alternative hippopotamus

Instapundit has taken to polling his readers on various issues of the day. Currently, he’s polling on the question:

How will the midterm elections turn out?

• Republicans keep both houses
• Democrats win one house, Republicans keep the other
• Democrats win both houses

Imagine my surprise when I saw that 60% of the Instie community believes that the Republicans will keep both houses. That’s up from 57% last week.

That suggests to me his readers are either:

• Uninformed. They’d like to believe that the rest of the country are jihadist Republicans like themselves. If that brain cloud ever parted they’d melt down quicker than Lynne Cheney on CNN.
• Informed. They have access to Karl Rove’s secret polls that show a Republican landslide. Curiously, the same polls show that a majority want to make Rush Limbaugh our next UN ambassador.
• Delusional. A steady diet of kool aid causes them to bark like mad dogs at their television sets.

A few of us went to see “Jesus Camp” last night. The characters in the documentary walk the line between absurdity and insanity- not the good kind of insanity, like in Robin Williams’ best bits, but the kind of insanity that produces a Waco, Texas or Jonestown. The kind of insanity produced by twisted minds, focused on power, and sure that they’re in the right.

One of the inmates of the asylum, the inmate that happens to be running the asylum, is Ted Haggard. KCinDC had forwarded a link to a Harper’s magazine article that’s worth a read. An excerpt: (Harper’s)

Free-market economics is a “truth” Ted says he learned in his first job in professional Christendom, as a Bible smuggler in Eastern Europe. Globalization, he believes, is merely a vehicle for the spread of Christianity. He means Protestantism in particular; Catholics, he said, “constantly look back.” He went on: “And the nations dominated by Catholicism look back. They don’t tend to create our greatest entrepreneurs, inventors, research and development. Typically, Catholic nations aren’t shooting people into space. Protestantism, though, always looks to the future. A typical kid raised in Protestantism dreams about the future. A typical kid raised in Catholicism values and relishes the past, the saints, the history. That is one of the changes that is happening in America. In America the descendants of the Protestants, the Puritan descendants, we want to create a better future, and our speakers say that sort of thing. But with the influx of people from Mexico, they don’t tend to be the ones that go to universities and become our research-and-development people. And so in that way I see a little clash of civilizations.”

So the Catholics are out, and the battle boils down to evangelicals versus Islam. “My fear,” he says, “is that my children will grow up in an Islamic state.”

And that is why he believes spiritual war requires a virile, worldly counterpart. “I teach a strong ideology of the use of power,” he says, “of military might, as a public service.” He is for preemptive war, because he believes the Bible’s exhortations against sin set for us a preemptive paradigm, and he is for ferocious war, because “the Bible’s bloody. There’s a lot about blood.”

Pastor Ted regularly advises President Bush, just so you know.

I was getting my regular Sideshow fix, when I ran across this bloggingheads debate between Bill Scher and Jonah Goldberg. It’s worth looking at for a few reasons: 1.) it’s a clever use of video with links provided alongside the video itself. 2.) Jonah has had media training. He does a number of things that folks on the left need to pick up on, such as lighting himself in a favorable way, body language that suggests he’s listening, and using simple debating points. 3.) While I object to Jonah’s use of hot-button phrases that caricature actual liberal positions, Bill should have been able to point these out. Actually, it seemed to me like he was starting to point them out, but then backed off, I’m guessing because he didn’t want to appear like he was making personal attacks.

I have a problem. I’d like to be able to boycott the networks that refuse to air the ad for “Shut Up and Sing”, but I don’t see how I can watch the networks less than I already do. Now that I think about it, the audience demographic for an anti-administration documentary probably doesn’t spend much time on NBC, CBS, or ABC to begin with.

To badly paraphrase a line from the 1960’s: what if they gave a boycott, but nobody was planning to be there in the first place?

Anyway, I found the ad entertaining, and I for one plan to run their ad on my humble soap box.

There’s a serious aspect to this, which is what Glenn Greenwald is getting into here. As he puts it:

The very idea that it is in the “public interest” to prohibit ads that criticize the Leader is ludicrous on its face. The President is constantly given free airtime to argue his views and propagandize on virtually every issue, and the networks endlessly offer forums for his followers and surrogates to defend him.

Part of our democratic machinery are common spaces such as the public airwaves. At the point where they cease to serve the public, but instead serve the Republican party, they begin to erode our society. They should not be allowed to profit from that action.

