"I would just say that if Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain that I would be glad to then listen to him. I’ll bet you $10, not $10,000, that he won’t take the offer," – Newt Gingrich, in response to Romney's criticism of Newt's $1.6 million in "consulting fees" from Freddie Mac.
Month: December 2011
Santorum And Sandusky
This I didn't know:
Another audience member questioned the candidate about Santorum awarding former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky with the Angels in Adoption Award. Santorum explained that he lacked knowledge of the situation at the time and noted that the award has since been withdrawn.
In response to his explanation, the audience member asked, "So we shouldn't trust Obama with our kids, but we can trust you?"
Yglesias Award Nominee
"[T]here is an almost fascistic tone to the rhetoric of some on the political right which can stretch from Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party to younger members of the governing Likud, the prime minister’s party, and also to some in its Mizrachi base, that is, those who descend from Islamic countries and poorer sectors of the population. They certainly are soft on the thugs of the settler movement who try to intimidate both Palestinian Arabs and Israeli peaceniks. And they are adept at manipulating administrative law through the bureaucracies and the courts to burden Arab life, both in Israel and the territories. There is also a certain militaristic cast to their ways. Moreover, they are sure that, if they don’t win this political battle and that, the apocalypse is just around the corner. This is the ugliest part of Israeli political life," – Marty Peretz, TNR.
Blacklisting Netanyahu’s Critics
One of the main themes of the pro-Israel lobby is that its critics hold a classically anti-Semitic notion of a "cabal" that talks to itself and polices the discourse in order to punish dissent and demonize critics. This is one of the tropes that convict you of anti-Semitism or, worse, something much darker.
And yet these are the facts of a recent Beltway contretemps that no one can dismiss. A list-serv existed that brought many Likudnik and neocon defenders of Israel's government together; and on that list-serv, the former AIPAC spokesman, Josh Block, urged a coordinated campaign to target key critics of Netanyahu as anti-Semites. As soon as this was revealed by a leaked email and a piece by Justin Elliott, the list-serv shut down.
Here are the details of the email coordinating smears against various writers mainly connected to the Center for American Progress:
Block’s email to the Freedom Community list arrived under the subject line "Important piece to echo and the research to do it…." – a reference to the Politico story. He wasted no time throwing around more accusations of anti-Semitism.
"This kind of anti-Israel sentiment is so fringe it’s support by CAP is outrageous, but at least it is out in the open now — as is their goal – clearly applauded by revolting allies like the pro-HAMAS and anti-Zionist/One State Solution advocate Ali Abunumiah and those who accuse pro-Israel Americans of having ‘dual loyalties’ or being ‘Israel-Firsters’ – to shape the minds of future generations of Democrats,” Block writes. "These are the words of anti-Semites, not Democratic political players."
The blacklist included writers such as Matt Duss, Eli Clifton, Ali Gharib, Matt Yglesias, and Media Matters’ M.J. Rosenberg. Duss responds here. Look: there's nothing wrong with making strong arguments against those with whom you disagree. But when you call them anti-Semites and when you argue that there should be a campaign to isolate, defame and get rid of them, you have gone over into the kind of bullying that is inimical to an open society. And by bullying, I mean:
I wonder if Steny Hoyer or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer or Dick Durban or James Clyburn agree with CAP? I wonder if they will say they disagree and condemn this stuff and expect better. You know how I feel – look at the below — and ask them how they feel about this discourse from CAP and Media Matters.
After you read the story, see below for more examples of CAP’s and Media Matter’s work and statements along these lines….
YOU SHOULD AMPLIFY this. And use the below to attack the bad guys.
A question: why is Journolist out of order but the Freedom Community isn't? And who was on the Freedom Community list? Who are on the list-serv being urged to smear other writers as anti-Semites and pressure the organizations that employ them? We should be aware the next time one of these smears come down the line, how and whence the campaign was started – and who coordinated it.
The View From Your Window
Wasilla, Alaska, 11.26 am
Update from a reader:
Ah, Wasilla. And a wonderful view of the Caucuses it is …
The Evangelicals’ Catholic
Newt is many things, but his hostility to secularism is one of the more recent and impassioned of his convictions. And it's this drive to found the United States on explicitly religious grounds that has won him the support of so many Christianists. The checkered marital past is not as important as Gingrich's new faith, and his new faith is less important than his defense of "Judeo-Christianity" in both America and around the world. There's been some internal debate among evangelicals over whether to forgive Newt his past – and the consensus seems to be yes. Note why:
On the same e-mail chain, which CNN obtained from a conservative activist, prominent Atlanta preacher Richard Lee said the nation’s evangelicals needed to support Gingrich. Lee called Gingrich “the only forceful Christian candidate who can at this point be elected and cleanse the White House next November.”
Don't you love that word "cleanse"? The current president is a devoted family man, devoid of any personal scandal, and a committed Christian, as his speeches and books testify to. And this must be "cleansed"? The reason is that Obama represents a more liberal and live-and-let-live version of Christianity, and believes in the separation of church and state. That's what needs to be cleansed (assuming we are not talking bald-faced racism here).
What Newt represents is the tip of the spear of the Christianist attempt to wipe separation of church and state out of the constitution. And in this struggle, the denominational differences do not count as much as the secular enemy. Gingrich is also not an old-style Catholic – in the Kennedy or Cuomo or Biden manner. He is an ideological Benedict XVI Catholic, bent on public and political Christianity as a means of saving what's left of civilization after the great Electro-Magnetic Pulse.
