Sociopathic: IRS murderer’s daughter calls him a “hero”

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to call this sociopathy (via TPM):

The daughter of the man who allegedly flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin, killing one person and injuring a dozen others, says her father is a hero because he stood up to the system.

“I think too many people lay around and wait for things to happen. But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,” Samantha Bell told Good Morning America.

Stack’s daughter goes on to call his last act “inappropriate,” but clings to the idea that her father’s cause was heroic. Incidentally, she apparently claimed that she felt Medicare did not give her enough money and now lives in the highly taxed nation of Norway.

Meanwhile, Crooks and Liars has a piece up on her father’s victim, Vernon Hunter. Not surprisingly, in the GMA video linked to above, Hunter’s son does not agree that flying a gasoline laden plane into a building makes a person a hero.

via crooks and liars -- click for link

The TPM piece also links to a CBS news story about people starting Facebook groups to honor the terrorist Stack. This is beneath contempt.

Rightwing Republican Hypocrisy Watch: McConnell slams Obama for posting plan online before summit

From TPM’s wrap up of the Sunday morning shows.

There is not even the shadow of a rational justification for this. We know by now what he and every single other rightwing Republican would be saying if the White House didn’t post their plan online before the meeting.

They would be collapsing on the floor from the vapors, their delicate senses of propriety shocked into near catatonia by 0bama’s (note the zero) abject rejection of transparency, as defined by the rightwing Republicans of course.

So, what is their reaction to Obama’s plan to, in fact, post his plan online before the summit?

Ask a silly question, get a silly answer (via TPM; scroll down for McConnell quote):

McConnell: Why Is White House Going To Post Health Care Proposal Before Summit?
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) criticized the White House’s plan to post a health care reform proposal online, just days before the upcoming health care summit. “You know, apparently we’re going to be there most of the day and have an opportunity to have a lot of discussion,” said McConnell. “But if they’re going lay out the plan they want to pass four days in advance, then why are — what are we discussing on Thursday?”

Scott Brown sympathizes with the IRS plane bomber’s motives [Update: Babbin jokes about attack]

[Updates below]

TPM, Digby and Steve Benen, among many others, are noting that Scott Brown, newly elected to the senate by the people of Massachusetts in their wisdom, can understand what can motivate a person to fly a plane into an IRS office (via Digby):

CAVUTO: We have a guy who is just ranting at the system, ranting at the IRS, ranting at big government, the need for health care, not the need for unions – I mean really crazy stuff. I would just be curious of your reaction to all that.

SCOTT BROWN: Well It’ s certainly tragic and I feel for the families obviously that are being effected by it. And I don’t know if its related but I can just sense not only in my election but since being here in Washington people are frustrated. They want transparency. They want their elected officials to be accountable and open and talk about the things effecting their daily lives. So I am not sure if there is a connection, I certainly hope not, but we need to do things better.

One thing I certainly agree with Massachusetts’ new senator on is that, yes, we need to do better.

Update: TPM has video of Human Events editor Jed Babbin joking at CPAC about Grover Norquest possibly being the suicide pilot and getting laughs from the rightwing attendees (via TPM):

“And let me just say, I’m really happy to see Grover today,” said Babbin. “He was getting a little testy in the past couple of weeks. And I was just really, really glad that it was not him identified as flying that airplane into the IRS building.”

How do you engage with people who engage in this kind of discourse and do so in public in an avowed attempt to win people to their cause?

Update II: A regular and frequent commenter makes the following joke and the admins at redstate don’t have a problem with leaving it on their site. Redstate is notorious for quickly criticizing heresy, even banning commenter heretics and sometimes even erasing the offending comments. We can take this comment’s persistence to indicate tacit support or at least lack of strong disagreement:

Sounds like he could have been but he forgot
Richard Mullins Saturday, February 20th at 10:39AM EST (link)
to place his application. I’m still pissed that he destroyed a good Piper Cherokee by ramming it in a building. He should have save the plane and put machine guns on the wings. [emphasis added]

The title is in response to another commenter’s ‘joke’ that Stack was an Obama administration appointee. It will be interesting to see if this commenter is rebuked for making this joke and if the comment is taken down.

RetroCons: rightwingers love Bush and Cheney

Evan McMorris-Santoro at TPM notes that Bush and Cheney epideictics are back in vogue among rightwing attendees of CPAC.

As others have noted already, the only people cheering louder than the attendees when Cheney made a surprise appearance at the end of daughter Liz’s speech were all the people who want to see the Republicans lose in 2010 and 2012.

It will be interesting, although probably totally unsurprising, to observe how the self proclaimed teabaggers react to this. This is especially so as it comes on the heels of Palin admonishing them to get their minds right and fall in line behind the Republicans. I say probably unsurprising because I expect that the vast majority of them will do just that.

They are a natural and ancient constituent of the coalition the Republican party has come to represent. For the most part, they are the heirs of the Birchers, the Mcarthyites, the Coughlinites, the Know Nothings and, at the extreme of the extreme, the KKK. Olbermann is right to ask why they are so overwhelmingly white.

It is a question they have no respectable answer for.

However, after just the first day of CPAC2010, we know their answer to this question:

Well, do you?

Bonus photo: Via The Washington Independent

Dick Cheney, with his daughter Liz, made a surprise appearance at CPAC on Thursday. (UPPA/ZUMApress.com)

Another Day, Another Rightwing Republican Flip Flop: why are they now afraid to meet with Obama on camera?

I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘dean’ Broder’s latest ridiculously out of touch panegyric of Sarah Palin, despite poll numbers from his own paper on the same day showing a sharp decline in even Republican’s estimation of her competency to sit in the oval office.

You’ve also probably seen the teams at The Daily Show and the Colbert Report, The Rachel Maddow Show and others take down the Republican and rightwing deliberate and willful ignorance regarding global warming and climate change.

But there’s another story, in line with the rightwing Republicans ramping up their blatant hypocrisy, that is even more telling about the political climate today. After demanding transparency and television cameras for hcr debates, the rightwingers and Republicans are now balking at, what else, transparency and television cameras.

The redstaters are not happy with the prospect of their side making their arguments in public. With seemingly no sense of self awareness or irony, a few of them even admit why they fear media borne sunlight:

The danger…
writeblock Thursday, February 11th at 6:46AM EST (link)
…is that this revives the bill. It gives bipartisan cover to a bill the public eyes with suspicion primarily because of a lack of bipartisanship and shading dealings behind closed doors. This show of bipartisan openness will change the dynamic of public perception–which will work in favor of its passage. Not good [emphasis added].

As this regular commenter freely acknowledges, calls for transparency were merely a tool to gin up resistance to the bill. As soon as transparency threatens to become a reality, it must be opposed at all costs.

It must be opposed because, once enough people see what the bill proposes — and that the rightwingers and Republicans offer nothing but rejectionist obstructionism — the ‘public perception’ of the bill will become favorable, which will lead to its passage.

The rightwingers and Republicans are for transparency.

Except when they’re against it.

The Party of Hypocrisy: the label Republicans (and some Democrats) deserve and that progressives must make stick

I wrote yesterday that progressives should turn the recent flurry of rightwing Republican hypocrisy into a long term narrative of double standards that comes to the forefront of everyone’s mind every single time they see, hear or think or Republicans and rightwingers of any affiliation.

This is certainly happening in response to the continuing over the top examples of hypocrisy and has been an ongoing project of some outlets.* However, as far as the larger message from progressives goes, the notion of Republicans and rightwingers as consummate general practitioners of hypocrisy has not been a recurring theme.

In fact, what is unusual about this particular moment when we are experiencing a surge in stories about Republican and rightwing hypocrisy is not that the level of such hypocrisy has increased, but only that the coverage of that hypocrisy has increased.

