Obama Derangement Syndrome continues. While the Republicans running for office have to maintain some level of credulity, most of the right wing is finding new and creative ways to bash Obama over something for which, were it accomplished by a Republican president, they would be offering apotheosis.

This after being so very wrong about so many things. From the moment Obama was elected, they claimed that everything was his responsibility–everything bad, that is. Right-wingers couldn’t wait to dump the recession on Obama, and after claiming that 9/11 was Clinton’s fault, had no problem absolving Bush for any terror event that happened after Obama took office.

Worse, they claimed Obama was weak on terror. They claimed that he shied away from even the word “terrorism,” could not face up to our enemies, and neglected to address terrorism. Palin claimed that Obama’s “fundamental approach to terrorism is fatally flawed,” writing:

We are at war with radical Islamic extremists and treating this threat as a law enforcement issue is dangerous for our nation’s security.

Yeah, that turned out to be right, didn’t it?

When Obama, in 2007, held that we should be willing to go in to Pakistan to get bin Laden even without Pakistan’s cooperation, he was attacked as being a lightweight who knew nothing about foreign policy. They claimed his statement was irresponsible and reckless, and was not the way to go. William Kristol characterized it as Obama “losing ground to Hillary Clinton because he seemed naive about real world threats, frantically suggesting that he would invade Pakistan.” That turned out to be accurate, didn’t it?

And now that Obama is vindicated, they’re just as harsh, if not worse. The initial reaction was to claim that Obama had little or nothing to do with it, and what credit did not go to Bush should go entirely to the military; Obama, in taking any credit, was a shameless narcissist, politicizing the event.

Limbaugh now famously went into deep sarcasm:

In fact, it may be that President Obama single-handedly came up with the technique in order to pull this off. You see, the military wanted to go in there and bomb as they always do. They wanted to drop missiles and drop bombs and a number of totally destructive techniques here. But President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room to deal with this, insisted on the Special Forces. No one else thought of that.

Ironically, he was more right than he knew. The military did want to bomb the target, and Obama did insist on a risky mission to go in there with SEALs. It’s not, as Limbaugh snarkily insisted, that nobody else thought of it–but it was Obama’s call, against what he was being advised. Had Bush done something like that, they would have been outraged at any sarcasm about it.

A lot of people had a confused initial reaction to bin Laden’s body being disposed of so quickly. Again, we see Obama’s preference to avoid drama. Right-wingers are livid that Obama didn’t bring the body back so they could do a victory dance on his crushed head. As satisfying as that might have been, it would have had too much negative blowback, making us more into villains and bin Laden into more of a martyr. Disposing of the body at sea may have been less satisfying, but it made eminent sense from a responsible, long-term point of view.

That, of course, does not stop a new right-wing movement from emerging, claiming that the decision is evidence that the whole thing was faked. Now termed as “Deathers,” in denial that Obama could have pulled off something like this, seeking some way of delegitimizing him. The DNA match is faked, they assert, and despite demands for photos of the body, there is little doubt that they’ll call that a fake, too.

Those on the right wing who do accept bin Laden’s death want to make it all about Bush. The Wall Street Journal “asked” if Bush should be given credit, leading a chorus of right-wing voices giving varying degrees of credit to Bush, who more or less gave up on bin Laden less than two years after 9/11. Palin stated, “We Thank President Bush For Having Made The Right Calls To Set Up This Victory.” A Breitbart blog writer exclaimed that this “vindicated” Bush, and was his victory, writing that, “If Any One Person, In Addition To Our Military Personnel, Deserves To Be Singled Out For Adoration At This Time It’s George W. Bush.”

Part of this is based upon the fact that information about the courier came from a Guantanamo detainee. This was immediately construed as vindicating torture. However, even Rumsfeld himself pointed out that the man who gave up the intel did not do so under torture, but only under standard interrogation techniques, after Obama had taken office. Nevertheless, right-wingers still cling to the idea that torture under Bush is now validated, and that because of this, Bush deserves credit for getting bin Laden, not Obama.

Here’s a question: reverse the party affiliations. A Democrat is in office when 9/11 hits. He then starts two massively costly wars, but after seven years in office, cannot track down the perpetrator, and in fact, at various points says he’s not even interested, that it’s not that important. And after all that time trying to spread “Democracy” throughout the Muslim world, he fails rather stunningly.

Then a Republican comes in to office, and in about two years, tracks down the terror ring leader, using new intel and a bold gamble of his own. In addition, after giving new popularity to the U.S. in the region partly just because of his name and partly due to a series of speeches that resonated with the people, a string of pro-Democracy revolutions rise up, so many that the effect is termed “Arab Spring.”

You really think that Republicans would give any credit to the Democrat?

If there were any event that could possibly bring left and right together, one would think that this were it. If there were any chance that bipartisanship and unity–which Republicans claim they are all about–were achievable, it would be for at least one day after nabbing bin Laden.

Instead, within hours, the right wing descended into the starkest, most hypocritical depth of accusation, recrimination, name-calling, and even conspiracy theorizing imaginable. While the big-league elected officials made grudging sounds of respect (though many with caveats and asides which detracted from them), most of the right wing simply turned this into yet another way to elevate the conservative establishment while denigrating Obama.

Keep in mind: one of their first criticisms of Obama was that he politicized all of this.

That’s something they would never do.

Not long ago, the Republican Party of Wisconsin demanded to see the emails of Professor William Cronon at the University of Wisconsin Madison, just a few days after Cronon wrote a blog post critical of the Republican governor of that state. Instead of being shamed by the blatant attempt to intimidate a scholar for exercising his freedom of speech, conservatives upped the ante and now a Michigan think tank is demanding email files on a number of other professors in that state.

They claim that the requests are legitimate because the professors, technically, are state workers and thus their files open to public review. They claim that it is not an act of intimidation because they are only looking for emails containing certain keywords. They even claim that it is the protests against their demands that are “chilling,” rather than the demands themselves.

Frankly, their claims are all self-serving and baseless. The requests should be denied out of hand for several reasons.

The first reason is academic freedom. Academics are often targeted by political figures and organizations, their jobs threatened for doing nothing more than speaking out. This is the key purpose of tenure, a hot-button issue in exactly this political debate–not as a cushy, union-based job security perk, but to protect academics from being punished for holding certain points of view that diverge from prevailing opinions, particularly those held in political circles. There is a long history of academics being punished, particularly in the form of career derailment, for the opinions they hold or the ideas they express, either publicly or in the classroom. The demands by political parties for private email records by educators regarding political matters is itself the best example why tenure should be protected and those making the demands should be censured.

