I am ashamed of those fellow Americans of mine who are twisting the words and life's work of Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf into a fanatical caricature for the purpose of stopping the Cordoba House project. Fellow Americans like Rick Lazio, Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and others with political agendas built on hate and fear.

I am ashamed of Democrats who should know better than to concede even one inch when anyone crosses the line of the First Amendment to threaten the religious freedom of any group out of hate and fear.

I am ashamed of the nearly 70 percent of my countrymen who believe it is their right to dictate the location of Cordoba House or of any other mosque, and all because of their hate and fear.

I am ashamed to share my country with those like the group SANE who want to outlaw the right of Muslim Americans to practice their faith as others are free to practice theirs, because my country was not founded on hate and fear.

At the funeral of David Pearl, the slain Jewish reporter for the New York Times, Imam Rauf spoke in solidarity with the victim, his family and their people, saying "I am a Jew."

Well, I am a Christian, but today I am Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. I am a Muslim. I am an American.

Tell me your name today.

The construction of the Muslim community center originally called Cordoba House and now known as Park51--but always as the "Ground Zero mosque" by its vocal opponents--was never subject in the first place to a debate about its propriety. For the sake of upholding American values and increasing the nation's security, it must now of necessity rise and stand in New York City, just blocks from the place where the World Trade Center was attacked and fell on 9/11.

Emotions about this nation's most horrific mainland attacks, suffered at the hands of terrorists acting in the name of Islam, are still understandably raw. To most Americans, most notably some of the families who lost loved ones at the site of the twin towers, the notion of building Park51 is like pouring salt in the open wounds of their hearts. Politicians such as Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin and others, say it is a matter of insensitivity--if not sinister motives--on the part of Imam Feisal Rauf and the larger Muslim community of Lower Manhattan.

But the opposition of opinion-makers like Gingrich--who recently compared Muslims to Nazis--is motivated more by political opportunism than concern for the safety or symbolism of the mosque, which is actually a prayer room planned as part of the much larger 13-story community center. Gingrich and Palin may be presidential contenders in 2012. Former congressman Rick Lazio, now a Republican candidate for governor of New York, is running ads using footage from 9/11 to stake out his position against the community center.

It is difficult not to empathize with the suffering of the 9/11 families who are represented by Keep America Safe, a group founded by Liz Cheney, daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney. But other 9/11 families, firefighters and police--just as aggrieved and just as wounded by the attacks--support the mosque.

President Obama last week entered the fray to a degree, saying that Imam Rauf and his backers have every First Amendment right to build the mosque wherever city ordinances allow--and they do allow it. Opponents countered that it's not about the Muslims' right under freedom of religion, but about what is right and wrong or what is "wise" to do.

But amid all the conflicting and conflicted emotions, the debate has only grown larger and more irrelevant, not more lucid. What is right and wrong about building this mosque blocks from Ground Zero--and, it should be noted, out of the line-of-sight from the new World Trade Center under construction--is not for the public or politicians to decide.

There is only one issue at stake: Do American Muslims enjoy the same freedom of religion to build a house of worship in accordance with the law? The answer must be yes, or this nation's ideals are merely sham and artifice, no more enduring and solid than the original twin towers themselves. And our ideals cannot be allowed to fall, for they are the things that must endure after 9/11 and the reason we are a free people and the envy of nations. In the end, our ideals are all that set us apart from those who attacked us. We must not succumb to the fear they wished to bring down upon us and thus give up what we hold most precious about our country and ourselves.

The First Amendment is bedrock in the supreme law of the land we call the Constitution. There is no debate as to whether this center, this prayer room, this mosque if that's what it is, can be built. The Framers answered that question long ago, at the very moment we became a nation.

Federal, state and local law enforcement authorities do not fear this center. The mayor and city officials of New York welcome it. The Imam proposing it has been a firm supporter of other religions and a firm and outspoken critic of terrorism. His long record of respect for all religions is documented. His love of America is indisputable. And the right of Muslim Americans to worship freely is protected from the whims of public opinion and fear by the same Constitution that protects every American's right to worship no matter what others may think or how deeply others are offended by the exercise of a religion not their own.

So now the Muslim world watches with keen interest to see if this country called America, this supposed beacon of liberty to the world, actually adheres to its own ideals. If not, we will be seen as no better than the warlords, shahs and despots who rule many of their lands to this day. If not, the Shia and Sunni factions in Iraq will forever hold their versions of Islam more sacred than the other and the U.S. service personnel who died to instill democracy in that land will have died, literally, for nothing--not even for the last vestige of a purpose there.

And if our nation's answer to this mosque is "No," then expect Christianity and Judaism to be closed for business in every Muslim country for a very long time, even in countries like Jordan, Egypt and others that now show some religious tolerance. In the eyes of the Muslim world, this mosque near Ground Zero is a test of how unshakable is our commitment to religious freedom. It is a test of our motivations, long suspected of being at war with Islam itself.

Park51 must rise and stand, for that now is the only course that preserves our ideals and demonstrates to the world that America treats every faith with equal respect under law, even when that dedication to our ideals grieves us personally. To suggest the legal placement of any house of worship in America is open for debate on any grounds at all is just another way of forsaking our values. What anyone but its congregation thinks or feels about its construction is completely irrelevant.

Fast on the heels of this summer's revelation that Thomas Jefferson erased the word "subjects" while writing the Declaration of Independence and replaced it with the word "citizens," another team of researchers announced this week they have discovered the first draft of the Bill of Rights hidden beneath the ink of James Madison's original manuscript.

Researchers said they used right-spectrum scanning technology to see "behind" the language of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution and peer at the founding father's original words and intent, which they said is visible only with a pair of X-ray glasses purchased from old copies of Mad magazine or from the Palin Pop-Up Books® section of Amazon.com.

