Trump Tweets False White Supremacist "Talking Point" and Causes Rift with South Africa

Donald Trump may be the least knowledgeable individual to ever occupy the White House.  Rather than educate himself from multiple sources and reading lengthy reports, he watches Fox News which now basically broadcasts what Trump and his supporters want to hear and insists on single page briefing papers.  Add to this Trump's long history of racism - one significant detail arose right here in Hampton Roads when Trump's company was sued for anti-black discrimination - and its little surprise that Der Trumpenführer launched a totally erroneous and racially charged tweet the other evening.  Whether it was meant to be a distraction form the coverage of the conviction and guilty plea of his right hand men or pure ignorance and racial malice may never be known.  What is certain is that the story line derives from a white supremacist talking point used to spread the myth of "white genocide."  The New York Times looks at this latest falsehood peddled by the White House:

Trust President Trump, following his familiar tactic of deflecting attention from yet another scandal by issuing some outrageous tweet, to come down hard on the wrong side of an issue he knows nothing about, based on no more than a slanted Fox News program. In a late-Wednesday tweet, Mr. Trump said he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into land seizures and the “large-scale killing of farmers” in South Africa. It was the first time he has mentioned Africa by name in a tweet as president.

His source was a grossly one-sided report by the Fox host Tucker Carlson [who has been pandering to white supremacists] asserting that the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, was seizing land from his citizens because they are the wrong “skin color.” There have been no large-scale killings of white farmers, and Mr. Ramaphosa’s proposal to change the Constitution to allow expropriation of land [in certain limited situations such as abandoned property and derelict urban buildings] without compensation has not yet passed.

The Natives Land Act of 1913 essentially reserved most of the land to the white minority, and the restrictions became more onerous in the apartheid era. When that system was finally dismantled almost 25 years ago, a new Constitution did provide for land reform, but the process has moved slowly. Statistics vary, but what is clear is that whites, who are less than 10 percent of the population, continue to own more than two-thirds of the land, while black South Africans, the overwhelming majority, own a much smaller share.

That “highly skewed” distribution of land and productive assets, according to the World Bank, contributes heavily to making South Africa “the world’s most unequal country.”

Mr. Ramaphosa argued in an op-ed article in The Financial Times that his proposal was “no land grab,” and that the A.N.C.’s land reform program would not undermine investment in the economy or damage agricultural production. The constitutional amendment he is seeking, he said, would strengthen the existing rules by making explicit the conditions under which land could be expropriated without compensation.
 Yet Mr. Trump’s tweet, and the Fox show on which it was based, were bereft of any context, sympathy or understanding. They pounced, instead, on the false narratives of right-wing white South African groups claiming widespread seizures of white-owned land and a continuing “white genocide.”
 In fact, the number of killings of farmers and farm workers is at a 20-year low, with 47 in the 2017-18 fiscal year, according to AgriSA, a farmers’ organization in South Africa.
 Not surprisingly, South Africa reacted angrily to Mr. Trump’s tweet, saying it reflected a “narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.” Sadly, it probably reflects even less than that — a clueless grasp at a racially tinged political diversion. As Patrick Gaspard, a former American ambassador to South Africa and now president of the Open Society Foundations, tweeted, “This man has never visited the continent and has no discernible Africa policy.”

Personally, I doubt Trump cares about the truth of the situation in South Africa.  His tweet was likely aimed merely pleasing his racist base that is hysterical over its loss of perceived white privilege and terrified of those with different skin color.

