Utah tea party Nazis get their orders from headquarters

On March 14, 2012 Salt Lake Tribune columnist Paul Rolly detailed one rightwing group's plans, from a memo to its members, on how to hijack the local political process to get what they want.

Utah, with its system of caucus meetings for selecting candidates, was the first state to oust a sitting Republican senator in favor of a tea party candidate. Senator Robert Bennett, who was a moderate, was the first in a long list of politicians targeted by the far right, and nationally it caused quite a stir in 2010. Replacing him proved it could be done, that very small but well organized groups could override the will of the majority.

Now Utah's senior senator, Orrin Hatch, has the bullseye on his back, thanks to a group calling itself FreedomWorks (and if ever there was a misnomer, that's it). Their memo, according to Rolly, tells its members to “go early to caucus meetings Thursday and dominate all the seats in the front of the room. That’s because there often are more people than seats, and if the right people hog all the seats, the others will get tired of standing and leave before voting starts.” Rolly continues, "[The memo] tells the minions to make sure they are the last ones nominated as delegates because that means they will be the last ones giving speeches."

There are other tactics: "When the group gets the chance to ask questions, the minions are told to have their stooges there ' to ask you friendly questions,' and to have others ready to ask questions 'to flush out those who think differently than we do.'" (Emphasis mine.)

Rolly’s column goes on to list what makes FreedomWorks mad, which is the usual list of sins committed by elected officials, such as voting for the auto industry bailout (thereby saving hundreds of thousands of jobs), and pork-barrel earmarks (like most Republicans, including Rick Santorum, use), etc., etc.

These tricks work. Personally, I'm sick of Orrin Hatch and his 36 years of living in comfort as my senator, but I'd prefer him to any of the nutcakes the tea partiers want in his place. After all, Bennett's replacement, Mike Lee, is the idiot who has vowed to oppose everything Obama wants voted on, just to show his total disdain not only for the President, but the people of his own state and citizens of America.

American politics usually finds a way of correcting itself, because the great majority of people in the country are moderate. They're worried about jobs and day-to-day stuff, not about moral issues or whether contraceptives can be covered by health plans administered by religious groups. Such issues cause even moderate folks consternation, but not at the expense of what is important.

If the belligerent anti-Obama, anti-voting public tea party groups were confronted by far-left groups who used their tactics, and those tactics worked for them, the tea partiers would be shouting to the mountaintops that the communists were taking over. They wouldn't think it any more democratic than those of us who are just left of center find their dirty tricks. This legal but unethical takeover of the system will come back and bite them, I'm sure. Maybe 2012 will be the year that it does, or maybe it'll be in 2014. Thanks to Paul Rolly for publishing those items from their memo and exposing them for what they are.

I'm reminded that it was a very small group of National Socialists who took over Germany through various underhanded means during a time of great national turmoil. It looks to me as if this revolution the far right is pulling off comes right out of the Nazi playbook. Oh, wait..."Nazi" is a loaded word, isn't it? We mustn't call even our political enemies such things. They certainly don't think of themselves as Nazis. They think of themselves as patriotic Americans who want freedom (a vague term even they have trouble defining, since their ideas of freedom usually mean trouble for everyone else by passing more laws against things they hate). They like to name their groups using words like "freedom" and "American" or "patriot," but I've noticed such groups are actually none of those.They are tiny factions who are using the system and subverting the will of the greater public for their own ends. You know, like Nazis.

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More muggings

I spend way too much time looking at booking photos from the local jail. I can't help it. It's so entertaining.

The day a person goes to jail and gets his picture taken is usually not a good day, and the pictures reflect that. They show that all kinds of folks end up in jail.

Even people with silly haircuts.

Speaking of hair, is this side hair thing a style?



This one has the unicorn look.

I like that this guy looks much the same upside down as he does right side up.

Have you ever watched guys with these really big mustaches eat? They usually have to dedicate at least one hand to parting their whiskers so they can shove the food in. I'm sure they'll be entertaining the other inmates in the mess hall.



This schmuck is telling us he's fit to live only behind bars. His racist, skinhead tattoos are a billboard of his hatred for society. He's going to make sure by marking his beliefs all over his head of his ultimate failure to live in a world beyond that of incarceration.

