Art? Culture? History? Who Needs 'Em?

Interesting article from TPM on the threat to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It's another budget cut that will impact smaller towns and rural communities the most, of course -- another kick in the teeth to The Hairpiece's base.

I found this telling:

Advocates feel they have a good chance of lobbying Congress to save funding for the endowments, which they say fund programs that offer crucial support to the public education system, help veterans readjust to civilian life and bring arts and culture to small communities.

“What we have here is an attack upon global citizenship and national civic culture," Jim Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, told TPM of the potential elimination of the NEH.

(Emphasis added.)

That's the point. Digby pointed out that Trump's proposed budget is authoritarian. I'll go a step further: it's a dictator's budget. The devil's in the details, as they say, and that comment about global citizenship and civic culture underscores it: that's the point.

Dictators start off by controlling the media, or trying to, and Trump's got the media chasing its tail 24/7.

And next they rewrite history. And the best way to accomplish that is to be sure that there are no other sources available, no other viewpoints to be had.

I wonder how successful he's going to be. He makes a big deal about how social media enables him to go directly to his supporters, but, as we've seen, that cuts both ways. And the cuts can be really sharp.

Today's Must-Read: First Amendment? What First Amendment?

You may have gotten the idea, from way too many reports, that the right believes the only freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment is religious freedom -- their religious freedom, because any other belief is a political philosophy, not a real religion. They tend to ignore things like freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly.

And now a number of states are starting to put that idea into practice:

Thom Hartmann reminds readers that the war on drugs arose as a Nixonian tactic for suppressing the antiwar left and black people. Half a century later, Nixon's heirs are using Arizona's RICO statutes to suppress dissent in Donald Trump's America. Arizona's version of North Carolina's "economic terrorism" bill, Hartmann writes, "would hyper-criminalize any sort of organized political dissent if any person involved with that dissent (including, presumably, agent provocateurs) were to engage in even minor 'violence,' so long as that violence harms the 'property,' regardless of value, of any person (including a corporation)." Attend a street protest and you might go to jail and lose everything. Riot is helpfully redefined under the proposed Arizona law to include, "A person commits riot if, with two or more other persons acting together, such person recklessly uses force or violence or threatens to use force or violence, if such threat is accompanied by immediate power of execution, which EITHER disturbs the public peace OR RESULTS IN DAMAGE TO THE PROPERTY OF ANOTHER PERSON." (Caps in the original.)

Stifle dissent and protect money. These guys never do anything that's not at least a twofer.

Read the whole thing, but I'm warning you -- it's pretty sickening.

Today's Must-Read: The Speech: Digging Deeper

Digby again, who starts off with the press reaction to "The Speech":

In the hours leading up to President Trump’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday night the news networks were giddy with excitement. They had been told by a “senior White House official” in a private luncheon with news anchors that the president was now in favor of comprehensive immigration reform. This seemed to signal a major reset in the administration’s agenda and the media outlets couldn’t have been more thrilled.

Nobody knew whether that proposal would be part of the big speech but there was a lot of feverish speculation that Trump was planning to surprise the country with a long-awaited “pivot.” As we all know now, he didn’t mention any such possibility in the speech. It looks like the whole thing was just a ruse to fool the media into giving Trump big props in the run-up to the event.

CNN’s Sara Murray reported yesterday that the administration basically told the news anchors what they wanted to hear, what Trump officials believed “would give them positive press coverage for the next few hours.” She added that a “senior administration official” had admitted it was “a misdirection play.” Said John King:

It does make you wonder; so we’re not supposed to believe what the senior-most official at the lunch says — who then they allowed it to be the president’s name says — we’re not supposed to believe what they say? Maybe we shouldn’t believe what they say.

I don't have a lot of confidence left in the press, especially the Washington press corps: they've been so desperate for "access" since Reagan that they'll swallow anything the administration feeds them and spew it back out as "news." I think they should do what one commentator suggested when Sean Spicer barred major outlets from his "gaggle": Get off their butts and go out and do some digging for their stories. You know -- like real journalists.

Digby goes on to examine an element that has been part of Trump's campaign from the very beginning and, in spite of what you may have heard, is still central to his "vision". This image pretty much says it:

Read her piece. It's chilling.

