☠enghis's Blog

Persecution Politics: Nazi Fever

2009-11-06T15:48:40Z

One of the recent propaganda tactics of the right wing has been to appropriate the leftist language of discrimination and civil rights to argue that liberal elites are persecuting white Christian conservatives. The most extreme form of this tactic is the Nazi attack, according to which liberals are portrayed as Nazis or fascists in order to represent them as brutal oppressors of helpless conservative victims. Commentators on the right have revised history to represent fascism as a leftist movement. They have invented or exaggerated associations between Democrats and Nazis. They have belabored the slightest similarities between Nazi doctrine and liberalism. And they have darkly hinted at the possibility of a fascist revolution in America.

But perhaps I should just let them speak for themselves...

Discover everything that you never wanted to know about conservative paranoia at my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

What's the Matter with New York? What Doug Hoffman's Election Loss Means for America's Future

2009-11-04T06:28:55Z

In his book, What's the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank documented the emergence of an angry populist movement in the prairielands. Christian fundamentalists and anti-abortion activists had exploited the anxiety of working class midwesterners by fabricating a persuasive myth of persecution. According to the myth, a tyrannical minority of liberal elites in control of the media and judiciary seek to repress the religious practices and traditions of "regular Americans" whom they despise and disdain.

Though liberals represent the bogeymen in the conservative horror fantasies Frank described in 2004, they were not participants in the pitched political battles that roiled Kansas. Kansas has always been a reliably Republican state; there are no liberals to battle. Instead, the war in Kansas pitted right-wing conservatives against moderate conservatives, "Cons" versus "Mods." According to Frank, the Cons emerged victorious and effectively wrested complete control of Kansas politics.

But elsewhere in the country, the Republican establishment courted the Cons, regarding them as a potent political force against Democrats -- just as the Roman Emperor Valens invited the Visigoths to settle in Roman territory, seeing in them "a splendid recruiting ground for his army." And so, like the Visigoths, the Cons are now sacking the Republican establishment.

]]> The conflict bloodily presented itself during the special congressional election of NY-23. Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman, a devotee of paranoid conspiracist Glenn Beck, challenged the moderate Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava. Con leaders like Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh enthusiastically endorsed Hoffman and labeled Scozzafava a RINO -- Republican in name only. Limbaugh's taunts were even more vicious and puerile than his usual attacks on Democrats. He accused Scozzafava of "bestiality" for having "screwed every RINO in the country."

The result: Scozzafava dropped out of the race. Despite Hoffman's loss, Cons are trumpeting their success against the Mods and preparing 2010 campaigns against Mods like Florida Governor Charlie Christ. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated, "If you look at what I think is likely to happen next year, you already have Republicans -- some Republicans who are more aligned with the very conservative element of what's happening in New York saying, this is a model for what you'll see throughout the country."

As Republican Mods drift toward extinction, the Cons have not given up their persecution myths. As one Con writes, "The Republican Party has been hijacked. Conservatives have been driven underground by the RINOs..." (If the current explosion of right-wing paranoia constitutes being driven "underground," imagine what above-ground Cons looks like.) Hoffman even applied the persecution myth to his election loss, accusing Democrats of election fraud in the final hours of voting: "There are reports that they're bringing in the troops and they're bringing in ACORN. I think the Democrats are doing anything they possibly can to steal this election away from the 23rd district." (Hoffman thought that the tires of one of his supporters had been slashed. The culprit turned out to be a broken bottle on the road.)

Democrats, meanwhile, have celebrated Hoffman's loss and the turmoil within the Republican party. But like another Roman Emperor, Democratic revelers are fiddling as Rome burns. While the Cons' political ideology may not be shared by independents and moderate Republican voters, the differences do not mean that they will vote Democrat. American politics is cyclical, and the nation will sooner or later vote the Democrats out of office. If paranoid extremists like Doug Hoffman control the Republican Party at that time, the Bush years will seem like an era of unfettered liberalism.

Discover everything that you never wanted to know about conservative paranoia at my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

Persecution Politics: Beck Predicts Dollar Collapse, American Land Sold to China and Russia, Polar Bears Executed by 'Ivan'

2009-10-29T00:17:02Z

Last month, Glenn Beck accused the Obama administration of deliberately instigating a national emergency in order to justify a totalitarian revolution. No disrespect to Mr. Beck's investigative skills, but his account was short on details. He had not determined what kind of emergency would occur, when it would happen, or whether the revolution would be communist, fascist, or some monstrous hybrid of the two. (Fascmunism?)

Fortunately for America, FOX News' indefatigable conspiracy hunter has continued to the sniff out the plot, and as of this evening, we have a few more details. First, the emergency will be economic. According to Beck, the U.S. will not be able to pay its mounting debts, and the Treasury will be forced to print money in order to fulfill the nation's obligations, as Germany's Weimar Republic did in the 1920s. The value of the dollar will subsequently collapse, and the U.S. will again emulate the Weimar Republic by introducing a new currency backed by real estate, which the government will obtain in several ways:

Between Fannie and Freddie, the federal government already owns 55 percent of the mortgages in this country. And coupled with all the federal land grabs for parks, polar bears who are crowded but endangered and all the oil we're not drilling for or coal we're not mining, you might be able to base a currency on all that.