The Right's Desperate Assault on Robert Mueller

When I left the Republican Party years ago I learned how quickly "friends" can turn on you once you suddenly are dreamed "other" or the opposition.  I went from being respected for "doing my homework and never going off half-cocked" to being dragged through the model not the least for the "lifestyle" I had chosen.   It was ugly and save for one of my "friends" in the Virginia Beach delegation to the Virginia General Assembly I never received an apology - not even after Ed Schrock was "outed" by Mike Rogers, something all of them, including Bob McDonnell had been told about in advance.   Now, on a much grander scale it is Robert Mueller's turn to feel the wrath of Republican more concerned about protecting their own or their own ties to power than the best interests of the nation or simply morality and the rule of law.  And what drives such vicious attacks?  Personally, I suspect that many know that Mueller is on the verge of exposing crimes committed by the Trump/Pence campaign  and/or are fearful that their own prior knowledge of such crimes may come to light.  Andrew Sullivan looks at both the data that shows a majority of Americans oppose the GOP backed cancer and the vengeance Mueller is under unjustified attack.  Here are highlights:

I have three sites tucked away to check when I’m having a bad Trump day. There’s the Gallup approval chart, FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, and Real Clear Politics’ graphic of Trump polling. They sit there like little squares of visual Xanax whenever the anxiety of living in a country run by a delusional rage-aholic gets a bit too much. And they’re all looking good. Squinting at Nate’s blurry orange and green, it looks to me as if the gulf between approval and disapproval is widening still further. . . . And then Virginia and now Alabama. And the Democratic flood of potential candidates for 2018, especially women.

And yet this still feels like a phony oasis. A huge majority of Republicans stuck with Moore and Trump last Tuesday. And we’ve learned one new and sickening thing this past month: Republican tribalism demands that the Mueller investigation be aggressively smeared in advance, its findings preemptively discredited, and its lawyers smeared for political loyalties, even when there is no evidence that this is affecting the special counsel’s work. In much of Trump media, Mueller’s alleged corruption and bias are fast becoming an article of faith. Night after night on Fox, it’s an endless diatribe against the special counsel, a constant drumbeat of propaganda about a “tainted probe.”

The House Judiciary Committee’s grilling of Rod Rosenstein this week also revealed a near-universal Republican consensus that the investigation is rigged. E.J. Dionne recently noted “the statement of Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that if every member of Mueller’s team who was ‘anti-Trump’ were kicked off, ‘I don’t know if there’d be anyone left.’” Jordan also declared that “the public trust in this whole thing is gone.” Ben Wittes is rightly worried that the House Republicans “are braying for actions inimical to the very idea of independent law enforcement. They are doing it about someone, Mueller, with whom they have long experience and about whom they know their essential claims to be false.”

The best news from Alabama is that the right’s strategy of constantly upping the ante, of mainlining tribalism so that the completely indefensible becomes a badge of honor, has reached an apparent limit. It took an alleged teen predator with contempt for the Constitution and nostalgia for the Confederacy to get us there, but we now know there is some kind of backstop. And so if Trump decides to wage war against Mueller, and pits his own ego against bedrock principles of the rule of law, there’s a chance he won’t quite get away with it. About a 51–49 chance. Our system of government — whatever today’s polling numbers — is hanging by roughly that margin.  And they say Alabama was a nail-biter.

For now, the majority of Americans seem to recognize the cancer in the GOP and White House.  Let's hope that continues and that November, 2018, sees a historic bloodbath for the GOP.  A blood bath that will set the stage for the removal of Trump and Pence and a decades long permanent minority status for the GOP.

Quotes of the Day: Legal Experts on Magnitude of Flynn Plea Deal

As the prior post on Michael Flynn's plea deal with Robert Mueller notes that the White House is trying to blow it off as a non-event .  True to form, Fox News, a/k/a Faux News,  has likewise down played it and seemed to focus an almost anything else possible last night (we were in the HYC club bar last evening and could see Fox on one TV and CNN on another and it was a case of conflicting realities). But those legitimate experts familiar with criminal law and the legal process see the matter quite differently. As noted in the past, I have worked as a consultant for the FBI in the past and do have some direct sense of how they operate and what plea deals mean.  Politico has a piece that looks at the reactions of various legal expert.   Here's my favorite one out of almost a dozen, none of which bode well for the White House:

‘As big as a day as this was for Mueller’s investigation, expect more and bigger ones’