The next reason is motives. Even if the request were made by a truly interested party for valid reasons, an open release of such academic records would still be questionable, with the matter instead best handled privately. For example, if an aggrieved parent of a student claimed that a professor was unjustly penalizing that student, that would at least qualify as a legitimate basis for a grievance which could, ultimately, lead to a limited private review of the email files of a professor. In the Wisconsin and Michigan cases, however, neither the parties asking for the information nor the purpose of their requests are legitimate to the context of the demand. The people demanding to see the professors’ emails are political entities, not parties with any legitimate interest in academic records, and the requests come immediately after the academics in question made public statements on issues that are politically sensitive–exactly the kind of situation where academic freedom is considered most relevant. The political entities’ claim that the keyword restrictions of the demands legitimize them instead prove the reverse; the keywords requested in the Michigan case, for example, are “Scott Walker,” “Wisconsin,” “Madison,” and “Maddow”–terms which reveal a blatantly political motive.

Furthermore, such records requests are supposedly intended to uncover malfeasance, but there is no–none, zero–indication that anything inappropriate was ever done by any of these professors, and the political nature of the keywords only serve to prove that the parties demanding the information are fishing for anything that could be used to discredit and otherwise harm the reputation of the professors regarding any political statements they made.

Finally, there is the issue of privacy. Not the privacy of academics making public statements, not even the privacy involved in the pursuit of academic freedom. But the privacy of students who expect full confidentiality regarding their academic work. The accounts in question are exactly those that would be used by the professors to communicate with students about the students’ work. The Michigan case, for example, involves all faculty members in the Labor Studies departments at Michigan State University, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and Wayne State University. Considering the keywords and the courses taught in the Labor Studies department, there is little doubt that the emails produced by such a search would include a great deal of correspondence with students over their essays, course work, grades, and even possibly could include material covering disciplinary actions (e.g., plagiarism claims) which are highly confidential and should, by no means whatsoever, be made public in any form.

In short, the demands made by these conservative groups are politically corrupt in their very nature, violate various ethical standards, and should not even be considered, much less granted.

The problem, of course, is that more and more, the conservatives talking points are being successfully sold as the New Truth. The very terms relevant to this issue have been twisted and turned to serve political ambitions and agendas. “Academic freedom,” in conservative circles, is nothing more than an end-run around constitutional prohibitions against teaching religious doctrine in the public classroom; they certainly will not respect the actual meaning or spirit of the term. Tenure, to them, is a cudgel that can be used to attack unions; it has already been at least partially redefined by the right wing to represent shiftless, incompetent, overpaid union-protected educators.

Worse, we now have a political climate in which conservatives feel comfortable doing pretty much whatever they feel like. Right-wingers are shamelessly and transparently lying about a variety of issues to make outright political attacks. Hidden-camera videos are heavily edited to mislead so as to take down organizations seen as liberal. False claims of voter fraud are fabricated so as to pass laws which would impede the ability of liberals to vote. Budget shortfalls are disingenuously said to be caused by overpaid teachers so that their unions, often supporters of Democratic causes, can be stripped of their power and influence. When a judge stops the law, Republicans simply ignore the judge–and the rule of law. Conservative officials advise “false flag operations” where faked assassination attempts can be blamed on political enemies. And college professors who dare speak their minds in public find themselves targets of political inquisitions.

We are not a fascist dictatorship. However, far too much of what goes on politically in our nation today bears far too great a resemblance to exactly that state. To which, the proper response would be shame; instead, conservatives simply blame those they seek to fraudulently vilify with the exact malfeasance they commit, with barely disguised smugness and contempt for propriety.

For them, fairness and honesty is for schmucks. They’re playing for keeps.

After the whole Scott Walker affair in Wisconsin, we’re far from done with the spirit of that political conquest. In fact, it’s only getting dirtier.

Under the transparently false pretense of budget concerns, the Republicans (while doling out huge tax breaks for the wealthy) unilaterally obliterated the collective bargaining rights of educators in the state, in a blatantly political attack against the opposition party’s constituent base.

Well, they’re not stopping there. With the taste of victory still fresh, they are stepping over another line: launching inquisitions against people who criticize them.

William Cronon, Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, wrote a blog post on the Republican campaign against educators, studying the motives and history behind the legislation.

Two days later, the Republican Party of Wisconsin demanded access to view all of Cronon’s emails issued from his university account.

Only peripheral to the issue is whether it is legal for the Republican party to do that.

Much more central is the surprisingly open threat. After all, only a fool would believe they are making this request for any purpose other than to try to find dirt on Cronon and then do anything from smearing him publicly to getting him fired. The message is frighteningly clear: if you criticize what we do, we will crawl up your back end with a microscope and do everything we can to destroy you.

One can only hope that the flagrantly shameless attempt at character assassination for political purposes is given the response it deserves: refusal at minimum, censure at best.

Keep in mind who these people are, what they claim to stand for, who they claim are the intrusive government fascists, and what liberties and freedoms they so falsely espouse but at the same time ruthlessly destroy.

Cronon, in the meantime, subsequently wrote an op-ed in the New York Times against the actions of Walker and the Republicans. One can only imagine that they’re trying to get access to his tax records after that.

UPDATE: In true Republican form, their response to criticisms about this shameless political attack strategy are a mixture of hypocrisy, outrageous hyperbole, and playing the victim:

“I have never seen such a concerted effort to intimidate someone from lawfully seeking information about their government,” [GOP executive director Mark] Jefferson writes. “Further, it is chilling to see that so many members of the media would take up the cause of a professor who seeks to quash a lawful open records request. Taxpayers have a right to accountable government and a right to know if public officials are conducting themselves in an ethical manner.”

Had the FOI request come from parents of students in his classes after viable accusations of misconduct, that would be a legitimate claim. But coming from a political party after someone simply criticized them in an open forum, their response is as disingenuous as the original action was viciously unethical. Shamelessness upon shamelessness. These people are thugs in the worst sense: that they are not only brazenly ruthless, but are endlessly slick and slimy in their PR portrayals of themselves as heroes who are victimized unfairly by the very people they attempt to crush.

Newt Gingrich, commenting on the reasons why he cheated on his wife and came to her hospital bed as she suffered from cancer to lay out terms of the divorce, before later marrying the younger woman and refusing to pay alimony and child support:

There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate.

Wow. He acted like an unspeakably cruel, selfish, and utterly soulless piece of scum because he was such a impassioned patriot. Yeah, that explains it.

At least he has enough shame to equivocate, saying that it’s only partially why he did it. I am assuming that the other, unspoken part is because he has no scruples, virtue, or shame. Goes without saying, I suppose.

Naturally, right after he finished saying the above, he mentioned God about five or six times in quick succession.

Meet the next Republican candidate for president.

Republicans these days seem to have no shame when it comes to attempts to outright ban Democrats from voting. There have been a large number of scams, from dishonestly padded “felons lists” to far more devious “caging” scams. On a larger scale, they have successfully attacked organizations like ACORN, which help get lower-income Americans registered to vote, and, using fake voter-fraud claims, have tried to institute “voter ID” laws which coincidentally cause far more Democrats to not vote. Voting machines made by corporations vowing to do whatever it takes to get Republicans elected have shown the tendency to make “errors” which just happen to heavily favor Republican candidates. Republicans have even made public statements about suppressing the Democratic vote.