What McConnell Didn't Want the Senate to Hear

You may have read or heard (depending on how you get your news) about Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pulling the plug on Elizabeth Warren during the Democrats' filibuster of debate on the nomination of Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as attorney general. She was reading a letter from Coretta Scott King opposing Sessions' nomination to the federal bench in 1986. McConnell, for whom Senate rules apply when he wants them to, ruled her out of order for saying bad things about another senator.

Well, here's the letter:



Via RawStory.

Representative Government, Republican Style

If you don't like the rules, change them:

The Week reports:

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee advanced President Trump’s nominee for treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and Trump’s nominee for health secretary, Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), on Wednesday with zero Democrats present. To do so required committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to suspend the committee rules, which normally require a quorum of at least one Democrat in the room in order to permit a vote.

Based on past history, this should really come as no surprise: we know that once in power, Republicans will waste no time abusing it. They've made no secret over the past thirty years that they're after one thing: One-party rule.

Quote du Jour (Update)

From White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, defending this:

Also among the protesters was Shohreh Rahnama, of Bethesda, Md., whose 5-year-old son was detained for several hours at Dulles Airport after a flight from Istanbul on Saturday night.

Artiman Jalali was born in the United States and has dual citizenship with Iran. He was traveling back from visiting relatives with his cousin, 25-year-old Aida Mohammadi, a University of Maryland student and a green-card holder.

Rahnama said she waited for hours at the airport with friends and family and a growing crowd of strangers who came to support them and others whose loved ones were detained. Artiman and Mohammadi were finally released around midnight. “He was hungry and he was thirsty, and I could not see him,” she said.

“How can a 5-year-old be banned? Just because his parents are Iranian? We are American, too,” she said. “I almost died in that airport. I can say it was the worst day of my life.”

Spicer's reaction?

Asked on Monday whether Trump’s order — which critics have called a “Muslim ban” — should apply to 5-year-old children, White House press secretary Sean Spicer gave a clear answer: yes.

“That’s why we slow [the process] down a little,” Spicer said at the daily press briefing. “To make sure that if they are a 5-year-old, that maybe they’re with their parents and they don’t pose a threat. But to assume that just because of someone’s age or gender or whatever that they don’t pose a threat would be misguided and wrong.”

WTF? Five-year-old terrorists?

I'm reminded of a story from several years ago, an incident that happened at O'Hare: a disabled boy on crutches was forced to crawl through the security check point by the TSA agent -- no crutches, and his mother was not allowed to help him.

This is what happens when small people get their hands on some power.

Via the New Civil Rights Movement, which makes a point for those who think this is all about making Americans safe:

And remember, Jalali is a U.S. citizen. Apparently his citizenship does not protect him in the eyes of the Trump administration.

Wonderful. The White House is now stocked with bigots. Can we hear again about "the party of Lincoln"?

Update: I guess that applies to little old ladies in wheelchairs, too. Can't be too careful.

It seems that Trump is determined to remake this country in his own image: whiny cowards.

Today in Disgusting People: Making a President-for-Life (Update)

Kellyanne Conway has a permanent place in the "disgusting people" category, partly because she's such an unregenerate liar, and partly because she's working overtime to browbeat the press. Now she wants every reporter and commentator who criticizes Trump fired.

Conway went on to complain that last week, she went on three Sunday news shows to discuss Trump's policy proposals, but the only thing that got reported was her now-infamous statement about "alternative facts," and "not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for not covering the facts that matter."

"Who’s cleaning house?" Conway said. "Which one is going to be the first one to get rid of these people that said things that just aren’t true?

By that criterion, she should be the first to go. And "the facts that matter" -- that would be your "alternative facts," right?

It's an interesting strategy -- pretend that you actually have the standing to demand that the press cater to your bullshit, demand firings of journalists who show signs of independence, discredit the press at every opportunity.

Hey, it worked for Franco, Peron, Mussolini, Hitler, and every tin-pot strong man on the African continent.