Norman Eisen, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, chief White House ethics lawyer from 2009 to 2011, and ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014

“If you don’t want to do the time, you have to drop a dime” goes the jailhouse saying. How ironic that Michael Flynn, who encouraged the chants of “lock her up” at the Republic National Convention, is now following prison maxims in negotiating a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller. Having worked with and against Mueller, I know he is resolute in his pursuit of justice. The information and statement of the offense makes clear that Flynn has not just “dropped a dime” but a whole roll of them, implicating multiple other Trump transition officials with knowledge of his conversations with Russia and other foreign governments. As big a day as this was for Mueller’s investigation—and it was the biggest yet—expect more and bigger ones.

The Alternate Universe of Fox News; Buckley on Trump

My firm's office that I principally work out of is located in a business suites complex with numerous other tenants, including close to a half dozen other law firms.  Over all, it is a mixed group of tenants, all of whom share a kitchen/lounge area with a TV in it, as well as the large central printer/copier. During the 2016 election, there was an unspoken battle as to what channel would be on: Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, CNN or MSNBC, with people regularly changing the channel to their preferred channel.  Interestingly, now the TV remains almost always set to CNN or MSNBC.  Fox News, much more rarely.  On the increasingly rare occasions when the TV is tuned to Fox News, the best way to describe the coverage is as an alternate universe where major stories and facts are simply not reported.  Indeed, Fox News might as well be Russian state controlled television insofar as only right wing affirming coverage is aired.  A case in point was yesterday when news was breaking about Robert Mueller's empaneling of a DC based grand jury.  A New York Magazine headline says it all: " CNN: Grand Jury. MSNBC: Grand Jury. Fox News: Literally Anything Else."  The Founding Fathers believed that it was critical that the country have an informed electorate and that citizens had a duty to be well informed on the issues and events of the day.  One does NOT fulfill that duty watching Fox News.  Here are excerpts from the New York Magazine piece:

Earlier on Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury as part of his ongoing investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. (The White House, for its part, just keeps reiterating that Donald Trump is not under investigation and plans to fully cooperate with Mueller.) The WSJ called it “a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase.” This is, clearly, big news. The kind of news that major networks should be talking about. . . . Frankly, once you’ve read The Wall Street Journal report about the grand jury, you might want to tune into Fox News. Seems like they’re running some very fun segments this evening.

If - or more likely when - indictments come, Fox News viewers will no doubt be in shock and ask "how did this happen."  For racists, religious extremists, and xenophobes, Fox News has become a way to stick one's head in the sand and ignore reality.

Meanwhile, some conservative outlets are reporting on the real Donald Trump.  A case in point is Red State which has a timely piece that reveals what William F. Buckley - an icon to thinking conservatives (admittedly a vanishing species) - thought of Der Trumpenführer, none of it good. Here are highlights:

There has been a lot of discussion in the last several months over whether not several conservative icons would be supporting Donald Trump for President. William F.  Buckley, the founder of National Review and host of Firing Line said during the 1964 GOP primary that his rule was to support the “most rightward viable candidate.” That has often been turned into “the most conservative, electable candidate.” 

Willam F. Buckley wrote something about Donald Trump when he was talking about running for President — in 2000. Buckley, in an essay he wrote for  Cigar Aficionado and said the following about Trump:

Look for the narcissist. The most obvious target in today’s lineup is, of course, Donald Trump. When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection. If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America. But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something. So what does Trump say? That he is a successful businessman and that that is what America needs in the Oval Office. There is some plausibility in this, though not much. The greatest deeds of American Presidents — midwifing the new republic; freeing the slaves; harnessing the energies and vision needed to win the Cold War — had little to do with a bottom line.

Wow. He wrote this sixteen years ago. And think about it. Some of our most pressing concerns right now have to do with foreign policy and and national security. Trump’s business acumen, however questionable, is worthless in such cases.

