Mullahs

Let's take a look at a couple reactions to the President's speech in Cairo. One, Senator James Inhofe:

Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama's speech in Cairo was "un-American" because he referred to the war in Iraq as "a war of choice" and didn't criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program.

Inhofe, R-Tulsa, also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, "There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo."

"I just don't know whose side he's on,'' Inhofe said of the president.

Two, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei of Iran:

Speaking shortly before Obama delivered his address, in which he called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world," Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that "beautiful speeches" could not remove the hatred felt in the Muslim world against America.

"People of the Middle East, the Muslim region and North Africa -- people of these regions -- hate America from the bottom of their heart," Khamenei said at a gathering to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution and Khamenei's predecessor as the predominantly Shiite Muslim country's supreme religious leader.

"For a long time, these people have witnessed aggressive actions by America, and that's why they hate them," Khamenei, 69, told a crowd of several thousand supporters in his televised speech. He attributed these feelings to "violence, military intervention, rights violations and discrimination" by the United States.

Is there much of a difference between these two statements? I actually agree with Khamenei on the point that sweet talk and speeches must match action in the Islamic world. But from the standpoint of tone, aren't these just two mullahs worried about keeping their grip on the world and the adversarial relationship that bolsters them? Just like Iranian mullahs, American mullahs need an enemy, to demonize and to criticize their domestic opponents for failing to take seriously. It's no accident that the most vociferous critics of the speech are the right wing in America and extremists in the Muslim world. They need each other.

These People Are Nuts

Dave Weigel:

This amendment to the economic stimulus bill passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate, submitted by conshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifervative icon-in-the-making Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was breathtakingly bold. The , from Sen. DeMint’s Website:

o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 percent;
o Permanently kill the Death Tax for estates under $5 million, and cut the tax rate to 15 percent for those above;
o Permanently extend the $1,000-per-child tax credit;
o Permanently repeal the marriage tax penalty;
o Permanently simplify itemized deductions to include only home mortgage interest and charitable contributions.
o Lower top marginal income rates from 35 percent to 25 percent.
o Simplify the tax code to include only two other brackets, 15 and 10 percent.
o Lower corporate tax rate as well, from 35 percent to 25 percent.

This got the support of all but five Senate Republicans.

And the ones that didn't support it, like Susan Collins and Ben Nelson, want to kill the bill by 1000 cuts instead of by one. I actually find them more loathsome. At least the neo-Hooverists are open and honest.

This really isn't a game. 626,000 Americans had to go to their unemployment offices and file a claim last week. Tomorrow we're going to learn how many jobs were lost last month, and it'll probably be in the same range. And in response, Republicans are playing out their familiar "Tax Cuts Forevah" fantasies.

There's nobody to negotiate with. They actually think they're insurgents.

Frustrated by a lack of bipartisan outreach from House Democratic leaders, Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, said House Republicans -- who voted unanimously last week against the economic plan pushed by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- will pitch a "positive, loyal opposition" to the proposal. The group, he added, should also "understand insurgency" in implementing efforts to offer alternatives.

"Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban," Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. "And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person's entire processes. And these Taliban -- I'm not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that's not what we're saying. I'm saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with."

You have these war porn fanboys who think they've just got off the set of Red Dawn in the United States Congress. They are COMPARING THEMSELVES POSITIVELY TO THE TALIBAN.

And Fred Hiatt still thinks the problem is a lack of bipartisanship.

This is how empires fall.

...Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer:

Frustrated Senate Democratic leaders dispensed with calls for bipartisanship on the stimulus package Thursday, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying that he won't let anyone "hold the president of the United States hostage."

President Barack Obama had once hoped to have the package pass with substantial Republican support. But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that's now a “distant memory."

"So far," he said, bipartisanship "isn't working. . . . It takes two to tango, but the Republicans aren’t dancing.”

To paraphrase the immortal Adam Sandler, something I could have informed you of YESTERDAY!

American Taliban

A state senator in Montana lets his slip show, along with the slip of his party:

As a Republican state senator in Montana and as a human being, I am offended by Senator Craig's existence. Why oh why are most of the perverts that get caught Republicans? Are there more of them or are they just stupid? The thought of a US Senator chasing love in all the wrong places makes me think longingly of the Ayotollahs in Iran. They would just kill the turkey.

Those happy days where men are murdered for their sexual orientation. Ah, those halcyon days...

