John McNicotine is now for the tobacco lobby after years of working against it.  He not only opposes the cigarette taxes he used to support but also opposes FDA regulation of the tobacco industry after years of supporting it.  McNicotine is an ex-smoker and should understand just how addictive nicotine is, and he even acknowledged the exceptionally high death rate for tobacco users when he joked that cigarette exports to Iran were part of his plot to kill Iranian citizens.  For McNicotine to cave in to the tobacco cartel is the ultimate flip-flop:
http://www.boston.com/...

Why has McNicotine caved in to the interests of the tobacco drug cartel?  It couldn't possibly have anything to do with hiring tobacco lobbyist Charlie Black as his senior adviser.  Move along folks.  There's nothing to see here:
http://firedoglake.com/...

Now let's use the traditional Rethug "moral values" and "sanctity of life" frames against McNicotine!  There's more in the flip.

Conservatives have always supported affirmative actions and quotas.

They believe that lesser able, lesser qualified individuals who are part of their ideology should get perks and positions that better able, better qualified individuals have earned.

They do not believe in competition, they believe in a rigged caste system.

Here are some permutations below.

It is one of the truisms in our modern political world.  Republicans claim government doesn't work...then ask the electorate to vote for them so they can prove it.

Exhibit A -- The Bush administration:

Many federal agencies have taken a step backward on the Bush administration's five major management initiatives, according to quarterly grades released on Thursday by the Office of Management and Budget.

There were 14 downgrades on the status section of OMB's management score card for the third quarter of 2008, which ended June 30. And there were only six instances in which grades improved.

If I read the headlines aright, John Conyers really means it this time.

Harriet Meiers, Karl Rove, David Addington, John Ashcroft, David Hasselhoff--all will testify, the truth will out, and there will be hell to pay.

For what we're not exactly sure. The politicized hiring and firing at the justice department? The persecution of Don Siegelman in Alabama? The EPA's willful disregard of a court's mandate to regulate greenhouse gasses? What about all that domestic eavesdropping? The war lies and forgeries? It's a list without end. Trying to find a thread that connects just one person to just one crime is like trying to remove just the shallots from a bisque.

Conservatism is a serious dysfunction that is destroying the fabric of society in this country and undermining its economy. It can never be eradicated completely, but must be contained and made publicly unpalatable to the point it never can infect policy overtly.

We label conservatives as dumb, knuckle-dragging troglodytes, mean-spirited ignoramuses, and many other negatives. One or the other of these may very well be true in most cases, but few conservatives exhibit all these traits. In fact, there are many educated or relatively high-IQ conservatives, and there used to be some kind and gentle ones, although they become harder to find as the movement sheds more and more disgusted followers and radicalizes.

My point of view is that these traits are just manifestations of the same dysfunction which is part mental, part social:

A conservative invariably craves a social order based on inequalities. Everything else follows from that.
 
Follow me below the fold for a brief, completely reversible journey into a mind like that.

I blinked. I had to rub my eyes.
Then I read it, again.

I could not believe what I saw.

http://www.newsweek.com/...

This enlargement is being improvised by conservative Republicans whose only doctrine is the theory of TBTF. The theory is that this or that institution is too big to (be allowed to) fail.

Today's surge of "conservative corporatism" began with the Bush administration's brokering of JPMorgan Chase's takeover of Bear Stearns.

Nevertheless, this looks like semi-socialism—keeping profits private, but socializing losses.

Sounds almost like a Kossack.

"Keeping profits private, but socializing losses" is one of our mantras: maybe he got it from reading us. :)

There's a real good piece on Daily Kos today about how the GOP is "screwed" with an incoming election of Barack Obama.  Honestly, I'd love to believe that, but we've heard this before.  Indeed, we seem to be counting our chickens before they hatch.  

You are the majority. In fact you are a supermajority. You are the mainstream.  You are the center.  

Conservatives are a superminority.  They are extremists.  They can NEVER win on the issues.  They should NEVER hold power again in American politics.  They should not be the 2nd major party nor the 3rd major party.  They should be 4th party gadflies at most.

Don't believe me?  Want to concern troll?  Think I'm exaggerating?  Wrong.

Of course I can direct you to extensive research by Pew or give you hundreds of better phrased questions than the garbage Gallup asks but I'm not going to do that today.

I'm going to give you one quote, it's 10 words long and says it all.

"Anyone who makes up their mind before they hear the issue is a fuckin' fool, OK? Everybody! No, no, no... Everybody's so busy trying to be down with a gang. 'I'm a conservative.' 'I'm a liberal.' It's bullshit. Be a fuckin' person. Listen. Let it swirl around in your head, then form an opinion. No normal, decent person is one thing. I've got some shit I'm conservative about, and I got some shit I'm liberal about. Crime? I'm conservative. Prostitution? I'm liberal!" --- Chris Rock

Just something to think about before we get started here. This is going to be a pretty thick diary, and you might not want to wade through it unless you're ready to do some thinking.