And he wasn’t finished:

In the final analysis, just as the king might look down with terminal disdain upon a courtier whose hypocrisy repelled him, so we have no substitute for relying on the voter to exercise a quiet veto when it becomes more necessary to discourage cynical demagogy, than to advance free health for the kids. That can come later, in another venue; the resistance to a corrupting demagogy should take first priority.

Finally, he illuminated Trump’s narcissism by comparing him with Steve Forbes:

So what else can Trump offer us? Well to begin with, a self-financed campaign. Does it follow that all who finance their own campaigns are narcissists? At this writing Steve Forbes has spent $63 million in pursuit of the Republican nomination. Forbes is an evangelist, not an exhibitionist. In his long and sober private career, Steve Forbes never bought a casino, and if he had done so, he would not have called it Forbes’s Funhouse. His motivations are discernibly selfless. . .

Buckley, a New Yorker, had more of an insight into Trump than others. At the time Trump wasn’t known to the rest of the country beyond people knew he was some rich businessman. Buckley however, was privy to the nonsense Trump engaged within NYC and Buckley was just well aware of it. Whatever it was, he had Trump pegged.

Trump Voters: Living in Alternate State of Reality

Past studies have shown that those who get their "news" exclusively from Fox News are among the least informed Americans.  Add in "news" outlets like Breitbart and alt-right forums and one ends up with a world view that can only be described as delusional or detached from objective reality.  Now, analysis of new PPP Poll reveals that Trump voters are indeed severely detached from reality.  Yes, "friends" who voted for Der Fuhrer - or Lord Voldermort as one friend refers to him - will not like the results of the poll results, but liking the truth does not make it any less the truth.  Daily Kos looks at the poll findings as outlined by Rachel Maddow.  Here are excerpts:

     Rachel Maddow dissected a PPP poll exclusively pre-released to MSNBC showing the Trump voter as severely detached from reality.

     Rachel started the segment by pointing out that President Obama's overall approval rating is at 50%. However, while his favorability with Republicans is 9%, it is only 5% of Trump voters.

     President Obama's overall approval rating is at 50%. However, while his favorability with Republicans is 9%, it is only 5% of Trump voters.

     Rachel then pivoted to issue after issue where a large percentage of Trump voters were severely misinformed. They live in a virtually fact-free or made-up-fact environment.

     The stock market under President Obama soared. The Dow Jones Industrial average went from 7,949.09 to 19,614.91, again, up 11,665.72. In other words, it more than doubled. 39% of Trump voters think the stock market went down under Obama.

 Unemployment dropped from 7.8% to 4.6% during the Obama administration. Clinton, Johnson, Stein and other voters are well aware of that fact.  But not Donald Trump voters; 67% of them believe unemployment rose under President Obama.

     Rachel continued.·        40% of Trump voters believe that Donald Trump won the popular vote.
·        60% of Trump voters believe that millions voted illegally for Clinton.
·        73% of Trump voters believe that George Soros paid Trump protesters.
·        29% of Trump voters believe California vote should not be included in the popular vote.

[W]hat Trump voters believe about the world is distinctively different from what the rest of the country believe," Rachel said. "And from what is true. And this is an alternate reality that they are in, -- it is weird enough and specific enough that you can't say it just springs from broader a misunderstandings or from a broader ignorance on issues that afflicts the country. And this is a specific alternate reality that was created by the Trump movement for a political purpose. And it worked for that political purpose.

And now as the Trump administration takes shape, they have to know that they are in power thanks to their voter base that has these false beliefs about the country. False beliefs about the country, false beliefs about the economy, false beliefs about the outgoing president, false beliefs about what California is. In terms of what happens next in our country, it seems important to know this incoming president basically created this fantasy life for his supporters."

One of the reasons Trump may want to keep the rallies going is to ensure his base remains ill-informed. Given his agenda, he will depend on that ignorance lest his draconian policies are dead on arrival. 

Expect the Trump Campaign to Get Even More Extreme

Part of what has lead the Republican Party to be now controlled by an out of control and down right ugly party base has been the rise of extreme right wing talk radio and similar "news" sites and outlets. These microphone jockeys and "journalists" care little about objective reality and focus on what will most excite the prejudices and paranoia of their listeners.  Hence why one study found that those who watch Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, were found to be the least informed - even less informed than those who watched little or no news at all.  Now, Donald Trump's campaign is going to be under the control and guidance of one of the mavens of the most extreme such faux news sites, Breitbart News.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how the GOP's craziness is likely about to get far more insane.  Here are excerpts:

Shaken by the fact that he’s losing, Donald Trump has fled into the parallel universe of the extreme right — and apparently plans to stay there for the remainder of the campaign. Let’s see if the rest of the Republican Party is dumb enough to follow him.

Trump has reportedly been feeling “boxed in” and “controlled” by the few people around him who actually know something about politics. Advice from these professionals to tone it down must be responsible for his slide in the polls, he seems to believe. So he has hired as chief executive of his campaign a man named Stephen Bannon, who will not only let Trump be Trump but also encourage him to be even Trumpier.

Bannon runs Breitbart News, a website that creates its own ultranationalist far-right reality — one that often bears little resemblance to the world as it really is. 

The site’s since-deceased founder, Andrew Breitbart, once “described Bannon, with sincere admiration, as the Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement,” according to a Bloomberg News profile. Riefenstahl was the brilliant filmmaker who became one of Hitler’s most effective propagandists. I think the comparison is wrong; Bannon is not nearly as talented.

He is a practiced provocateur, however, with a gift for reinforcing the worldview of far-right true believers. Bannon gives readers the impression that the nation is in grave and imminent peril, that Muslims are conspiring to impose sharia law throughout the land, that Mexican immigrants are running rampant in a wild crime spree, that only Trump can save us — and that polls showing him far behind Clinton are somehow skewed, incompetent or irrelevant.

It’s all a paranoid fantasy, designed to exploit anxieties about demographic and economic change. And Trump has decided that his best chance of winning is to peddle this garbage, some of which he may actually believe.

So if anyone was wondering whether this election cycle could get any worse for the GOP, it just did.

It now appears to be a good bet that Republicans will lose control of the Senate. It is far too early to predict a “wave” election that might threaten the GOP’s big majority in the House, but Democrats are allowing themselves to dream. For Republicans, the two most likely outcomes of the election are bad and worse.

Trump’s decision to throw in with the likes of Bannon can only increase the probability of a GOP debacle. Does it have to be spelled out for you in neon lights, Republicans? Trump could not care less about the party, and he would happily destroy it to feed his own ego.

Bannon, likewise, appears to view the party of Lincoln as merely a vehicle for his own ambition, which is to nurture and grow a nationalist-right movement. His website is as critical of the Republican establishment as it is of the Democrats. He has no interest in making Trump more palatable to the general electorate. 

It was perhaps foolish of me to hope that very many Republican elected officials would reject Trump on principle. But now, perhaps, more will do so for reasons of self-preservation.

Trump has made his decision. In a town hall meeting this week moderated by Sean Hannity of Fox News, Trump ignored opportunities to embrace traditional American values and instead reinforced a message of nationalism, xenophobia and fear. He offered himself as the only solution, promising, like any tinhorn strongman, that “I have as big a heart as anybody.”

But there is no room in that heart for the GOP. Trump won’t save you, Republicans. You had better save yourselves.

 The GOP establishment is now truly reaping what it has sown by years of winking and nodding to insane elements of society, including the Christofascists, white supremacists and the outright crazy. Trump is the embodiment of it all and Bannon  will make the lunacy even worse.  I for one have no sympathy - all of this could have been avoid if the leadership had had a spine and not welcomed these horrible people into the party.  