Her boss, of course, is weighing in on this as well, specifically targeting the New York Times:

Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

Click through to see the responses on Twitter. They're not positive. (And do note that since The Hairpiece started his anti-NYT campaign, subscriptions are up.)

This says what needs to be said:

Attacks on legitimate media that holds power to account is a routine precursor to the rise of authoritarianism. https://t.co/vGDqlNfjuy

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) January 29, 2017

The sad part is that the American press has set itself up for this. "As ye sow. . . ."

Update: On to Phase Two: siccing the Secret Service on the journalists.

Beyond Outrage

I was so infuriated yesterday by the news about Trump's Muslim ban that I literally couldn't write. We already knew the man was a walking, talking piece of shit, but that just drew it in high relief.

There are stories all over the place about the chaos at airports, the people who were returning home -- legal residents, mind you -- who were detained at airports or told they could not board their flights. The Age has a good summary, and points out one salient fact:

The new President is cravenly political in the countries he decided to put on a refugee and migrant blacklist. And his inclusions and exclusions don't make sense – unless your name is Donald Trump.

Trump claims to be motivated by the horrific September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, but the countries of which the 19 aircraft hijackers were citizens are not on the list – most came from Saudi Arabia and the rest from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon.

Also absurdly absent are Pakistan, Turkey and Afghanistan – all of them hotbeds of terror. In excluding them, Trump is grovelling to their leaders, not making a gesture to their people. . . .

In the 40 years to 2015, not a single American was killed on US soil by citizens from any of the seven countries targeted - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen - according to research by the conservative-leaning Cato Institute.

But the same research shows that in the same period nearly 3000 Americans were killed by citizens of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey — most victims of the September 11 attacks.

And oops, wouldn't you know it, Trump has multimillion-dollar business operations in all those countries.

In 2015, he registered eight hotel-related companies in Saudi Arabia, according to The Washington Post; in Turkey, two luxury towers in Istanbul are licensed to use his name; in Egypt, he has two companies; and in the UAE, he has naming and management deals for two golf courses.

(Emphasis added.)

Source:  Bloomberg

I doubt that anyone will be surprised by that little tidbit, and I'm sure it will just roll of his supporters' backs, like every other bit of reality they come in contact with.

For what it's worth, MoveOn has a petition, which you can sign here.

The American Civil Liberties Union is leading the fight. You can donate here.

The Age article via Nick's Place.

Footnote: NCRM has the complete text of the executive order.

Footnote 2: And it seems to have been as carefully planned as everything else these yahoos have come up with: nobody bothered to tell INS how to implement it.

Today's Must-Read: The Slide Toward Autocracy: A Checklist

Via Digby, this list from Amy Siskind of "Trump atrocities" of the week.

Experts in authoritarianism advise to keep a list of things subtly changing around you, so you'll remember. Here's my list for week 9[.]

Digby just shows this week's list, but has links to the previous eight.

I found this one possibly the most worrisome:

35. Human Rights Watch issued it's annual report of threats to human rights around the world. For the first time in 27 years, the US is listed as a top threat because of the rise of Trump.

Here's Human Rights Watch's article on the 2017 World Report. Just one salient section:

Executive Director Kenneth Roth writes that a new generation of authoritarian populists seeks to overturn the concept of human rights protections, treating rights not as an essential check on official power but as an impediment to the majority will.

“The rise of populism poses a profound threat to human rights,” Roth said. “Trump and various politicians in Europe seek power through appeals to racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and nativism. They all claim that the public accepts violations of human rights as supposedly necessary to secure jobs, avoid cultural change, or prevent terrorist attacks. In fact, disregard for human rights offers the likeliest route to tyranny.”

Roth cited Trump’s presidential campaign in the US as a vivid illustration of the politics of intolerance. He said that Trump responded to those discontented with their economic situation and an increasingly multicultural society with rhetoric that rejected basic principles of dignity and equality. His campaign floated proposals that would harm millions of people, including plans to engage in massive deportations of immigrants, to curtail women’s rights and media freedoms, and to use torture. Unless Trump repudiates these proposals, his administration risks committing massive rights violations in the US and shirking a longstanding, bipartisan belief, however imperfectly applied, in a rights-based foreign policy agenda.