But then it gets a bit foggy. Beck predicts that we will need some kind of help to create the new currency, some allies in the endeavor, and he wonders aloud, "Who would the new regime responsible for this new system of currency...after they've destroyed our future and your children's future, who would they have on their side?" Beck then answers his own question. Our new currency buddies will be international all-stars, Russia, China, and Venezuela. The astute viewer can imagine what happens next. Our "helpers" will help themselves to our houses and national parks. That's bad enough for the American people, but it will be disastrous for the poor polar bears:

Do you really think Russia and China will be better protectors of the planet than we have been? Will Russians cordon off 200,000 square miles of extra space for polar bear roaming or will they shoot them in the head to get a barrel of oil that used to belong to you? I know I would. Surely, Ivan will.*

OK, so Beck clearly has some homework to do, but it's coming together. Will he get to the bottom of the plot in time? Will Americans be able to stop the the Obama administration's diabolical plan before it's too late? Stay tuned to Persecution Politics to find out.

* For the young and stupid: Ivan means "evil Russian dude who hates polar bears."

Persecution Politics: Bill Kristol Says, Rage On!

2009-10-27T05:45:25Z

One reason that right-wing commentators continue to spout paranoid hysteria is that no one has told them to shut up. OK, Keith Olbermann and a bunch of left-wing bloggers have told them to shut up, and the White House has indirectly implied that they should please keep it down. But the people who really have the power to undermine the conspiracists--the non-paranoid conservative leaders, or what's left of them--have not said a damn word about the wild accusations hurled by Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Michele Bachmann. Some may be afraid, particularly after Limbaugh schooled RNC Chair Michael Steele when Steele called him an "entertainer." But others have cynically calculated that the paranoia works for the party, so they just let it ride.

Take Bill Kristol. Kristol is a very conservative man, but he is not a stupid man. Unlike Beck and Limbaugh, who never graduated from college, Kristol received a B.A. (magna cum laude) and Ph.D. from Harvard. Instead of beginning his career as a radio D.J., he taught political science at U. Penn and Harvard's Kennedy School. He has never expressed the kind of paranoia that has become the standard fare of FOX News commentary. But he has no intention of trying to stop it. Kristol believes that the Republican Party's center of gravity lies "with individuals such as Palin and Huckabee and Gingrich, media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and activists at town halls and tea parties," and he praises their effectiveness:

Some will lament this -- but over the past year, as those voices have dominated, conservatism has done pretty well in the body politic, and Republicans have narrowed the gap with Democrats in test ballots...The lesson activists around the country will take from this is that a vigorous, even if somewhat irritated, conservative/populist message seems to be more effective in revitalizing the Republican Party than an attempt to accommodate the wishes of liberal media elites. So the GOP is likely, for the foreseeable future, to be of a conservative mind and in a populist mood. In American politics, there are worse things to be.

In American politics, there are worse things to be. Kristol doesn't tell us what those worse things are, but red-baiting witch-hunters from the 1950's are fairly high on many peoples' lists--the politicians whose paranoid fearmongering tore the country apart until someone finally stood up and said, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" Conservative leaders of the day surely felt that the "populist mood" benefited their election chances. Eisenhower toured Wisconsin with McCarthy, and it probably helped him to win the Presidency.

But Eisenhower hated McCarthy and actively worked to undermine him after winning the election. We might also recall a more recent president, George H.W. Bush, who resigned his lifelong NRA membership after an NRA advertisement referred to "jack-booted government thugs," a fascist reference that seems almost quaint by today's standards.

Yet today, we hear nothing but silence from the right side of the aisle, or worse, complicity from politicians who seek to profit directly from the hysteria. As long as conservatives provide a haven for conspiracy theories, the paranoia will continue to boil and heave and devour the party that protects it.

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Stay tuned for more crazy talk in my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

Why Bankers Make So Much Money

2009-10-23T16:20:16Z

When I worked for a software company, a fellow computer programmer once lamented that the salespeople earned so much more than the coders, despite the fact that the coders were generally better educated, more intelligent, and more essential to the company's core value: its products. The reason for the disparity is straightforward. Salespeople are closer to the money. It is very difficult for executives to perceive the value good programmers, who represent cogs somewhere deep in the machine, but the value of good salespeople is obvious from their sales numbers. For instance, it is easy to justify paying $200,000 in salary and bonus to a salesperson who makes sales worth $500,000 in annual profits.

My colleague's dismay exhibited the wide gap between "merit value" and "market value." Merit value is an amorphous sense of the worth of an employee based on capability, education, seniority, and hard work. Market value is the perceived monetary worth of an employee. Our economy is primarily based on market value. Insofar, as we reward merit value, it is because of cultural reasons and a loose, indirect relationship between merit value and market value: people generally perceive monetary value in the meritorious qualities of capability, education, seniority, and hard work. Yet while this indirect relationship may hold true within a particular field, it varies widely between fields. Thus, the most capable coders are likely be the top paid programmers, but they are unlikely to be paid as well as the most capable salespeople.

]]> The principle of market value infuses even those industries that we might like to think of as merit-based. Book publishers, for instance, pay the highest advances to the authors they believe will most likely generate the highest sales, which is why prominent writers of trashy romances and conservative screeds can get high advances, while brilliant academic historians rarely receive any. Even within the academy, tenure for the sciences is primarily awarded to the professors who can capture the most grant money.

Which brings us to bankers. Many investment bankers are intelligent, hard-working, and capable, but like any other employee, those qualities are only indirectly tied to their compensation packages. Bankers make the big bucks because they are extremely close to a lot of money. When an employee conducts transactions worth tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, then small differences in ability can make a difference of millions of dollars for the employer in a very obvious way. For that reason, it is an easy decision for banking executives to pay massive salaries and bonuses for the top talent. Such monetary considerations travel all the way up to the CEOs, who are perceived to make the largest difference to a bank's profitability.