As you may know, recently gathered with right-wing journalists and pundits to discuss the Iraq War. Here are some excerpts: (from E&P)

• “If we leave, they will follow us here.”
• “I believe when you get attacked and somebody declares war on you, you fight back. And that’s what we’re doing.”
• “And I’m trying to figure out a matrix that says things are getting better. I think that one way to measure is less violence than before, I guess. We’ll have to see what happens here after Ramadan. I believe these people — oh, I was going to tell you Abizaid believes Ramadan, no question, caused them to be more violent because he says there’s some kind of reward during Ramadan for violence.”
• “We will press and press and press to protect ourselves. And this stuff about how Iraq is causing the enemy — whatever excuse they need, they have made up their mind to attack, and they grab on to things to kind of justify. But if it’s not Iraq, it’s Israel. If it’s not Israel, it’s the Crusades. If it’s not the Crusades, it is the cartoon. I’m not kidding you. I’m not kidding you.”

There’s also this from White House Briefing. Bush on the upcoming elections, the war, and the struggle between good and evil:

• “It’s not over. We’ve got the issues on our side. Protecting this country is the number-one issue. And you talk to — admittedly, my focus groups are not broad, but people always say to me, thank you for protecting us. I view this as a struggle of good versus evil, by the way. I don’t think religious people murder. I think people are misusing religion to justify their murder. And a lot of Americans understand it that way. Maybe it’s not nuanced enough for some of the thinkers and all that stuff — that’s fine. But that’s exactly what a lot of people like me think. And my job is to make it clear to the American people the stakes, and to spell it out as plainly as I can. And a lot of people understand it.”

You know, when he says “people are misusing religion to justify their murder,” he’s got me.

The vociferous youngsters at NRO seem to be in a pickle. While they don’t want to support the public prosecution of Parkinson victims, they don’t want to support Michael Fox’s pro-stem cell views, either.

This has always been a dicey area in theocratic-Republican circles. They may well know someone who is suffering from Parksinson’s and other diseases that would benefit from stem cell research. But, like a B Science Fiction movie from the 1950’s, they believe that without their supervision, Science will go too far. They truly believe that they posess that piece of objective knowledge that allows them to discern when God’s law is being violated, and human intervention is needed.

Which is why they’re mostly comfortable that “Fake Jesus” (the actor who starred in The Passion of the Christ) is doing an anti-stem cell commercial. As the moral authorities they approve “Fake Jesus” because his views correspond with WWJD, while “Not Fake Michael Fox” should STFU.

As far as using Fake Jesus to advocate for a candidate, why not? I’ve even written my own Political Jesus commercial:

Hi! I’m Jesus. Over 2 thousand years ago I started a religion based on the principle of treating others like yourself. I confounded the scribes and pharisees of my time with a message that the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who thirst after righteousness are blessed. I turned water into wine, fed the masses with 3 loaves of bead, and brought a dead man back to life. Now, I sit at the right hand of the Father, where I judge the quick and the dead.

My name is Jesus, and I approve this message.

The recent episode of Rush Limbaugh dissing Michael Fox really pissed me off. I like the way Josh Marshall put it:

Some days I really have to sit back and marvel at the moral chokehold the big right wing media players have over the mainstream media. Take the Limbaugh episode.

This character goes on the radio and cracks jokes about a man suffering from Parkinsons disease. Says he’s faking his symptoms. Playing for the camera. It’s right up there with your better jokes about, say, breast cancer or other knee-slappers like pediatric oncology.

Who is Rush Limbaugh to judge? Is he some paragon of virtue that we should be quoting him in the press?

What if my brother Scott, wanted to go on record about how Downe’s Syndrome has affected his life? Would Rush Limbaugh want to weigh in on what medications he’s taken?

With Rush, haven’t we reached past the point where, at long last, he feels no shame?

Teh Norbot:

Can you promise, then, that when Democrats, if they re-take the House of Representatives and the Senate, will not issue tens or hundreds of subpoenas to the White House when it comes to Katrina, Iraq, and a number of issues and essentially make the president’s final two years in office a living hell, if you will, and mean that nothing gets done in Washington.

When you investigate, say a suspect in a criminal investigation, it might well make the suspect’s life hell. I’ve seen enough episodes of Columbo to suggest that may be the case. But, you know, too bad. Or, as someone I know once put it: “boo freaking hoo.”