Fox News Ignores Growing Duggar Scandal

Proving yet again that Fox News is little more than a right wing propaganda machine, the "news" channel is ignoring the Duggar scandal which seems to be getting worse by the hour as more individual challenge the storyline put out by the freak show family and more questions arise about the investigation of Josh Duggars admitted five episodes of molesting under aged girls, some of whom were his sisters.  Media Matters looks at Fox News' apparent effort to keep its brainwashed viewers from the facts about this less than normal or decent family.  Here are highlights:

Fox News largely ignored the controversy surrounding Josh Duggar following his recent admission that, as a teenager, he molested young girls, including several of his sisters. The revelations are particularly stunning given that, under the guise of protecting children, the Duggar family has played an active role in the fight against LGBT equality.

On May 21, In Touch magazine revealed that in 2006, Jim Bob Duggar - patriarch of TLC's hit show 19 Kids and Counting - had waited more than a year before telling police that his son, Josh, had confessed to molesting several female minors, including his sisters, when he was a teenager. TLC has since pulled episodes of 19 Kids from its schedule.

The revelations drew widespread criticism in the media, with many outlets pointing out the Duggar family's reputation as a torch-bearer for conservative values and strong involvement in Republican politics and anti-LGBT activism. The revelations look to many like hypocrisy from a family that's become a political powerhouse in socially conservative circles in recent years by wielding its reality show influence to stump for "family values," Republican politicians, and the repeal of legal protections for LGBT people.

But while MSNBC and CNN have reported heavily on the Duggar scandal, Fox News has largely ignored the story. According to a Media Matters analysis, Fox News spent less than two minutes covering the story between May 21 and May 25, compared to almost an hour of coverage from the other cable news networks.

The Duggar controversy has put Fox News in an awkward position. Before he resigned the day In Touch's story broke, Josh Duggar was the head of the Family Research Council's (FRC) political wing. Representatives of FRC, an anti-gay hate group that routinely links homosexuality to pedophilia and describes LGBT people as a threat to children, are a regular fixture on Fox News.

Former Fox News employee Mike Huckabee, who is running for president in 2016, has come under fire for defending the Duggar family in the wake of the controversy.

The right wing's "family values" stink to high Heaven.  And if you want to remain uninformed, then Fox News should be your news network of choice.

Watching Fox News Worse Than Watching No News At All

While I don't stay on them for extended periods, I do check out the batshitery that passes as news on some of the far rights alleged news outlets. It's a case of knowing what your enemy is doing and being prepared to counter whatever batshit craziness Republicans and Christianists may bring up in conversation should one find themselves stuck talking with them. I generally cringe at some of the craziness that bears little resemblance to actual reality. Now, a new survey conducted as part of Fairleigh Dickinson University's latest Public Mind poll found that individuals who watch Fox News were less informed than individuals who watched no news channels at all. I've always viewed Fox News asa warped propaganda vehicle for the most deranged elements of the GOP and far right and this poll vindicates that evaluation. Here are highlights from Queerty's coverage:

Not only does Fox News do a horrible job covering LGBT stories but, according to a recent poll, watching it actually makes viewers less informed than if they had just sat around watching a red sock tumbling in the dryer.

Fairleigh Dickinson University’s latest PublicMind poll phoned a random sample of 612 New Jersey adults via landlines and cell phones. They then asked them how they get their news and questioned them about about the success of the revolts in Syria and Egypt, the popularity of Republican presidential candidates, the European financial crisis and the political affiliation of Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Researchers found that the best informed respondents watched Sunday morning news programs. Such shows “tend to spend a lot more time on a single issue than other news broadcasts, and… are less likely to degenerate into people shouting at each other.”

They also found that “there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all.” Fox News respondents were:
•18 points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government.
•6 points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government.
•No more or less likely to name the Republican frontrunner in the GOP presidential race.

You can also pretty much count on Fox News not reporting this recent study either.

Faux News' New Comedy Venture

I will admit that I rarely put on Faux News - I like to know what is really happening in the world as opposed to some altered universe prospective on things. But on occasion I will turn to that channel to see what the enemy is up to so to speak. Sarah Palin is taking a risk: unless she stays to a pre-written script, God only knows what lunacy she may display. All of which will be captured on video for posterity. She's a narcissist and this show will likely demonstrate this for all to see.

Obama Speaking to Children and Right Wing Insanity

UPDATED: Pam's House Blend has the text of Obama's speech here. Reading the speech only reenforces my thoughts on why the GOP's lunatic fringe is so unwound by the speech - because it's a black man delievering a message that, if heard and followed by students from other minority groups, indirectly might further undermine the white privilege the wingers cling to.

*

I haven't commented until now on the increasing bat shittery - to use one of Pam Spaulding's terms I love - of the lunatic base of the Republican Party that is utterly melting down over President Obama making a speech about personal responsibility and remaining in school. This topic is precisely what the GOP claims to support, hence why the sobbing nut jobs and irrational foaming at the mouth? People in other parts of the world must truly look at the USA and think that their is some insanity inducing agent in the water in some locals. How else to explain utterly bizarre and insane conduct?

*

Personally, I believe a couple things are in play: (1) as the photo above indicates, I believe that not so subtle racism is at play, and (2) with the exodus of moderates and intellectuals from the GOP the base of the GOP is becoming increasingly ignorant, uneducated, paranoid and down right pathological. I truly fear where such detachment from reason and logic may lead. The Seattle Post Intelligencer has a column that looks at the insanity of the far right which acts as if Obama is doing something that other presidents have not previously done. Here are some highlights:

*

He pledged to be "the education president," so it was fitting in 1991 that President George H. W. Bush gave a speech to America's schoolchildren aimed at motivating kids to "strive for excellence."
*

Eighteen years later, President Obama is about to give a similar talk that will encourage students to work hard, set educational goals for themselves and take responsibility for their learning. The president's persist-and-succeed speech, set for Sept. 8, has produced a wellspring of hate from the far right. Hate talk radio is even urging parents to keep kids home from school.

*

Far-right media are engaged in niche marketing. The likes of a Limbaugh, O'Reilly or Beck attract a hard-core audience, deliver designated devil figures, and play on fears of gullible, resentful -- and largely elderly -- people. With Obama's speech to students, other goals come into play. With right-thinking Supreme Court justices leading the way, conservatives have long sought to limit young peoples' free expression, from censoring student newspapers to penalizing students for holding up signs off campus.

*
The 2008 Obama campaign energized the young in numbers not seen since the 1960's. At an Obama rally in Bend, Ore., last year, a 17-year-old high school student served as warm up act, delivering a cogent analysis of all that the Bush administration had wrecked. National Review online picked up my article. It condemned the kid, which put him on the receiving end of hate mail.

*

The Obama speech seems largely an appeal for students keep on truckin' and never get discouraged. It's not all that different from the thoughts of Bush Sr. Or the stay-in-school message delivered at East High School in Anchorage last week by Alaska's new GOP Gov. Sean Parnell. Yet, in Anchorage, right-wing parents have demanded that the speech be blocked from the classroom. Districts in Missouri, Texas, Virginia -- even the president's home state of Illinois -- have opted not to show it.

*
The action of Medina, Ohio, schools superintendent Randy Stepp is a typical cave in: Civics education -- not just sex education -- is getting censored by crazies.

*

The far right has been on a rampage this summer. "Birthers" have disrupted lawmakers' town meetings with the false claim that Obama was born in Kenya. Opponents of health care reform have carried posters depicting the president as The Joker from Batman movies, even as Adolf Hitler.

*

The vast majority of Americans are civil and tolerant. Most people want presidents to succeed, even if their candidate came up short in the last election. The country loses footing when an administration flops: Look at the last eight years. Instead, the far right and its media megaphones -- notably Fox News -- debase debate, spread lies, and demean a president 200 days into his term.

*

Joe Scarborough, congressman from the Republicans' Class of 94, Florida conservative, now host of "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, speaks the truth to the crazies -- and their enablers. "Where are the national GOP leaders speaking out against this kind of hysteria?" Scarborough asked Friday in a Twitter entry.

*

Truth be told, the national GOP leadership has become just as nasty and debased as the Party's base. Ignorance and religious extremism are now the hallmarks of a party that once prided itself on educated and thoughtful conservatism. Those days are gone, perhaps forever.

Birthers, Town Hall Hecklers and the Return of Right-Wing Rage

Rick Perlstein has a column in the Washington Post that examines right wing lunacy over the decades which shows that what we are witnessing now with the birthers, deathers, and townhall meeting hysteria is actually nothing new. The far rights in fact has had a cottage industry over the years dreaming up would be conspiracies and allegations of the nation going socialist for well over 50 years. What is different is that the MSM and elements of the media like Faux News are now giving them a forum whereas in decades past responsible journalists ignored them and relegated them to the lunatic netherworld. As I have said before, the decline of a responsible, investigative news media in this country increasingly allows bad things to happen - e.g., the Iraq War - and gives power to those who are clearly not dealing with a full deck. Indeed rather than doing what Perlstein describes as "he said she said" reporting, journalists need to have the balls to identify lies and untruths fro what they are and stop giving credibility to crazies. Here are some highlights:

*

In Pennsylvania last week, a citizen, burly, crew-cut and trembling with rage, went nose to nose with his baffled senator: "One day God's going to stand before you, and he's going to judge you and the rest of your damned cronies up on the Hill. And then you will get your just deserts." He was accusing Arlen Specter of being too kind to President Obama's proposals to make it easier for people to get health insurance.

*
In Michigan, meanwhile, the indelible image was of the father who wheeled his handicapped adult son up to Rep. John Dingell and bellowed that "under the Obama health-care plan, which you support, this man would be given no care whatsoever." He pressed his case further on Fox News.

*
In New Hampshire, outside a building where Obama spoke, cameras trained on the pistol strapped to the leg of libertarian William Kostric. He then explained on CNN why the "tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of tyrants and patriots."

*
It was interesting to hear a BBC reporter on the radio trying to make sense of it all. He quoted a spokesman for the conservative Americans for Tax Reform: "Either this is a genuine grass-roots response, or there's some secret evil conspirator living in a mountain somewhere orchestrating all this that I've never met." The spokesman was arguing, of course, that it was spontaneous, yet he also proudly owned up to how his group has helped the orchestration, through sample letters to the editor and "a little bit of an ability to put one-pagers together."

*

If you don't understand that any moment of genuine political change always produces both, you can't understand America, where the crazy tree blooms in every moment of liberal ascendancy, and where elites exploit the crazy for their own narrow interests.

*
In the early 1950s, Republicans referred to the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman as "20 years of treason" and accused the men who led the fight against fascism of deliberately surrendering the free world to communism. Mainline Protestants published a new translation of the Bible in the 1950s that properly rendered the Greek as connoting a more ambiguous theological status for the Virgin Mary; right-wingers attributed that to, yes, the hand of Soviet agents. And Vice President Richard Nixon claimed that the new Republicans arriving in the White House "found in the files a blueprint for socializing America."

*

The instigation is always the familiar litany: expansion of the commonweal to empower new communities, accommodation to internationalism, the heightened influence of cosmopolitans and the persecution complex of conservatives who can't stand losing an argument. My personal favorite? The federal government expanded mental health services in the Kennedy era, and one bill provided for a new facility in Alaska. One of the most widely listened-to right-wing radio programs in the country, hosted by a former FBI agent, had millions of Americans believing it was being built to intern political dissidents, just like in the Soviet Union. So, crazier then, or crazier now? Actually, the similarities across decades are uncanny.

*

It used to be different. You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to "debunk" claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president's program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn't adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of "conservative claims" to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as "extremist" -- out of bounds. The tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America's flora. Only now, it's being watered by misguided he-said-she-said reporting and taking over the forest.

*

One can only hope that some decent, investigate journalists will grow some balls and reverse the downward spiral in the MSM.