A majority of Republicans believe that President Barack Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world,” according to a survey released on Monday.

That figure, buried at the very end of a newly released Newsweek public opinion poll, reflects the extent to which a shocking bit of smear and misinformation has managed to become nearly commonplace within the GOP tent.

A full 14 percent of Republicans said that it was “definitely true” that Obama sympathized with the fundamentalists and wanted to impose Islamic law across the globe. An additional 38 percent said that it was probably true — bringing the total percentage of believers to 52 percent. Only 33 percent of Republicans said that the “allegation” (as Newsweek put it) was “probably not true.” Seven percent said it was “definitely not true.”

It’s hard to overstate how truly insane this is. This isn’t, by the way, a matter of the public not knowing what “sharia” means — the question read, “Some people have alleged that Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world. From what you know about Obama, what is your opinion of these allegations?”

Adam Serwer makes the case that “Americans don’t have a very good understanding of what Islamic law is.” That’s no doubt true. For that matter, the poll results, if accurate, may very well be an extension of just reflexive partisan hatred — people who hate the president suspect he may sympathize with foreign Islamic fundamentalists, not because it’s true, but because they hate him so much they’re inclined to believe anything. (“Some people have alleged Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Lrrr, the Omicronian ruler of Omicron Persei 8, who intends to come to Earth to enslave humanity. From what you know about Obama, what is your opinion of these allegations?”)

But whatever the rationale, it’s hard to get over the fact that Obama Derangement Syndrome has become so pervasive on the right, literally most of the nation’s rank-and-file Republicans appear to have gone stark raving mad.

If/when there’s a GOP majority on the Hill, Republican officials should probably realize now that this party base will simply not tolerate any kind of constructive policymaking with the White House, making the prospects for a functioning political process next year almost laughable.

Original Article: When a party goes mad – The Political Animal

But it’s the endless investigations that would get tiresome. Politico reported the other day that Republicans “are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.”

Paul Krugman explained today that it’s “going to be very, very ugly.”

…I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.

And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.

Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we’ve just seen, he’s doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.

And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found. [...]

It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.

I’d just add one related thought. The Politico piece on the expected witch hunts, highlighting right-wing lawmakers “quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas,” offered a list of “six possible committee investigations if Republicans take back the House in November.” The possibilities are probably predictable to those who follow current events: a job offer to Joe Sestak, rescuing the auto industry, the New Black Panther Party, ACORN, etc.

That’s no doubt accurate, but it’s missing a relevant detail: some of the likely investigations will cover stuff that’s just made-up. In the Clinton era, House Republicans held hearings on garbage that was manufactured out of thin air, and subpoenas were issued just for the sake of issuing subpoenas.

There’s every reason to believe it would be worse in 2011 and 2012.

Original Article: Expect Limitless, Relentless Witch Hunts – The Political Animal

While the Kochs are reluctant to admit any direct ties to the tea parties that have swelled across the nation, David and Charles’s efforts to promote libertarian ideas by spending more than a hundred million dollars on right-wing causes have arguably contributed more momentum to the movement than those of any other individuals:

“Ideas don’t happen on their own,” Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, a Tea Party advocacy group, told me. “Throughout history, ideas need patrons.” The Koch brothers, after helping to create Cato and Mercatus, concluded that think tanks alone were not enough to effect change. They needed a mechanism to deliver those ideas to the street, and to attract the public’s support. In 1984, David Koch and Richard Fink created yet another organization, and Kibbe joined them. The group, Citizens for a Sound Economy, seemed like a grassroots movement, but according to the Center for Public Integrity it was sponsored principally by the Kochs, who provided $7.9 million between 1986 and 1993. Its mission, Kibbe said, “was to take these heavy ideas and translate them for mass America. . . . We read the same literature Obama did about nonviolent revolutions—Saul Alinsky, Gandhi, Martin Luther King. We studied the idea of the Boston Tea Party as an example of nonviolent social change. We learned we needed boots on the ground to sell ideas, not candidates.” Within a few years, the group had mobilized fifty paid field workers, in twenty-six states, to rally voters behind the Kochs’ agenda. David and Charles, according to one participant, were “very controlling, very top down. You can’t build an organization with them. They run it.”

Citizens for a Sound Economy later split into two groups — FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity — both of which have provided direct education, training, and support to Tea Party activist groups across the nation. AFP has offerred “Tea Party Talking Points,” urged citizens to protest by sending tea bags to Obama, and provided directions to protests. It is now hosting “Defending the American Dream” summits across the county, the next one scheduled in Washington, D.C. for this Friday and Saturday. The event package includes transportation to Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor Rally” on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial this Saturday.

Also of note are the strange echoes in the rhetoric of today’s Tea Party candidates of the ideas put forward by David Koch when he ran as vice-president on the Libertarian Party ticket to the right of Ronald Reagan:

Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”

Original Article: The Koch Brothers and the Tea Parties – Washington Independent

With that in mind, it was heartening, though not necessarily surprising, to see Ron Paul issue a fairly strong condemnation of his allies for their ugly demagoguery related to the proposed Park51 community center.

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Paul didn’t hold back. He argues that the debate itself was initiated by neocons, exploiting anti-Muslim bigotry and manipulating the public through propaganda. He notes the polls showing opposition to the community center, but insists that “majorities can become oppressors of minority rights as well as individual dictators. Statistics of support is irrelevant when it comes to the purpose of government in a free society — protecting liberty.”

The uproar, Paul concludes, “is all about hate and Islamaphobia.”

From a Libertarian perspective, this makes perfect sense. We are, after all, talking about a private real-estate transaction between the owners of a former clothing store and those hoping to build a community center. As far as Libertarian adherents are concerned, the notion of political officials intervening, demanding that a religious group build a private facility five blocks away from Ground Zero instead of two-and-a-half away, is absurd.

What’s interesting, though, is that Ron Paul’s essay is specifically at odds with Rand Paul’s political rhetoric in Kentucky. While the elder takes a principled stand in support of American ideas, the younger, running a bizarre Senate campaign, is doing precisely the things his father finds offensive.

Just last week, Rand Paul’s campaign said the community center’s construction would run counter to “the healing process.” In fact, while some on the right want Park51 moved elsewhere, Rand Paul has suggested the facility shouldn’t be built at all — his campaign said all of the money that would construct the building should instead go a 9/11 memorial and/or victims’ families.

In context, the father doesn’t have to worry about re-election, while the son has to exploit anti-Muslim animus to win a competitive Senate campaign in a different state. But the lesson here is nevertheless interesting — Rand Paul not only has a radical worldview, he has a radical worldview that he doesn’t fully understand. Despite all the Ayn Rand novels and speeches to fringe groups, these concepts shouldn’t be hard for the right-wing ophthalmologist to understand. He’s either confused about his own principles, or he’s cast them aside in the hopes of winning an election.

Rand Paul’s beliefs are troublesome; his intellectual inconsistencies are worse.

Original Article: Paul vs. Paul – The Political Animal

Yesterday, deranged media personality Glenn Beck aired the months-old clip of Sanchez’s mistake, using it as evidence to argue that Sanchez is “the dumbest man ever on television.”

For the record, Sanchez generally isn’t my cup of tea, and his volcano joke was pretty foolish, so I’m not inclined to offer much of a defense. But for Glenn Beck to describe anyone on television as dumb is just astounding. It’s the equivalent of Sarah Palin accusing someone of being ignorant. Or Mark Kirk accusing someone of exaggerating their personal background. Or David Vitter accusing someone of lacking character and integrity. Or Sharron Angle accusing someone of being a lunatic.

George Zornick highlights a few of Beck’s greatest hits.

• Beck reveals that President Obama is an “oligarh“
• Beck also misspells “heroes” and “villains” live on-air.
• Beck plays Connect Four against himself, and cheats.
• Beck displayed a graphic demonstrating that Silas from “The Da Vinci Code” is a member of ACORN.

Beck said of Sanchez, “I honestly don’t know how the man ties his own shoes. If I had a nickel for every time I’ve had the same thought about Beck, I could retire wealthy.”

Original Article: Department of Pots and Kettles – The Political Animal

In general, there’s been relative parity between the parties’ fundraising committees, at least in recent months. We learned this week, for example, that the Democrats’ Senate campaign committee did slightly better than the Republicans’ counterpart in the most recent filings. Among the House committees, the NRCC did a little better than the DCCC. In both cases, Democrats have a modest edge when it comes to cash on hand.