Anyone who pays attention to these stories knows that this is not a side game, a sometimes thing, or just a practice of people on the fringe: illicitly attempting to disenfranchise voters on the basis that they are Democrats is very much a mainstream Republican sport–and one certainly does not hear much from people on the right in protest of these actions.

Now, in New Hampshire, the state legislator is taking yet another new spin on this right-wing pastime. The Republican state House speaker, William O’Brien, wants to limit the ability of young people to vote, because all too often, he claims, they do so “foolishly”–that is, they vote Democratic:

“Voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do,” he added, his comments taped by a state Democratic Party staffer and posted on YouTube. Students lack “life experience,” and “they just vote their feelings.”

This he told a Tea Party gathering–and it’s not just talk. There are bills going through the New Hampshire legislature which would use college and other residency situations common to young voters to keep them from the ballot boxes.

I am serious when I ask, how long will it be when it becomes so blatant that someone will claim that voting Democratic is a sign of mental instability, and will want to disenfranchise voters on those grounds? I am sure that some on the right-wing fringe already do so, but how long until a politician starts venting along those lines? O’Brien’s rant is dangerously close to exactly that.

This would be hilarious if it weren’t so depressingly normal. In the midst of his outrageous lie-spinning on the Wisconsin protests, Fox News “reporter” Mike Tobin claimed that someone in the crowd “punched” him in the arm. He knew that the Fox camera was being blocked and that what really happened was not broadcast on the air.

As it happened, protesters were filming also–and when the video was shown, it was pretty clear that a guy in a Santa hat simply tapped him on the shoulder. Though it could have been a pat. But a punch? Not even remotely close.

A little later, Fox host Megyn Kelly tried to play up the incident, one she did not witness, calling it an “assault.” When Tobin tried to walk it back a little, Kelly pressed even harder, insisting that it was, in fact, “battery.”

This is a tactic they have picked up: the side which has the violent thugs loses, so they do everything they can–use fake footage, exaggerate wildly, lie outright–to make people they don’t like seem violent.

Just for a little perspective, remember when the woman at the Rand Paul rally was grabbed, wrestled to the ground, and had her head stomped on by a Paul supporter? Did Fox call that an “assault”? Maybe “battery”?

Nope. It was a “scuffle.” A term they used repeatedly. “Assault” was only referred to in the context of legal charges, but the headlines were all about “scuffles.” Which sounds like something kids get into when they call each other names and maybe throw kid-punches at each other.

I wonder, if the Wisconsin protesters wrestled Mike Tobin to the ground and stomped on his head, do you think they would call that a “scuffle”? Considering that someone tapping his shoulder is “assault and battery,” somehow I don’t think so.

Similarly, Fox is pulling out all the stops in demonizing the Wisconsin protesters, repeatedly calling them “angry mobs.” However, when large crowds of bused-inTea Party protesters invaded town hall meetings in which Democratic representatives wished only to speak to their constituents and answer their questions, mobbing the events and angrily screaming as a means of shutting them down, did Fox call them “angry mobs”?

Of course not. They were “boisterous crowds” enacting “democracy in action.” Sometimes they were “rowdy” or even “antagonistic.” But an “angry mob”? Hell, no! Fox got upset when the term was used by Democrats. These were red-blooded American patriots, how dare you call them an “angry mob”!

But those teachers in Wisconsin? Very different story. These are scary people, folks. Lazy, greedy people who get off work at three in the afternoon and take the whole summer off. Yep, that’s actually what they’re saying, in their attempt to make school teachers sound evil and the cause of all our problems. You know who goes home at three in the afternoon and gets summers off? Students. Teachers, actually, stay much later than three o’clock, and when they do go home they have papers to grade and lessons to plan. And summers? Yeah, no teacher ever has summer duties. They all go to Florida and get drunk for three months at taxpayer expense. Yeah, that’s what they do.

Besides, those “angry mobs” in Wisconsin are all “professional protesters” who were “bused in” by mysterious, unnamed left-wing organizations. (Psst! It’s Jews like George Soros!) What makes them think this? Apparently, because some have signs that were well-drawn, even though not professionally printed, and otherwise, just the “sense” they get from the crowd. That’s the word from Bill O’Reilly and Mike Tobin, so it’s as good as gospel.

Watching them just makes one blanch at the feckless parody “news” reporting on the right has become, nothing but a sheer political BS brigade, just making crap up out of thin air. To make the protesters look violent, they took footage from a protest in California, complete with t-shirts and palm trees, and tried to pass it off as violence happening in Wisconsin.

What I found laughable was the fact that they made a big deal about protesters being “bused in”–not only are the protesters local, but when the whole thing kicked off, the ones doing the organized busing were the Tea Party activists–and I am pretty sure that Fox never dismissed them for busing people in, though that’s what they’re famous for.

When masses of Tea Partiers bused in from out of state were shoving and screaming and generally disrupting any attempt at Democratic politicians communicating with their legitimate constituents, they were patriots. When local teachers and workers try to hang on to their median incomes as the Republican governor attempts to send them to the poorhouse for purely partisan political reasons, they are frighteningly violent union thugs.

In other words, it’s all about the message. Because it’s certainly not about the facts.

Network neutrality has always been about fairness, freedom, and independence. Which is probably why Republicans hate it so much.

Network neutrality is about everyone being equal on an unfettered, decentralized frontier, intentionally left untouched by invasive rules or controls. It is akin to a free public space where people can do what they wish, no one given priority over anyone else. Currently, it keeps telecoms from taking what has been a public resource from day one, grabbing it as their private domain, and using it to squeeze as much profit from the public as possible. Again, reasons for Republicans to hate it.

Network neutrality has always been the rule of the Internet, you might say that’s a big part of what defines it. It’s an important reason why the Internet has been so successful, as a domain free from outside interference. Network neutrality opponents want to change things, they want to turn it into a privately-controlled commodity, in which corporations would have control over how fast you go, how much you pay, what you do, and how you do it–controls which the government has never tried to impose, a free and unfettered state of being that the FCC wishes to allow to continue.

And yet to hear Republicans talk about it, network neutrality is somehow a new idea, something which will change the Internet into an over-regulated quagmire–when the exact opposite is true.

To trash the idea of network neutrality, they throw vague and unsupported accusations that the concept is somehow connected to things Republicans hate–“government regulation” being the big one. In this case, however, the government regulation is not to stifle or control, but the exact opposite. It’s a regulation which would keep industry’s–and government’s–hands off.

However, here’s Boehner rattling on about the concept, clearly either clueless or an industry shill, but more likely both:

“’Network neutrality,’ they call it. It’s a series of regulations that empower the federal bureaucracy to regulate Internet content and viewpoint discrimination. The rules are written vaguely, of course, to allow the FCC free reign.

”The last thing we need, in my view, is the FCC serving as Internet traffic controller, and potentially running roughshod over local broadcasters who have been serving their communities with free content for decades.

