Don't Worry, Tea Partiers, Frank Rich Is Looking Out For You

I imagine his motivation here is to have you so disillusioned you either stay home Tuesday or vote for the corrupt party in power. He obviously hasn't the slightest clue that the grassroots demanding real change in Washington will vote Republicans out of office faster than they will Democrats. Rich obviously missed the primaries this year.

Don't worry about the enemy, Frank, they know how to handle their business. If they don't get what they want they'll be planning for 2012 fast enough.

Nice try, though.

Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and Wall Street Journal have been arduous in promoting and inflating Tea Party events and celebrities to this propagandistic end. The more the Tea Party looks as if it’s calling the shots in the G.O.P., the easier it is to distract attention from those who are actually calling them — namely, those who’ve cashed in and cashed out as ordinary Americans lost their jobs, homes and 401(k)’s. Typical of this smokescreen is a new book titled “Mad as Hell,” published this fall by a Murdoch imprint. In it, the pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen make the case, as they recently put it in Politico, that the Tea Party is “the most powerful and potent force in America.”

They are expert at producing poll numbers to bear that out. By counting those with friends and family in the movement, Rasmussen has calculated that 29 percent of Americans are “tied to” the Tea Party. (If you factor in six degrees of Kevin Bacon, the number would surely double.) But cooler empirical data reveal the truth known by the G.O.P. establishment: An August CNN poll found that 2 percent of Americans consider themselves active members of the Tea Party.

That result was confirmed last weekend by The Washington Post, which published the fruits of its months-long effort to contact every Tea Party group in the country. To this end, it enlisted the help of Tea Party Patriots, the only Tea Party umbrella group that actually can claim to be a spontaneous, bottom-up, grass roots organization rather than a front for the same old fat cats of the Republican right, from the Koch brothers to Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. Tea Party Patriots has claimed anywhere from 2,300 to nearly 3,000 local affiliates, but even with its assistance, The Post could verify a total of only 647 Tea Party groups nationwide. Most had fewer than 50 members. The median amount of money each group had raised in 2010 was $800, nowhere near the entry fee for the country club.

But those Americans, like all the others on the short end of the 2008 crash, have reason to be mad as hell. And their numbers will surely grow once the Republican establishment’s panacea of tax cuts proves as ineffectual at creating jobs, saving homes and cutting deficits as the half-measures of the Obama White House and the Democratic Congress. The tempest, however, will not be contained within the tiny Tea Party but will instead overrun the Republican Party itself, where Palin, with Murdoch and Beck at her back, waits in the wings to “take back America” not just from Obama but from the G.O.P. country club elites now mocking her. By then — after another two years of political gridlock and economic sclerosis — the equally disillusioned right and left may have a showdown that makes this election year look as benign as Woodstock.

If the Tea partiers are such a tiny fraction of the public, why is Rich and his cohorts so obsessed with them? Oh, and Frank, don't forget to bring an umbrella with your Tuesday. A tsunami's coming.

Frank Rich Loses Me at Kristallnacht

I'm beginning to think Frank Rich does does this stuff for laughs. I mean, seriously, to invoke Kristallnacht to describe opponents of ObamaCare? Can you get any more obtuse? Does he even have the slightest remembrance of the Bush years and the countless times he was likened to Hitler?

THERE were times when last Sunday’s great G.O.P. health care implosion threatened to bring the thrill back to reality television. On ABC’s “This Week,” a frothing and filibustering Karl Rove all but lost it in a debate with the Obama strategist David Plouffe. A few hours later, the perennially copper-faced Republican leader John Boehner revved up his “Hell no, you can’t!” incantation in the House chamber — instant fodder for a new viral video remixing his rap with will.i.am’s “Yes, we can!” classic from the campaign. Boehner, having previously likened the health care bill to Armageddon, was now so apoplectic you had to wonder if he had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons.

But the laughs evaporated soon enough. There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. And as the week dragged on, and reports of death threats and vandalism stretched from Arizona to Kansas to upstate New York, the F.B.I. and the local police had to get into the act to protect members of Congress and their families.

How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht. The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at Congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.

Let's not remind Rich not a single arrest has been made related to any of these alleged incidents. Going so far as to invoke a pogrom against Jews is beyond intellectual dishonesty. Never mind the facts there still not the slightest shred of evidence any "goons" hurled "venomous slurs" at Lewis or Barney Frank. If there was it's would have been plastered across the media 24/7 the past week.