But the real story here is the disaster for Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee. The party waited until late last night to release its tally for a very simple reason — it was objectively embarrassing.

The Republican National Committee spent twice as much as it raised in July, leaving the committee with just over $5 million on hand with less than three months left before the 2010 midterm elections.

In a report filed with the Federal Election Commission this evening, the RNC showed $5.5 million raised and more than $11 million spent — including $1.5 million in transfers to state party committees — last month. The committee ended July with $5.3 million in the bank and $2.2 million in debt.

The Democratic National Committee raised and spent $11.6 million in July, including nearly $4 million in transfers to state parties. The DNC ended the period with $10.8 million. The DNC had $3.5 million in debt.

The dismal report comes less than a month after RNC Treasurer Randy Pullen accused Chairman Michael Steele of hiding $7 million in debts; the RNC filed amended reports in July detailing $3 million in previously unreported debts.

How humiliated was the RNC? While parties routinely issue press announcements, putting their best spin on their fundraising filings, last night, the RNC said literally nothing. The only reason the media found out about the filing was that the Democratic National Committee tracked it down and flagged it for reporters.

That’s the good news for Dems. The bad news is this is just part of a more complicated landscape.

The RNC’s humiliating problems are likely to undermine the party’s get-out-the-vote efforts, but when it comes to finances, it’s worth remembering that the other Republican committees — NRCC, NSCC, and the Republican Governors Association — are all doing pretty well. What’s more, Republican candidates will get a boost from corporate allies intervening in the cycle in ways unseen in generations, while Karl Rove’s various shady operations keep filling their coffers to finance deceptive attack ads for the fall.

And then, of course, there’s the unpleasant fact that voters aren’t happy with a struggling economy, and seem more inclined to punish the majority party anyway.

Steele’s “leadership” no doubt brings a smile to the faces of leading Democratic officials, but Dems will need more than RNC embarrassments to salvage the cycle.

Original Article: The Numbers Michael Steele Doesn’t Want You To See – The Political Animal

The alleged abuse took place in the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, near Austin, Texas. The resident supervisor, Donald Dunn, 30, was charged Thursday with three counts of official oppression and two counts of unlawful restraint, the Austin American-Statesman reported. The facility is managed by Correction Corporation of America, a private detention and corrections contractor.

The ACLU said Corrections Corporation of America officials were violating policy by allowing female immigration detainees to be isolated with male staff members. After an ACLU investigation into sexual abuse at the Hutto facility, Vanita Gupta, Deputy Legal Director of the ACLU, said the charges show additional need for reform:

“The sexual abuse of numerous immigration detainees at Hutto underscores the systemic failures that continue to plague our nation’s broken immigration detention system. The irony is that ICE touts Hutto as a flagship facility, emblematic of its commitment to reform. Clearly, that commitment is shallow. ICE has ignored repeated calls for increased and independent oversight and accountability of its immigration detention facilities and the private contractors like CCA who run them, and tragedies like this are the unfortunate result. It is time for ICE officials to live up to their promise of creating a ‘truly civil’ immigration detention system that does not tolerate the abuse and degradation of its detainees.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s major detention reform has so far been considered lackluster by immigrants rights groups, and abuses at the Hutto facility are a bad sign. ICE announced plans to reform its detention system last year, touting an overhaul of the Hutto facility as one of them. ICE officials converted the facility, which was formerly a state prison, from family detentions to female detainees only after criticism of inhumane conditions for detained children.

ICE has already demanded some changes to the facility: After allegations of abuse this May, Corrections Corporation of America was put on probation by ICE and ordered to forbid male guards from being alone with female detainees.

Original Article: ACLU Investigates Sexual Abuse of Female Immigration Detainees – Washington Independent

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS this week detailed the “seven public policy initiatives” that will be most important for Congress next year. The group runs ads against Democrats across the country.

On the list at No. 1: “Stop the Obama tax hike time bomb scheduled to detonate on January 1, 2011.“

That’s not a typo. Rove’s group is claiming that Obama set the timer on that so-called “bomb.”