Just looking at the left-right chart, it is clear that the conservatives are moving to the same kind of authoritarianism that we have in fundamentalist theocracies around the world. Far from being libertarian, they want to be in everyone's bedroom, legislating morality and physically harming those who aren't as morally pure as they are. This is the real face of the Republican Party in the 21st century. And if the GOP wants to survive, they need to purge their party of this strain of fundamentalism and theocratic impulses, or they will never be anything but a minority party as the long arm of history bends toward justice and liberalism. I thank this state senator for peeling back the curtain.

UPDATE: Well, the American Taliban has succeeded in pushing WideStance Craig out of their party. Not to defend Craig, whose inability to understand the law disqualifies him to be a lawmaker IMO. But clearly there is a major, major problem in the Republican Party with their demand for absolute fealty with a fundamentalist agenda.

"...and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for 9/11."

ACT I:

REP. RON PAUL, R-TEXAS, GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They attack us because we've been over there, we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East. I think Reagan was right. We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics.

RUDY GIULIANI, GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: That's an extraordinary statement of someone who lived through the attack of Sept. 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq. I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.

-Rudy Giuliani, GOP debate, May 16, 2007

ACT II:

JERRY FALWELL: And I agree totally with you that the Lord has protected us so wonderfully these 225 years. And since 1812, this is the first time that we've been attacked on our soil and by far the worst results. And I fear, as Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, said yesterday, that this is only the beginning. And with biological warfare available to these monsters -- the Husseins, the Bin Ladens, the Arafats -- what we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact -- if, in fact -- God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.

PAT ROBERTSON: Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.

PAT ROBERTSON: Well yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system..

JERRY FALWELL: Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged". In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time - calling upon God. ~~~

PAT ROBERTSON: Amen.

Jerry Falwell & Pat Robertson, September 13, 2001

The punch line:

Giuliani Gets A Standing Ovation At A Christian College

Mayor Giuliani's battle to win over social conservatives in the Republican Party may not be the impossible task that many political pundits have predicted.

That certainly appeared to be the case yesterday at Regent University, the Christian college founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, where Mr. Giuliani's message of leadership and strength on terrorism met with a standing ovation.

-JoinRudy.com, June 27, 2007

And a comment:

Steve Benen could not be more right. The Mayor of New York City on September 11th, the guy who's made "9/11" his middle name, just visited a school founded by a radical theocrat who blamed Americans for the deaths of 3,000 of its citizens. This should be the first, last and only question for Rudy Giuliani at every press event. "Do you agree with Pat Robertson that the ACLU and feminists and abortionists and gays and lesbians are responsible for 9/11?" If the guy's so consumed with talking about the terrorist attack, let's talk about it. Why are you validating the work of Pat Robertson, who has recently said that the perpetrators of 9/11 were "just a few bearded-terrorists who fly into buildings” and who thinks that "activist liberal judges" are a greater threat to America?

Forget Giuliani’s ridiculous Clinton smear; this is what matters. Reporters should be confronting Giuliani with Robertson quotes and asking a) whether he agrees with them; and b) whether presidential candidates should lend their credibility to fringe fundamentalist extremists.

In 2000, when Bush visited Bob Jones University, it became a controversy — why would a credible presidential hopeful sanction BJU with a high-profile appearance? The questions dogged Bush for weeks. There’s no reason Giuliani shouldn’t face similar scrutiny now.

I’m curious, if a top-tier Democratic candidate publicly appeared with a radical extremist who blamed 9/11 on Americans and encouraged a terrorist attack on the State Department, do you think it might become a big deal?

A smart activist would start attending Rudy's campaign events with a "Mullahs for Giuliani" sign. Look, despite what everybody thinks, Giuliani can still win the Republican nomination on an explicit "electability" argument. His negatives in the swing states are extremely low, and he's very competitive where the race will count. The time for defining Rudy, yoking him to the likes of Pat Robertson, saying irresponsible things like "Giuliani blames Americans for 9/11" and also responsible things like "Giuliani left the emergency command center at the World Trade site despite it being a terrorist target in 1993" and "Giuliani didn't fix the radio communication problem between police and firefighters which caused many unnecessary deaths on 9/11" and "Giuliani was more concerned with making people think the city was on its feet again than protecting Ground Zero rescue workers who are getting sick and dying"...

That time is now.