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The Birthers Are Back!

 Latest Newspaper Column: There's no link because the Pilot has, once again, forgotten to put my column up on the web site. But I'm getting crazy people e-mailing me about it (we'll have more on that soon), so I know it ran.

If you thought the ridiculous movement known as "birtherism," which holds that Barack Obama has not sufficiently proven his U.S. citizenship, was dead, then think again.

A person of normal intelligence might think that the whole kerfluffle had been put to rest by the long-demanded release of the President's  "long form" birth certificate, a document which I'll wager 99% of Americans never knew existed before the birthers asserted that that was the only proof they'd accept (except as it turns out, that didn't make them happy either). But if  you think that, you've forgotten one of the basic tenets of the right wing: if something fails miserably, then it's just because we didn't do it enough. If the economy tanked despite eight years of tax cuts under The President That Must Not Be Named, then the solution is clearly more tax cuts. If poorly regulated investment houses lost billions of their clients' money and/or failed to disclose risks to their clients, then clearly what we need is less regulation. And so on.

And so, apparently on the theory that that  birtherism failed because they just weren't crazy enough, it returns, this time in the presence of no less an august personage than The Honorable Ken Bennett,  Secretary of State of Arizona, a state which is apparently trying to supplant Florida as the nuttiest one in the Union. (I heard Dave Barry is thinking of relocating there because of the wealth of material). Mr. Bennett recently called up a deputy attorney general in Hawaii and requested "verification" of the President's birth record. After a few days (and, one imagines, a fair amount of eye-rolling), Deputy AG Jill Nagamine e-mailed Bennett back, apologizing for taking so long while pointedly noting that she had "been tied up with some legislative deadlines that take precedence." She then provided Bennett with the sort of links any half-bright person with access to Google could find, links to official websites that covered the whole issue. In short, Deputy Attorney General Nagamine told Bennett: "look, pal, I got a lot of stuff on my plate here, we've been over this a hundred times, look it up yourself." But politely.

Unable, apparently, to take a hint, Bennett e-mailed back, again requesting verification of the President's American birth. He did not, it should be noted, ask for a similar verification of the birth records of Millard Mitt Romney. Maybe Mitt had already given him one in person, since Bennett is the co-chair of Romney's campaign in Arizona. I'm sure that's  just a coincidence, right?

Nagamine's e-mailed response was a classic: she turned the tables and demanded verification that Bennett  was eligible to make the request. She also asked a slew of other questions, such as what list he was updating and  if he was asking any other candidate this information. He would also, of course, need to send verification of all of that.

Bennett sent back references to various Arizona statutes, which he claimed gave him the right.  Nagamine, displaying the sort of mulishness that would make a birther proud, said "nope, not good enough." (Politely). None of those cites, she said,  "establish the authority of the Secretary of State." But, she said, Hawaii  "stands willing to provide you with the verification you seek as soon as you are able to show that you are entitled to it."

 Later that day, Bennett went on AM talk radio and suggested that, if Hawaii didn't do as he asked, President Obama may not appear on the Arizona ballot this year. Meanwhile, just to add in an extra dollop of lunacy, Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio  dispatched a deputy from his "threat unit" to Hawaii's Department of Health on the taxpayer's dime. Arpaio refused to identify the "threat" or to explain exactly why a division of the state government of Hawaii should do anything for a county Sheriff's deputy from another state except show him the door. Politely,  of course.

Finally, Bennett gave up and  pronounced himself satisfied that the President was, indeed, born in the USA and would appear on the ballot. That is, until the next opportunity arises for the right wing lunatic fringe to drag that poor dead horse out of the barn and flog him again. Because in the land of Wingnuttia,  if a dead horse won't run, it's because you didn't beat him hard enough.  

27 Percenters: Still Crazy After All These Years

Latest Newspaper Column:

There's been a lot of talk lately about the 1 percent versus the 99 percent. But there's another number that's at least as important in American political discourse these days. That number is the "crazification factor": 27 percent. 

