Motley Moose – Archive

According to recent reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are clear signs of a resurgence in the virulent “Patriot” movement–a broad coalition of previously autonomous and loosely related anti-government paramilitary militias, anti-tax rebels, “sovereign citizens”, and so-called Constitutionalists–thought to have reached its zenith in the 1990s.

An inverted flag is a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.

Catalyzed by shifting demographic trends toward Caucasian minorities and the fringe conspiracy theories that are increasingly disseminated by mainstream media figures like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Michael Savage, and others, the anti-government movement is growing all across the United States. Feeding this extremism are the same usual radical ideologies, radical religious beliefs, pent-up anger, and frustration that can lead to violence-from ‘lone wolf’ hate crimes to acts of mass-casualty domestic terrorism.

Our own Cheryl Kopec has already planted her (far superior) flag in the subject of President Barack Obama’s pending address to students, and the ‘controversy’ we all probably should have seen coming given the birther/bircher/deather/oligarchy contamination in our current political environment.  You know, the whole Obama iz comin’ fir yallz childern to make ’em Nazis meme.

After the jump, I’ll recount my own very personal experience with this matter.  The names and most other identifying details have been redacted or omitted to protect the innocent, and not-so-innocent alike.

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had the temerity to suggest that the CIA had lied to her in briefings regarding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques?

Was the CIA also masking the truth about the “Executive Assassination Ring” directed by former Vice President Darth Cheney, the same one Seymour Hersh talked about back in March of this year?  

“It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently,” Hersh said. “They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

“Congress has no oversight of it,” he added. “It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us.”

One theory floating around Capitol Hill seems to suggest that this is indeed the case.

As Abraham Lincoln was serving his first term in the Illinois state legistlature, Alexis de Tocqueville, the French political thinker and historian wrote:

Scarcely have you descended on the soil of America when you find yourself in the midst of a sort of tumult; a confused clamor is raised on all sides; a thousand voices come to you at the same time, each of them expressing some social needs. Around you everything moves: here, the people of one neighborhood have gathered to learn if a church ought to be built; there, they are working on the choice of a representative; farther on the deputies of a district are going to town in all haste in order to decide about some local improvements; in another place, the farmers of a village abandon their furrows to go discuss the plan of a road or a school.

Corner Detail of a Turn-of-the-Century Log Cabin Recorded by the Author in Washington State.

Lincoln was one of the many ambitious souls drawn to politics in a young nation that had founded itself on the notion that the people could and should govern themselves. Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana is generally credited with the first use of the phrase “grassroots and boots”, who said of the Progressive Party in 1912:

This party has come from the grass roots. It has grown from the soil of people’s hard necessities.

While Beveridge coined the term, it’s clear from de Tocqueville’s observations of young America that the principles of grassroots organizing, wherein individuals are actively involved at the local level, are as old as America itself. These principles are alive and well today — they played a vital role in the election of President Obama, and brought many of us (myself included) more deeply into one of the modern machinations of grassroots involvement:  Blogging.

In a move that brings Democrats another step closer to a  powerful 60 vote super-majority in the U.S. Senate (assuming Minnesota Democrat Al Franken is eventually seated), Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), the 12th-most senior member of the U.S. Senate has today announced that he is switching his party affiliation.

Clearly, this is political survival instinct at work. As a Republican, Specter is toast come 2010, and the Lieberman Independent route isn’t available to him. If Specter wants a sixth term in our nation’s most vaunted deliberative body, he had little choice but to become a Democrat. Sure, he’s grabbing onto the train before it leaves him behind, but no matter how you spin it this is very bad news for the GOP. There’s little doubt that the once brutish muscle of right wing conservatism has atrophied into a increasingly regional (and irrelevant) flap of underarm skin.

BE WARNED: If you live in red state, or otherwise have wingnuts in your vicinity, it would be wise to don a plastic poncho and make like you’re at a Gallagher show.  Many heads are certain to explode on account of the handshake and smile exchange between President Barack Obama and Venezuela’s dastardly Hugo Chavez.

Will this seismic event cause as many Scanners moments as Saudi Bow-Gate?

The 2010 census will tell us a lot about the population, economic status, industry, and geography of America, but it will not measure the sheer number of meatheads that live among us. Fortunately (or unfortunately), Nate Silver over at 538 took a look at the reported “numbers” from yesterday’s National Scrotum Dipping Festival Tea Bagging groundswell to give us a pretty good estimate.

…based on news accounts of 306 “Tea Party” protests in different cities across the country yesterday, I get a cumulative attendance of 262,025, with a fair number of (probably mostly smaller) events still unaccounted for.

If we account for children and pets (who know not what they do), we can safely assume there were around a quarter of a million idiots protesting something on April 15th, 2009.

I’m going to rant a bit:

The political party that barfed up the hairball that is Sarah Palin, helmed by Michael Keepin’ it Real Steele–or depending on the time of day–Rush Limbaugh (the talk radio equivalent of government cheese) has bought the proverbial farm. Dead. Teets up, like Colonel Sanders and Ayn Rand.

The latent racism…err…immigration reform, culture wars, senseless real wars, homophobia, greedy deregulation, trickle-down (i.e. pissing on middle class heads) economics, spreading democracy one smart bomb at a time, and other sundry GOP asshattery has brought about their inevitable (and overdue) demise. Of course, having a semi-sentient uber-douche like George W. Bush as the party’s figurehead for eight long years didn’t help much either.  Think The Godfather meets Deliverance. Nope, that movie doesn’t end well.

Perhaps the social and religious conservatives who compose the base of today’s Republican Party aren’t as out of touch as we thought. Sure, they’re wrong on the issues and are essentially clueless about what most Americans need and want, but at least they’re not out of touch with their own genitalia.  

As it turns out, folks who live in red states tend to get their digital freak on more than residents of blue states. A new study finds that Republican voters spend more time and money on online pornography. You hear that noise? It’s the sound of Republican moral authority groaning under the weight of its own hypocrisy.  

What is it with Democrats and taxes?  First it was Tim Geithner, then Nancy Killefer, and now HHS pick Tom Daschle.

Former Sen. Tom Daschle has withdrawn his nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a statement Tuesday from the White House.

Okay who’s our next choice?  Wesley Snipes?  Willie Nelson?  Come on, Democrats.  Pay your friggin’ taxes before you apply for a job with the government, okay?