Of course, the cronyism and short-term thinking prevalent in banking is certainly a related problem, but it is a market value problem of mistaken perception, not a merit value problem. Yet what seems to drive the rage of the anti-Wall Street crowd is not market inefficiency but the myth of merit value: bankers getting compensated far more than they deserve for their work. But our system is based on market value, and while this system is not ideal, we have not been able to invent a better one. The only known alternative to market value is some kind of human judgment of merit. Such judgment inevitably devolves into political bias, which is even less related to merit than market value. From nation-sized communist systems to department-sized bureaucracies, human judgments too often result in higher pay for the most loyal and sycophantic employees, not the most capable.

Because our system relies on market value, the government's current plan to cap executive salaries at companies that received bailouts will do nothing to address income disparities between the rich and poor. It will not affect banks that did not receive bailouts or all the other industries, from law to medicine to Hollywood to all manner of business, where compensation of certain employees towers above that of everyone else in the country. And within a year or two, the government's bailout leverage will dwindle, and it will be back to business as usual among the bankers as well.

Though it may seem like a paradox, if we really want to address income disparity, we need to be honest with ourselves and firmly reject the myth of merit value. That is because as much as merit value appeals to capitalism's critics, the myth of merit value is even more prevalent among the pro-market anti-tax crowd. Conservatives tend to fiercely oppose taxes on the grounds that rich moneymakers deserve their wealth due to their capabilities and work ethics. If we abandon the notion that people deserve all the money that they earn and are instead simply beneficiaries of somewhat arbitrary market forces, then implementing higher taxes on top income brackets will be less controversial. The rich people who are most open to high taxes tend to treat their wealth as a kind of lucky windfall rather than a well-deserved fortune. We need to encourage this attitude towards wealth and stop pretending that financial compensation must be something that it cannot be.

Or for a more cynical take, see Willam K. Wolfrum's How to be a "Swashbuckling Captain of Capitalism" by Patrick Byrne.

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Cross posted at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.

Persecution Politics: Paranoia Rules the Right

2009-10-16T22:33:58Z

In early August, I began working on a book to document a growing sense of paranoia among right-wing conservatives. At the time, the media was fairly quiet on the subject. With the exception of liberal blogs (ahem), no one paid much attention to the wild rhetoric of the tea parties and occasional paranoid outbursts from commentators like Rush Limbaugh and politicians like Michelle Bachman. Then Sarah Palin loosed her "death panels" broadside, and the floodgates opened. Health care paranoia spewed from the orifice every conservative media outlet, Lou Dobbs embraced the "birther" conspiracy, Limbaugh raged about Obama's Nazi agenda, Glenn Beck launched a week-long tour de paranoia in which he accused Obama of preparing for a fascho-socialist revolution, and D.C. roiled as rabid conservative activists congregated in the Mall. Suddenly, the mainstream media took notice, and articles about the new "paranoid style" of the American right rolled across major newspapers, magazines, news sites, and talk shows. TIME Magazine even put Glenn Beck's tongue on its cover.

Now, as TPM's Eric Kleefeld has documented, the consulting firm of James Carville and Stan Greenberg has validated the thesis of my Persecution Politics series: there is a very large, very determined block of conservative voters who have thoroughly embraced paranoid extremism. Based on the results of a series of focus groups, the organization concluded:

The self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party stand a world apart from the rest of America...First and foremost, these conservative Republican voters believe Obama is deliberately and ruthlessly advancing a 'secret agenda' to bankrupt our country and dramatically expand government control over all aspects of our daily lives. They view this effort in sweeping terms, and cast a successful Obama presidency as the destruction of the United States as it was conceived by our founders and developed over the past 200 years.

]]> These voters "identify themselves as a minority in this country - a minority whose values are mocked and attacked by a liberal media and class of elites." They believe that these elites "are actively working to advance the downfall of the things that matter most to them in their lives - their faith, their families, their country, and their freedom." In short, they believe themselves to "persecuted."

The sense of persecution, along with egotistical confidence in the validity of their own world view, has fostered an attitude of quasi-religious evangelism. They feel "a responsibility to spread the word, to educate those who do not share their insights, and to take back the country that they love. Their faith in this country and its ideals leave them confident that their numbers will grow, and that they will ultimately defeat Barack Obama and the shadowy forces driving his hidden agenda."

Their hero, of course, is Paranoiac-in-Chief, Glenn Beck "They believe he embodies the best of conservative media - determination to unearth the stories the liberal media tries to bury, love of country, and refusal to be intimidated, even as the liberal media unleashes waves of attacks on his past and his credibility." They even fear for his life, believing "that his willingness to stand up to powerful liberal interests was putting his life, as well as the lives of those working with him, in danger. Of course, his willingness to face this danger head on only adds to his legend."

And their favorite candidate for the next presidential election is, no surprise, Sarah Palin, in whom they see their own reflection: "They see in her the uncompromising personal conviction and integrity that they admired in Bush, but with an authentic conservatism that reflects her personal background. The one point they all agree on is that Palin was a victim of an unprecedented smear campaign. Reflecting in many ways their feelings about themselves as a group, they say Palin was targeted by the liberal media like no other figure in modern history because they both feared her and hated her for her unwavering values and beliefs."

This paranoid Republican base represents "one-in-five voters in the electorate, and nearly two out of every three selfidentified Republicans," which means that current Republican legislators must accommodate them, and the next batch of Republican political candidates will likely be the most extreme that the nation has seen since the 1950s. If you haven't been taking them seriously, you should. The tidal wave of paranoia shows no sign of slacking. With a weak economy and an active Democrat-controlled government, conservatives are rattled and vulnerable to paranoid narratives. The growth of cable news, talk radio, and blogs have produced a right-wing echo chamber in which conservative commentators shout ever louder to make themselves heard over the shrill cries of their colleagues, and listeners measure the plausibility of each new conspiracy theory against a swiftly falling standard. We are witnessing a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit.

Unfortunately for the nation, I expect to have plenty of material to write about for the foreseeable future.

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Stay tuned for more crazy talk in my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

BREAKING: Obama Wins More Prizes

2009-10-12T22:57:28Z

While President Obama's recent Nobel Peace Prize has been attracting media attention, he has been quietly reaping a number of other prizes, including the New York Marathon, the Heisman Trophy, Best Cooking Blog, Sikh Man of the Year, and West Duluth High School's Most Likely to Succeed. Critics have decried the flood of awards on the grounds that Obama has been selected for political reasons over more deserving candidates. The New York Marathon has been the subject of the widest scorn because the event has yet to take place. Ron Faerly, Chairman of Concerned Citizens for Marathon Transparency, protested:

"I'm sure that Obama does OK on the treadmill and may win a marathon later in his political career if he ever quits smoking, but he just hasn't earned it yet. This award is a slap in the face to all the runners who have spent years training for this marathon."

But a spokesperson for the New York Marathon, who asked not to be named on the grounds that the New York Marathon doesn't have a spokesperson, defended the decision:

"Awarding the victory to President Obama sends a message to the entire world that engaging with the international community is just as important as running 26 miles with your nipples taped through all five New York boroughs, even the Bronx."

A spokesperson for the Sikh Man of the Year award, who may or may not be the same person who spoke for the New York Marathon, also defended that organization's award, declaring:

"We don't know for sure whether or not [President Obama] is a Sikh, but his actions have raised our suspicions. For instance, the White House recently appointed a Large Receptacle Czar who happens to be Sikh. You have to ask yourself, what kind of person surrounds himself with Sikhs?"

The spokesperson may have been referring to William S. Noma, the recently appointed Chief Diversity Officer for Domestic Baskets, Buckets, Barrels, Bins, and Baby Bjorns. Mr. Noma insists that he is a Christian but may have been mistaken for a Sikh because he often wears turbans for reasons of "vanity" and "baldness."

Conservative leaders have been especially critical of alleged bias among the award committees. Following Rupert Murdoch's establishment of Jesus Prizes to offer "fair and balanced" alternatives to the Nobel Prizes, other philanthropists have sponsored a number of new prizes with conservative winners:

Freedom Marathon: winner - Rush Limbaugh
Jesus Heisman Christ Trophy: winner - Former Senator Jack Kemp (posthumous)
Best Christian Cooking Blog: winner - Susanne Grayson Townsend, author of How to Eat Like a Republican: Or, Hold the Mayo, Muffy--I'm Feeling Miracle Whipped Tonight
Christian Sikh Man of the Year: winner - Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana
West Duluth High School's Even More Likely to Succeed: winner - Jesus Christ (posthumous)

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Cross posted at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.

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Persecution Politics: Dollar Falls, Amero Looms

2009-10-12T19:38:09Z

KISS THE DOLLAR GOODBYE

So screams today's Drudge Report headline in a thunderous "xx-large" Arial font. The linked AFP article discusses the possibility that the dollar might lose its place as the preferred global currency, but based on the headline, the reader might be excused for thinking that the nation is about to return to the barter system or else adopt Chinese renminbi.

Indeed, the headline is intentionally misleading. The collapse of the dollar has become an idée fixe among paranoid right-wingers who believe that the government is deliberately killing the dollar in order to make way for a new international currency: the Amero.

]]> The Amero first came to my intention in a New York cab in the summer of 2008. When you take a cab in New York, you can reliably expect that 1) the driver will be a male immigrant, and 2) he will not speak to you except to ask you where you're going. On the few occasions that I've been picked up by white native-born Americans, I've been regaled with conspiracy theories and wacky religious doctrine, so I knew that I was in for some entertainment when my white American driver asked me not only where I was going (a movie theater) but also what I planned to see. He then went on to inform me that he doesn't watch movies any more. He had conspiracy sites on the Internet instead. Warily, I asked him what sort of conspiracies he was into. That's how I found out about the Amero.

According to my driver, who seemed very knowledgeable on the subject, the Amero is a joint North American currency, equivalent to the Euro, that will be established along with a North American central government called the North American Union, equivalent to, you guessed it, the European Union. (Apparently, the masterminds aren't very original.) The plan was supposedly hatched by the Federal Reserve Bank, which as "everyone" knows is really a private corporation created in 1913 to protect tycoons like John D. Rockefeller. It has been gradually accumulating power since then, waiting for it's moment to pounce.

That moment has come. The FRB knows full well that we Americans won't willingly give up our sovereignty, so it plans to exacerbate the current financial crisis and encourage the government to respond with deficit spending. When the government is deep in debt (or rather, deeper in debt), the FRB will call in the debts. Unable to pay, the government will be forced to accept the FRB's conditions: the establishment of the Amero and North American Union. The plotters are also planning to build a 16-lane NAFTA superhighway that will bisect the country and deliver goods from Mexico to Canada. (I don't know why this detail is important to plot, but it will surely lead to protests of new highways in middle Ameria.)

When I took that cab ride, G.W. was still president, and people like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs weren't on my radar. But the Amero was on theirs. You might think of Beck as a diehard Republican, but in fact he owes allegiance to paranoia over party, and he's been pushing the Amero mythology since at least October 2007, when he hosted Jerome Corsi on his CNN program in a segment called "Liberty in Peril: What You Need to Know." Corsi is making headlines these days for pushing the Obama birther conspiracy theory, but in 2007, he wrote a book, The Late Great U.S.A.: The Coming Merger With Mexico and Canada, that discusses a "secret agenda...to dissolve the United States of America into the North American Union. The [Bush] administration has no intent to secure the border, or to enforce rigorously existing immigration laws." Here's Beck response:

I was with one of the country's leading economists having dinner the other night, and I said, "What point do you start" -- and this guy's an optimist. "At what point do you start worrying about the dollar?" And he said, "Glenn, about six months ago." He said, "It's almost like we`re intentionally destroying the dollar."

Beck also mentioned that nefarious superhighway:

You've got the trans -- the NAFTA superhighway that, again, everybody denies, but you've got it broken up in chunks being built right now. It will deliver goods from China right to Mexico through America into Canada.

Before Beck joined the party, Lou Dobbs, another birther conspiracist, was already pushing the North American Union theory. According to Media Matters, Dobbs discussed the NAU 56 times on his CNN show in 2006-2007, e.g.

It's unofficially known as the North American Union. Some, for some reason, suggest there's no such thing, that there is no plan to merge the United States and Mexico and the United States without the knowledge and approval of the citizens of those three countries. Well, tonight, you're going to find out that there really is such a thing and it's all part of a plan.

Dobbs explicitly blamed the Bush administration, but with Democrats in power, the idea of a secret plan to establish a North America Union and replace the dollar with a trans-American currency has gained...um...currency among the right wing, hence the Drudge headline.

So let this blog be your first warning. We're going to hear a lot more about the Amero in coming weeks.

PS As TPM has previously documented, Representative Michele Bachman (R-MN) once suggested that Geithner wants to replace the dollar with a global currency.

Update: Here's precursor from a reader's comment to an article about the dollar's decline.

Incriminally Sane Says:

Folks, looking at the markets around the world, I believe we are DAYS AWAY from an absolute collapse of the dollar and when it happens, you can expect that you will NO LONGER be able to buy ANYTHING with your Dollars, no food, fuel, rent or anything that is exchanged in Americas former currency.......THE DOLLAR.

They will wait for people to move to the streets and the killing starts before they declare Martial Law in America. Then, when things get really ugly, they will integrate the Amero into the system and will charge you $10.00 for one Amero and they will make you believe you are getting a good deal since the Dollar has been devalued to NOTHING.

This has all been planned for much longer than you or I have been alive. Gold, Silver and a system of Barter will be the only way we will be able to make it when this happens.

Good Luck People!

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Stay tuned for more bad currency puns in my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

Conservatives Decry Obama Nobel Peace Prize, Award Alternative "Jesus Prize"

2009-10-09T13:41:00Z

Conservatives reacted with shock and dismay to the Nobel committee's decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. There are reports that some prominent conservatives exploded like Agent Smith at the end of Matrix. But FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly reacted with little surprise, telling viewers, "Look, Sweden is a socialist country, so of course they elected one of their own." Rush Limbaugh blamed "reverse discrimination," claiming that, "Qualified white candidates have been passed over once again for a black man who doesn't deserve a peace prize." Limbaugh also complained that liberals were "playing the race card again." Glenn Beck wept aloud on his radio show and cried, "Run for your lives, America, the fascho-communist revolution is at hand!"

Other conservatives, led by billionaire Rupert Murdoch, hastily arranged an alternative set of prizes to combat perceived bias by the Nobel Committee. According to FOX News president Roger Ailes, the new prizes are called "Jesus Prizes" because "everyone looks up to Jesus." The Jesus committee has already selected winners for the 2009 prizes in the following categories:

]]> Literature: Sarah Palin, for her upcoming book, Going Rogue: An American Life. While the book has not been released, the committee expressed confidence that "its literary impact will be enormous."

Economics: Rush Limbaugh, for his groundbreaking theory that Obama had purposefully created economic instability in order to increase unemployment that would make people more anxious about health care and help pass a universal health care plan.

Chemistry: Charles B. Thaxton, author of The Mystery of Life's Origin, for his pioneering work in the field of Intelligent Design

Physiology or Medicine: Rush Limbaugh again, for his courageous resistance Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' swine flu vaccination drive on the grounds that "it's not her role" to tell him what to do.

Physics: God, for making the universe. God's award will be accepted by His representative, Dr. James Dobson, and the $1.5M award will be donated to Dobson's Focus on the Family organization.

Peace: Joint winners George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, a "dangerous menace" who the committee said "might one day have developed Weapons of Mass Destruction."

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Cross posted at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.

Persecution Politics: Beating on White Kids

2009-09-16T19:50:02Z

One of the recurrent themes that contribute to right-wing paranoia is the fantasy that white people suffer from discrimination in Obama's America. This conceit erupted on the talk shows during the Sotomayor hearings and after Henry Louis Gates' arrest, when Rush Limbaugh said, "President Obama is black, and I think he's got a chip on his shoulder," and Glenn Beck exclaimed that Obama "has a deep seated hatred for white people."

Yesterday, the "white persecution" theme bubbled up again when Drudge reported, "WHITE STUDENT BEATEN ON SCHOOL BUS; CROWD CHEERS." The police officer who described the assault as racially motivated later retracted the characterization, but it was too late to stop Rush Limbaugh from representing the incident as an example of "Obama's America":

You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering, "Yeah, right on, right on, right on!" And of course, everybody says, "Oh, the white kid deserved it, he was born a racist, he's white."