No, it would empower the government to maintain the Internet as the government has maintained it from the beginning. It does not “regulate content,” it ensures that content will not be interfered with. It does not allow the FCC to be a traffic controller, it keeps the telecoms from become traffic controllers. In ensures that free content will be protected from the “local broadcasters” (read: big telecoms) who want to end the whole concept of free content.

Note the language, though. “They” call it that, as if there is some mysterious, nefarious “they.” “Regulations,” “empowering federal bureaucracy,” “regulate,” “viewpoint discrimination,” “vague,” and regulatory “free reign.” Almost every other word in that sentence is a carefully-crafted fright word intended to push scare buttons that the right wing has worked for decades to instill in the people. Almost his entire rant is chock-full of this crap.

“As far as I’m concerned, there is no compromise or middle ground when it comes to protecting our most basic freedoms.

”So our new majority in the House is committed to using every tool at our disposal to fight a government takeover of the Internet.

The government created the Internet, you ignorant sellout. He’s trying to make it sound like the Internet was created by the telecoms, so they should get to “keep” it. “Our most basic freedoms”? What the hell is that supposed to mean? How do you propose that allowing telecoms to control content, restrict the free use of applications, and segregate a public resource so it can charge a premium to users, will “protect our most basic freedoms”? Just the opposite–you and your patrons want to destroy the equality which has been the hallmark of the Internet since its inception. Your plans would open the doors, for the first time ever, to service providers censoring content and working to harass those they disapprove of, a state of affairs expressly forbidden by network neutrality.

“Already, the committee has held hearings to give FCC regulators a chance to explain the need for this intrusion. It won’t surprise you to hear they haven’t been able to give the American people a straight answer.

Again, ”committees,“ ”hearings,“ ”regulators,“ ”intrusions.“ Be afraid and do whatever we say, you dim-witted cattle.

And an ”intrusion“? How the flying frack is a set of rules which essentially says, ”hands off and allow people to do as they please“ an ”intrusion“? Especially compared to the corporate controls you want to institute, giving this massive thing of value to the telecoms for free.

Then Boehner uses a segue to his next line of spouted waste, drawing an analogy between network neutrality and yet another boogeyman of the far right:

”Congresswoman Blackburn has been a national leader on this issue, holding the FCC’s feet to the fire. She has called net neutrality ‘the Fairness Doctrine for the Internet.’

“The ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ that’s another threat to freedom with an innocuous name.”

Yes, heaven forbid that money not be allowed to buy a louder voice. What a travesty to plutocracy that would be. However, aside from the complete disconnect between the two concepts, the Fairness Doctrine is just yet another red herring, a fictional scare tactic, like Obama banning guns, or the return of the New Black Panther Party, or “death panels,” a false specter to galvanize the party faithful.

Even in this age where lies and corruption stand as the mainstay of Republican politics and policy, this outright fictional spew is galling. But this is what we have come to expect from this man–to sell out the American people for money and power. What else is new?

From a Wisconsin Pastor:

In response to previous columns, I have received numerous messages that go something like this:

I work at two jobs to make ends meet, pay almost half my take home pay for medical insurance and don’t even have a pension. Why should I have to then pay for my tax dollars for pampered government employees to receive cushy benefits?

I have great sympathy for these correspondents. As a parish pastor, I’ve encountered many people in just those circumstances, men and women who have worked hard, saved money, and, then, seen their retirement savings disappear because an injury or unexpected illness left them unable to work and forced them to pay thousands of dollars a month for the health insurance needed to keep them alive.

Rather then helping these people, what the governor has done is to goad them to anger against people who do have decent health and pension benefits. And one of the first things he did in office was to lend his support to efforts to repeal President Barack Obama’s health insurance laws, which would have made insurance available and affordable to those not lucky enough to have high-benefit jobs.

So, they’re left with frustration, but not help.

And that was the plan from the start. Make people who are scraping by angry, not at the wealthy, but at the middle class, and so instead of trying to bring the poor up to the middle class, use the anger of the poor as a weapon to further decimate the middle class.

Destroying the unions will not bring one iota of relief to people working two jobs and paying exorbitant medical insurance bills. Quite the contrary, those people need unions themselves.

Emboldened by advances made in many areas, and feeling the wind at their backs, Republicans at the state level are letting go with rapid fusillades against Democrats. Republicans across the country are attempting to decimate unions while empowering corporations. Controlling an unusually large number of state houses, they fully intend to gerrymander the crap out of their states, while instituting measures like voter-ID laws, purported to combat imaginary voter fraud while actually designed to keep Democrats away from the voting booth.

This is not just campaigning for a candidate or a party. It’s not just trying to spin news or events. It’s an attempt to abuse political power and the law itself to grab power, to disenfranchise and cut the legs out from under people who believe differently so power can be maintained by a minority.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, they are panting with fear at the massive crowds in places like Wisconsin; they would be cheering American spirit were they Tea Partiers, but now the sheer number of people who are pissed to no end scares the piss out of them.

Almost comically, they make the comparison to Egypt–as if it is a bad thing–and yet somehow miss the commonality that can be applied best to the comparison: that people can be abused so much that they eventually stand up and say, “no more.” Particularly they miss the part about who is being the hated dictatorial abusers.

In what amounts to a brazen political attack at a Democratic base, Wisconsin Republicans are trying to incapacitate the teacher’s unions. They claim that it is about balancing the budget, but that claim is pretty much pure BS. Stripping the unions of their collective bargaining rights will not even come close to solving the state budget crisis; instead, the worst culprits, according to Business Week, are “anticipated Medicaid expenses and a court-ordered repayment to a fund that was raided four years ago.” Additionally, Gov. Walker proposes another big chunk–$117 million–to be given to businesses in the form of a tax cut. Somehow, cutting the direct stream of revenue will increase revenue, but paying a fair wage to workers who directly spur business and pay money back in taxes is a revenue-killer.

Meanwhile, despite determined efforts to demonize the unions and frighten a gullible public into viewing them as lazy, greedy, and destructive, public support for the unions is surprisingly solid–a fact which Fox News, of course, shamelessly lies about.

This is not about balancing the budget. Walker and the Republicans are not doing what would be necessary to accomplish that–quite the opposite. This is 100% political. It’s about cutting the legs out from under one of the Democrat’s only remaining base constituencies–workers–while shoveling the state more into debt by further engorging a Republican constituency–business. Walker believes that he’s a Republican hero, setting a trend that will spark a nation-wide conservative revolution. When asked if he would back off on the unions if they agreed to pay cuts, he said no–this is not about money, this is about political support and power bases.

As if to punctuate that, Walker–who is not easy to reach by phone–accepted a prank phone call by a blogger claiming to be infamous billionaire and Tea Party funder David Koch. Walker spent twenty minutes on the call, during which he explained how he planned to lie to Democratic lawmakers, tricking them to coming back so he can ram through his budget. The call also highlighted Walker’s cozy relationship with big business in his state, ending with Walker showing enthusiasm at the suggestion that Koch would treat him to a vacation in Cali after Walker succeeds with his plans.