No one should be surprised. Rove has been lying to voters, just as a matter of course, throughout his career. For a campaign operation organized by the activist/hatchet-man/media-personality to base its work on playing voters for fools is entirely predictable.

But as Rove’s lies go, this one takes some chutzpah. It was Rove’s White House, after all, that crafted and approved irresponsible tax cuts — which failed miserably in their stated goal — and put an expiration date on them. It wasn’t Obama, and it wasn’t Democrats — Rove’s White House played a budget game and set the lower rates to expire at the end of 2010.

If it’s a “bomb,” Rove helped set the timer. He has no reason to whine (or lie) about it now.

And as the “debate,” such as it is, proceeds, there are two competing approaches about future tax rates. Democrats’ plan leaves the lower rates for the middle- and lower-class in place, while the wealthy would go back to brackets that existed in 2000 — back when a Democratic president left a health economy and a massive budget surplus for a Republican president to screw up. Republicans’ plan, apparently endorsed by the clownish Rove, is to protect massive breaks for millionaires and billionaires, and throw the tab onto the massive deficits they left for Democrats to clean up.

Maybe Rove knows this, and is just counting on voters being dumb. Maybe Rove doesn’t know this, and he’s just a mindless hack. Either way, this talk of “bombs” is ridiculous.

Original Article: Rove plays voters for suckers (again) – The Political Animal

If you haven’t heard, a woman called Schlessinger’s show last week with an upsetting problem. The caller is in an inter-racial marriage — she’s black, her husband is white — and is offended when her husband’s friends and family members make racist remarks. Schlessinger blamed the woman, telling the caller that she’s “hypersensitive” — a problem “bred by black activists” — and needs a better sense of humor. To prove the point, Schlessinger repeated the N-word 11 times, defending it by saying “black guys say it all the time.”

Last night, Schlessinger announced that she’s ending her radio show.

Dr. Schlessinger made the announcement on Tuesday night on “Larry King Live,” saying she made a decision not to renew her contract when it expires at the end of the year and suggesting that she did not want her opinions and language, however provocative, to be muzzled

“I want to regain my First Amendment rights,” she said. “I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I’m sort of done with that.”

But she stressed that she was not retiring, only ending her show, and would continue to write books and appear at speaking engagements.

“I’m not quitting,” she told Larry King. “I feel energized actually — stronger and freer to say the things that I believe need to be said for people in this country.”

Oddly enough, last week, facing criticism, Schlessinger expressed regret for her remarks and acknowledged that her on-air remarks were “wrong.” By last night, however, her contrition appeared to be gone and the incident was everyone’s fault but hers.

Media Matters’ Eric Burns said in a statement, “Dr. Laura’s radio career ended in disgrace tonight because of the bigoted, ugly and hateful remarks made on her show. Americans have had enough. Listeners are now holding hosts, affiliates, and sponsors accountable for the offensive and inexcusable content on the airwaves.”

Here’s hoping that trend continues.

Originally Posted at DR. LAURA’S RACIST TIRADE LEADS TO RADIO SHOW’S END – The Political Animal

The company’s media outlets play politics more openly than most, but the huge contribution to a party committee is a new step toward an open identification between Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and the GOP. The company’s highest-ranking Democratic executive, Peter Chernin, recently departed.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the company said, “News Corporation believes in the power of free markets, and the RGA’s pro-business agenda supports our priorities at this most critical time for our economy.”

In case you were curious, there were no comparable contributions to Democratic campaign committees. News Corp. has written some modest checks for a few Democratic incumbent lawmakers, but they’re of the four-figure variety — a small fraction of the $1 million check for the Republican Governors Association.

Indeed, the RGA’s “biggest corporate donor” happens to be Fox News’ corporate parent.

Matt Gertz asks, “Are there still people who doubt that Fox is just an arm of the GOP?”

There shouldn’t be.

On a related note, anyone want to lay odds on whether Fox News’ on-air broadcasters, reporting on gubernatorial races, disclose that the same company paying their salary is also helping finance the Republican candidate they’re covering?

Original Article: DROPPING AN ALREADY-THIN PRETENSE – The Political Animal

Murdoch caught lying about political party support:

Click here to view the embedded video.

h/t Media Matters