Beyond the odious Kristallnacht reference, it actually gets worse, if you can stomach it.

Mr. Rich, have you no decency? Or better yet, having seen a week's worth of this pants-wetting hysteria from your media comrades, have you not the slightest ability to be original?

Frank Rich: John McCain the Leader of the 'Unpatriotic Opposition'

I'm sure Senator McCain will be thrilled to find out he's now unpatriotic for opposing Barack Obama.

The New York Times actually pays Frank Rich for this garbage?

If Reid can serve as the face of Democratic fecklessness in the Senate, then John McCain epitomizes the unpatriotic opposition.

These people scratch their pointy heads and wonder why nobody is paying attention to them.

Pathetic: Axelrod Claims Obama 'Saved' Two Million Jobs

They cannot possibly be this obtuse, can they?

President Barack Obama's chief political adviser says the president will focus on job-creating plans in his State of the Union address Wednesday night.

Strategist David Axelrod says the White House takes only "cold comfort" from the fact that the president's stimulus program saved about 2 million jobs — given the millions lost in the deepest economic downturn in decades.

So millions of jobs have been lost, yet Obama somehow magically "saved" two million? There's no evidence to support such an assertion and it's a glaring sign this administration refuses to deal with the reality that their economic policy is a mess, the stimulus hasn't worked, unemployment continues to rise, Obama's approval rating continues to plummet and they show no visible signs of getting the message.

It's as if they're taking advice from Frank Rich, who deludes himself into believing how He Who Walks on Water has nothing to do with the Massachusetts debacle.

It was not a referendum on Barack Obama, who in every poll remains one of the most popular politicians in America. It was not a rejection of universal health care, which Massachusetts mandated (with Scott Brown’s State Senate vote) in 2006. It was not a harbinger of a resurgent G.O.P., whose numbers remain in the toilet. Brown had the good sense not to identify himself as a Republican in either his campaign advertising or his victory speech.

In one paragraph Rich proves he's surely cut out for a job as a White House flack or, failing that, we may have found Ellie Light.

Memo to Rich: When 24% of the public strongly approves of the job you're doing, you're no longer very popular. Rich, naturally, fails to link to "every poll" where Obama remains so awesomely awesome. As for his assertion that GOP numbers are in the toilet, how does one explain their eight-point lead on the generic Congressional ballot? I suppose of the GOP numbers are in the toilet, then the Democrat number are already in the septic tank. For God's sake, Obama is already losing a matchup with Mike Huckabee, a 2008 GOP also-ran. Internally, the Democrats have to realize following Obama down the path of economic doom cannot auger well come November. And they can't possible be so naive as to take anything Frank Rich says seriously.

Can they?

It remains to be seen whether Obama is going to follow Rich’s advice, and more important, whether anyone on the ballot in 2010 will be dim enough to do so as well. Republicans can dream that Democrats will plunge over the political cliff, but they shouldn’t count on it. Unlike New York Times columnists, members of Congress get out now and then, read local press, and pay attention to polls. Their future depends on it. And when they do, they might realize that the problem is not too little leftism, but too much, and not too little political demagoguery, but too much.

Update: The idiocy actually gets worse.

White House advisers appearing on the Sunday talk shows gave three different estimates of how many jobs could be credited to President Obama’s Recovery Act.

The discrepancy was pointed out by a Republican official in an email to reporters noting that “Three presidential advisers on three different programs [gave] three different descriptions of the trillion-dollar stimulus bill.”

Valerie Jarrett had the most conservative count, saying “the Recovery Act saved thousands and thousands of jobs,” while David Axelrod gave the bill the most credit, saying it has “created more than – or saved more than 2 million jobs.” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs came in between them, saying the plan had “saved or created 1.5 million jobs.”

Via Hot Air.

'Friends of Blago' Goes Live, Seeks to Bring 'Change' to Illinois

You knew this was coming before long. And now it's live.

The Illinois Republican Party launched a new Web site that it says will link 12 different state Democrats to scandal-ridden Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The site, Friendsofblago.com, is the latest incarnation of the state party's hopes of turning President-elect Barack Obama's Senate seat over to the GOP.