For example, Madison's original First Amendment read: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the refudiation thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to host a talk show, and to petition the Government to overthrow itself."

Former conservative media personality Dr. Laura Schlesinger praised the discovery by Beck University historical researchers, saying, "See, what did I tell all you n------?"

Among other startling findings:

• Madison's first draft of the Second Amendment read:  "Oil well-regulated militias, imprtnt 2the security of, a free state, the fringe (right) keep arms; grizzly bear mamas, reload!!"

• Madison originally called the last amendment of the Bill of Rights the "Tenther Amendment.

The researchers promised more facts as they are needed.

My high school classmates and I loved Manfred Mann's cover of the song "Blinded by the Light," and not just for its energy. We listened to it over and over partly because we were certain that no lyrics played on the radio could possibly include "wrapped up like a douche"--could they? As it turned out, the actual lyrics are "revved up like a deuce," but our mistake was a common one.

The refrain that dominates the airwaves these days seems similarly shocking to the ears of liberals--downright obscene, in fact. It is the chorus of the re-energized Republican Party, with the Tea Party on backing vocals.

Democrats are revolted by the strains of racism, anti-Muslim hysteria, anti-immigrant xenophobia, anti-government radicalism and reptilian emotionalism in the GOP's siren song. But the sinister themes that rake on liberal ears like Beck's nails on a chalkboard--Tea Party bigotry, Faux News apologetics, partisan obstructionism and Palin/Bachmann-style hysterics--are all distractions from the overarching threat in this fall's elections. That threat is the populist appeal of fiscal conservatism.

While racism, bigotry, conspiracy theories and legislative non sequiturs are part of the conservative mystique that draws liberal attention for its audacious ignorance, most Americans are more concerned about Carville's Maxim: It's the economy, stupid.

It's understandable but unproductive that Democrats have despaired too quickly. While the recovery hits the doldrums and employment sags, the good news might seem too sparse to regain the support of Independents, who've shifted to pro-Republican by more than 60 percent since the 2008 election. And the support of the Democratic base is lukewarm, given the Obama White House's stupid attempts at triangulation and the feelings of betrayal on the far left.

But the strategy and focus of the DNC and its affiliated campaign organizations have been all wrong. Democrats have been blinded by the right and there is now no time to waste in regaining a winning clarity and vision.

The Democrats must present a unified strategy and focus. Arguing with the idiot fringe of the Tea Party won't work. Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann may garner all the morbid attention of a bad car wreck, but their message is not a winning message, even for Republicans. That leaves battling on the real turf: the economy. And it can be a winning argument if Democrats will stop wasting time on fringe issues and address it head-on.

Obama always said the recovery would be slow. It is. But why it's slow is important, and despite the criticism that Democrats can't run against George W. Bush, there's no reason not to run against the GOP's desire to resurrect and institutionalize his failed policies.

And Democrats don't have to leave it there. They can tout the recovery in no uncertain terms. They can point to months of straight jobs gains, small though they may be. Democratic leaders can talk about every improvement in economic numbers that comes out, whether about productivity, average work-week hours, exports, and more.

Obama and every congressional Democrat needs to speak with the optimism of Ronald Reagan, who campaigned that "it's morning in America" even while the country was gripped by stagflation and about to enter a recession. Bad news never stopped Reagan from accentuating the positive.

The Democratic campaign committees and liberal organizations like MoveOn.org can begin spending some of their money on ads to combat the negative psychic cloud that is holding back investment and hiring--and Democratic support.

Congressional Democrats can develop a new legislative plan that stimulates or directly creates jobs at minimal expense or through budget offsets. And they should do it with the same vigor and innovation with which they approached health care reform. But they have to begin now.

I don't buy the GOP line of despair and outrage. Most of you here at TPM don't either. Even liberals (progressives, if you prefer) who don't support anything Obama and the Democrats have done must know that Republicans would have done worse not just economically but in terms of strangling progressive debate, quashing progressive ideals and turning the clock back on decades of gains already made.

It's still the economy, stupid. Democrats have to run on it and make it their proudest accomplishment. If I had averted the Second Great Depression, I know I wouldn't accept the GOP's pessimistic blinders. Neither will voters accept a gift that's wrapped up like a douche.

Each time I see the video of Linda McMahon, the WWE owner and Republican U.S. Senate candidate from Connecticut, delivering a swift kick to an employee's testicles as she fires him, I can't help thinking of the movie "Idiocracy." In it, Luke Wilson awakens in a future United States so dumbed down by media that it has elected a pro wrestler as president, with a paid pitchman as his secretary of state ("Brought to you by Carl's Jr.")

And the really funny thing is that the movie was made just a few years ago--just before the advent of the Tea Party and Linda McMahon's candidacy. Is it a co-inky-dink that teabagging and bag-teeing arrived simultaneously in our political history? I think not.

The time is ripe for simple solutions. For tossing the bums out. For throwing out the babies with the wetbacks. For anything goes so long as everyone in Washington leaves. For reading the preface to "Politics for Dummies" and launching a movement. For reducing the best country in the world's government to a pictograph on Glenn Beck's chalkboard. 

While the message of radical conservatism is stunningly simplistic, it also is remarkably clear and getting clearer. Forget the movement's Sideshow Bobs carrying the "Obama=Hitler" signs. Pay no attention to the predominantly white, wealthy males behind the curtains at the Hall of Mirrors. Look for a moment only at the main attractions on the Tea Party carnival's Midway.

Chris Littleton, a founder of the Cincinnati Tea Party breaks it down this way in a must-read USAToday article:

"We have three core values that really, I guess, span everything we do. ...

"One, a fundamental limitation of government. The limited government is key. We believe that the more control and influence the size of government, the more it grows, the less important the individual is. ...

"And then the next would be fiscal responsibility. There is no excuse in the world why our government can't be fiscally responsible. ...

