Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

There's a shitload of stupidity out there today, so much I can't even begin to catch up with it. I'm going to have to have another edition this evening. The teabaggers are restless, and the insane rhetoric is flying thick and fast.

First things first: I'll never eat at Chick-fil-a ever again.

Secondly, right-wing governors might want to think twice about screaming for secession...

All the insane talk coming from the Limbaugh National Convention is spreading into the fabric of the entire GOP. Listen to Texas Gov. Rick Perry say:

Perry: Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.

We got a great Union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that.

These republicans are talking treason in my mind. As soon as a Democratic president is inaugurated after conservatives led the charge and collapsed our economy, these freak show conservatives are now talking succession.

...considering how often he screams for federal help:

... and there's Perry's reality.

Governor Rick Perry, five days ago: Governor Perry Calls FEMA To Assist With Wildfires

Governor Rick Perry, last month: Governor Perry Calls For 1,000 Troops To Be Sent To Border

Governor Rick Perry, five months ago: Governor Perry Requests 18 Month Extension Of Federal Aid For Ike Debris Removal

Yes, ol' Rick just can't stand that "oppressive" federal bureaucracy that keeps "interfering" with Texas, except when he needs its help.

Motherfucking hypocrites.

Faux News is trying to keep up a drumbeat of fascism and victimization, but it's a little hard to take them seriously when one of their own reporters destroys their screaming points:

Yesterday, a Department of Homeland Security report about the rising radicalization of “rightwing extremists” was leaked. The right wing was immediately incensed, viewing the report on radical “extremists” as an attack on “conservatives.” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, for example, tried to suggest it was a report about Republican “loyalists.”

However, this morning, Fox News’s Catherine Herridge revealed that the report, along with an earlier report on radicalized left-wing groups, was actually “requested by the Bush administration” but not completed until recently:

HERRIDGE: Well this is an element of the story which has largely gone unreported. One looks at right-wing groups, as you mentioned. And a second is on left-wing groups. Significantly, both were requested by the Bush administration but not finished until President Bush left office.

Herridge’s reporting undermines her network’s own “reporting” over the past 24 hours. Since news of the DHS assessment broke yesterday, Fox anchors and guests have been seizing upon the report as evidence that the administration is trying to intimidate tea party goers or “stifle speech”...

As per usual, the right is full of sound and fury over made up shit. You know how much it signifies. And it signifies even less considering this little nugget:

As it turns out, the Obama administration's Department of Homeland Security has prepared a threat assessment on "left-wing extremists," too. Greg Sargent has the report.

I've now obtained, however, an internal DHS assessment for law enforcement officials that sounds equally dire warnings about "left wing extremists." And it broadly defines these extremists as including people who embrace some components of "anticapitalist" or "antiglobalization" ideas.
You can read the whole thing right here.

While this new memo was mentioned tangentially by The Washington Times, reading the whole memo in full shows clearly that a similar approach was employed towards the left and deflates any claims of DHS "bias."

The threat assessment notes, "Many leftwing extremists use the tactic of direct action to inflict economic damage on businesses and other targets to force the targeted organization to abandon what the extremists deem objectionable. Direct actions range from animal releases, property theft, vandalism, and cyber attacks -- all of which extremists regard as nonviolent -- to bombings and arson."

Now, given this, are liberal media figures, pundits, bloggers, and talk-show hosts likely to throw a complete fit? It seems unlikely, for one simple reason: I don't think DHS is referring to liberal media figures, pundits, bloggers, and talk-show hosts.

It's what struck me as so strange yesterday. When DHS raised concerns about radical right-wing extremists who might commit acts of violence, Limbaugh, Hannity, Dobbs, Malkin, and others immediately thought, "Wait, maybe they're talking about us!"

And why, pray tell, would that occur to them? Perhaps because it's completely plausible they're psychotic enough to be of some concern:

Republican political consultant Matt Mackowiak, a former press secretary to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, has an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, touting the greatness of the far-right "Tea Parties."

Most of the piece is just confusing. The Tea Baggers are getting together, Mackowiak explains, to voice their outrage at "the Obama administration's confiscatory level of taxation." Really? Because just yesterday conservatives were trying to convince us this has nothing to do with the existing levels of taxation -- the president recently signed a massive middle-class tax cut -- and everything to do with hypothetical rates at some point in the future.

More important was Mackowiak's conclusion:

The coming revolution is akin to "Fight Club," the 1999 film that follows the struggles of day to day life for a regular guy who starts an underground fight club as radical and not terribly productive psychotherapy.

As Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, says in the movie, "Fight Club was the beginning, now it's moved out of the basement, it's called Project Mayhem."

Is that so. For those who haven't seen "Fight Club," David Weigel explains, "Project Mayhem, of course, was the militarization of the Fight Clubs into terrorist cells that blow up banks."

Now, Mackowiak's piece concludes that we'll see the results of the Project Mayhem-like "revolution" during the "2010 midterm Congressional elections." Presumably, he's referring to changes through legitimate political means, not using violence to disrupt the elections.

But as Matt Yglesias reminds us, "[I]f you go around analogizing yourself to terrorists, then you don't get to be shocked and outraged that the Department of Homeland Security might think there will be a problem with fringe members of your organization."

And when your mainstream pundits and your mainstream news organizations are calling for a Project Mayhem and saying things like this:

Fox Business Network anchor Cody Willard didn't appear to be very "fair and balanced" as he let out his opinion of Democrats' economic policy during a tea party protest in Boston. "When are we going to wake up and start fighting the fascism that seems to be permeating the country?" asked an excited Willard. "The fascism -- the definition of it is big business and government getting in bed together. That is what these people are fighting. We have about 700 people here. They are starting to rally," he said.

It's no wonder you might think the government might see you as extremists who bear close watching, now, is it?

These people have all gone completely round the bend. It would be hysterically funny if it wasn't a bunch of hysterical fuckwits with guns and national media pulpits pulling this shit.