The crazification factor was first noticed by, of all people, television writer John Rogers. He first wrote about it as far back as 2005 on his blog, titled "Kung Fu Monkey." He'd observed the 2004 Illinois Senate election, in which Barack Obama ran against Alan Keyes. Keyes, as you may remember, was trotted in from out of state a mere 86 days before the election after the campaign of the Republican nominee, Jack Ryan, imploded because of a bizarre sex scandal.
Keyes was clearly a sacrificial lamb, a guy no one expected to win; not only did he have no base in Illinois, but he was also, as Rogers put it, "plainly, obviously, completely crazy ... head-trauma crazy."Both candidates were black, so race wasn't a factor. And yet, Rogers noted, Keyes still got 27 percent of the vote in Illinois.

"They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever, ahead of rational judgment," he said. "Even 5 percent of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behavior. I think you have to assume a 27 percent crazification factor in any population."

It seemed like a joke to me at first. But then I noticed that that 27 percent figure kept cropping up more and more, in poll after poll. Give or take a couple of percentage points, pollsters often find about 27 percent of Americans who believe in things that are against their own self-interest or that are just mind-bendingly ridiculous.

For instance, in the darkest days of the 2008 economic meltdown, after the bankruptcy of Lehmann Brothers, the federal bailout of AIG and the collapse of Merrill Lynch, approval ratings for President George W. Bush were still at 27 percent, and hovered around that figure for quite some time before taking their final nosedive.

(Yes, He Who Must Not Be Named, and not Barack Obama, was president when the economy tanked, with his beloved tax cuts firmly in place, something you probably won't learn from watching Fox News.)

After Sarah Palin flamed out in spectacular fashion and took John McCain's presidential campaign into the ground with her, 27 percent of people surveyed in one poll still thought she would have made a good president.

A poll in January of this year on the subject of gridlock in Congress found that 60 percent of those polled believed that President Obama was trying to work with Republicans; 27 percent believed that Republicans in Congress were trying to do the same. In January, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 27 percent of people still supported the tea party.
Give a couple of points margin for error, and crazification becomes more obvious. After the 2008 election, 26 percent of those polled believed that it had been stolen for Barack Obama by ACORN, even though there wasn't evidence of a single fraudulent vote actually being cast as a result of a few registration workers boosting their paychecks by signing up nonexistent voters. (No, Mickey Mouse did not try to vote, something you probably won't learn from listening to Rush Limbaugh.)

During the health care debate, when polled as to what kind of reform bill should pass, 26 percent of respondents told a CBS poll "no bill at all."

Note well: We aren't talking about people who simply don't agree with the administration. That figure is, of course, higher than 27 percent. We're talking about people who do so for reasons that are completely and incurably crazy, people wedded to "facts" that simply aren't true and opinions with no support in reality.

They're immune to persuasion. They're aided by right-wing media outlets that reject the idea of objective facts and objective proof; any evidence you care to provide that does not fit their narrative is, to them, the product of "bias" or an "agenda," no matter how unimpeachable the source. That's one of the hallmarks of true delusional thinking: It's immune to reality, and so are the 27 percenters.

So what can you do? Well, if you're one of those people who roll their eyes at the idea that President Obama is going to send federal agents to check on your light bulbs, or who shake your heads in disbelief when people, after all this time, still put up billboards and bumper stickers asking "Where's the Birth Certificate?" - then you need to get out and vote.

Because the crazies surely will.

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"Every bit as good at writing legal thrillers as Michael Connelly, you will not be disappointed by reading any of JD Rhoades' novels." -Reader review by "Jenni". 
"His characters are full and deep and real." -S. Malley 

"Your client being found in the presence of a dead body is widely regarded as a bad thing among the defense bar."- Andy Cole 


Andy Cole has a problem. Local crime boss Voit Fairgreen has just dropped a bag full of cash on his desk and hired him to defend Voit's brother Danny on a murder charge. Andy's one of the movers and shakers in the small southern town of Blainesville, and Voit figures Andy's the kind of inside guy that can cut a deal to get his baby brother out of the jam. 


The problem is that Danny just might be innocent. But someone powerful needs this case buried, and if an innocent man dies for that, so be it. 


Andy Cole is a guy who's made a good living by going along to get along. He's been willing to bend every rule, except Rule One--always get paid. But this case will cause him to re-examine his life and push him and his lover, beautiful newspaper editor Elizabeth Sinclair, to risk everything--including their lives-- for the truth. 

Only In Wingnuttia: "Forward" Is Now A Suspicious Word

Latest Newspaper Column:

F orward. It seems like such a nice, positive word. We call someone with foresight "forward-thinking." When you repay a good deed done for you by doing a similar favor for someone else, we call that "paying it forward." When traveling, moving forward is a good thing. So you'd think no one could have a problem with an upbeat word like "forward."

You'd think so, but you'd be wrong. Because in the dark and scary thicket of paranoia that is the right-wing mind, there is no word that cannot be turned into something fraught with secret and sinister meaning, especially when that word is used by or on behalf of the man they regard as the embodiment of pure evil, President Barack Obama.

So when the Obama campaign revealed that its slogan for 2012 was, simply, "Forward," the reaction was predictable.

See, the right wing realizes that the president is a better campaigner than their guy, Lord Mitt "Etch a Sketch" Romney. Obama's more natural, is a better speaker, and connects better with people than Mitt, who often seems like an alien trying to get the hang of acting like a human being.

So they're going to gripe and whine and complain whenever the president campaigns at all, as if it's somehow unseemly of him not to graciously step aside and let their guy win by default. Every campaign speech will be denounced as "divisive" regardless of content. Every appearance will draw howls of outrage over the cost of transportation and security. Every commercial is going to be treated like some sort of affront to the very idea of democracy.

Their reaction to the slogan is no different, and neither is their usual scattershot, muddled and generally crack-brained reaction to it.

"Communist leaders frequently used - and still use - the word 'forward," blogger Joel Pollak of Breitbart.com pointed out. The word "has a long and rich history with European Marxism," said The Washington Times.

On the other hand, Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit, who can be reliably counted on to exceed your wildest dreams of sheer lunacy, claimed that "Forward" had been a "marching song of the Hitler Youth" and emphasized the point by posting a picture of marching Nazis wearing Obama pins so that his dumber readers (which is to say, all of them) wouldn't miss the point.

So let me get this straight. By using one common English word, the president demonstrates that he's both a communist and a fascist, even though those two ideologies spent a big chunk of the 20th century at each other's throats.

It's too bad they couldn't have come up with some quote from the Quran that uses the word "forward" so they could claim the wingnut trifecta, in which the raging right insists that Obama is a fascist, a Godless communist, and a fanatical Muslim jihadist all at the same time.

But wait! It seems that "Forward" also is the state motto of Wisconsin, whose current governor is right-wing union-busting hero Scott Walker, at least for the time being. Does this mean that Walker is a fascist or a communist, or both, for not immediately having the slogan changed?

I read that the slogan hung on banners at Richard Nixon's 1969 inauguration was "Forward Together." So maybe Nixon was a Marxist, too. Sort of throws the whole China trip into a whole new light, doesn't it?

George Bush the Elder's 1987 campaign autobiography was called "Looking Forward." Before that, even St. Ronnie Reagan titled a famous speech in 1986 "Forward to Freedom."

OMG, as the kids say on the Internet! The entire Republican Party has, for years, been riddled with Marxists! Or fascists! Or something.

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, started his campaign with the slogan "Believe in America." If that sounds familiar, it's because it's been used before, by Democrat John Kerry.

Which makes sense, since Romney is the John Kerry of the Republican party: a rich, entitled Massachusetts moderate trying to convince his party's skeptical base he's one of them, despite having once supported the thing that base purports to despise most (the Iraq War in Kerry's case, the individual mandate in Romney's). Both are running against a controversial incumbent on a platform that amounts to "I'm Not Him." And we all know how that turned out.

Romney would be well advised to drop a slogan with such negative historical baggage for something more appropriate to him. Like "Backward." After all, that's where he and his party want to take us.

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"The Devil's Right Hand blasts right out of the chute and keeps up the pace until the final paragraph. Steeped in Southern sense of place, the reader can feel the heat and humidity and smell the cordite hanging in the air. J.D. Rhoades writes action as well as anybody in the business, and bail bondsman Jack Keller is a winner."--C.J. Box, author of Trophy Hunt 


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"Riveting as the rack of a sawn-off shotgun, The Devil's Right Hand is a novel of pace and power, locked and loaded from the start. Bail enforcer Jack Keller, a damaged gulf war veteran, moves the heart in unexpected ways. Keller's quarry Raymond, a drug dealer bent on revenge, pledges 'no more water, but the fire next time'--and it's the fire we get on almost every page of a book that is positively aflame with action. Let's hope that J.D. Rhoades and Jack Keller are due to deliver more of the fire and soon."--Ken Bruen, author of The Guards