"And the last one is free markets, or you could call it free enterprise. The ability to earn your own way, to generate your own wealth, to create your own American dream should be relatively free from all of the inhibitions of the government."

As USAToday boils it down, the Tea Party has crystalized its message in these three core values and dispensed with debate on social issues like race, gay rights, corporate responsibility, religion and abortion precisely because these issues are best unspoken and politically unnecessary. What remains is pure cotton candy for the masses, secretly fortified with all the consequences that inspire the wet dreams of social conservatives.

Take the first two of Littleton's core values: limited government and fiscal responsibility. Together they equal severe cuts in the federal budget, not just the deficit. Make no mistake: Conservatives always want to apply an axe, not a scalpel.

But any way you slice it, the federal budget has a lot to do with equal justice, minimum standards for individual prosperity and ensuring the greater good in areas as diverse as the environment and road construction. Cut the budget with an axe and you cut a decent retirement and adequate medical care for seniors, food and health assistance for the poor and unemployed, civil protections for minorities and women, environmental regulation, and more. And all those cuts end up disproportionately starving, disenfranchising and keeping jobless many more women, minority citizens and immigrants than white males. The power of the purse in GOP hands is the power to destroy the entire liberal agenda.

And the unrestricted free-market theme of the third Tea Party core value? Think Citizens United, Rand Paul's segregated lunch counter and apologies to BP when it destroys ecosystems.

Now the beauty of having just three core values, with social issues left unaddressed, unmentioned and unexamined, is that the Tea Party can do the dirty work of the GOP without any direct ties to--or any of the antagonizing encumbrances of--its ideological master. The arrangement can look arm's length while being sordidly intimate behind the scenes. It's as if the Tea Party were merely hiking the Appalachian Trail with Republicans. But of course, they're also stopping off in the bushes together. The GOP's role is to resist the temptation to narrow its appeal while gratefully accepting Tea Party votes. The Tea Party's role is to swing the GOP even more rightward by supplying candidates and supporters cloaked in traditional GOP fiscal policy. They are essentially one and the same organization, with the Tea Party supplying the shock troops for GOP electoral goals. As a result, the message of the GOP is increasingly the message of the Tea Party.

The challenge for Democrats and liberals is to develop a core message that puts the three core messages of the Tea Party in the context of the nation's other priorities, including stimulus spending and rational oversight of the free market. Essentially, nothing else will matter if that message doesn't get out and resonate--and soon.   

Confusion of Tongues by Gustav Doré

IN THOSE YEARS
by Adrienne Rich

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing
became silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to.

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I.

It's a popular myth that today's youth are particularly narcissistic and that the pastime of navel-gazing has reached an historic high among the new generation fascinated by YouTube, networked by Facebook and self-exposed through Twitter. But as psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett has written, such "glib generational generalizations" are inaccurate and unfounded.

I'll probably get in trouble for saying so, but I think it's conservatives of any age who tend to be most narcissistic.

When I saw how many young people flooded into the political process during the campaign of president Obama, I was overwhelmed with joy for the republic. Given a leader who could inspire, America's youth weren't the sullen, self-absorbed slackers they were portrayed as being; they were positively inspirational in and of themselves! By hard work and earnest hearts, they showed they care deeply about the country. They care about others, not just about themselves.

In my work canvassing for a congressman, I've knocked at the homes of all kinds of people, from all walks of life and of all ages. And here is what I see:

America is fragmented, polarized and deeply divided along the lines of ideology and information. No surprise there.

Democrats and Republicans alike have offered me a cold drink of water on hot, muggy evenings when I've knocked at their doors in my trademark sweat-soaked shirt. Bipartisan chivalry is still alive in America, and that does surprise me somewhat. (No, I wasn't expecting Republicans to offer a Democratic canvasser anything better than polite scorn.)

Does that help my case? No. So why do I say that Republicans tend to be the most narcissistic people in these United States? Simple.

Nothing--and I mean NOTHING--in Republican principles advances any concept of "We, the People." Republican philosophy is completely and totally about "I, the Person."

Taxes? Don't tread on me, say Republicans. In other words, they don't give a damn and they'd rather not give a dime for the needs of their countrymen.

Civil rights? I already have mine, say Republicans. They don't want to hear how others don't have all of theirs.

Government spending? It's a commie, social welfare plot to redistribute my wealth to someone else, say Republicans.

Health care reform? Double the above response, say Republicans. It won't benefit me, so it must be unimportant or worse.

Anytime a Democrat proposes anything, the first thing out of a Republican's mouth is that it will hurt somebody (them). Nothing Democrats propose ever seems to help anyone. And if it does, like, say, extending unemployment, then there's always a downside that supersedes the up side. And the down side is always spending and taxes. Always taking and not giving. Always depriving me who has much to help him and her who have next to nothing.

And him and her always got where they are in life because of their bad choices--never, ever by circumstance. Lost your job because your company's credit dried up? Your fault. Lost your home because you lost a job or had to take a pay cut or reduction in hours? Your fault. Lost your marriage because you couldn't get health insurance and didn't know your wife was schizophrenic? Your fault.

The entire concept of a social safety net is antithetical to Republican beliefs. In the minds of the GOP faithful, it's not that shit happens; it's that God punishes you because you're not worthy.

And don't take away the guns of a Republican. It's his right to own as much firepower as an aircraft carrier. After all, it's his Constitution, not yours--until he wants to amend it. For that matter, the country itself belongs exclusively to him--and he wants to "take it back" from people trespassing on it.

Republicans do not believe in enlightened self-interest. They believe only in a stark self-interest. They cast their votes in childish tantrums of narcissism, for themselves only and never for the good of the country as a whole.

Me. I. My. Mine.

Not us. Not ours. Not "We, the People."

So yes, I'm a little shocked that some Republicans bother to offer a thirsty Democrat a sip of the most abundant resource on the planet. I wonder if it hurts them to do so.