This Einstein, from the national website, mugshots.com shows how social networking makes stupid people even more stupid. He stole a judge's nameplate, then posted his picture on Facebook.

These people are all showing their displeasure at being arrested.

The frown:

The glare:

The baring of teeth:

On the other hand, these people all seem really, really happy to be going to jail. I'm not sure why they're all smiles for their booking photos. Maybe they think they're getting a driver's license.




More mug shots here and here.

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Game Change

There's a scene in the HBO movie, Game Change, where Sarah Palin watches Tina Fey do a comedy bit on Saturday Night Live, based on her. "I can see Russia from my house!" Fey exclaims. It's at that moment I believe the real-life Sarah Palin lost credibility with the American electorate. Pointing out someone's foibles is one thing, but making a laughingstock of them is another. Just ask Dan Quayle.

The thought struck me: What if Sarah Palin (the real one), was looking at Sarah Palin (as portrayed by Julianne Moore) watching Tina Fey? How weird would that be? I got my answer yesterday when I heard Palin announce she wouldn't watch the movie. John McCain said the same, although the movie treats him much more kindly than it does Palin.

And it doesn't do a cartoon-like character assassination on Palin, either. Not like Saturday Night Live or political cartoonists did in 2008, anyway. Julianne Moore does not play Palin as a caricature, and even somewhat understates her personal "hockey mom" rah-rah vocal style. I think it gave the portrayal a bit more verisimilitude, rather than having Moore do a caricature of Fey doing a caricature of Palin.

I had to look closely when I went to find pictures of Palin and Moore-as-Palin. The resemblance is close, although Palin has a much squarer chin.

Game Change has gotten a lot of attention, much of it positive. But there are harsh comments, also. Those pundits who haven't seen it and are dismissing it automatically owe it a look-see. In real life Palin was in over her head, unable to handle the instant fame and notoriety. The movie portrays it well in scenes where Palin suddenly becomes a diva, demanding to do "what I want to do when I want to do it," rather than be manipulated by McCain's advisors.

I believe Sarah Palin is a narcissist, who feels that God has chosen her. There's a line of dialogue in the movie where she says that, and whether it happened in real life or just in a script-writer's mind, it rings true. It may be why rather than fade into obscurity (Dan Quayle, again), she continues to hammer away on television. She's gotten more media savvy, but her personal worldview is still out there in Cloud Cuckooland. There was talk of her running for President this year, which she wisely chose not to do. She kept everyone guessing, riding around in her bus, stirring up her base, all for naught. But come Republican convention time, if Mitt Romney doesn't have enough delegates to make it on the first ballot, who knows who will show up at the convention, glad-handing and throwing their hat into the ring?

The movie is a must-see for anyone interested in American politics, and especially the historic election cycle in 2008. Because an African-American was his party's nominee, and he had been running neck and neck with a woman (Hillary Clinton) for the nomination, and because of Palin's own self-destructive ignorance, it's overlooked that Palin was only the second woman chosen to be on a Presidential ticket. (Here's a pop quiz...can you name the other?*)

I'm sorry that Game Change is available only on HBO. I'd advise them to put it out on DVD and Blu-Ray immediately to cash in on the curiosity factor.

Ed Harris was good as John McCain, and Woody Harrelson as Steve Schmidt was excellent, but the real star was Sarah Palin, as channeled in such an uncanny and accurate performance by Julianne Moore.

*Geraldine Ferraro (1935-2011) ran on a ticket with Walter Mondale (1928-) against Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Happy birthday, Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is 133 years old today. Happy birthday, Albert!

I dream of ghosts

As an agnostic who sometimes strays over the line into the realm of atheism, only to cross back over into agnosticism (I really can't make up my mind what I don't believe), I don't put much stock in the supernatural. Tales of ghosts are interesting, but I don't expect to see one. Occasionally I dream of the dead, and my wife, Sally, tells me she believes that spirits of the dead visit us in dreams.

I find that a romantic thought. It conjures pictures in my mind of our dead loved ones or acquaintances wanting to say howdy. Unable to do so in the corporeal realm, they come to us through our dreams. It doesn't mean I necessarily believe what Sally believes, but let's just say I really like the idea.

I've been "visited" a couple of times by my late father-in-law, and several times by a deceased female coworker. Also my former boss, but I'll get to that.