The main danger here is not, to my mind, domestic. The real danger is what Gingrich would do in the wider world. With Bolton as his secretary of state, gripped of the conviction that we should launch two more pre-emptive wars against North Korea and Iran, paranoid of existential threats to an extent that would out-Cheney Cheney, determined to fuse America's foreign policy with Israel's in a religious war between Judeo-Christian fundamentalists and Jihadists … it would be hard to come up with a more alarming prospect than Newt with a capacity to wage war, under the unilateral parameters set up by George W. Bush and tragically reasserted and legitimized by Obama in Libya. There is not a global conflict Gingrich would not further inflame; not a diplomatic relationship he wouldn't occasionally blow up (apart from Israel, which would effectively be seen as indistinguishable from the United States itself).
Every day, it seems, the tectonic plates of our world shift. And what I see in Gingrich is the relentless rise of fundamentalism as the overwhelming threat to liberal democracy and world peace.
Hathos Alert
A new conspiracy theory within a conspiracy theory springs from the talk-radio right:
Donald Trump has fallen so far that on Friday Rush Limbaugh discussed the idea, brought by a caller, that the reality star and momentary Republican kingmaker is actually President Obama's "Trojan horse."
Kevin from Houston — who implied he was a birther, no less — said, "I mean, if you look at how the birth certificate issue went and all that it just seemed like it was just too (sigh) orchestrated, the way it all came out. All of a sudden, it just disappeared. We get the phony birth certificate…" Limbaugh cut in to explain that several strangers have approached him to float the Trojan theory, saying, "there is a lot of suspicion about this. I've had the term Trojan horse used to me twice this week by people who are doubtful. The thing that set 'em both off was what Trump says, 'If I don't like the nominee, I'm running third party,' 'cause everybody knows third party guarantees Obama. Everybody."
From savior to traitor in mere months.
Newt Gingrich Is A Dumb Person’s Idea Of A Smart Person
Stephen Budiansky spells it out:
I have been perplexed for some time why Newt Gingrich is routinely acknowledged even by his bitter enemies within the Republican Party as a "genius," but the answer turns out is simple: he acts exactly like one of those obnoxious elitist intellectual know-it-alls that the right-wing no-nothings think is the hallmark of an intellectual. He is constantly reminding us of his doctorate in history; he routinely claims he understands issues more deeply than anyone else; he has made a career of denouncing or (when he had the authority) eliminating professional expertise that might challenge his own certain pronouncements; and he is a veritable fount of crackpot "big" ideas (mining minerals on the moon, protecting the United States from sci-fi doomsday scenarios, and "fundamentally transforming" everything as a first step to doing anything.
The Youngest Prisoner At Gitmo
At 15 years old, Mohammed el Gorani was picked up in Pakistan shortly after 9/11:
One Friday, at the beginning of the sermon, we saw a lot of soldiers surrounding the mosque. After the prayers, they started questioning the people. They were looking for Arabs. They asked me: ‘Saudi?’ ‘No, Chadian.’ ‘Don’t lie, you’re Saudi!’ It must have been because of my accent. They put me on a truck and covered my head with a plastic bag. They took me to a prison, and they started questioning me about al-Qaida and the Talibans. I had never heard those words. ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘Listen, Americans are going to interrogate you. Just say you’re from al-Qaida, you went with al-Qaida in Afghanistan, and they’ll send you home with some money.’ ‘Why would I lie?’ They hung me by my arms and beat me.
Two white Americans, in their forties, arrived. They were wearing normal clothes. They asked: ‘Where is Osama bin Laden?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘You’re fucking with us? You’re al-Qaida, yes!’ They kept using the F-word.
I didn’t understand this word but I knew they were getting angry. A Pakistani was in the room, behind the Americans. When they asked if I was from al-Qaida, he nodded, to tell me to say yes. I wasn’t doing it, so he got mad. The Americans said: ‘Take him back!’ The Pakistani was furious: ‘They’re looking for al-Qaida, you have to say you’re al-Qaida!’ Then they put the electrodes on my toes. For ten days I had them on my feet. Every day there was torture.
He was finally released in 2009. David Cole explains why Gitmo will probably never close:
For nearly ten years now, Guantanamo Bay’s military prison has been an international symbol of United States lawlessness and a recruiting boon for al-Qaeda. If Congress gets its way the facility will stay that way for the indefinite future. Both houses of Congress have now approved versions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a bill that would require the use of military detention and military courts for suspected terrorists and make it virtually impossible to close Guantanamo.
Facebook’s File On You
Earlier this year, Max Schrems, a 24-year-old Austrian law student, asked Facebook for all the information they had on him. Due to European law, they had to give it up:
Accordingly, Max received a CD containing about 1,222 pages (PDF files), including chats he had deleted more than a year ago, "pokes" dating back to 2008, invitations, and hundreds of other details. Berlin-based newspaper taz.de decided to visualize [taz.de] different aspects of this data: the magnitude of the 1,222 unique pages, the exact times Max logged in and wrote messages, the times of day messages he sent or received, Max's friend network, the locations of the pictures he took in Vienna, and the most popular tags of Max's messages.
Directions for how to get your own CD made its way to Reddit and readers have flooded Facebook with requests. Alicia Eler explains what became of Schrems' mission:
The European Commission is cracking down on the way Facebook gathers information about European users. A new EC Directive will ban targeted advertising unless users specifically say they want it. This is great news for European Facebook users…. The real question is: Why isn't this happening in America? All 800 million Facebook users agree to let the company use their personal information.
The Dish 