Surely porcupines mate, but exactly how they do it is a prickly matter.

Can the GOP, struggling for a message beyond "Don't Blame Us, We Gave Obama Our Mess," absorb energy from the Tea Party without losing the support of moderate Republicans and Independents? And can the Tea Party, struggling for broader appeal, cozy up to the GOP without losing its steam?

That is the the dance of the seven veils we see everywhere between the GOP and the Tea Party. In some primary races, the Tea Party threw out GOP establishment candidates like Utah Sen. Bob Bennett and Trey Grayson in Kentucky. In other races, GOP candidates quickly learned their lessons and toed the Tea Party line. And where Tea Party candidate have won, it has always been Republicans taking the Sharron Angles and Rand Pauls under their wings. And also, as a certain twittering harpy would add, it's hard to find a Tea Party candidate who isn't running on the Republican ticket.

Given that 98 percent of teabaggers say they will vote for Republican candidates, what's the problem here? Don't the two groups overlap enough to actually be considered one group? Yeah, that's the sticky part.

The Tea Party includes a lot of self-identified Independents, most of whom regularly vote Republican, and even a few Reagan Democrats who never got the memo. So the Tea Party wants to tout its own separate and rather meaningless identity. And with that separate identity comes the support of fringe elements like paramilitary groups, racists and other conservative extremists. Oh my! but the rhetoric is scorching, and for the GOP, that's the real problem: how to keep the hatred in the Big Tent at a nice simmer without letting it boil over into a Freak Show the evening news might broadcast.

For the GOP, the trick is to maintain the perfect distance, the LaGrange point that allows the GOP close influence but doesn't allow the Tea Party's more rambunctious hijinks to crater its image.

For Tea Party leaders (let's face it, they're mostly Republican and Libertarian insiders), the trick involves drawing on the resources of the Republican campaign machine while not getting so cozy with it that rank and file teabaggers recognize their movement's been assimilated by the BorGOP. But resistance is futile.

The image of porcupines mating is, in reality, a farce. If the Tea Party is not a wholly owned subsidiary of the GOP, it is a convenient spinoff whose only real stakeholders are Republicans. From the perspective of Mitch McConnell, John Boehner and Mitch Romney, what's not to like about an organization that bashes Democrats without leaving your fingerprints on their bodies? 

But what dyed-in-the-wool teabaggers really want is an anti-abortion rights version of H. Ross Perot to carry their Gadsden flag before them. Some of them even want to create a third major political party. But they will have to wait for Sarah Palin to declare her 2012 candidacy, and then some.

Assuming that Palin--ever the opportunist and still gravely pissed at the GOP's handling of her in 2008--decides to run, anything could happen. But the parallels run deep between Perot's failed bids for the White House and what Palin is likely to underachieve as a Tea Party candidate. Take a look at Perot's support in the 1992 election, as described by wikipedia:

A detailed analysis of voting demographics revealed that Perot's support drew heavily from across the political spectrum, with 20% of his votes coming from self-described liberals, 27% from self-described conservatives, and 53% coming from self-described moderates. Economically, however, the majority of Perot voters (57%) were middle class, earning between $15,000 and $49,000 annually, with the bulk of the remainder drawing from the upper middle class (29% earning more than $50,000 annually).[28]  Exit polls also showed that Ross Perot drew 38% of his vote from Bush, and 38% of his vote from Clinton, while the rest of his voters would have stayed home had he not been on the ballot.

Those numbers closely mirror the Tea Party's national voter base, income distribution and demographic breakdown: slightly wealthier on average and overwhelmingly Republican and Independent. Perot's base was noticeably less conservative, however.

Nonetheless, Perot rode an anti-Washington wave of anger to eventual failure. His central issue was cutting the deficit. He was anti-incumbent, anti-tax, and pro-gun. Unlike Palin, he was pro-choice.

Read the following and try not to think of the half-term governor's resignation and the reality soap opera starring her daughter Bristol:

By the summer Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with thirty-nine percent of the vote, but on July 16, Perot unexpectedly dropped out. Perot eventually stated the reason was that he received threats that digitally altered photographs would be released by the Bush campaign to sabotage his daughter's wedding.

So the Tea Party waits for a savior to lead it to unification, legitimacy and power. Will it be the second coming of Sarah Palin? Another incarnation of Ross Perot's first and second attempts to form a viable third party? Very likely "yes" to all the above.

Like Perot's second run for the presidency, Palin's resounding defeat in 2012 will seal the end of her White House ambitions. The Democrats don't want her, and the GOP will blacklist her if she seriously splits the conservative vote. Her role in the GOP's plan is still that of a stooge, and stooges get their comeuppance if they stray too far into the halls of power.

The fate of the Tea Party will be the same as Perot's Reform Party: Like an old soldier in the culture wars, it will fade away. The movement will be swallowed whole by the Republican Party and, in the belly of its host, further transform the GOP into a monster of stubborn idiocy.

Who Caught You When You Fell

Thank God you can't recall your mother forcing you bloodied
from her womb, slipping through the doctor's gloved fingers
and landing headfirst on the delivery room's tile. Otherwise
you'd know that women don't drop babies, doctors do.
You don't remember how hard it was, do you--
pushing against the earth to stand erect that first time,
bare-bottomed and wide-eyed on fat, wobbly legs?
Maybe your mother or father cradled the air beside you
like watchful brackets, but no, you probably were one
of those kids who wailed and screamed for absent parents
each time the linoleum hit that astonished face of yours.
It must have been scary growing up alone with no one
to get your back when bullies made the playground
a killing zone for their sport and you became the football,
the punching bag, the thing curled into a ball and kicked.
But let's get real. You wouldn't know about such things.
The truth is you grew up in a nice home, a neighborhood
where kids never die of crossfire from slow-moving cars.
And your dad, your uncle or your buddy helped you get
that first job at a time when there were jobs, and all because
you're so special and self-sufficient, so strong and so wise.
You worked hard and actually believe that everything you own
is yours because it's your God-given, constitutional right
to have more than the next guy, a job better than they have.
You're worth a lot, and they got what they deserved.
That postman who delivers your mail, that cop who risks his life
keeping you safe, that road crew who makes driving possible,
that lady who teaches your kids how to read and write, that food
you eat because some inspector made sure it doesn't poison you,
that union guy waiting for a job he'll pay taxes on and yes, that crippled guy
who contributes nothing to society but a humble lesson in fate--
you don't need any of them. Because that bump on your head
made you think you're Superman, soaring alone with no memory of
who caught you when you fell.

With a smile as warm and broad as any of his predecessors, a charisma that brought seas of humanity shoulder-to-shoulder to light their candles of hope from his torch, and a way of engaging the issues that was so calm, inspirational and intelligent that his opponents derided it as "just words" from an empty suit, candidate Barack Obama was hailed as the New Great Communicator.

So why, ever since then, has President Obama's message gotten so drowned in the static of partisan noise and distracted media? How did he lose his political mojo?

It may be instructive to compare Obama with the original Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan. The former actor's gift for delivering a well-rehearsed line rarely failed to win the hearts of his audience. As Reagan championed the causes of his base--from Jerry Falwell's moral oversight in the bedroom to tax cuts in the boardroom, from axe cuts in virgin forests to nuclear brinkmanship in Europe--the conservative movement came to identify itself more and more as proud Reaganites.

Talk about a conservative Messiah! Here was a right-wing president who could transcend his Hollywood lifestyle to connect with Joe Six-Pack, even if most of his shtick was ripped from Barry Goldwater, old movie scripts and the pages of Reader's Digest.

Despite his ruthless advancement of conservative ideology, Reagan always emerged from controversies unscathed by his own involvement. With the aid of blocking from his White House "handlers" and from Republican politicians and compliant media (precious few journalists excepted), the Gipper won a free pass to be president of the United States without having to actually be accountable for anything his White House did that was unethical, bad for the country or downright illegal. And for his remarkable ability to avoid being tarred by his own slime, Reagan earned the title of The Teflon President.

Obama may be the nation's first Magnetic President, for he attracts blame like a steel rod gripped in the electrified coil of his opposition. Even the strongest facts seem to fail at repelling the unmerited negative charges directed against him and his agenda.

Obama's slowly declining approval ratings mirror those of Reagan's at this point in his first term, and so offer no particular evidence that Obama commands less popularity than Reagan did. But approval ratings can't measure the difference between Reagan's stick-free surface and Obama's inability to shed the lowest partisan mud.

Obama is savaged by conservatives for adding to the national debt in a time of economic meltdown and two major wars. Tea partisans say he should have pulled the plug on the life support that jump-started the economy's recovery--that Obama should cut spending like Japan's leadership did in the '90s and FDR did in the '30s, when each caved to deficit hawks and pushed their economies back into the toilet face-first. Many across the political spectrum say Obama should have broken up the banks that caused the mess and thrown their CEOs in prison. (On the other hand, conservatives don't want the government intruding on private enterprise, and progressives claim to be huge fans of due process.)

And Reagan's economic record? He tripled the national debt in a time of relative peace while cutting taxes on the rich, and he did all this without seriously ruffling the GOP's feathers. Reagan's trickle-down, voodoo economics took three years to marginally lift the country out of a run-of-the-mill recession. In other words, Americans waited twice as long as they've waited under Obama for Reagan to deliver comparable relief from an economic downturn not half as bad as the utter collapse Bush left for Obama to avert. And no, Obama has not tripled, doubled or even added 50 percent to our national debt since he took office. The sharp rise in deficit spending Obama's first year is largely the result of the Bush FY 2009 budget, according to a surprising source and unlikely ally: the libertarian Cato Institute think tank.

That Reagan's agriculture department listed ketchup as a vegetable to trim costs in the federal school lunch program was seen as just some guv'mint bean counter's stupidity, not a logical consequence of Reagan's draconian cuts in anti-poverty spending.

Under Obama, government assistance programs have been expanded to provide some measure of relief for millions of unemployed and hungry citizens, nearly all of whom were left unemployed and hungry by Bush policies that spilled over into Obama's lap and more than 75 percent of whom were left unemployed and hungry during Bush's actual tenure in the White House. Moreover, Obama's economic policies actually are creating jobs for the first time in two years, much to the chagrin of those who offer no ideas beyond the resumption of failed Reagan/Bush policies.

That Reagan's Interior Secretary, James G. Watts, was so rabidly anti-environmental that he once declared "trees cause pollution" never became a real problem for the Great Communicator. Watts slashed conservation programs, resisted private land donations to the national parks and refuge portfolio and boasted of opening "a billion acres" to offshore drilling, all with the president's blessing. Reagan finally threw Watts under the bus in 1983--not for perverting his duties as chief steward of the environment, but for causing an uproar by mocking affirmative action with his description of a coal-leasing panel: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent," he said. If there was any doubt about Watts' contempt for the environment, he eliminated them in 1991 when he told a Wyoming cattlemen's association, "If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used."

And Obama's environmental record? Well, he's failed to single-handedly save the planet, a tall order for any mortal in any case. But it's not for lack of trying. And as disastrous as the Gulf oil spill is, it's important to remember that BP caused it, Bush-era de-regulatory policies allowed it, and once again, Obama has to act as W's janitor. The climate and energy legislation that Obama has supported is DOA in the newly filibuster-prone Senate, and the GOP is dancing on its body. But intransigent facts won't stop progressives from bashing Obama from the left. Nor will the facts stop the coal, oil and gas industries from promoting the lie that the president supports an "energy tax" on consumers.