Want to be a conservative hero? Here’s how: first, get a hidden video camera. Second, choose an organization that is or seems liberal to you, especially one doing good things for people in need–providing medical service, legal counseling, voter registration, job creation etc. Then, create a ludicrous false identity for yourself–you’re a pimp, a child pornographer, a rapist, a sex trafficker, or something like that. And then go into the organization’s offices under your false identity and see if you can create enough footage where you talk to them about seriously ludicrous and unbelievable crap. You might have to go to a whole bunch of different offices until you can get some workable material. Then, when you get back, see how you can edit the video footage and add commentary with the right spin to make it look like the organization was doing something questionable.

Voilà! Instant right-wing champion! Fox News will love you, and your new career as a creative muckraker is born! If you’re lucky, you might win the James O’Keefe Award for Slimeball Hit-and-Run “Journalism.” If you’re really lucky, maybe you will succeed in sliming the liberal organization so successfully that it will have to shut down, leaving thousands or even hundreds of thousands of poor people without medical services, legal representation, voter assistance, or some other service that could help them get a slightly more fair shot at equality and justice. Super hero!

The latest scumbags lining up for a nomination: Live Action, a pro-life group which visited at least a dozen Planned Parenthood offices and apparently found one employee who may have fallen for the scheme–but not before the organization reported a possible sex-trafficking operation to the FBI. Still, several major “liberal media” outlets have fallen for the ploy, reporting it just like Fox News would, as if Planned Parenthood, as an organization, were officially “covering up” a sex trafficking ring. Mission Accomplished!

The most recent case:

Roger Stockham, a 63-year-old Army veteran from California who was reportedly angry at the U.S. government, was arrested by police in Michigan and charged with allegedly threatening to blow up a Mosque in Dearborn.

Dearborn police allegedly found Stockham inside his vehicle outside the Islamic Center of America with a load of M-80s in his trunk and other explosives, the Detroit News reported.

Note the common thread in virtually every homegrown terrorist or gunman over the past couple of decades: angry at the government. Often picks a target disliked and/or smeared by the right wing.

Just in the past year:

• January 8, 2011: Jared Lee Loughner shoots U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and 19 others; angry at government.
• December 9, 2010: Charles Turner Habermann made death threats against U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA); is arrested January 12; angry at local and federal governments, especially about taxes.
• November 3, 2010: James Patock arrested in D.C. when police find several guns and ammunition, as well as propane tanks wired to four car batteries in his truck and trailer; angry at government, hated Obama.
• July 30, 2010: Camp Hill prison guard Raymond Peake murdered a man for his gun, claiming he and another were stealing guns “for the purpose of overthrowing the federal government.”
• July 18, 2010: Byron Williams captured in shootout in Oakland on his way to “start a revolution” against the government by killing people of the ACLU and Tides Foundation in San Francisco.
• March 4, 2010—John Patrick Bedell fires on police officers at the entrance to the Pentagon; a Truther who is angry at the government.
• February 18, 2010—Joseph Stack flew a plane into an IRS building; angry about taxes and at the government in general.

You will note that going back, from the man who shot three policemen in Pittsburgh in 2009 back to Timothy McVeigh and before, most cases of domestic terrorism are linked to people who are angry at and usually paranoid about the government.

So, naturally, right-wingers spouting such incendiary, vile, ridiculously fantastic accusations about the U.S. government (when controlled by Democrats) have nothing whatsoever to do with any of this. It’s just pure coincidence that this kind of violence spikes when a Democrat occupies the White House. The violent rhetoric and insane rantings about left-wing conspiracies has, we can be absolutely certain, no effect on these people at all. Yes. Right.

I was just looking over some old posts, and stumbled across this from 2004:

But it is a classic political weapon, used down the ages. Make the people afraid, and then tell them you are the one who can save them. … Fear is not only a weapon, it is perhaps the most powerful weapon that can be used in politics.

I was referring to the “terror alerts” that the Bush administration regularly issued throughout the election in order to push up Dubya’s numbers in the polls and to deflate Kerry whenever he was due for a bump. Strange that all of those alerts turned out not leading to anything. And we all remember how, after Bush won the election, we rarely saw any terror alerts again.

I mean, that couldn’t have been a trick, now could it have? Oh, of course not–conservatives would never think of using some scare tactic purely to make people vote for them?

It’s not as if there was a huge scare about some sort of terror mosque being built near Ground Zero that was all over the news last year but then we never heard about it again once the election was over.

No, conservatives never use fear tactics. Just like they never use violent imagery or suggest gun violence is a way to handle political disputes.

Conservatives, in the wake of their inappropriately violent references and the more recent Palin “blood libel” fiasco, seeking some kind of handle on the Tucson shooting that will allow them to attack Democrats successfully, tried to pull a Paul Wellstone: they tried to claim that the memorial event presided over by Obama–widely recognized as not just appropriate but excellent–was turned into a political campaign rally. In particular, they criticized t-shirts being given to members of the crowd, and reacted in disgust to the fact that people cheered. These points, they insinuate, show that liberals are politicizing the event, trying to gain from it. The term they seem to have settle upon is “pep rally,” but overall, are blasting the event from every conceivable angle.

The reality was quite different–a president getting a stricken community back on its feet:

Asked if the mood was appropriate, Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup, a Republican, didn’t hesitate: “Oh yes. Yes! If there was one thing that was appropriate, it was cheering. I’ve been in the hospital, and the people that are healing, they want to hear people cheer.” …

Obama himself gave the crowd reason to cheer, when he departed from his prepared text to announce that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) had opened her eyes for the first time since the shooting, just hours before. “She knows we are here, she knows we love her, and she knows we are rooting for her,” he said.

They cheered for Daniel Hernandez, the intern who many credit for saving Giffords’ life who also happens to be a junior at the university here. Hernandez, 20, later delivered a speech of his own in which he dubbed “e pluribus unum” — “out of many one” — the credo of the night.

They cheered for prominent native Arizonans in the crowd who have made much of themselves, from former Gov. Janet Napolitano to 2008 presidential nominee John McCain to former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

And, perhaps most markedly, they cheered for the members of their community both living and dead who were unknown until this week. Among those who received the warmest applause were the first responders who rushed to the parking lot of the Safeway where Giffords “Congress in your Corner” event ended in tragedy, the medical team from this university’s medical center that saved 10 lives and Giffords’ slain staffer Gabriel Zimmerman.

Yes, how dare they cheer. That bastard Obama.

Additionally, it appears that the university where the event was held–not Obama, Democrats, or liberals–was responsible for the t-shirts, which simply read, “Together We Thrive: Tucson & America.” Which, of course, is an incredibly left-wing political–even possibly communist–sentiment, as we all know. People seeing such shirts will instantly think to vote Democrat in the next election. Right.

Can conservatives do even one thing in the wake of this tragedy that doesn’t make them look like complete idiots, knowing hypocrites, or unbelievably callous partisans?