I'm wondering again whether New Zealand is far enough away.

About All That Data Mining

And the government/industrial complex in general, a clip from the 19997 film Good Will Hunting:

The president has dismissed it all as "hype":

"When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That's not what this program's about," Obama said. "As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at peoples' names and they're not looking at content. But by sifting through this so-called metadata, they may identify potential leads with respect to folks who might engage in terrorism."

Ah, yes -- the "may" identify folk who "might" engage in terrorism. How reassuring.

About that metadata that doesn't really tell the government any of your secrets, via Digby, this article from The Atlantic, with some real eye-openers:

The answer, according to the mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer Susan Landau, whom I interviewed while reporting on the plight of the former N.S.A. whistleblower Thomas Drake and who is also the author of “Surveillance or Security?,” is that it’s worse than many might think.

“The public doesn’t understand,” she told me, speaking about so-called metadata. “It’s much more intrusive than content.” She explained that the government can learn immense amounts of proprietary information by studying “who you call, and who they call. If you can track that, you know exactly what is happening—you don’t need the content.”

For example, she said, in the world of business, a pattern of phone calls from key executives can reveal impending corporate takeovers. Personal phone calls can also reveal sensitive medical information: “You can see a call to a gynecologist, and then a call to an oncologist, and then a call to close family members.” And information from cell-phone towers can reveal the caller’s location. Metadata, she pointed out, can be so revelatory about whom reporters talk to in order to get sensitive stories that it can make more traditional tools in leak investigations, like search warrants and subpoenas, look quaint. “You can see the sources,” she said. When the F.B.I. obtains such records from news agencies, the Attorney General is required to sign off on each invasion of privacy. When the N.S.A. sweeps up millions of records a minute, it’s unclear if any such brakes are applied.

Read the whole article -- it gets worse.

It occurs to me that it's maybe slightly more difficult than a total no-brainer to set up systems that are going to correlate certain batches of metadata to show the patterns that Landau is talking about -- Google and Amazon do it all the time. (See this bit from TPM about a company that actually does this. Although they're denying any government connection, even though their first client was the CIA.) Do you really want something like this being run by people who operate in secret, under the auspices of judges who meet in secret and whose decisions are secret, all for something as vague as "national security"? And tell me, who's going to insure our security from programs like this?

And do we dare ask who has access to this information?

Things like this are probably a major reason that I'm into total escapism these days.

If This Doesn't Freak You Out

you're beyond hope. A major article in Wired about the surveillance state.

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

Judicial review? We don't need no judicial review. Or anything else in the way of oversight, for that matter. I love how Congress killed the project, and the administration -- now two administrations -- went ahead and did it anyway.

Talk to me again about Obama and civil liberties. But be sure there are no drones in the neighborhood before you open your mouth.

The Conservative Vision of America

Is to be forced to listen to wingnuts at gunpoint. Mike Huckabee says so, so it must be true -- the money quote (which has been edited out of the "official" version) is within the first minute.



Here's the quote, via Box Turtle Bulletin:

“I just wish that every single young person in america would be able to be under his tutelage and understand something about who we are as a nation. I almost wish there would be like a simultaneous telecast, and all Americans would be forced — forced, at gunpoint no less — to listen to every David Barton message. And I think our country would be better for it.”

You have to wonder if these people are even thinking about what they're saying. As an American, that's the sort of sentiment that turns my stomach. (I realize there is a remote chance that Huckabee was "joking," as conservatives understand the concept. Considering that they seem to consider humor as being against God's will, somehow I doubt it.)

The remarks about being forced to listen to a screwball like David Barton are bad enough, but I found it very interesting later in the clip (if you can stand to watch that long), when Huckabee is praising the organizer of the event as being "a perfect servant." Right there, I think, is what bothers me most about Christianity (well, give or take the exclusion of the Goddess, and all the focus on breeding): the idea that we are all servants. There's something really wrong about that.

But back to Huckabee: that clip has gone viral. I think we have a good idea where the Christian right stands in regard to American values, in case we had any doubts.

