only those on the loony fringes of the right can explain it. doesn't make sense to anyone sane. if it does, you ought to get a quick mental health checkup. you expect opposition, hey its politics after all, but this is the craziest thing i've ever seen in my lifetime. no claim too outrageous.

See: Today's Doonesbury.

I often smile sourly when I hear rhetoric like this. The Europeans look down on us because of our policies like this but they don't have ANY experience of this kind of right-ist opposition. If they faced it, they would fall like flies just like we do.

MNPundit---It is illegal in some countries to promote hate speech. In the UK, it is illegal. That's why Michael Savage is not allowed in that country. The problem in America is that it is perfectly legal for anyone to tell lies and smear the reputations of others. We are cowarde when it comes to calling out this type of behavior and in passing legislation to combat it. IMO, instead of doing what is right, we hide behind the First Amendment. I think the Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves if they knew how politicians and some of those in the media have so fully embraced lying to replace a missing political agenda.

Two points:

First, the real problem here is that our media picks up the most outrageous and stupid slurs the right flings--and treats those as if they're serious and well-considered arguments. The craziness only exists because the media enables it.

Second, to MNPundit's claim that Europeans "don't have ANY experience of this kind of right-ist opposition," I'd say go take a look at European political history of the late 1920s through the 1930s. Their experience may not be as fresh as ours, but it sure was a lot more violent and ultimately resulted in the deaths of more than 50 million people.

What ever happened to the Alien and Sedition Acts? Bring back the old days...

A simpler explanation might be that over-the-top political rhetoric is a version of trash talking. It's as much designed to get the target off his game as it is to allow the trasher talker to let off steam.

Think of that sea of maniacs behind the basket waving towels, cursing, and screaming during the visiting team's free-throw attempts.

That said, in politics it often offends middle of the road types, independents, etc., so that while it may make the above-mentioned sea of maniacs feel good, it's counter productive.

As I understand it, the Hitler moustache cartoon began with the Larouche bedlamites and then spread to the angrier fringes of the tea party crowd. Was it counterproductive? So far, the polling numbers would seem to indicate that it was.

Dan

If it weren't for The Daily Show I think we in Britain would think you're all completely bonkers.

If that world leader wants to understand the current parameters of our political "discourse," he or she should take a look at Blazing Saddles. Sadly, what was most outrageous about that movie has become prescient.

Well it makes perfect sense when you stop to consider the long tradition of the Republican Party using fear, bigotry and religous bitterness to pursuade low intelligent people to work against their own good.

Well, one way to win an argument is to arrest the other person. That works well. The person who likes the Alien and Sedition Acts probably wasn't as enthusiastic about them when Bush was president. It's as if the Men in Black had flashed that memory thingy on all you folks on January 20. You've never seen such hostile comments before. Please.

Dave P - if it weren't for the Daily Show, I too would think we're all completely bonkers. Those who criticize it as a source of news miss its real significance: For thirty minutes four nights a week, we get to mutter a relieved, "Oh good... It's not just me..."

Hey! Mike K is right! None of this is new, and the right at this time is EXACTLY like we all were during Bush's two terms. Remember?

Remember how an anonymous contributor posted a video to the MoveOn.org contest that compared Bush to Hitler (which video MoveOn immediately removed and repudiated)? Well that's EXACTLY like Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Bachmann comparing Obama to Hitler.

And remember how there was a guy with a sign at a protest in Portland, OR that said something mean about Bush? That's EXACTLY like Lou Dobbs questioning Obama's birth certificate.

See? Don't you get it now? Completely insignificant nobodies making critical comments about Bush is precisely equivalent to national media figures and elected politicians comparing Obama to Hitler and questioning his legitimacy. There's not one iota of difference.

Well, one way to win an argument is to arrest the other person

Other ways to win arguments when you're not in power is to show up armed at presidential events bearing signs about "watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants," assassinate doctors who provide abortions, blow up federal buildings, and stockpile guns and ammo in records volumes while calling for a general insurrection and claiming the current president was not born in this country.

@ Roddy McCorley:

You are absolutely right about "Blazing Saddles" (penned by Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor). Add "Idiocracy," and you've got two "absurd" comedies that succinctly and accurately describe what's wrong with American popular and political culture (and probably not just America).

