Ampad was forced into bankruptcy.

– Bain Capital and Goldman Sachs bought Dade International for about $450 million in 1994. The firm quickly fired or relocated at least 900 workers. Over the next several years, it sunk increasingly into debt and laid off 1,000 workers. In 2002 — after Romney had left Bain — it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

– A 1997 buyout of LIVE Entertainment for $150 million resulted in 40 layoffs, roughly one in four of the company’s 166 workers. The job cuts affected all aspects of the company, from production and acquisition to legal and public relations.

– In 1997, Bain bought a stake in DDI Corp., a maker of electronic circuit boards. Three years later, Bain took the company public and collected a $36 million payout. But by August 2003, the company filed for bankruptcy protection, laying off more than 2,100 workers.

22 percent of the money Bain Capital raised from 1987 to 1995 was invested in five businesses — Stage Stores, American Pad & Paper, GS Indusries, Dade, and Details. These five made Bain $578 million in profit, even as all five eventually went bankrupt.

It's sweet that Rubenstein wants to give us a kindler, gentler impression of private equity, but it's a dangerous misdirection of the vulture capitalism that has brought this economy to its knees. And let's be honest, The Carlyle Group is hardly a kindler, gentler kind of company.