"Evil Done in God's Name is Not God's Work" (Updated)

That's a quote from, believe it or not, a fantasy novel by Tanya Huff, one of her Summon the Keeper series. I found it apropos for today's subject, which I'm finally feeling able to tackle now that I have less nasal congestion and, consequently, the return of some cognitive function.

It all grows out of this post, about Gail Sweet's attempt to scrub an "offensive" book from the Burlington County, NJ, library system on the sly. (That post was a follow-up to this one on the same topic, which became a separate post because of the lengthy and somewhat hysterical comment left by "SafeLibraries." I won't comment on the irony in that moniker.)

The bottom line in that story is that Sweet, acting on her own and without following regular procedures that would have left her decision open to public debate, tried to remove Revolutionary Voices, a collection of essays, stories, poems and art by GLBT teenagers, from the library shelves because of a complaint by a wingnut Beck-worshipper lodged with a high school library in the county. Note that the complaint was not lodged with the county system, but one high school. SafeLibraries' defense of Sweet was shrill and didn't really hold up to scrutiny, but was in a way quite revealing of a mindset that I think I captured in my response to a comment in the second post:

The real issue in this case is not whether Revolutionary Voices is, in fact, appropriate for a school library. That question was never open for discussion or review and was instead decided on the basis of one woman's judgment. (Frankly, the assertion that a collection of works by teenagers is not appropriate for teenagers is itself somewhat suspect.)

The issue so far has been Sweet's method of removing the book, not just from a school library, but from an entire county library system. Has she now appointed herself the arbiter of what's permitted for adults to read as well as "impressionable youth"?

The more I look at this story, the more it becomes obvious to me that Sweet has engaged in a naked attempt to impose her values on the community at large, and to do so undercover. Offside quotes about inappropriate material in a situation where the designation of "inappropriate" rests on one woman's questionable judgment are not going to change that.

Believe it or not, that's related to this post from Pam's House Blend covering two counseling students who let their religious objections to homosexuality get in the way of their desire to help people. First, Jennifer Keeton:

Professors asked Keeton to complete the remediation plan after she said she opposed homosexuality and would tell gay clients "their behavior is morally wrong and then help the client change that behavior," according to an affidavit filed in the case.

And Julea Ward:

"The university had a rational basis for adopting the ACA Code of Ethics into its counseling program, not the least of which was the desire to offer an accredited program," Steeh said in a 48-page opinion.

"Furthermore, the university had a rational basis for requiring its students to counsel clients without imposing their personal values.

"In the case of Ms. Ward, the university determined that she would never change her behavior and would consistently refuse to counsel clients on matters with which she was personally opposed due to her religious beliefs -- including homosexual relationships."

The judge said Ward's "refusal to attempt learning to counsel all clients within their own value systems is a failure to complete an academic requirement of the program."

The link in these examples is one that is a fundamental characteristic of the Christian right in this country: the attempt to impose one set of values and standards on those who don't adhere to them. That last quote from the article on Julea Ward is the key, and it's a concept that carries over to the Gail Sweet controversy: libraries, like counselors, are not in the business of imposing one set of sectarian values on the general populace. It's particularly reprehensible when they position themselves to do so with a vulnerable population: those in need of help and support in general, and particularly teenagers who may be trying to come to terms with their sexuality.

There also seems to be a cognitive deficit in these people, revealed by their utter inability to recognize that there are other points of view and other value systems in play. There are over three hundred million people in this country, who come from all sorts of different cultures, religious backgrounds, and social contexts. It's arrogance beyond belief to take it upon oneself to dictate what they must believe, particularly in the context of a secular society founded in part on the guarantee that no one has that right.

And they will always paint themselves as victims, when in reality, they are the greatest danger to our way of life.

Update: As a pendant discussion to the above, see this post at Mahablog:

But “rights” according to Rep. Fleming is the right of the majority faction to maintain tribal dominance by erecting its totems in government buildings (the Ten Commandments in courthouses) and to force everyone to participate in its religious rituals (prayers at graduation ceremonies and football games).

I think too many Americans have no idea what “rights” are. They throw the word around a lot, but they have no idea what it means. As in the Park51 controversy, even people who pay lip service to the rights of a Sufi congregation to build an Islamic center on their own property seem to think that others have a “right” to stop them by force, either legal or physical. In this context, “right” seems to mean “power.”