Progressives paint Obama as a warmonger, despite the fact that the U.S. troop pulldown in Iraq is proceeding on schedule while a stumbling Iraqi government raises doubt about the policy's wisdom. Americans on the left and the right are growing weary of nearly nine years of U.S. military involvement--not to say engagement--in Afghanistan. Progressives want a withdrawal now. Conservatives want an open-ended declaration of our commitment to prosecute the war. Obama is somewhere in the middle, taking political flak from both sides for wars that everyone but Michael Steele knows were started by Bush and Cheney.

Reagan? He went in search of conflicts, inserting Marines into Beirut and pulling them out three months after Islamic Jihad detonated two car bombs that killed 241 American and 58 French servicemen--by far the worst one-day casualty count suffered by America forces since the Tet Offensive. It wasn't until Ollie North and the Iran-Contra Affair that Reagan took any responsibility for the heat in the mess hall.

But the saddest evidence of the president's magnetic personality comes from attitudes still prevalent among the GOP and, particularly, its militant tea party wing. Three years after the lies were thoroughly debunked, the GOP still tolerates the ideas that Obama is a secret Muslim, a Manchurian president of foreign birth and a Socialist at heart. He is, according to Colorado gubernatorial candidate and former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo, a bigger threat to the nation than all the terrorists of al Qaeda put together.

According to Fox News and most teabagger websites, the president and his attorney general, Eric Holder, may be coordinating a veiled campaign to discriminate against whites nationwide. Shirley Sherrod was supposed to be evidence of that, just as Van Jones and ACORN were victims of the same right-wing propaganda.

Despite the extraordinary multiplication of the challenges he faces and the enormous progress he has made, the b.s. keeps coming Obama's way. For as much as Obama inspires hope, he also inspires fear in those who refuse to see him as he is, beneath all the mud they feel compelled to heap upon him.

The manufactured controversy of Shirley Sherrod's speech to a local NAACP group in Georgia, like the manufactured controversy of the Obama Justice Department's treatment of the New Black Panther Party, are the kind of tempests in a teapot that Fox's alleged news shows like to display in the front window.

What Fox keeps in the back room are the hundreds of documented incidents of racism by members of the Tea Party and other conservatives. And what Fox keeps buried under the floorboards is the real racism that propels the right wing's agenda on immigration, health care reform, and deficit spending.

While it's easy to see the overt racism that propels the right's bidding war for who can hate the most on immigrants, it's harder to recognize the subtler racism that underlies the conservative opposition to health care reform and deficit spending to avert a depression. The common thread is racial prejudice and resentment.

Fox and the right wing make no bones about the fact that the goal of making Shirley Sherrod and the New Black Panther Party top stories is to illustrate the idea that the Obama administration coddles minorities and doesn't like whites so much. And with the popularity of the Arizona immigration law model comes the right's concurrent condemnation of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder as willing participants in a Latino invasion.

But health care reform? The deficit? What do those things have to do with racism?

Chip away at the high-minded arguments, seemingly irrelevant to race at first glance, and the glue binding the right's overarching narrative is the same used to stick Obama to the right's highly selective images of Shirley Sherrod, immigrants and the New Black Panther Party.

When applied to health car reform, the narrative becomes a vile portrait of an administration bent on killing every white person from Medicare beneficiaries to Sarah Palin's grandson, all while taxing the country into Michele Bachmann's "nation of slaves."

When the narrative is applied to deficit spending, the rationale of averting economic disaster gets lost and becomes a story of favoring the poor (blacks and other minorities) over whites who will end up paying the bill through taxes.

A few photo ops with blacks notwithstanding, right-wing politicians like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Sharron Angle and Rand Paul all promote policies that lead to the destruction of minority communities, the disproportionate impoverishment of minority families, a greater strain on minority marriages, fewer educational opportunities for minorities and greater obstacles to political enfranchisement.

The Tea Party wanted a poster child for black racism in Shirley Sherrod. More than that, it wanted payback for the NAACP's resolution and another brick to throw through the Oval Office window at that scary black man inside.

So the reaction was predictable when Andrew "Who Me?" Breitbart's video snippet was picked up by Rupert Murdoch's networks and endlessly replayed as if the Challenger had just exploded. Tea Party sites soon posted Breitbart's video and like perverts aroused by their own racism, salaciously promoted it as more evidence of black presidents gone wild.

But the full story provided evidence not of Sherrod's racism, not of the NAACP's racism, and certainly not of the Obama administration's racism. It only gave more evidence that the right wing will grasp at any straw to supplant the story of its own widespread racism against minorities with tall tales of government sanctioned racism against whites.

There simply is no comparison between Shirley Sherrod and the racism that propels so many Tea Party signs, hundreds of hours of Fox incite-tainment and the vile policies that erode the lives of millions of minority Americans each and every day.

That is the real question the radical right is asking. For they have vested in Shirley Sherrod all their pent-up racial hatred and, in willful ignorance of the facts, have accused and convicted her of being the Wicked Witch of the Liberals and the long-sought poster child for black racism against whites. The Andrew Breitbarts and Sean Hannitys and Newt Gingriches of the radical right have distorted the facts, played fast and loose with words, intentionally ignored the overwhelming evidence in her favor.

But the potion masters who stir this evil pot are only the vanguard of the sick racists who infest the radical right. The Tea Party needed pushback against the NAACP, and in Sherrod's 40-minute sermon of sin and redemption they found 2-1/2 minutes of her remorseful tale of trespass to conveniently twist into their Exhibit A, and oh, by God, the truth be damned along with her.

Never mind that the alleged victim of all this stands by Sherrod's close friendship and credits her with saving the family farm. Never mind that the hesitant attitude for which Sherrod is being crucified flitted through her mind 24 years ago. Never mind that Sherrod's point was precisely that racism is never justifiable--neither against blacks nor against whites.