I should just add that if you're a right-winger and you're in power then the way to win an argument is to put your enemies on no-fly lists, illegally wiretap them, withhold vital information to Congress that would prevent them from authorizing a baseless invasion of another country, and discard bidding for federal contracts to save taxpayer money in favor of giving historically large no-bid, cost-plus contracts to companies you used to work for that still cut you a check.

Because it's so much easier when you're the Decider and you "don't have to explain yourself to anybody." Heh.

Re: The Daily Show
"Oh good... It's not just me..."
or me...

Until The Daily Show, I used to think that Americans were just a bunch of dreary pricks, full of themselves and without any sense of humour (other than cream-cake-in-the-face and slip-on-a-banana-peel sort). I'd meet an occasional individual who wasn't like that, but it was like the exception that proved the rule. Like Roddy McC, @ 14:51 said: it took The Daily Show to convince me that I wasn't all alone or, even more scary, totally nuts.

You want to understand American politics? We are at the end of an era in which the economic and religious right-wing has made a massive power-grab trying to enforce their views on America, and it has all gone into the crapper for them. They are panicking.

They did the same thing in the late 90's when Clinton was elected. by going nutso extreme and by choosing George W. to unify the political and religious conservatives into a single power, they grabbed the Presidency and would have lost it in 2004 without the help of al Qaeda and 9/11. Then they lost it anyway, and it is all slipping away from them.

The big problem is that the whole game is now being played out in a media universe which is itself fragmenting, becoming more and more unstable and failing. The relationships between government power, the people, and the various channels of communication in the media are unstable and shifting. It's that media dogfight that we are all watching and wondering because it looks crazy. And it is.

But the right wing is quite right to panic. They have thrown literally everything into the fight, and as things sort out, they are losing everything. Their increasingly frantic lunges as they panic make good media, which the unstable and shifting media grabs on to, communicates and encourages.

By this time next year most of it is going to be sorting itself out and the direction of movement will be clear. It's only been eight months since the federal government was in the hands of the anti-government crowd, and they are not going happily.

The Europeans have their share of far-right political groups -- the British National Party, the Belgian Vlaams Blok, or the Belgian or French Front Nationale, to name a few -- and they could give the GOP lessons in racism and xenophobia, but none of them can hold a candle to the GOP in wackjobbiness.

Well, I am not one to defend our particular political dysfunction but I think its pretty important to say that all countries have their own peculiarities and from the outside, they all look pretty strange. The British parliament for instance, where the prime minister has to speak over a bunch of shouting and where there are still ceremonial and paid inherited political positions from its history as a monarchy is also pretty odd. Hell, fist fights have broken out on the floor of the South Korean parliament. Its easy,if you spend anytime thinking about it to find some idiosyncrasies in any particular country's political system that just don't exist anywhere else.

All of the extreme rhetoric in this latest political fight is certainly disheartening but that is as much about our ideological diversity as anything else. Its the price we pay to maximize the value of free speech. I think its a perfectly good tradeoff.

As far as the money party is concerned, Hitlerizing Obama only has to make sense to the unhinged rabble that they've unleashed to unsettle and frighten the rest of us - it doesn't have to "make sense" - get it?

Domage, anyone - really, could we could take the more precise concepts of libel and slander, and apply them to groups, allow "public figures" some protection against the worse of it, etc?

Obama's answer should be pretty simple-- calling someone Hitler is just shorthand for "completely and totally evil." It has nothing to do with actual policy differences, it's all perception. Also, they're nuts and get a lot of press but really aren't taken seriously by most people.

You're trying to make sure everybody has health care and they're putting a Hitler mustache on you -- I don't -- that doesn't make sense to me. Explain that to me.'"

When you have a hidden agenda you're arguments won't make sense to intelligent people. That is exactly what is happening here. The real agenda behind the arguments against healthcare reform has to do with the hording and protection of wealth among those who profit the most under the current system. They can't come out and say that, so they have to throw up a barrage of bullshit and hope it enough people either swallow it wholesale or at least plant the seeds of doubt and suspicion.

Here’s my explanation:
You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.
Some dumbass American came up with the folly that the earth is 6,000 years old, enough said? Bazillions of trilobite fossils disagree however that doesn't stop the latest rant from Fairyland Forest and the hate them/that brigade! These people are legally insane, socially acceptable sociopaths. That is the right (very wrong) wing lunacy of the US and it is protected by the Constitution.