It's this Alice-In-Wonderland approach to discourse that makes the religious right such a threat -- they have no compunctions about turning history, current events, and even the Constitution on their heads to get their way. It's a natural outgrowth of the idea that only their point of view (values, beliefs, what have you) has any legitimacy, because they simply can't recognize any other.

The Gloves Are Off, Part ?

From Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, this surreal performance by Janet Porter, professional right-wing Christian theocrat:



Black Tsunami had this to say:

Porter, who has done many bizarre things such as claiming that anyone voting for Obama is going to hell and writing a fictional account of Christians forced into "re-education camps" had Hilary Clinton won the 2008 presidential election, actually prayed for the "Christian takeover" of the media. Apparently amongst other things, she wants "more influence than Oprah Winfrey, " and desires "to make CBS 'the "Christian Broadcasting System.'"

Aside from the fact that the Christian right is largely in control of the public discourse in this country already -- have you noticed how often Tony Perkins, leader of a recognized hate group, is on the air "debating" gay civil rights? -- in light of open calls by "Christian" beauty queens for the execution of gays, or at least, if we listen to the American Family Association, the recriminalization of homosexual behavior, and now wanting to control the media, you start to wonder if any of these people have ever read the New Testament.

WWJD? Throw up, probably.

Censorship: Ur Doin' It Rite

Didn't I hear something from the Mormons about protests of their smear campaign on Prop 8 violating their constitutional rights to free speech? Do we know what they really think about free speech? I think we do: from Dan Savage:

Gay People Exist...

...and some people out there actually, kinda, sorta like us. I know, I know: it's enough to blow your mind, huh? It's also enough to get your artworks yanked from a student show at Utah's Brigham Young University.



Says the artist...

Apparently the topic of homosexuality is a bit much for the BYU audience and my part of our Fine Art Classes show was taken down today. It seems that censorship is favored over support and love. This really saddens me. I found out because a friend of mine went to the show and said that my peices had been removed and the show had been rearranged.

The show was rearranged so that no one who attended would realize that the works on display had been censored for political/religious reasons. So... shhh. Don't tell anyone.

The student artist took pictures of openly gay BYU students—openly gay and openly ballsy—and a companion portrait of a supportive friend or family member. The artist didn't label the portraits; you don't know who in each pair of portraits is the fearsome, terrible, ungodly gay, and who is the tragically deluded enabler of evil—excuse me, "the supporter."

Uncensored examples of the work.

"By their works shall ye know them." That line keeps coming back to me.

Thanks to AmericaBlog.

Stepping Up the Fight

This is infuriating, but only to be expected. We're dealing with a group here that has relied on lies, intimidation,and threats throughout their campaign because they have no real arguments.

I wish I could say the threats are empty, but they're not, entirely. I suspect, though, that their support is not going to be as widespread and enthusiastic as they are banking on: the Mormon leadership already has a black eye and it's going to get worse. The Catholic hierarchy, who facilitated child molesters for decades -- and threatened those who protested -- is on thin ice.

I think a lot of people who voted for Prop 8 are having second thoughts. I'd like to be in a position where I could say, "Let's see how this plays out," but we don't have that luxury right now.

So yes, boycott Cinemark and any other company or individual who supported Prop 8 and who supports those who support Prop 8. Here's that list again -- the only useful thing HRC has done in this fight so far.

If you want to see what the anti-gay right is all about, good ol' Newt Gingrich lays it out for you:

Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact. And, frank -- for that matter, if you believe in the historic version of Islam or the historic version of Judaism, you have to confront the reality that these secular extremists are determined to impose on you acceptance of a series of values that are antithetical, they're the opposite, of what you're taught in Sunday school.

There's a psychological mechanism called "projection," by which an individual imputes his or her feelings and motives to others. The right has been using that for decades, blaming their opponents for using the tactics, and having the goals, that they embrace themselves. Here you see it in action.

And implicit in this is the idea that Gringrich's religious views should be imposed on everyone. (Andrew Sullivan has a strong post on Gingrich's allies of the moment, the Mormons. And on that topic, I'm looking forward to the civil war when they start losing consistently. We're seeing the tip of the iceberg right now among the Republicans; just wait until the Christianists start.)