There’s some very good reasons to believe that there were both serious breaches of the public trust, and coverups for malfeasance. The only way to find out for sure is to investigate the bad guys. Alright, alleged bad guys.

The right-wing jihadists have a noisier version.

Hannity:

I want you to stay home on Election Day because you must accept the fact that your party has abandoned you. You’ve gotta accept the fact that your vote doesn’t matter anyway. So all you Democrats, stay home. So, you know, why don’t you stay home on Election Day? This is how the press is going to report this: “Hannity says Democrats should stay home on Election Day.” After all, your vote won’t change who occupies the White House. Your candidates have absolutely no ideas how to win the war on terrorism. The only ideas that they espouse are ways to undermine the troops in harm’s way and undermine their commander in chief while they’re at war.

Cheney:

And when you see the kinds of things that happened this year, for example, when the Democratic Party in Connecticut purged Joe Lieberman, in effect, drummed him out of the party on the grounds that he had supported the President in the global war on terror, that sends a message to the terrorists overseas that their basic strategy of trying to break the will of the American people may, in fact, work.

From Media Matters:

CROWLEY: Every since the tumultuous early ’70s when the Democrats got tagged as the party of acid, amnesty, and abortion, they have been on the losing side of the values debate, the defense debate, and, oh yes, the guns debate. Al Gore and John Kerry lost every Southern state and most of the mid- and interior West.

If you don’t recognize the “acid, amnesty, and abortion” bit that’s a line Scoop Jackson used to tar McGovern in 1972. It’s not my favorite negative slogan by any means. I spent a little time with “the google” and came up with these slogans describing Republicans. I think you’ll find they’re a bit more clever than Crowley’s example.

• “Bozo and the Pineapple” (Ford/Dole 1976)
• “In Your Guts, You Know He’s Nuts” (Goldwater 1964)
• “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (Bush 2004)

Also, the bit about being on the losing side of the values, defense, and guns debate is just a hack job.

This is what they call “journalism”? I really believe I could randomly pick a person off the street, and they could do a better job than CNN’s senior political analysist.

Update: I see that Glenn Greenwald is pursuing the same topic. Not Candy and her Catapult per se, but the more general issue of how so-called political analysts continue to “report” on how Democrats are outside of the mainstream, often with the thinnest anecdotal “evidence.”

He also mentions a very amusing poll conducted by Instapundit. Reynolds asks his readers who “should” win the House and the Senate. Unsurprisingly, his readers say that Republicans “should” maintain control of both houses:

Republicans keep both houses - 78%
Republicans lose one house - 14%
Democrats take both houses - 8 %

That margin indicates an audience well outside of the mainstream.

Which makes me wonder: when is Candy Crowley going to do a segment on how Instapundit, one of the most popular political blogs, attracts the fringes of the rightwing?

Sometimes the simplest questions are the best: (DemocracyNow!)

AMY GOODMAN: Why is it called “extraordinary rendition”?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, it’s extraordinary because of the way that it was transformed from a program that brought people back to justice in the United States to a public trial before a judge and jury to a program that took people to places where they wouldn’t face such justice. So, rendition itself has been around for a long time, in fact since the 1880s, and has always been about, you know, snatching people where you wanted in the world. It’s been legal in U.S. law — and not perhaps in other countries — but in the 1990s they started using it to send people to other countries. So it actually started under President Clinton.

But the difference that occurred after September 11th was that it greatly expanded, but also it was used after that period to send people to places where there weren’t even any charges against them. It was used to take people off the streets that were considered a threat and were sent to countries where they had no connection at all. I mean, Maher Arar, as you know, was a Canadian citizen, was sent to Syria. We’ve got an Egyptian citizen sent to Libya. We’ve got Ethiopian citizens sent to Morocco, really showing how it was used as a method of outsourcing of interrogation, not simply just to imprison people somewhere else.

I remember a time, just a couple of years ago, when if I said I was outraged by this, I would have been in the fringe left. Would you believe that less than two years ago after Kerry conceded the 2004 vote people posted comments on this blog to the effect that America doesn’t share my values? I’m aware that those who commented on my “values” really meant specifics relating to their own byzantine interpretations of the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, but still, there was a conventional wisdom that the coalition of Fundies, Freepers, and Neocons that made up the Bush base represented Freedom. And, if I disagreed with say, pulling people off the street and taking them to countries so they could be waterboarded, then I hated freedom.

I’m glad to say that some of what E. J. Dionne calls the radical center managed to escape from Planet Bush.