Jan was the hardest working person I knew. I met her in about 1994 at the school district where we both worked. She was a rover, a custodian who was called on to fill in for regular school custodians when they were sick or on vacation. Jan was very slim and slight-looking, but she was strong. Many a healthy male custodian would leave jobs for her to do when they knew they were going on vacation. Like furniture moving, for example. They abused her in that fashion. But it was her willingness to work and work hard that eventually earned her the job as District Office custodian, which was the highest paid custodial job in the school district. Unfortunately, she worked too hard, and you might even say she worked herself to death. Because she was so tired after a really long day at work she made a fatal error driving home. She turned in front of a truck in an intersection. It broadsided her and killed her.

Jan has come to me in my dreams to ask me how things are going, how're my grandkids, everyday things like that. I've never asked her what she's doing in the afterlife. I have to assume that for the purposes of my dreams these visitors of mine are still in existence somewhere, but I never think to ask where. In the last dream I had of her Jan had started to tell me a dirty joke. Jan was famous for her raunchy jokes, which she told at the drop of a hat. For a woman Jan had a filthy mind, which of course endeared her to me. I don't remember what the joke was, but if you look back at some of my postings of "dumb jokes you can tell at a party," they were exactly the types of jokes she could reel off one after another. She was a sort of walking library of ribald humor. I'm still waiting for her next visit to me so I can ask her to finish the joke.

My father-in-law, Ray, was a curmudgeonly sort, but I liked him anyway. Ray had fought through the Battle of the Bulge, was one of the first soldiers across the river and into Germany where, he said, the Army was met by "old men and boys"charged with defense of the homeland in a futile attempt to repel the Allied invaders . Ray was never very talkative, and very seldom told a war story. The two dreams I've had of him are of him talking, though, and this last one he was talking to me from a balcony. Maybe next time I can get him to loosen up a little and tell me more about his time in the war.

Of course these are dreams, and many of my dreams just evaporate in the morning. Details I may remember clearly at the time have become fuzzy.

I've only dreamed of my deceased father a couple of times, and of my mother, who died in 2008, never. Maybe they are visitors whose visits leave me upon waking, or they just aren't interested in chatting.

The last ghostly visitor I got was the most unusual of all. My ex-boss, Phil. Phil and I worked together for over 20 years and we never got along. It was a shouting match with Phil in July, 2008 that made me announce to Sally, "I'm going to retire at the end of this year." And I did. I had often said that if my relationship to Phil had been a marriage I would have gotten a divorce long ago, but it was something more awful than a bad marriage...it was a bad supervisor/employee relationship, with neither of us willing to give an inch to the other.

Phil dropped dead on Labor Day, 2011. He had been dragging for a few months, felt ill, missed work, which according to his secretary, "he never did." He had taken his three granddaughters to a local state park. He felt ill, threw up in a garbage can, then sat on a bench and died. The troubles I had with Phil suddenly evaporated, although I still wrote about him. This post is a confession: I killed him with voodoo.

Since that post I had this dream of Phil: he's standing next to a white couch, and he's dressed all in white. White suit, white shirt, white tie, white shoes. He says to me, "So how are you doing? How's it going?" I tell him I'm a three-year cancer survivor. He says, "Good, good." I ask how he's doing, and he tells me, "I've never felt better." I remark he's never looked so good to me. He is much slimmer and has a huge smile on his face. I rarely saw him smile in real life. Phil turns and leaves the room. "Well, good luck to you," he says.

I'm left to think that if by some chance Sally is right and the dead visit us in dreams, that maybe I was a loose end in Phil's life, a conflict unresolved. He was that for me. I had a very peaceful feeling when I awoke that morning, and unlike most of my dreams, since it happened it's stayed fresh in my mind .

Phil was the reason I went into therapy in the mid-'90s, the reason I went on anti-depressant medication. Both helped me a lot, and of course at my current age I've mellowed quite a bit, anyway. Things that used to bother me a lot don't bother me as much now. Don't sweat the small stuff, the man said. But Phil and I would fight over small stuff all the time. We both sweated the small stuff. And now the small stuff is too small to worry about. It's true that since that dream of Phil I'm more inclined to think of him without bitterness; kindness, even. His "visit" had something of a healing effect on me.

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