It comes on the scene just days after the governor's arrest on charges that he'd tried to sell Obama's vacant seat to the highest bidder. And it even adopts Obama's signature mantle, urging visitors to "Join the fight - Bring change to Illinois."

Prior to the arrest, the seat had been certain to remain Democratic since the governor has sole discretion to appoint the new senator.

Now, though, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is calling on Blagojevich to resign or be ousted, and the may be filled by a special election, giving Republicans a chance to win just their second senate seat in the state in 38 years.

"Blagojevich Democrats are all part of the same tainted Web in Illinois," a banner on the site reads.

The state GOP drives this point home with a spider web image that features a picture of Blagojevich in the middle.

Currently, though, the web with strands connecting 12 postage-stamp sized squares to the embattled governor, links Blagojevich to only one other Democrat, Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. The other slots contain a question mark, and the words, "WHO'S NEXT?"

It'll be over a week before visitors to the site find out.

The state GOP says it will "unveil a new Democrat and their Blagojevich connection each day to remind voters that Blagojevich Democrats should not be choosing our next U.S. Senator."

Meanwhile, now that people are finally waking up to the reality Illinois is steeped in corruption, it's drawing comparisons with Louisiana.

David Merriman, a professor at the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said that while the Blagojevich scandal is "definitely a black mark," it could spark reform that eventually could help Illinois' economic prospects.

"If I was a company thinking long term about Illinois, I would think, 'This is the kind of shock and publicity that means Illinois will really get it together to clean up in the long run,' " Merriman said.

I have to laugh at this reform talk. You only hear that when they're exposed. Sure, let's reform! But how can you have any reform when you have a corrupt one-party machine dominating the state. It can't happen and won't happen. It's laughable.

Delusional NY Times columnist Frank Rich takes the opportunity today to claim the non-crimes of Scooter Libby were far worse that those of Rod Blagojevich.

Really, he does. He also somehow works Enron in to the mix, although their crimes pale in comparison with those of Bernard Madoff, prominent Democrat contributor. Funny how nobody has put two and two together. Well, except me.

In the chuckle of the day, I heard a report on Fox News this morning suggesting Barack Obama may do a speech on corruption. Funny how he never had the urge to do one before this. He always waits for embarrassing associations to pop up, then thinks he can dazzle the adoring masses with his soaring rhetoric interspersed with an endless series of uhhhs and ummms. He figures it bamboozled enough people with his race speech after the ugly Jeremiah Wright tapes surfaced, so let's try it again.

Sorry. The illusion of a man above the fray has been shattered, perhaps permanently.

At this point, Obama may simply want to avoid contracting feditis.

Frank Rich Gets Hysterical Over Palin

The logical conclusion of a big lie gone viral.

What makes them different, and what has pumped up the Weimar-like rage at McCain-Palin rallies, is the violent escalation in rhetoric, especially (though not exclusively) by Palin. Obama “launched his political career in the living room of a domestic terrorist.” He is “palling around with terrorists” (note the plural noun). Obama is “not a man who sees America the way you and I see America.” Wielding a wildly out-of-context Obama quote, Palin slurs him as an enemy of American troops.

By the time McCain asks the crowd “Who is the real Barack Obama?” it’s no surprise that someone cries out “Terrorist!” The rhetorical conflation of Obama with terrorism is complete. It is stoked further by the repeated invocation of Obama’s middle name by surrogates introducing McCain and Palin at these rallies. This sleight of hand at once synchronizes with the poisonous Obama-is-a-Muslim e-mail blasts and shifts the brand of terrorism from Ayers’s Vietnam-era variety to the radical Islamic threats of today.

That’s a far cry from simply accusing Obama of being a guilty-by-association radical leftist. Obama is being branded as a potential killer and an accessory to past attempts at murder. “Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family” was how a McCain press release last week packaged the remembrance of a Weather Underground incident from 1970 — when Obama was 8.

We all know what punishment fits the crime of murder, or even potential murder, if the security of post-9/11 America is at stake. We all know how self-appointed “patriotic” martyrs always justify taking the law into their own hands.

Obama can hardly be held accountable for Ayers’s behavior 40 years ago, but at least McCain and Palin can try to take some responsibility for the behavior of their own supporters in 2008. What’s troubling here is not only the candidates’ loose inflammatory talk but also their refusal to step in promptly and strongly when someone responds to it with bloodthirsty threats in a crowded arena.