Remember the GOP freshman who had campaigned against government-run health care who threw a fit when he couldn’t get his own government-run health care package right away?

We have another entrant in the “Biggest Hypocrite in the GOP Freshman Class of the 112th Congress”: Michael Grimm (R-NY13). Grimm also campaigned virulently against government-run health care, and yet is now insisting that there’s absolutely wrong with his having the same government-run health care he is trying to deny his constituents.

His excuse:

What am I, not supposed to have health care? It’s practicality. I’m not going to become a burden for the state because I don’t have health care and, God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation…That can happen to anyone.

Here is a case of someone who didn’t expect to have his hypocrisy called out and so did not have time to think of a good excuse. There are several things wrong with his claim:

1. What applies to him applies just as well to the tens of millions of people who would go uncovered by health care should he be successful in repealing the ACA–should they be burdens for their states?
2. He acts as if he has no other options aside from taking government-run health care or having no insurance at all, as if there is no such thing as private insurance–the same “free market” insurance he so valiantly defends. What’s wrong with the exact same insurance option he claims is good enough for everyone else? Or does he think that private insurance is too expensive or just not good enough for himself?
3. If he believed government-run health care is a bad thing, then it is a bad thing when he gets it too.

Clearly what we have here is a hypocrite who will take what he feels he has “earned” even though he “earned” it by telling people that it is an evil that will lead to the downfall of the country, excusing it with a logically invalid load of crap. To top it off, he told Diane Sawyer in regards to making cuts, “the pain should be shared by everyone”–except, apparently, himself. And at a salary of $174,000 plus benefits and a generous retirement plan paid for by the taxpayers, one would think that of all people, he could pay his own way.

Yet another piece of evidence that these people don’t believe in what they’re selling, but are instead following what is now a full-blown Republican tradition of saying and doing whatever will benefit them personally.

Despite the fact that five former Republican secretaries of state–Powell, Kissinger, Shultz, Baker, and Eagleburger–as well as George H. W. Bush are all on record as saying that the new START treaty is good and will make the world safer, Republicans in the Senate are making sounds about voting down the treaty.

Why? According to Mitch McConnell:

Republican senators are “uneasy” about the treaty, and trying to get a vote before Christmas was not the best way to “get the support of people like me,” McConnell said.

He makes it sound like this was just suddenly thrown at the Senate and they’re flustered about whether or not it’s good enough. Despite having had eight months since the treaty was signed to study the treaty, 18 Senate committee hearings (12 by the Foreign Relations Committee), dozens of witnesses, thousands of questions asked, a National Intelligence Estimate, and a State Department report and analysis all confirming that the treaty is sound and we should sign it. The former Republican president and five Republican secretaries of state endorsing the bill are just the cherry on top.

But Republicans don’t like the timing of how it’s being pitched to them. Bullshit. If they’re not fully briefed on the treaty, then it’s due to their own incompetence. What else?

Their main substantive objection is that the treaty would limit America’s ability to deploy missile defense systems. Ah, well that sounds important, and could be a real sticking point, right? Well, if the objections were based in reality, yes. Of course, they’re not–the Republican claims are thoroughly debunked here.

What Republicans are doing in the Senate smacks of political game-playing. They are trying to get changes made to the preamble of the treaty–which is legally non-binding and would have no effect on our obligations–and other changes that would necessitate going back and renegotiating the treaty with Russia, throwing a rather significant wrench into our nuclear security options.

The fact that the objections are rather transparently false, and the way the Republicans are doing this, suggest pretty clearly that they are not interested in national security so much as they want to deprive Obama of another achievement and create the impression that they were responsible for making the treaty actually work.

“Country First” indeed.

Ha. It seems that Republicans will cry “Voter Fraud” not matter who the other candidate is. In Alaska’s (R) vs. (R) fight between Murkowski and Miller, Miller–the GOP’s new Sore Loser (and Norm Coleman’s weak echo)–is now claiming what is assumed to be massive voter fraud for a Republican candidate. Among the devious criminal enterprises are, according to Miller, many ballots with suspiciously similar handwriting and votes cast by voters without correct identification–add that to all the ballots misspelling “Murkowski,” which Miller insists are protest votes against Murkowski.

This after Miller’s people ran a campaign to flood the write-in candidate list with names so that people would have trouble finding Murkowski’s name.

This would have to be massive fraud as Miller is behind by 10,000 votes and yet still seems to be fighting to win.

After Minnesota two years ago, I have to admit it would be rather amusing–and yet still wrong–if Miller were able to hold up Murkowski’s appointment for several months. Not that that is going to happen, for various reasons–including the obvious lack of GOP support, as well as the fact that Murkowski is the incumbent.

Still, it is amusing enough that Miller is using the standard baseless, asinine, and fraudulent sore-loser claims against Murkowski that right-wingers tend to fling out whenever they lose elections fair and square.

Sorry to have been quiet for several days; we’re at a very busy time in the semester right now. But it’s been a pretty busy week for conservatives, too. So instead of ten posts, here’s an all-in-one.

This has been a pretty typical week for conservative politics–and yet we see more crazy crap in a one-week span now than we used to see in months way back when. like so much else in politics, the goal posts keep moving.

---

James O’Keefe is at it again. He started by releasing heavily-edited tapes of conversation with ACORN, eventually destroying the organization despite its being cleared of any wrongdoing, on the weight of faked controversy blared through the Fox News megaphone. Then he and his cohorts were arrested when they went to a Democratic senator’s office and falsely tried to pass themselves off as a telephone repair crew. They attempted to gain access to the senator’s telephone equipment closet–claiming, of course, that they never would have done anything improper once they got in to it. Then he tried to punk CNN reporter Abbie Boudreau because she was doing a documentary on young conservative activists he didn’t approve of; he planned to entice her to board a “pleasure boat” where he would make sexual advances and videotape everything.

So, what is O’Keefe up to this time? He wanted to embarrass another popular conservative target, the teacher’s unions. So he hired an attractive young man to approach 38-year-old New Jersey special-ed teacher Alissa Ploshnick, ply her with drinks, and use leading conversation to try to get her to say embarrassing things on tape so it could be heavily edited and used to discredit her and the unions. They were successful: in response to O’Keefe’s operative’s attempts to steer the conversation, she said it was hard to get a tenured teacher fired (that’s not exactly standard date talk), and gave an example of one teacher who had used the N-word. The edited tape was then made public, the teacher disgraced (she was suspended and lost thousands of dollars in salary), and Republican governor Chris Christie used to to attack the teacher’s unions in a fight to cut teacher salaries, benefits, and tenure.

But what stands out about this sordid smear is the target O’Keefe chose. Ploshnick was not just a random teacher, she is a hero in a very real sense. In 1997, a careening van threatened to run over a dozen schoolchildren; Ploshnick saved them:

Alissa Ploshnick risked her life to save the lives of a dozen Passaic schoolchildren. She threw herself in front of a careening van to protect her students and landed in the hospital with broken ribs, a fractured wrist, a badly bruised pelvis and glass cuts in her eyes. She could have died.

I can only assume O’Keefe will next target Captain Sullenberger in order to attack the pilot’s unions. That’s just the classy kind of guy he is.

---

Charles Murray, co-author of “The Bell Curve,” the arguably racist and thoroughly discredited book about intelligence, is at it again, once more earning his right-wing credentials. He insists that if you are not a NASCAR-loving, End-of-Days-fearing, game-show-watching American from a rural area who vacations in Branson, Missouri, then you’re exactly the kind of elitist snob that Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers have been warning us about. You love to backpack in the Sierra Nevadas and gush about exquisite B&Bs overlooking Boothbay Harbor. You isolate yourself, marrying only your own kind, are hostile to anyone below your station, are completely apart from the mainstream America which you disdain, and are “ignorant about the lives of ordinary Americans.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t see liberals going around snubbing others for their lowbrow tastes. Stupidity, yes–believing Glenn Beck, voting against their interests, thinking Fox is balanced journalism, thinking Sarah Palin is presidential material. But that’s judging people by demonstrably poor judgment, and not for where they live, what religion they belong to, what sports they like, or what TV entertainment they enjoy. As many people with bad judgment live in cities as they do farmland, just as many smart and reasonable people live in rural areas as do in cities. As for backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas and gushing about exquisite B&Bs, that’s more hackneyed a stereotype than the drunk, wife-beating, pickup-driving redneck bigot.

The elitism that conservatives constantly whine about supposedly concerns arrogant people who look down on others because they believe themselves to be better than the ones they disdain. Well, guess what: conservatives have cornered that particular market. And Murray is simply exemplifying that in classic style. People like him and Palin go around telling conservatives that they are more patriotic, more hard-working, more deserving, and just plain better, that they’re the real Americans. Which is what elitism is all about–thinking you’re better than others because of who you are, not because of how you treat other people.

---

Incoming House Republican Andy Harris, who campaigned against government-run health care, throws a hissy-fit when he learns that he has to wait a whole month before his government-run Congressional health-care package kicks in. While running for office, he vowed to “lead the fight to abolish Obamacare.” Is it possible to get more hypocritical than that?

---

Republicans viciously attacked Obama’s auto industry bailout as “socialist” and accused him of “taking over” the auto industry, as if he were now controlling its every move. If so, then Obama is an economic genius: the industry is back on its feet, GM is now successful and profitable with a fantastic IPO, and due to the bailout, Obama saved 1.4 million jobs–and not burger-flipping jobs, but solid manufacturing jobs for the most part. That goddamned socialist! Well, Republicans laid it all on his door, blamed him for whatever it would bring–and now that it’s being paid back in full and the auto industry is taking off, they have switched to nothing but praise for Obama. </snark> Actually, they’re claiming it was a big coincidence and TARP had nothing to do with it. Seriously.

---

The people of Alaska liked Sarah Palin protogé Joe Miller and his ideas so much that they did something almost unheard of in American politics: they defeated the official candidate for a safe Senate seat with a write-in vote. Who said that people in rural America are dumb?

Sarah Palin, meanwhile, makes an overture to run for president in 2012–and conservatives in government and the media now seem to be mocking her, with Palin foe Murkowski, winning the “No Shit Sherlock” award for November, saying Palin just isn’t presidential material.

---

Michele Bachmann says that earmarks are bad except when they are transportation projects in the district of the politicians getting earmarks for them. Which, of course, are the classic definition of earmarks. In short: we get to be the anti-earmark heroes while bloating the budget with earmarks because when we do it, it’s legitimate and therefore not earmarks. Got that?

---

Republicans, clamoring for deficit reduction, refuse to say they would cut anything that would make a dent in the deficit, and instead demand that rich people get massive tax cuts again, and that is more important than middle-class tax cuts. Because they’re all about the little guy, and, as Rand Paul says, poor people and rich people are so intertwined that there’s really no difference between us. So, when do I get to live in the really nice house of that rich guy uptown, and drive his nice cars? Unless by “interconnected,” Rand Paul meant “in the thrall of.”

---

The GOP canceled a meeting with Obama because they didn’t like the idea he might upstage them:

The roots of the partisan standoff that led to the postponement of the bipartisan White House summit scheduled for Thursday date back to January, when President Barack Obama crashed a GOP meeting in Baltimore to deliver a humiliating rebuke of House Republicans.

Obama’s last-minute decision to address the House GOP retreat – and the one-sided televised presidential lecture many Republicans decried as a political ambush – has left a lingering distrust of Obama invitations and a wariness about accommodating every scheduling request emanating from the West Wing, aides tell POLITICO.

“He has a ways to go to rebuild the trust,” said a top Republican Hill staffer. “The Baltimore thing was unbelievable. There were [House Republicans] who only knew Obama was coming when they saw Secret Service guys scouting out the place.”

That’s what The Politico originally printed. Since then, they have rewritten the post without note of the revision–considered dishonest by Internet-reporting standards–and in so doing, removing some of the more outrageous claims by conservatives.

Josh Marshall had an excellent rundown of this. Obama did not crash, he was invited. He did not ambush, he was expected well in advance. Conservatives were, in fact, salivating at the opportunity to make Obama look bad, and Fox News broadcast the event–until Obama was doing so well they couldn’t bear it any more, and they cut away early. Obama came with his usual bipartisan outreach, complimenting the Republicans and trying to find common ground; the Republicans asked him sharply partisan questions, sounding like asses; and Obama handled the questions adroitly, making excellent points and sounding reasonable. That’s why Republicans hate him so much for it. They weren’t “ambushed” because they didn’t expect him to come. They were ambushed because they expected to humiliate him, and were shocked to find that this backfired when Obama was reasonable and rational, making the politically motivated Republicans look like dicks.

---

Speaking of which: Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, accuses NPR of “spouting propaganda,” saying, “They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism.” No wonder he hates Jon Stewart so much–Stewart spoke out against calling people “Nazis.”

---

McCain (2006): We shouldn’t stop DADT until the military leaders tell us to. Last year, the military leaders told us to.

McCain (2009): That’s not good enough. We need to study it. OK. Study it is. They did the study, and it supports the repeal of DADT.

McCain (2010): We shouldn’t depend on a study, we should depend on the military leaders and what they say. Um, we went over that already. The top military leaders support the repeal.

McCain (2010): We need a different study. We need a study on the effects of openly gay soldiers on morale and battle effectiveness. That’s exactly what they study was.

McCain: We need more study. Maybe some committee meetings and whatever else we can throw in the way. Now, uproot that goalpost and set it back another ten yards. That’s it.