]]> The fact that black politicians make up 7.5% of U.S. Representatives, 1% of U.S. Senators, and 2% of state governors does not register in the fantasy of white persecution. Nor does the persistent income gap between whites and blacks: $49K to $30K. The overwhelmingly white right-wing desperately wants to represent itself as persecuted, the facts be damned. Hence Limbaugh's enthusiasm to report the purported race bias on the school-bus. As blogger John Rogers cannily explains:

One of the great secrets of human nature is that the one thing people want more than love, security, sex, chocolate or big-screen TV's is to feel hard done by. Because being hard done by is the shit. Feeling hard done by is the sweetest of drugs. If you're being persecuted - it must mean you're doing the right thing, right? You get the mellow buzz of the moral high ground, but without arrogantly claiming it as your own. You get an instant, supportive community in a big dark scary world of such scope it may well literally be beyond rational human processing. When you are hard done by, you get purpose in a life where otherwise, you'd have to find your own. And when you ride that high, then no amount of logic, no pointing out that in actuality you and your beliefs are at a high point of popularity and influence for the last hundred years - is going to pry that sweet crack-pipe of moral indignation from your hands.

Stay tuned for more black-on-white action in my Persecution Politics series at dagblog.com.

Glenn Beck, the Man With the Crazy Plan

2009-09-07T18:04:48Z

You may have heard about Glenn Beck's recent paranoid accusations, but if you are a drive-by voyeur of right-wing hysterics, you might not appreciate the method behind the madness. Relying on out-of-context quotes, tenuous associations, and giant leaps of speculation, Beck has meticulously pieced together the most elaborate, nefarious government conspiracy in the history of cable news. His argument consists of four primary elements:

]]> Part 1: The Czars

"Czar" is not an official title in the Federal government, and it is not printed on anyone's business card. It is a label that journalists and politicians assign to appointed officials in the executive branch, a common practice of Democratic and Republican presidents since F.D.R. Last February, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd criticized President Obama for appointing too many "czars," whom he believed were not sufficiently accountable to Congress. Glenn Beck took up the issue in early June and added his own sinister spin, stating, "A shadow government is giving the Obama administration unprecedented power with virtually no oversight."

More recently, Beck began airing regular segments called "Know Your Czar" in which he digs up the most outrageous biographical details he can find about bureaucrats and advisors in the Obama administration. His favorite bête noir within the Administration has been a man named Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. (If the length of the title were related to political power, Jones would indeed be a powerful czar.) In his youth, Jones had been a Marxist sympathizer and black activist, but he embraced eco-capitalism in 1990's. Beck, of course, focuses on Jones' Marxist roots, which he has mentioned in almost every broadcast lately. Presenting Jones along with a few more appointees with tenuous connections to socialism and right-to-die movements, Beck argues that the Obama administration is an angry hive of "anti-Capitalist nutjobs" with unchecked political power and radical plans, saying, "There is a revolution, and they think they can get away with it quietly."

In response to controversy over Jones' past statements, he has just resigned. So much for the revolution.

Part 2: The Secret Army

Malevolent Marxist bureaucrats are disturbing, but they're not quite scary enough for a potent conspiracy theory. The evil czars need some muscle to carry out their sinister plans. That muscle takes the form of the fearsome AmeriCorps. Yes, according to Beck's theory, an army of teachers and community activists will establish martial law and suppress dissent. Beck's ammunition comes from a July 2008 campaign speech in which Obama explained his plans to expand AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, saying, "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded." This statement is all the evidence that Beck requires to allege that Obama and his Marxist cohorts intend to use this new "security force" to suppress people like...well...Glenn Beck.

Mr. President, is your civilian national security force to protect us from things the Missouri State Police, your own Homeland Security and the liberal Southern Law Poverty Center have come out and said were a threat: militia groups; tea party goers; folks with "Don't Tread on Me" flags; me; Sarah Palin? Think about this: Is it unreasonable to think this government would ask you to spy on your neighbors, in light of these recent stories?

Beck doesn't offer any context to the quote. Here's Obama's next sentence:

We need to use technology to connect people to service. We'll expand USA Freedom Corps to create online networks where Americans can browse opportunities to volunteer. You'll be able to search by category, time commitment and skill sets. You'll be able to rate service opportunities, build service networks, and create your own service pages to track your hours and activities.

We can see why Beck left out the context; a browsable database of volunteer opportunities just isn't that scary.

Part 3: The Gag

To execute their plan quietly and efficiently, the conspirators need to silence those strident voices of dissent. Their mechanism, Beck charges, is a proposal by Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the FCC, to promote local, minority, and public broadcasters by tightening FCC regulations and taxing media conglomerates:

Our diversity 'czar' has just proposed that radio companies pay 100 percent of their operating budget, yearly. A 100 percent tax which would then be transferred to the state-run radio of NPR. If you can't pay that, you'd lose your license and it would be sold to minority group.

This "proposal" was taken from Lloyd's 2006 book critiquing corporate control of the media. The "100 percent of their operating budget" canard was invented by Matt Cover of CNSNews.com ("The Right News. Right Now."), and it quickly circulated around the conservative end of the blogosphere before Beck added it to his arsenal. Beck fears that Lloyd will use his awesome powers as FCC "diversity officer" to enact legislation that would shut down FOX News and other conservative media outlets:

Speak without fear or more "harmless legislation" will be passed and you will not be able to speak and you will experience the kind of fear that no one in this country has experienced before. All it will take is an "emergency." God help us all.

Which brings us to part 4.

Part 4: The Emergency

Even with the czars and the civilian brownshirts, the Obama administration would need some kind of justification to execute its tyrannical agenda. Beck alleges that the conspirators are planning to manufacture some kind of emergency to provide the catalyst. For instance, discussing Sarah Palin's "death panels," Beck played the history scholar and theorized that economic crisis caused Nazi Germany to institute a eugenics program that murdered tens of thousands. (This theory is known as the Gross Oversimplication Hypothesis.) At the end of the program, Beck darkly mused:

"What are [Obama's health advisors] saying to the president behind closed doors when we aren't there to watch it? I guess we won't know, because we'll all be too focused on the emergency that starts the rationing and the czars don't have to answer to anyone."

In another program, Beck reconceived Joe Biden's infamous gaff: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy." Beck wondered, "Is this civilian national security force just preparing for what Joe Biden predicted?"

Finally, Beck claims that the liberal media will be the mouthpiece through which Obama's czars manufacture the crisis.

"If you watch what could only be called the organizations -- or the administration's organ -- anything involved with GE or NBC; you've got now Jeffrey Immelt on the board of the Federal Reserve, you have in the Oval Office consulting not only on health care but the financial situation, and they are an organ. If you watch MSNBC, I contend that you will see the future, because they are laying the ground for a horrible event that will be... What they're laying the ground for, anything from the right some awful event -- and I fear this government, this administration, has so much framework already prepared that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought."

And there you have it, an easy-bake Fascho-Communist revolution in four simple steps: hire powerful Marxist czars, silence the dissenting voices, manufacture a crisis with the help of the liberal media, and deploy the civilian security force to round up Americans of conscious.

Beck's ratings are up, of course. There's nothing like a juicy end-of-times conspiracy for that exhilarating jitter in the gut and the lump-ditty-lump of pulsing indignation. Taking note of Beck's success, right wing commentators and politicians are jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon. Clear Channel's Jim Quinn praised Beck and decried the "Marxist takeover of the United States." Rush Limbaugh went on Beck's show and warned, "This is statism, totalitarianism versus freedom. And if these people are allowed to go where they want to go unchecked, then some people, a lot of people...will wake up one day and find, "My God, what the hell happened?" Putting her facebook page to good use, Sarah Palin wrote, "Glenn Beck is doing an extraordinary job this week walking America behind the scenes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and outlining who is actually running the White House."

In the conservative echo chamber, paranoid voices have produced a feedback loop where each apocalyptic alarm bell facilitates another shriller peal of artificial terror. We can look forward to even more elaborate manifestations of the paranoid style from Beck and those he inspires in the days to come.

Update: Articleman offers a counterpoint to media obsession over Beck.

Genghis will speak live about Beck's paranoid theories on Tuesday 9/8 at noon EST / 9am PST with on KRXA 540 AM. [Cross-posted at dagblog.com]

Persecution Politics: Illegals to Steal Grandma's Heath Care

2009-08-19T11:26:33Z

Last week, I wrote about Glenn Beck's paranoid theory that Obama's health care plan would covertly deliver slavery reparations by redistributing health care to African Americans. It turns out that black people aren't the only undeserving minorities after grandma's health care. Filling in for Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn of the National Review earned his airtime by inventing a whole new health care persecution fantasy:

And what's interesting is that under the whole death panel scenario, you know, you'll be an 87-year-old who's paid his taxes all his life, but they're not going to give you the procedure because they think it's more in the country's interest to give it to a 38-year-old illegal immigrant who shouldn't even be here in the first place.

Since bashing illegal immigrants is much more acceptable in polite society than bashing black people (earth to Glenn Beck), the big talk show hosts and maybe even a few legislators will probably tear into this latest bit like hungry hyenas.

Between Nazi comparisons, race-baiting, and immigrant bashing, the health care bill is like Christmas in August for conservative persecution addicts. They haven't had this much fun since Homeland Security warned of a terrorist threat from right wing extremists.

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Persecution Politics is a dagblog series. Send conservative victimology tips to .

Persecution Politics: Death Panels and Slavery Reparations

2009-08-12T03:17:40Z

Credit where credit's due: Sarah Palin knows how to capture headlines. She also knows how to speak the language of America's most persecuted demographic: white Christian conservatives. Many in her audience believe in a secret plot by liberals to enact a radical secular agenda, and they view all progressive policies through the lens of this alleged conspiracy.

Sarah Palin on the health care plan:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

For the unvarnished version Palin's ideas, complete with Nazi references, read the account offered by the "Christian Anti-Defamation Committee" (yes, it exists, and yes, it is insane):

Your grandmother will be told to make plans to end her life early because her care will be too costly. After all, it is her duty to not to be a burden. Obama explained they will "encourage the use of living wills" that terminate otherwise viable lives through "do not resuscitate" (DNR) legal releases. This is nothing less than state sponsored euthanasia. Hitler began his reign of terror by his application of the brutal, Darwinian ethic, "survival of the fittest." He started killing the disabled and infirm because they were considered to be a burden on the state. Hitler rationalized the killing of innocent people in an effort to advance his fascist, national socialist agenda. In the name of doing what's best for the good of society, Hitler trivialized human life. Ultimately millions ended up paying with their lives. In the name of the public good, Obama and the Congress are on the same anti-Christian, pro-death path...Not only will this bill end the lives of the elderly, it will expand and subsidize the killing of babies through abortion. The "Capps Amendment" nationalizes free abortions for low-income urban neighborhoods, fulfilling the dream of eugenicist Margaret Sanger that minority babies will be the first exterminated. This is a Planned Parenthood full employment dream come true.