The theater critic continues to wet his pants. Read on if you need some laughs.

Speaking of laughs, his counterpart, the lush Maureen Dowd, also weighs in with her unique brand of wisdom, in pig Latin. Good grief.

Fisking Frank Rich

Mark Finkelstein shreds the resident clown and washed-up theater critic from the Old Grey Hag.

Rich begins by mocking the the "collection of sallow-faced old Beltway pols" who flanked McCain during his victory speech on the night of the Potomac Primaries. Adding insult to injury, Rich replays Letterman's line about the GOP presidential hopefuls looking like “guys waiting to tee off at a restricted country club.”

Of course Rich doesn't offer any evidence that any of the candidates do in fact belong to restricted clubs. Rich would nevertheless invite readers to engage in the worst kind of stereotyping based on age and race. Imagine the outcry if a conservative columnist did the same about a group Rich might favor, say older black women. And if older white guys are so irrelevant and unappealing, shouldn't Rich himself have the grace to step aside? After all, he is a person of pallor who next year will begin his seventh decade on earth.

Read the whole thing.

Giuliani Derangement Syndrome

Frank Rich has been diagnosed.

Today's installment of Rich silliness stars Judith Regan as Linda Tripp.

Seriously.

When we last visited the former theather critic, he was on a bizarre rant about the GOP candidates running for dictator. Today he thinks he's found the magic bullet to slay the evil Rudy Giuliani.

Good luck with that.

NEW Yorkers who remember Rudy Giuliani as the bullying New York mayor, not as the terminally cheerful “America’s Mayor” cooing to babies in New Hampshire, have always banked on one certainty: his presidential candidacy was so preposterous it would implode before he got anywhere near the White House.

Surely, we reassured ourselves, the all-powerful Republican values enforcers were so highly principled that they would excommunicate him because of his liberal social views, three wives and estranged children. Or a firewall would be erected by the firefighters who are enraged by his self-aggrandizing rewrite of 9/11 history. Or Judith Giuliani, with her long-hidden first marriage and Louis Vuitton ’tude, would send red-state voters screaming into the night.

Wrong, wrong and wrong. But how quickly and stupidly we forgot about the other Judith in the Rudy orbit. That would be Judith Regan, who disappeared last December after she was unceremoniously fired from Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house, HarperCollins. Last week Ms. Regan came roaring back into the fray, a silver bullet aimed squarely at the heart of the Giuliani campaign.

Read the whole thing.

H/T: Ed.

NY Times Pinhead: GOP Candidates Running for Dictator

An even more hysterical column that usual for New York Times theater-critic turned political analyst Frank Rich.

We've spent seven years hearing from the left how incredibly stupid George W. Bush is, yet he amazingly has managed to turn the United States into a dictatorship while we were all sleeping.

Even more distressing to Rich, now Democrat Senators Charles Schumer and Dianne Feinstein are aiding and abetting Chimpy McHitlerburton as he turns America into a police state where people are waterboarded on every street corner.

The corruption is now so ingrained, the current GOP candidates are just running for President, they aspire to be the next dictator.

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York’s term-limits law.

Where do you even begin with such paranoid lunacy?

First of all, has Rich and his ilk even commented on places where there are real dictatorships blooming, like in Venezuela? Doubtful, since that's a burgeoning Communist dictatorship, and the New York Times has never had any problem with those.

Second, in case Rich hasn't noticed, we keep releasing Gitmo detainees and are looking for ways to close it, but I guess that news has escaped him. Perhaps he ought to read his own newspaper (headline: U.S. weighs plan for closing Guantanamo - NY Times).

Third, the ridiculous assertion that Rudy Giuliani tried a coup to keep himself in office simply is not supported by the facts. Yes, 9/11 occurred the day of the scheduled mayoral primary in 2001, and in the aftermath, was rescheduled. The idea was floated that perhaps Giuliani's term should be extended a bit, but was quickly dismissed and Michael Bloomberg was properly inaugurated as New York Mayor January 1, 2002.

Rich knows this, but in his hysteria, cannot rationally report the facts; he just makes ridiculous assertions unworthy of being printed in a newspaper. Dreck like this is better left for the fever swaps of the left. Then again, that suits the New York Times.

Rich sums it up appropriately for someone in the throes of incurable Bush Derangement Syndrome.

We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.

Speak for yourself, Frank.