Jim Burroway has a wonderful response to Gingrich:

He seems to think that ambling down the boulevard, holding signs in front of a Temple or gathering in front of city hall constitutes a violent act. The sight of homosexuals on the streets, parading openly in their, you know, street clothes was just too much for him. American citizens exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and lawful assembly, well that’s just downright fascist!

So Gingrich equates exercising constitutionally guaranteed freedoms with fascism. I can't top that.

The reassuring part is that the shrillness is a sure sign that they see themselves losing. Let's make it come true for them, OK?

Some Good News

I'm tired of the Prop 8 post-mortems. I tend to see things in very simple terms, because they usually are basically very simple. We were out-lied and out-spent. Our weakness here is that we tell the truth, and most people will believe whatever the last person they spoke to told them, especially if it's bad, so the rush of money at the last minute from the right did us in. Remember, they're playing Republican politics. We're being civilized. Of course they won.

However, from hilzoy, a note about this article from WaPo:

Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.

A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition.

In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office.

"The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees rush to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy.

There is hope. Now, if Obama will override the torture memos and the "legal opinions" from Bush's Regent University Law School graduates granting the president unlimited power to do whatever he wants, I might even be able to begin to believe in him.

The Mask Is Slipping

This, via Scott Lemieux at LG&M, from this post by digby:

McCain's decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.

"If he were to change the party platform," to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother's life, "I think that would be political suicide," Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. "I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble." (Emphasis added)

I don't see how any woman in the country can vote Republican. Frankly, I don't see how anyone can vote Republican with Huns like Tony Perkins calling the shots.

Torture

Check out this post from D-Day. It's long, but pretty thorough, with good analysis.

If this administration doesn't wind up being the most reviled in American history, there is something seriously wrong with historians.

Voting

Hey, surprise -- the Missouri anti-voting law died. Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, via Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog:

“This proposal not passing is a victory for voter’s rights. This debate has not been about having Missouri voters identify themselves at the polls. In Missouri, we already have common sense identification requirements in place. This debate has been about ensuring fair elections, and elections can not be fair if eligible voters are not allowed to make their voice heard on Election Day.

These past two weeks we heard from Missouri voters across the state that feared they would lose their right to vote because they don’t have a government-issued photo ID or a birth certificate, and I am glad the legislature didn’t put their right to vote at risk. The hard work of citizens and groups around this state who opposed this proposal played a key role in making sure this legislation was not passed.”

Sudbay goes on to note that the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a voter ID law in 2006, citing the burden it placed on eligible Missourians rights to vote -- unlike SCOTUS, which apparently doesn't believe the right of Americans to choose their own government. (Didn't our pal Tony Scalia make some comment about there being no right to vote for president enumerated in the Constitution? Typical right-wing double-talk: he's strictly speaking correct, but that doesn't abrogate the right to vote for the people who are going to choose the president, which is in the Constitution.)

(I should point out that voters in Chicago are asked for ID at the polls. State IDs are easy to get if you have a morning to spend -- the usual bureaucratic lines, although it actually doesn't take so long -- and are free for seniors. I'm not sure what provision is made for the poor.)

Another bit of good news for free elections in the U.S.: Hans von Spakovsky has withdrawn his name from consideration as chairman of the FEC:

President Bush’s contentious nominee for the Federal Election Commission removed his name from consideration Friday, potentially ending a stalemate that had paralyzed the agency.

Hans von Spakovsky, a former Justice Department official who never had Democratic support to win confirmation, withdrew his nomination, saying it was time for the protracted deadlock to end.

Harry Reid finally showed some spine:

I welcome the President’s decision to withdraw the controversial nomination of Mr. von Spakovsky. It is an action I have repeatedly urged the President to take for more than six months. Democrats stood united in their opposition to von Spakovsky because of his long and well-documented history of working to suppress the rights of minorities and the elderly to vote. He was not qualified to hold any position of trust in our government.

Reid was quoted elsewhere as saying that von Spakovsky's confirmation was not going to happen.