The CADC article quotes from an Investor's Business Daily editorial. The same publication has another editorial that's even nuttier: Reparations By Way Of Health Care Reform. Not only does the health care bill oppress Christians, it also "redistributes health" to black people. Obama has previously noted that a universal health care bill will disproportionately help people of color because people of color are disproportionately insured. Ergo, the IBD reasons, Obama wants to give the "racial grievance industry" the power to redistribute health benefits as a backdoor route to slavery reparations:

Read the health care bill. It's affirmative action on steroids, deciding everything from who becomes a doctor to who gets treatment on the basis of skin color...This may be a goal of Obama's health care plan: the redress of health care disparities on the basis of race and the punishment of those believed to be responsible, such as greedy doctors who perform unnecessary tests and procedures and greedy insurance and drug companies lusting for profits...The racial grievance industry under health care reform could be calling the shots in the emergency room, the operating room, the medical room, even medical school. As Terence Jeffrey, editor at large of Human Events puts it, not only our wealth, but also our health will be redistributed.

Sound crazy? Not too crazy for Glenn Beck. Sarah Palin, for once, showed the good sense not to go there.

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Wingnut trivia question: What does the Democratic health care plan have to do with "Season's Greetings" messages at department stores?

Answer: Wingnuts believe that both will lead to euthanasia and abortion-on-demand. Here's Bill O'Reilly on Christmas Under Siege:

What's really going on here is a well-organized movement to wipe out any display of organized religion from the public arena. The secular-progressive movement understands very well that it is organized religion, most specifically Christianity and Judaism, that stands in the way of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, legalized narcotics, euthanasia, and many other secular causes. If religion can be de-emphasized in the USA, a brave new progressive society can be achieved.

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Cross posted as usual at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.

Showdown in Iran: Ahmadinejad Defies Khameni

2009-07-22T21:56:39Z

As the post-election protests by reformists simmers in the background, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has openly defied Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, setting the stage for a major political battle among the conservatives who hold power.

]]> Last Friday, Ahmadinejad appointed Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei to be his vice president. Mashaei, the father of Ahmadinejad's daughter-in-law, is seen as a moderate. Hard line conservatives despise him for a statement he made last year in which he declared Iran to be "a friend to the nation in Israel and the United States." Though he clarified the statement by saying that he had been referring to Israeli and American citizens, not to the governments, conservatives still fiercely protested the recent appointment.

Yesterday, Ayatollah Khamenei sent a letter to Ahmadinejad telling him to dismiss Mashaei. Since Khamenei has final authority in political affairs, Iranian experts assumed that the matter was finished, and there were rumors that Mashaei would resign.

But today, Ahmadinejad surprised the experts by insisting on retaining Mashaei. His defiance supports the view of some analysts that Ahmadinejad's tainted re-election amounts to a quiet coup by his allies in the powerful Revolutionary Guard at the expense of the clerical elites who have ruled Iran since the revolution.

The situation is particularly perplexing because though Mashaei may be moderate, the Revolutionary Guards are seen as hard-liners who crushed the elections protests, whereas the clerics have been divided, and many reluctantly followed Khamenei's lead in approving the election results. At this point, it does not seem that any outsiders fully grasp what's going on inside Iran's government or how the struggle will play out. The outcome of this confrontation could transform the government in Iran, for better or for worse.

For more on Ahmadinejad's power grab, read this NYT article from last month.

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Cross posted as usual at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.

Breaking: Goldman Sachs Apologizes for Earnings, Promises to Reduce Profits

2009-07-17T21:37:30Z

Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, apologized today for his firm's strong earnings in 2009. In a press statement, he took responsibility for the profit and promised to lose money more aggressively for the remainder of the year.

"We are cognizant of the difficulties faced by average Americans and realize that earning money this year is insensitive and shows a lack of gratitude to the American people. We have had difficulty reeducating our employees to understand that there is a right time and wrong time for profitability. Had we known how much money we would make, we would certainly have taken more drastic steps to avoid this unfortunate situation.

]]> "The blame for this year's profit falls squarely on my shoulders. I have initiated internal restructuring to reduce earnings for the remainder of the year. Underperformers will be promoted and rewarded with large bonuses. Our most effective employees have already been placed on indefinite unpaid leave. While it will be difficult to offset the earnings so far, we believe that we can still break even and possibly even take a loss for the year."

Mr. Blankfein also revealed that in Goldman's negotiations to buy back warrants granted to the Federal government under the TARP program, the company has been trying to pay more than the government has been willing to accept.

"We feel that the government is underestimating the value of the warrants. We owe it to our shareholders to purchase them at the full value."

But in light of Goldman's latest announcements, some analysts believe that the Treasury Department's estimate is correct. Roy Wardsback of the Wall Street Journal argued that if Goldman hits the new targets, its share price will be devalued.

"Once Goldman starts losing money again, the warrants will be worth zilch. That loss will ultimately cost the taxpayer, but [Treasury Secretary] Tim Geithner realizes that taxpayers are willing to take the hit if it means lower profits for Goldman Sachs and other banks. It's important to keep these banks insolvent until the economy rebounds and Americans forget about the fiscal crisis. I'm glad to see Goldman embrace the new paradigm. Profitability is so 2008."

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Cross posted as usual at dagblog.com. You can subscribe to all my posts via RSS feed or email.