If Only It Were Now Only 24 Hours to Go!

I saw a headline last night along the lines of "48 Hours to Go." I couldn't help but think of Johnnie's "25 Minutes to Go." Hopefully the next 24 will not be quite that grim!

But there's no doubt the next 24 will be stressful. The more you can avoid the idiot-box, the better. No point in even tuning in before dinner time. Get your updates from reliable sources on the Internet.

John Dean, acknowledged former Goldwater-repub, continues to provide helpful reminders about this authoritarian "thing" that seems to fill a psychological need for a significant fraction of the population, otherwise known as the certifiable (explaining why shrub's negatives cannot get much below 20%?):

Occasionally, during the past eight years of writing this column, I have addressed the remarkably dangerous manner in which Republican Party officials rule the nation when they control one or more of the three branches of the federal government. Over the same period, I've also made this argument, even more directly and loudly, in three books on the subject.

In this column, I will be more pointed on this subject than I have ever been, while also repeating a few key facts that I have raised earlier -- because Election Day 2008 now provides the only clear remedy for the ills of Republican rule.

The Republican Approach to Government: Authoritarian Rule

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans' authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which it to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans' limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity - nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however -- and generally oppose the government's doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

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During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.

The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide no true, specific proposals to address America's needs. Rather, they simply ask voters to "trust us" and suggest that their opponents - Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden - are not "real Americans" like McCain, Palin, and the voters they are seeking to court. Accordingly, McCain and Plain have called Obama "a socialist," "a redistributionist," "a Marxist," and "a communist" - without a shred of evidence to support their name-calling, for these terms are pejorative, rather than in any manner descriptive. This is the way authoritarian leaders operate.

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Just when it seemed Mcslimey could not get worse, he does

It's so important I'm reprinting Jo-Ann Mort's post on McCain vile campaign against Rashid Khalidi in full

It has come to this--the red baiting and the nastiness of the McCain/Palin campaign, in desperation to get Jewish support, is now baiting and bad-mouthing a notable Palestinian-American historian, Rashid Khalidi, for his and his wife's friendship with Obama. The Khalidis know Obama from their time in Hyde Park, when Rashid was a professor at the University of Chicago.

Now at Columbia University, he is someone who has always reached out to all sides in the debate about the future of Israel and Palestine. He has been outspoken in his arguments against Arafat's ways of governing and terrorism and when he was at U of C, he was close to Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, one of the most important American Jewish figures of our time. For the Republicans to go after him is pure vile--they think that the Jewish vote is so stupid and racist that they will turn away from the Democrats solely on this type of slander. For someone like Daniel Pipes, quoted in today's New York Times story, to call him 'marginal,' is a joke. It's time to move the Center back to the Center--let's hope that happens as of November 5--for the sake of America, the sake of Israel and the sake of Palestine.

McCain's final gambit is racism pure and simple, a stain on our national honor.

Greenwald appropriately rides this pony further:

Numerous commentators have condemned the McCain campaign's despicable -- and patently false -- attack on Professor Rashid Khalidi as an "anti-Semite," deployed in order, yet again, to insinuate that Barack Obama is an American-hating, Muslim/Arab radical. Even Fred Hiatt's Washington Post Editorial Page this morning called McCain's comments about Khalidi "a vile smear," "simply ludicrous," and "itself condemnable," and favorably cited Khalidi's response when asked by The Post if he wanted to address the controversy: "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over."

It's true, as those commentators point out, that this episode is just the latest in the McCain campaign's increasingly desperate (and laughably inept) attempt to win by sinking lower and lower into McCarthyite muck. But it goes far beyond just the McCain campaign. The neoconservative Right has been doing exactly this for a long time -- playing frivolous games with the "anti-semitism" accusation, casually tossing it at anyone who utters any criticism of Israel or who advocates some even-handed approach to Israel's conflicts with its various enemies. As Joe Klein said yesterday:

Here we have the McCain campaign's execrable Michael Goldfarb slinging around accusations of anti-semitism--a favorite pastime, as we've seen this year, among Jewish neoconservatives. . . . I'd say that if we have a bigot here, it's Mr. Goldfarb who, if he's intent on calling people antisemitic--or any other epithet--should be required to provide chapter and verse, which he does not do on CNN. (I'd also like to know on what basis CNN's Rick Sanchez can stipulate that Khalidi is antisemitic.)

To put it mildly, there are many profound flaws with Joe Klein as a pundit and, unlike others, I'm not impressed by his vocal support for Obama this year. There are many former Beltway Bush enablers with their wet fingers in the air who have undergone similar transformations, who will, I fully expect, return to form once circumstances change. Needless to say, I take a backseat to nobody in criticizing Klein, but on this topic, I am impressed with what Klein has done and he deserves a lot of credit.

Although he began doing so a bit later than one might argue he should have, Klein really became the first person in a venue as establishment-serving as Time Magazine to explicitly criticize neocons for their Israel-centric fixations and, much more importantly, for their disgusting exploitation of "anti-semitism" accusations against anyone and everyone who disagrees with their views on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and, more generally, on the Middle East.

Having someone like Klein, in a place like Time, make those arguments without punishment is highly threatening to the neocons' ability to continue to intimidate people away from expressing divergent views by wielding "anti-semitism" accusations. And they know that it is threatening, which is why, once Klein began doing it, they engaged in a full-court swarm to attack and demonize Klein and even insinuate that he should and would be fired for his transgressions on the topic of neocons and Israel. The ADL formally condemned Klein, and National Review's Peter Wehner predicted/hoped/threatened:

For those who have been watching Joe Klein v. well, lots of people, here's the latest. It’s like watching a movie that you now know is going to end very badly, and very sadly.

Had it been 2003, Wehner probably would have been right. But it didn't end "badly" or "sadly" for Klein. Quite the contrary, he continued criticizing neocons at least as aggressively and unapologetically -- actually, even more so -- and not only was he undeterred by the standard neocon "anti-semitism" rants, he became increasingly defiant in his refusal to suppress his critiques.

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