DelCapslock, that's pretty much the deal. Also, it isn't just the "rabble" I referred to, it's the punk-intellectual hacks like Michael Ledeen of NR, referred to downblog - who also had his hands in Iran-Contra, the phony intelligence from Chalabi types, maybe the yellowcake forgery.

BTW, I don't see that Del+Capslock does anything interesting - does it?
And TGT - how did the kangaroos get back to Australia?! REM it's not just an early creation with a human race born of incest - then they have to start over again with Noah!

It's also part of accusing and having to prove yourself innocent. As Judge Land handed down the recent birther suit and referred to Alice in Wonderland logic of saying so doesn't make it so. In other words, prove it and not have the accused have to prove you wrong. It goes against justice and the legal system.

There must have been a whole bunch of trilobites when the flood buried and fossilized them so very neatly so that we could predict and eventually theorize "hmm, these must be millions of years old"! I want a website that traces my ancestry back to Noah's daughters. LOL!

Obama didn't mention the public option at all during the CBC speech:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/60451-obama-skips-public-option-push-in-cbc-address

Hard to know what to think about that...

Yeah, we need to keep pushing Obama and Dems on the PO. Meanwhile, the group at http://mensunion.org/ is an interesting semi-populist resistance group. They pick on liberalism, but I give some credit for admitting that the environment has been messed up. I hope they realize, that conservatives won't protect the environment.

The nation is making an ass of itself internationally once again.

Off thread, but in that photo of Michelle (in a white evening dress) shaking hands with someone, is she showing a bit of baby bump?

What's not to understand? They don't have ignorant, inbred, racist, religious fanatics in Europe?

There truly isn't much new here. The pamphleteers in the 1700s weren't any different than what goes on today. The opposition in the US has always, always had more than a tinge of lunacy to their opponents.
What's different today is the media. The NYT/WaPo/NBC etc etc would make one think that those European countries and the cost of their health care simply don't exist.
Read this story from the WaPO about the French health care system and see if you can find a direct cost comparison. It's as if the reporter just won't tell you that the French spend about half what the US spends on health care.

France spent about $300 billion for the health needs of its 64 million people in 2007, the last year for which reliable statistics are available, the OECD reported. That amounted to about 11 percent of gross domestic product for a system covering an estimated 99 percent of the population, well below what Americans pay for a system that leaves out tens of millions of people.

That's as close as Cody gets. He can't just say that the US spent $7,200/person while France spent about $3,600. He goes on to spend the rest of the article rambling on about increased co-pays and lowered reimbursement but direct cost comparison? Not going to happen, not around here.

NeilB,
Nah, just the best I could come up with when I was trying to think of a handle for blog posting. Got it from a character in the John Sanford Prey series. My understanding is Sanford came up with the character while trying to think of a name for the character, and staring at his keyboard.

majii: "I think the Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves if they knew how politicians and some of those in the media have so fully embraced lying..."

Jefferson and Adams were not above lying. About each other, even.

Some dumbass American came up with the folly that the earth is 6,000 years old, enough said?

Actually, Bishop James Ussher was Irish.

I want a website that traces my ancestry back to Noah's daughters. LOL! -- TGT, @17:50

Just because the Bible mentions only Noah's sons (getting drunk on the upper deck), doesn't mean that there weren't any daughters (fixin' dinner for the men and taking care of all the livestock) in the bowels of the Arc.

Some dumbass American came up with the folly that the earth is 6,000 years old, enough said? . . . Actually, Bishop James Ussher was Irish.

To be fair to Biship Ussher, as Stephen Jay Gould pointed out, he was an actual scholar acting on the best evidence available in his day. We're dealing with the deliberate ignorance of biblical literalists, a theological faction that didn't become common until the 19th Century and dangerously powerful until the 1980s.

None of the traditional Christian sects were biblical literalists. They used the bible as a source text, having in common with modern literalists that they tended to use verses as a philosophical and political club at need, as when the Italian Catholic hierarchy got mad at Galileo.

"You're trying to make sure everybody has health care and they're putting a Hitler mustache on you -- I don't -- that doesn't make sense to me. Explain that to me.'"

Langston Hughes: I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

"You're trying to make sure everybody has health care and they're putting a Hitler mustache on you -- I don't -- that doesn't make sense to me."

That's because you don't understand how projection works. You see, all you have to do is accuse your opponents of what _you_ are guilty of. You don't have to prove anything. Just make up stuff. Then the VRWC/echo chamber will repeat your lies for you and everybody will forget about your own faults and instead, focus on the lies you've spread about your opponents.

The right-wing fringe understands this completely. They are doubling down on all their crap in hopes that they can hoodwink enough voters to keep them in office.

It sucks. On the left, we hope enough reasonable people will see through the bullshit without having to resort to the same nonsense. Sometimes, we call this process, "Sausage Making" (an arcane reference to the meat-packing industry, where you don't want to see what actually goes into the product before it comes out).

We want shrubbery!

--The Media Knights who say Socialism.

majii: We are cowarde when it comes to calling out this type of behavior and in passing legislation to combat it. IMO, instead of doing what is right, we hide behind the First Amendment. I think the Founding Fathers would be rolling in their graves if they knew how politicians and some of those in the media have so fully embraced lying to replace a missing political agenda.

"Hiding behind" is another phrase meaning "respecting". The founding fathers were familiar with public policy rhetoric as extreme as what we are familiar with today -- indeed, they wrote it (anonymously sometimes) and spoke it.

One thing they understood clearly is that the government can't be trusted to decide a priori what is true and what is a "lie." Indeed, no one can be trusted. The only protections against lying are free speech and free press.

Well, I have to agree with MatthewRMarler here, but I also have to say that "news" organizations like Fox should be liable when they act as propaganda arms of political parties without openly and repeatedly making it known they are doing so.

Of course, that would defeat their usefulness, the fact that they are 'hidden' propagandists makes them useful for the VRWC string pullers.

Unfortunately, MatthewRMarler cannot, because he does not want to, see that.

US wingnuttery: for those that get it, no explanation is necessary; for those that don't get it, no explanation is possible.

Dear Steve:

Yes, American politics DOES seem strange -- and disturbing -- outside the US.

I live in Canada, the one country in the world most LIKE America, and as you know we have government-run (not government-owned or "socialised") medicine. Obviously it's not perfect, but frankly our system is WAY better for working people than what the US has, particularly these days.

Admittedly the super-rich in Canada often go to America to get faster treatment (particularly for elective surgeries if you get my drift), but the super-rich go wherever they think the fastest/best options are (like Mexico for cancer treatment and so on).

Our premiums (yes, we pay premiums, it's not “free” -- but they are modest and on a sliding scale based on income) haven't doubled in the last 10 years like the average US insurance bill. In fact, they haven't changed at all in my province.

I don't know who the leader was who asked Obama about the health care debate, but it could well have been our (Conservative) PM, Stephen Harper. He's a Republican wanna-be and even HE is not crazy enough to dare meddle with our healthcare system.

And despite the fact that about 60% of the population here don't much care for him as our PM, nobody in Canada would EVER show the level of racism and disrespect to him that the "moron class" in the US show their president. It's beyond shocking to us.

I invite our American friends to come visit Canada, and see what it's like in a land where all the hot-button issues in the US -- gay marriage, abortion, gun control, healthcare, immigration, etc -- have all been settled. I suppose it will seem dull to some, but we prefer to call it "stable." :)

The American health-care debate is at the same time extremely perplexing and hilarious viewed from that communist homo-loving dystopia call Canada. It seems dead simple. Obama campaigned on it. The Democrats have a majority in both houses. The public supports it. So WTF are the Democrats up to ? What a bunch wimps. Why do they let morons side-track them. Every industrialized nation except the US has some kind of guaranteed public health-care. Everybody is covered. Nobody goes bankrupt when they get sick. The Democrats and Obama should be pushing back hard ! This is a no-brainer.

Irony alert: Matthew R Marler discussing -- no doubt with considerable relief -- protections against lying.

Shame on you, Marler.

"It seems dead simple."

Until you come to understand that America has institutionalized bribery of politicians via corporate campaign contributions. Until that is corrected (which it never can be) we will continue to have extraordinarily out-sized influence of our political process by a small group of ultra wealthy citizens for their own narrow ends.

Could you help me. All things are difficult before they are easy. Help me! Could you help me find sites on the: Designer fashion jewelry replica wholesale. I found only this - lamborghini diablo replica for sale. There had been essential products about celebration of undoubtedly made searches over the cambrian new genes, replica. In this day disease you will help how new professional discovery is for you, replica. :cool: Thanks in advance. Audi from Iceland.