It isn't just the pertinent facts themselves that those who have built and gleefully tend the pyre of Sherrod's destruction want to wipe from our consciousness. They want to divert our eyes from the deeper sorcery at hand: that Sherrod's vilification and resignation was formulated to diffuse the light which the NAACP's resolution has shined on the use of overt racism as a political tool within the ranks of the Tea Party.

Harken, for here stands the human scapegoat of a bloodthirsty rite, the lamb brought for slaughter upon the altar of political power. She has been abandoned to those who scorn her. But the knife must be stayed and the fire quenched, for this is an abomination to justice. If profane conservatism can succeed against Shirley Sherrod with its finely crafted attack on reality, then none are safe. The purveyors of propaganda will have claimed a victim in full sight of the world and with the tacit blessing of all who cower in fear of speaking against it.

Call the White House, the Secretary of Agriculture and Congress. Tell them to stand up for Shirley Sherrod. Tell them to stand up for the truth. Tell them to stand up to the racist witch hunters of the radical right.

This line must not be crossed. The race-baiters and fear mongers have tread too far upon what is good and true and innocent. Fascism is stirring among the radical right and must not be allowed this foothold. We must deny them their prize, for Shirley Sherrod is no witch and no pound of flesh to be bartered for the loving graces of the Tea Party.

"He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave."
 -- Andrew Carnegie

For a political organization whose smear tactics make cholera smell like Clorox, the tea party seems awfully upset by the self-inflicted tread marks on its banner.

Polls taken in April this year show the racial attitudes of most tea party members--except for a lot of them--are consistent with those of the general public. That's certainly half the story. But to hear tea party activists tell it, there's hardly a racist bone in their whole confederation's body politic. Now, with the cat officially out of the bag, the truth about the movement's racist undercurrents is getting impossible to conceal.

Just last week, tea party activists lashed out at the NAACP, even before the nation's largest and oldest civil rights organization passed a resolution calling on tea party leaders to "repudiate the racist elements and activities" within their ranks.

The tea party's denials and counter-charges were embarrassingly inept. While its leaders were skirting the NAACP's point by angrily claiming that racism exists only on the movement's fringes, they were simultaneously chastising Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams for publishing a series of racist screeds. By Saturday, the national umbrella group, Tea Party Federation, had ousted Williams and his group from their membership.

As a result, the movement forfeited its argument that a multitude of leaders--or no leaders at all--somehow entitles it to immunity from accountability. Presto! Change-o! Suddenly the "grassroots" organization was pulling leaders out of a hat, anointing some and excommunicating others as if struck by a bolt of religion.

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I have questions, lots of questions, and not just about politics.

• Why do hot dogs come in 10-packs, but hot dog buns come in 8-packs? Is there no communication at all between meat packers and bakers?

• If "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is true, then is it true also that "Whatever doesn't make you stronger kills you?"

• Should Sen. Harry Reid point out that his opponent, Sharron Angle, is the poster child for the effect of abolishing the Department of Education?

• If Jews hate Nazis, why do so many Jews like neo-cons?

• Why is the Coca-Cola distributed in the U.S. sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, but the Coca-Cola distributed in Mexico sweetened with sugar? Does it have something to do with the volume of corn needed for tortilla production or is it that Mexicans can afford the "good stuff" and Americans don't mind eating livestock feed?

• There are many spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way. Why are there no Spirograph galaxies?

• Am I the only one to notice that conservatives are essentially angry sacks of protoplasm? 

During his first 18 months in office, President Obama has often reiterated the essence of Rodney King's plaintive appeal for civil fellowship, "Can't we all just get along?" Time and again, Republicans have rebuffed Obama's pleas for bipartisanship with thundering echoes of Sarah Palin's obstructionist "Hell no!" This week, in remarks aimed at House Minority Leader John Boehner and Texas Congressman Joe Barton, Obama began to use the GOP's hyper-partisanship against itself.

If America ever was governable from the center, those days appear long gone. Right-wing zealots and political opportunists have attempted to invalidate the 2008 election results and stir anti-government sentiment to a fever pitch--indeed, to intimidate members of Congress through incitement to political assassination and fringe insurrection. As a result, the field on which political compromise must play has narrowed. The stark choice before citizens now is between protecting rational government for the good of many or promoting anarchy in the guise of patriotism. To blend the words of Paine and Lincoln (two actual patriots): These are the times that try the better angels of our nature.

In his own similarly tumultuous time, Richard Henry Dana, Jr., understood the temptations that threatened our national soul. Dana began his career as a lawyer and politician in 1840 when he passed the Massachusetts bar exam. He went on to argue the cases of slaves and helped found the abolitionist Free Soil Party. Later, as a United States Attorney, he successfully argued before the Supreme Court for the Union's right to blockade Confederate ports. He served as a prosecution counsel in the trial of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Despite his impressive role in American political history, Dana may be better known as the author of the acclaimed bestseller, "Two Years Before the Mast," published the same year he passed the bar. The memoir chronicles Dana's life from 1834 to 1836, when he embarked as a merchant sailor on a voyage that he thought might help his eyesight, which had been weakened by a bout of the measles at Harvard, from which he had just graduated.

Dana's seafaring in the cowhide trade took him from Boston to the Spanish colonial outposts of California, by way of treacherous, half-frozen waters around the tip of South America. "Moby Dick" author Herman Melville wrote of Dana's palpable prose: "His chapters describing Cape Horn must have been written with an icicle."

So with all the makings of a thrilling yarn at his disposal, it might seem odd that Dana instead chose to compile his diaries into a book whose purpose was to chronicle the pitiful working conditions of the men who made their livings on the unforgiving seas. During the two years of his voyage, Dana shared with his mates the filthy crew quarters housed in front of the mast; he knew the hardships of overpowering waves, endless toil, thin gruel, paltry wages, cruel punishment, blistering suns and freezing nights.

Equally fickle and merciless is today's political environment. Wracked by two intransigent wars, a sputtering economy barely saved from the brink of collapse, the chronic suffering of unemployed millions, runaway corporate greed and a monstrous ecological disaster along our Gulf coast, the national psyche is stressed to the max.

Even discounting the recent effects of these problems on popular perception, the winds of change we believed in just 18 months ago had already run square into a partisan headwind before President Obama's inauguration. As the president struggled to move his agenda, blowback from the Democratic base against the Administration's pandering to the Right reached gale-force levels. And all of this mess now sounds a distress call for Democrats, who face the perfect storm in this fall's elections unless they can somehow thread the eye of the hurricane.

Forgive my extended oceanographic and atmospheric metaphor. I use it for several reasons. First, because sailing into a storm is invariably the result of failing to account for the unpredictable. It is true, after all, that fate has handed the Obama White House and congressional Democrats a nearly unbroken string of foul weather, both metaphorically and literally. But the Administration's failure to read the political winds and steer course accordingly also have contributed to why, I believe, Democrats are likely to fare worse in the fall midterms than is generally anticipated.

As I will conclude, another reason I use this metaphor is that Dana was, in some respects, oddly representative of today's anti-establishment zealotry, which sees no discrepancy between insisting on a stable society and supporting the armed overthrow of government. Dana did not take this discrepancy to the national level, but he did write approvingly of a Tea Party-style vigilante group in San Francisco, in a section appended to his book many years after its original publication. 

How strange and eventful has been the brief history of this marvelous city, San Francisco! In 1835 there was one board shanty. In 1836, one adobe house on the same spot. In 1847, a population of four hundred and fifty persons, who organized a town government. Then came the auri sacra fames [from the Roman poet Virgil: "the holy lust for gold"], the flocking together of many of the worst spirits of Christendom; a sudden birth of a city of canvas and boards, entirely destroyed by fire five times in eighteen months, with a loss of sixteen millions of dollars, and as often rebuilt, until it became a solid city of brick and stone, of nearly one hundred thousand inhabitants, with all the accompaniments of wealth and culture, and now (in 1859) the most quiet and well-governed city of its size in the United States. But it has been through its season of Heaven-defying crime, violence, and blood, from which it was rescued and handed back to soberness, morality, and good government, by that peculiar invention of Anglo-Saxon Republican America, the solemn, awe-inspiring Vigilance Committee of the most grave and responsible citizens, the last resort of the thinking and the good, taken to only when vice, fraud, and ruffianism have intrenched themselves behind the forms of law, suffrage, and ballot, and there is no hope but in organized force, whose action must be instant and thorough, or its state will be worse than before. A history of the passage of this city through those ordeals, and through its almost incredible financial extremes, should be written by a pen which not only accuracy shall govern, but imagination shall inspire.

--Richard Henry Dana, Jr., "Two Years Before the Mast," Appendix, 1869 Edition

Having played an important role in both the prosecution and resolution of the Civil war, Dana was no stranger to the notion of "taking back" America from a Confederacy that fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. And in rough-and-tumble San Francisco of the mid-19th century, it's easy to imagine that few remedies other than vigilantism were available to the city's beleaguered citizenry. Still, I was somewhat shocked that a man of Dana's rather progressive morality would endorse vigilantism without so much as a cursory weighing of the political or ethical implications.

But then I remembered that Dana was probably a zealot. And zealots operate on both the Right and the Left independent of consideration for the other side of an argument. It's easy for me to think approvingly of Dana's argument for blockading Confederate ports--until I also think of the widespread starvation the blockade meant for the people of the South. That makes it a little more complicated.

As Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham points out in a new New York Times profile, today's vigilantes seem to have no agenda other than the destruction of government itself. Graham recalls he challenged a group of Tea Partiers in a meeting: "'What do you want to do? You take back your country -- and do what with it?'...Everybody went from being kind of hostile to just dead silent."

The Tea Party's mentality of "shoot first and ask basic questions of ourselves later" isn't particularly shocking to those who have monitored its rise to utter incompetence in fulfillment of the Peter Principle. Yet this is precisely the mentality that has arisen not only among the entrenched fringes of the Right, but among many on the Left and many middle-class people who occupy the center as Independents.

"They were the worst of times and the worst of times" goes America's most enduring sentiment, for we all like to bitch and moan. In the time of this Great Recession, this Great Spill, this Great Debt, this Great Wall Street Betrayal, this Great War on Terror, many Americans are scared to death of what the future holds. Average citizens, the crew of America's ship of state, are in a panic. We see icebergs all around us.

In such conditions, mutiny is all too tempting and all too counterproductive. And it is all too dangerous for the captain and his officers. 

Call your Senator now. Heavy duty, evil, bad voodoo shit is going on in the U.S. Senate as you read this. Call your senators now before it's too late. The worst polluters on the planet are trying to shove regulators out of the way today and win free reign to dump greenhouse gases into our air.

The debate is underway already on the Senate floor. Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski's resolution to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions could very well pass. The Republicans and other minions of Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Electric are behind the resolution. That means some Democrats are likely to support the resolution.

Tune into C-SPAN 2 for more.

In fact, I called the office of my only non-alcoholic senator, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, and issued the sternest warning against siding with oil lapdog Murkowski and the Palin-clone Neanderthals pushing this resolution. McCaskill has been very cozy with coal interests and is one of the reasons we don't yet have a climate and energy bill. (My other senator, Kit Bond, is a paid-for, foregone, too-far-gone case of fossil fool.)

If McCaskill fucks up today's vote like she fucked over the Public Option behind the scenes, her re-election bid is toast. I and many other Missouri progressives will see to it with the kind of home-grown enthusiasm that could make even an Arkansas senator blanch.