At
Mother Jones, Tim Murphy tells the tale of a recent Republican caucus meeting
at the Georgia state Capitol:
On October 11th at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the [Georgia senate] majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event—captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes)—had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a non-binding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. […]
[The meeting] was emceed by Field Searcy, a local conservative activist who was forced out of the Georgia Tea Party in April due to his endorsement of conspiracy theories about the president's birth certificate and the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7. The presentation also featured a special video cameo from conservative talking-head Dick Morris in which the former Clinton aide warns that Obama "wants to force everyone into the cities from whence our ancestors fled."
About 23 minutes into the briefing, Searcy explained how President Obama, aided by liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress and business groups like local chambers of commerce, are secretly using mind-control techniques to push their plan for forcible relocation on the gullible public […]
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Chip Rogers introduced his own anti-"Agenda 21" legislation, cribbed from John Birch Society documents, earlier this year. Because yes, the Republican Party has gone completely insane.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—David Brooks: Apologist for Racism:
Last Friday, David Brooks wrote that it was a "slur" to say that Ronald Reagan's 1980 Philadelphia, Mississippi, campaign speech about "states rights" was a piece of unbridled racism. Reagan, according to Brooks, was possibly insensitive, but not exploiting racism, and the people who say he was are wicked and naughty and overly partisan:
But still the slur spreads. It’s spread by people who, before making one of the most heinous charges imaginable, couldn’t even take 10 minutes to look at the evidence. It posits that there was a master conspiracy to play on the alleged Klan-like prejudices of American voters, when there is no evidence of that conspiracy. And, of course, in a partisan age there are always people eager to believe this stuff.
For this, Brooks has received a number of significant beat-downs from bloggers, which is nothing new for him. Then the Carpetbagger Report highlighted a response by Paul Krugman on his Times blog. It didn't name Brooks, of course, but it was unmistakable. |
Tweet of the Day:
Has anyone asked @LukeRussert whether he has thought of stepping aside to make way for someone who actually earned the job?
— @emptywheel via TweetDeck
On today's
Kagro in the Morning show: Petraeus? Still in the news. And have you noticed the similarities between Jill Kelley and those Salahi wackos? Just wanted to throw that out there! Anyway,
Greg Dworkin dropped in to put us on an even keel and talk more post-election analysis. Then it was the steep climb over the mountain to understanding the stakes and procedure in the upcoming Senate rules reform fight. Part 1 of our deep dive (to mix the metaphors), with the exciting cliffhanger conclusion... tomorrow!
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