And if the past is any guide, this recent uptick will be temporary unless progressives make a concerted effort to keep it at the forefront of the national narrative.

If we know a well is poisoned, we know that any water from that well is not fit to drink. This was true yesterday. It is true today and it will be true tomorrow. Any water from that well, no matter how shiny and clean the bucket seems to be, cannot be trusted to be safe.

Progressives need to establish the fundamental belief that Republicans and rightwingers — of any or no affiliations — are water from the poisoned well of hypocrisy. In time, some Republicans who are not hypocrites might gain positions of influence in their party and will not deserve that label. But, as seems obvious, this is not the way things are today.

In the mean time, if we want to avoid another 8 or 16 years of Republican rule under the leadership of Palin, Beck, O’Reilly and Limbaugh, it is the job of progressives to ensure that there is a virtually hardwired link in the mind of every voter between Republicans and rightwingers and the general — and predictable — practice of unrestrained hypocrisy.

You can check out the full Gingrich from the Daily Show last night here.

* Note, of course, that this is by no means an exhaustive, let alone any where near complete, list of recent and ongoing efforts to document and archive Republican and rightwing hypocrisy. Please feel free to provide other examples in the comments if interested.

Rationalizing hypocrisy and bad ideas: how to remind voters why they rejected the Republicans

The recent take downs of Palin and Limbaugh for their hypocrisy of use of the term “retard” are good models for how to counter such illogical positions. Colbert’s dissection of the double standard from last night’s show is one of the better ones I’ve seen.

The same is true for the weird rightwing jab that Obama is somehow dependent on teleprompters. This is gold for the committed rightwingers but leaves everybody else shaking their heads. Of course, Palin’s use of note cards during the speech and palm reading during the pre vetted Q&A session makes the hypocrisy even more evident, as does the defense of Palin for doing so.

Below are two examples of defense of these double standards from the commenters at redstate. Note that they seem completely oblivious to the cognitive dissonance they engage in. That is an artifact of hyper partisan speech that has completely left rationality behind.

But, while they might not see their own hypocrisy, it is glaringly obvious not only to those on the left, but also to any one who is not already a committed Obama hater mired in reactionary groupthink. The Dems need to remind independents of what they will be in store for if they vote for the current slate of rightwing Republicans as a means of protest.

They also need to remind them that, along with all the usual hypocrisy, come ideas like privatizing social security, ending medicare and declaring war on Iran.

Here are some redstaters defending Palin’s use of crib notes and giving Limbaugh a pass on the use of “retard.” Although it has to be said that not everyone over there is enamored of Palin and the author of this post criticized Palin’s hypocrisy over use of term, labeling his post “Sarah blew it,” which drew these as the first two comments:

you are WRONG, she answered him perfectly on that question….
JadedByPolitics Tuesday, February 9th at 5:11AM EST (link)
because Rush was doing it satirically did you hear him or did you pick up your talking points from Media Matters? BTW when you live by the PC code you will die by the PC and that is what she made Rahm do and for that she is CORRECT!

I suspect in a debate with The idiot and his Teleprompter she and her palm would SMACK him around. Sarah Palin hit is out of the park in the past week at advancing Conservative Values as she had the entirety of the LEFTIST media watching her every word and of course then there are those like YOU who want to batter her as well but so be it because she is STILL STANDING and what she is saying is gaining traction in America and when the populace likes what they hear they vote OUT Democrats!

Without his TOTUS Obambi is a bumbling idiot
nessa Tuesday, February 9th at 5:19AM EST (link)
he is barely capable with the damn thing. Soon it will be whispering in his ear so he doesn’t screw up corpsman or some other equally difficult word. The tingler and the rest of the lame stream media praise his ability as an orator, but like the rest of obambi’s history, there is nothing to back that up. An orator can speak without the TOTUS, Obambi is reduced to a mumbling idiot without his. I’d rather write an entire speech on my hand than rely upon the TOTUS and the words of the man behind the curtain that feed the great and powerful Oz.

Again, their double standard is invisible to them but is shockingly obvious to everyone else. We need to remind voters that this hypocrisy is not just a fodder for jokes but is emblematic of their entire approach to governing and campaigning.

For a while the Party of No was a good counter to the rightwing Republicans. We should now change that to the Party of Hypocrisy. These issues will stick in people’s mind and make it that much easier for them to see the hypocrisy that is so rife in so much else of what the rightwingers and Republicans preach to the rest of us.

An added benefit is that, as is seen on this thread and elsewhere, such blatant adherence to double standards also drives a wedge between various factions even of the redstate community. This is even more true of the broader rightwing Republican coalition.

What might have been: Sarah Palin reminds Americans what they voted against

David Weigel at TWI is reporting on the Palin speech to the “Tea Party Convention” in Nashville. I’ve dvr’d it and have only listened to the first fifteen minutes and will either update this post or write more expansively tomorrow.

For now I’ll just say that she is putting the capstone on the merger between the so called tea party — or parties — and the Republican party. It was obvious anyway, but now they’re not even trying to put up a facade. Still, I think that’s a a move that will diminish their outsider credibility and spark various internal skirmishes.

Also, by defending the Bush administration and adopting, in the first fifteen minutes at least, a combative tone reminiscent of some of her really odious posturing during the campaign, it seems that she is giving quite a gift to the administration and congressional Democrats.

Update: Okay, it’s only been a few minutes, but

…and around the world, people who are seeking freedom from oppressive regimes wonder if Alaska is still that beacon of hope for their cause…

I’d have more sympathy for her stumbling over her notes if she hadn’t repeated the strange rightwing Republican attack on Obama as somehow being dependent on teleprompters.

Update II:

…and unethical shameless tactics like considering a candidates children fair game…

Like Rush Limbaugh, John McCain and many other rightwing Republicans did to Chelsea Clinton?

and

and children with special needs are welcomed in this world and embraced

Like the way Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck used exactly the same term Rahm Emanuel used, except they used it explicitly to mock and ridicule developmentally challenged people?

Update III: her hypocrisy is shameless. Sam Stein at Huffington Post notes the following about her Sunday morning appearance on Fox

Palin also used her platform to continue a call for the president to rid himself of his closest advisers. On Attorney General Eric Holder, she labeled his handling of captured terrorists — “allowing them our U.S. constitutional protections when they do not deserve them” — a firing offense. On Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel, she said his comments calling liberal groups “f-ing retards” was “indecent and insensitive” and cause for his dismissal.

But the former governor went to great and sometimes awkward lengths to insist that when conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh used the same exact term to describe the same exact group, it was simply in the role of political humorist.

“They are kooks, so I agree with Rush Limbaugh,” she said, when read a quote of Limbaugh calling liberal groups “retards.” “Rush Limbaugh was using satire … . I didn’t hear Rush Limbaugh calling a group of people whom he did not agree with ‘f-ing retards,’ and we did know that Rahm Emanuel, as has been reported, did say that. There is a big difference there.”

Also, there are now pictures and videos of the notes she scrawled on her hand; no word on whether she wrote the notes before or after she made the telepromter dig.

Again, this would normally not be a big deal if she hadn’t repeated the weird teleprompter line. Also, as Stefan Sirucek notes at HuffPo in the above link, it was a “lovefest” with pre selected questions. Criticizing Obama’s performance at the “question time” with House Republicans and overlooking this requires some world class level mental gymnastics.

Poll finds many Republicans disconnected from reality; Wapo calls Obama disconnected despite its own polling data

David Kurtz at TPM and Greg Sargent at The Plumline note that, sadly unsurprisingly, a Washington Post article is disproved by the paper’s own polling data. If anyone wonders why people turn away from these corporate mouthpieces when good alternatives exist on the web, this fiasco says it all.

As Sargent points out, when asked whether Obama “understand the problems of people like you,” 57% said yes, 42% said no and 2% were undecided. And the Post chooses to portray this by asserting “almost half” of the respondents feel he is disconnected. They’re not even trying anymore; just like the guy on Hardball yesterday who, in explaining his opposition to ending DADT, said he wanted to outlaw homosexuality.

All of this comes on the heels of the Research2000/DailyKos poll showing how fringe most self identified Republicans are:

Should Obama be impeached?
no: 32%
yes/not sure: 68%

Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
no: 21%
yes/not sure: 79%

Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
no: 43%
yes/not sure: 57%

Do you believe ACORN stole the 2008 election?
no: 24%
yes/not sure: 76%

Do you believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be President than Barack Obama?
no: 14%
yes/not sure: 86%

Do you believe Barack Obama is a racist who hates White people?
no: 36%
yes/not sure: 64%

Do you believe your state should secede from the United States?
no: 58%
yes/not sure: 42%

Should public school students be taught that the book of Genesis in the Bible explains how God created the world?
no: 15%
yes/not sure: 85%

Should contraceptive use be outlawed?
no: 56%
yes/not sure: 44%

Do you believe the birth control pill is abortion?
no: 48%
yes/not sure: 52%

Do you consider abortion to be murder?
no: 8%
yes/not sure: 92%

Do you believe that the only way for an individual to go to heaven is though Jesus Christ, or can one make it to heaven through another faith?
other: 15%
christ/not sure: 85%

These are not people who have the slightest interest in compromise or bipartisan unicorns and rainbows. If Democrats want to achieve legislative and further electoral success, they must bring this craziness out in the open.

Call them on it. Force votes that make Republican incumbents and candidates to stake out a position on wedge issues that will force them to choose between the fringe elements in the base and moderates and independents who will not support the extremist positions that titillate the base.

Call into radio shows; go to forums, rallies and townhalls and make the Republicans stake out a position on these issues. Don’t let them have their cake and eat it too.

Rebranding the Party of No: Republicans try to put a positive spin on obstructionism

After the unexpected smackdown Obama gave the House Republicans, the rightwingers and Republicans are making clear that they are doubling down on the ‘Party of No’ obstructionism that has allowed them to monkeywrench hcr.

There’s not exactly a shortage of people offering all sorts of advice on getting messages across. One thing that seems clear is that presenting a laundry list facts and figures does not motivate adequate numbers of voters, either in the election booth or in polls and other gauges of ‘the mood of the country’ in between elections. Now I’d say that the notion of ‘the mood of the country’ is a pretty ludicrous construction. The best we can probably do is to talk about the predominant for now mood of various constituent groups of various coalitions. However, as the current teabagger infighting shows, even that may be several bridges too far.

Looking at blogs like Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, Think Progress, Crooks and Liars, Redstate, Town Hall and any number of others will show that posters and commenters at all these sites also express ‘internal’ dissension and outright infighting. Still, on specific elections and big issues like hcr, what are at other times loose groups tend to tighten up and coalesce around candidates and issue positions, especially when confronted with such polarized choices as they pretty much inevitably are in the US.

As I noted above, facts and figures alone, however impressively arrayed, do not generally pull voters into a dedicated orbit around a candidate or policy position. I have not yet really dug into the book, but I’m tending to think Drew Weston is right when, in The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation, he argues that narratives, by reaching our emotions, are more persuasive.

As the rightwingers and Republicans have demonstrated, those stories and ’emotional truths’ need not actually be grounded in reality. However, when the narratives are actually based in fact rather than distortion, they have the beneficial effect of attracting the not insignificant number of voters who are persuaded by facts and figures.

Together with people who respond more positively to emotionally undergirded narratives, they might form a coalition that can counter the Party of No agenda of the rightwingers and Republicans.