As usual, Jon Stewart laid it out best:

---

Bush plagiarizes several passages from his memoirs:

Crown [Bush’s publisher] also got a mash-up of worn-out anecdotes from previously published memoirs written by his subordinates, from which Bush lifts quotes word for word, passing them off as his own recollections. He took equal license in lifting from nonfiction books about his presidency or newspaper or magazine articles from the time. Far from shedding light on how the president approached the crucial “decision points” of his presidency, the clip jobs illuminate something shallower and less surprising about Bush’s character: He’s too lazy to write his own memoir.

Why am I not surprised?

---

One thing the Republicans do right: distribute and follow their hollow and meaningless talking points. They sure know how to get everyone reading from the same page. And it makes for a bit of fun as Jon Stewart runs all the clips together in a bunch to expose how shallow it is. This week’s talking point: time to start having adult conversations. As if (a) they’re the adults, and (b) they really want to do that. It’s kind of like how they claim to be the bipartisan ones right before declaring scorched-earth campaigns when Obama gives them everything they want.

Right-wingers jumping on the inane for political traction: Michelle Obama went to her polling place in Illinois to cast her ballot early for the midterm elections. Naturally, she draws a lot of attention–people talking to her, taking photos, etc. One of them, afterwards, tells a reporter:

“She was telling me how important it was to vote to keep her husband’s agenda going.”

RED ALERT!!! The Drudge Report breathlessly gives its take on the story (the link will probably dissolve after a short time, so here’s a grab of the page code, minus ads):

FIRST LADY CAMPAIGNS INSIDE POLLING PLACE

First lady Michelle Obama appears to have violated Illinois law — when she engaged in political discussion at a polling place!

Right-wingers instantly fell on it. One newspaper pundit immediately called on Mrs. Obama to apologize:

She is a Harvard-trained lawyer who broke the law. No one is saying she should be prosecuted. It’s wrong. It’s unlawful. It’s worthy of a public apology.

A blogger at American Thinker was scandalized, and not a little creative:

Ever the pragmatist, Michelle, after voting in full-blown campaign mode, allegedly decided to encourage voters to vote Democratic in close proximity to where voters actually vote. Mrs. Obama posed for polling place pictures and then, according to Mr. Dennis Campbell, after smiling for the camera turned to remind him “how important it was to vote to keep her husband’s agenda going.” …

If, in the end, Michelle’s valiant efforts – criminal or otherwise – fail to turn the tide in favor of Democrats, on Election Day Barack and Michelle can always rely on Black Panther “prayer circles” to keep “clean spirits” from voting.

Note: I had to check to see if that last one was satire. I don’t think it is.

Pajamas Media also started sounding the alarm:

Today, when Michelle Obama voted early in Chicago, she reportedly told a voter that he needed to vote to keep her husband’s legislative agenda alive. This took place in an area where such electioneering is prohibited by Illinois law. The law has criminal consequences.

Like the New Black Panther case, photographs exist of the lawbreaking. And like the dismissal of the New Black Panther case, the administration has swung into action to abet lawbreaking. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that the first lady supports her husband’s agenda.

Like so much about the New Black Panther case, that isn’t the point. The point is the rule of law, that precious institution that makes America thrive and, in her darker hours, survive. Laws should apply equally to everyone, whether a president or a prisoner. That is the revolutionary idea that drove our revolution.

Fascinating how the Black Panthers keep getting mentioned, isn’t it? Because I’m sure they were involved somehow.

There are a lot of other examples, from news and blog sources, but you get the idea.

The problem: Michelle Obama did nothing wrong, and even if she had, it would be so innocuous as to be laughable. But she didn’t, as many have pointed out–even, after some thought, Fox News–a blogger for which, strangely, covers all the bases (I hope he still has a job tomorrow):

It all depends on what Obama actually said to the group of voters. Had she specifically told Campbell he needed to vote for a candidate who would support President Obama’s agenda, she would indeed have violated Illinois election laws, as would someone wearing a campaign button or distributing political literature inside a polling place. But according to a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, Obama made no such statement.

Rather, the elections official said, Obama told the group how important it is to vote early and vote in general, a perfectly appropriate suggestion at a polling place. Campbell’s characterization of the conversation may simply have included his political position, that he voted “to keep her husband’s agenda going,” but not that the first lady had specifically encouraged Campbell to support Obama-friendly candidates.

Even if one of the other voters had mentioned their support for President Obama and the first lady agreed, she would still not be in violation of election statutes because she would not, in that case, have initiated the political conversation. The Chicago Board of Elections has not, at this time, made an inquiry into the matter.

Many other right wingers have taken a more “moderate” approach, blogging on the impropriety and/or giving it the “you decide” treatment. But in the end, it’s a whole lotta nothing.

The fact is, it was just one secondhand comment, almost offhand, not verified, not even checked–and we get a flurry of attention from the whole thing. The right-wing blogosphere and media machine, on the job.

But this is typical of the right wing: you have Christine O’Donnell spending campaign money to cover personal expenses–illegal, but who cares? California’s Whitman hired an illegal alien and lied about it–who cares? In 2008, McCain clearly violated campaign funding laws–who cares? When Republicans commit serious laws regarding or during a campaign, we’re supposed to ignore it. But when the First Lady says something in support of her husband when people approach her in a polling place–and actually breaks no laws–we should be aghast and scandalized, and we deserve a public apology.

You can go back many elections and see the same BS: Republicans violate serious laws, get a bye, but then jump all over Democrats for technical violations that aren’t even violations. It falls into the pattern–excuse what’s happening on the right by making up crap about the left while trying as much as possible to capitalize on it secondarily–like Republicans committing election fraud while accusing Democratic voters of voter fraud, then using that in attempt to squelch the Democratic vote (Michigan State Senator John Pappageorge in 2004, “If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we’re going to have a tough time in this election”).

All in good fun, though, right?

Right wingers seem to be constantly pushing the envelope these days. The latest example? A billboard showing four versions of Obama: terrorist (He’s a Muslim!), gangster (from Chicago!), bandito (Headless torsos are his fault! Somehow!), and gay man (he doesn’t bash gays!). The Obamas are playing poker, all carrying triple sixes (They’re all cheating! And they’re all the AntiChrist!), gambling with the constitution, the bible, the liberty bell, Lady Justice, Uncle Sam, and our troops, while sinister-looking rats (Get it? DemocRATS? That’s so original!) labeled IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed scurry under the table, and grinning vultures labeled “George Soros” and “U.N.” wait for Obama to kill off America so they can pick at the carcass.

Jesus. I mean, we had a great deal to hate about Bush, but I’m not sure we ever went this far, even on web sites, much less on a public billboard. But it does show the level of complete and utter fantasy the right wing is indulging in, buying the science fiction Fox peddles as gospel.

It would be hard to image what asinine, racist, homophobic, bigoted scare imagery they didn’t include. No, wait–I don’t see him as a nazi or as a communist. Unless the Mexican is a socialist and the gay man is a closet Nazi.

The person or group who commissioned the billboard and determined its content is staying hidden–apparently they’re either too connected or too embarrassed to admit to putting this thing up. I would guess the former–one has to have little or no shame to pay for something like this.