Free trade and conservative governance - a toxic mix when it comes to the nation's food supply:

LAREDO, Texas - Day after day, Mexican trucks line up as far as the eye can see for entry to the U.S. at the World Trade Bridge, carrying everything from raw tomatoes, broccoli and fresh basil to frozen seafood. They also bring in salmonella, listeria, restricted pesticides and other food poisons.

Customs and Border Protection officers take less than a minute per truck to determine which products enter the U.S. and find their way into grocery stores and restaurants...

Crossposted from Calitics

Fires continue to burn across California, with the massive blazes in Goleta and Big Sur getting the focus of the state's attention. California's firefighting capacities have been strained beyond their limits. Arnold Schwarzenegger had to call the California National Guard in to help fight fires for the first time since 1977.

And while the fact that most of the Guard is in Iraq and not available to undertake projects like firefighting is a problem, the deeper issue is that decades of conservative policy has left the state without the resources it needs to fight these fires. Already residents are trying to take matters into their own hands, distrustful of government's ability to help them.

It's something we're not about to do today, or likely tomorrow, or perhaps ever under these circumstances.  It might have been easier to have agreed upon some ubiquity of certain core values in the progressive movement if we'd been asked to do it the day after we invaded Iraq.  But not now.

Well, that was quick.

I appreciate those who recommended and posted thoughts on my second DK diary ever--which went into some detail about Dr. James Dobson's "critique" of Obama's "Call to Renewal" speech, and tried to maintain a balanced view of the matter from a decidedly non-religious viewpoint. I was, however, quite surprised to encounter this story, highlighting Obama's plans to not only maintain, but expand, faith based initiatives. From someone who has followed the primaries closely, and who has grown to respect Obama considerably for his conduct throughout, this story comes as a bit of a shock.

More disconcerting than that, however, is the suggestion that Obama apparently thinks hiring and firing based on one's faith is a good move.

I have recently been participating in a political forum, that, in all honesty, is probably beneath my skills as a commentator. That is not said out of lack of modesty--it's just that the forum in question is so poorly moderated, and the majority of its contributors so ill-informed, that engaging the subjects that come up is rarely substantive, and debunking some of the posts made by other contributors is rather like shooting fish in a barrel.

The same could be said, perhaps, for a post that attempts to analyze the issues that come up in Dr. James Dobson's recent criticism of Obama's "twisted theology." I have to admit to enjoying a game of solitaire now and again, as well, so perhaps I just like shooting fish in a barrel now and again. However, I would like to think that my recent attention to Dobson's remarks springs partially from a legitimate interest in the issues involved.

As much as I might diss the forum in question (and believe me, it deserves to be dissed--the moreso for its being affiliated with a well-known name in political circles), the exchange was valuable because I managed to maintain a civil exchange with someone who clearly was not going to change his view of the matter, any more than I was. That goes to the crux of what I hear Obama saying in the speech Dobson criticized.

While the following blockquoted premise and my diary title is an overstatement, and while it applies to some and not all, (hence the word usually) there is no doubt that the behavioral elements that this diary will discuss is the primary causal factor as to why adults who are right wing conservatives turn out the way they are and how we can prevent future generations from turning out this way.

As a few of you know I have been working for years on what I expect to be about an 800 page political manifesto (98% of it is already written) designed to promote progressives values for decades to come while putting a nail in the coffin of the decrepit philosophy of conservatism.

For the first time in two years, I am going to share an excerpt from that eventual book. (It is copyrighted)

It's about conservatism and the core root of the philosophy.  If you get these two paragraphs, you will see the basis for 100% of all positions and beliefs that conservatives have.  (The next several pages in the book then applies these concepts to specific issues.)

Here goes.

In a Saturday post that generated a lot of replies, and that carried the (ironic?) title "Speaking truth to power," Megan McArdle at theAtlantic.com ridiculed reports that magistrates in other countries might be looking to arrest the architects of America's torture regime. Having dismissed that notion as both "cute" and "incredibly stupid," McArdle then answered her respondents with further mockery. We can learn quite a bit about how conservatives think by looking a bit more closely at McArdle's extremely defensive comments on this issue.

As if the universe were answering Grover Norquist's conservative dictum that government should be reduced to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub, another watery event reminds us what government is for:

CANTON, Mo. — The levees along the Mississippi River offer a patchwork of unpredictable protections. Some are tall and earthen, others aging and sandy, and many along its tributaries uncataloged by federal officials.

The levees are owned and maintained by all sorts of towns, agencies, even individual farmers, making the work in Iowa, Illinois and Missouri last week of gaming the flood — calculating where water levels would exceed the capacity of the protective walls — especially agonizing.

It did not have to be this way: