Chris Hayes tells Terry Gross about how the last decade affected his politics:

My disposition as a human being is kind of a go-along-to-get-along person. I tend to trust authority. I tend to think people in charge broadly know what they’re doing, don’t lie to you, aren’t going start wars for no reason and, you know watching Iraq happen and then watching the financial crisis happen and then Katrina in the middle of that, you know, you turn around and, you think, ‘Wait a second: No one is on top of anything. Who the heck is in charge here? These people who say that they know what they’re doing don’t know what they’re doing. I’m not going to trust them the next time they tell me they know what they’re doing.’ It’s a radically unmooring feeling to recognize that people that you just figured kind of had it under control don’t have it under control and might be totally incompetent or completely corrupt or totally self-dealing.

Image of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina by greenmanowar

theatlantic:

2 Stunning Photos of Senator Daniel Inouye’s Casket Lying in State

[Image: Joshua Roberts/Reuters]

There is probably no politican of any competence whatsoever who isn’t good at that because that’s in fact what politics is. It’s not about purity. It’s about compromise and strategy and making things actually happen in real time on this earth as opposed to a metaphysical realm.

— Tony Kushner on Lincoln’s political savvy and what it takes to be a good politician

theatlantic:

[Image: National Journal]

In honor of Oktoberfest, find our what your beer says about your politics.

Everything you need to know about how they see Obama was what happened at where Bryan Fischer works with the American Family Association shortly after the election in 2008. The group, which calls itself a Christian ministry, passed around a picture of Obama’s face, which they had blended with that of Adolf Hitler. And they sort of posted it on the wall and all laughed at it. It showed Obama with a little Hitler moustache and swastikas behind him. They have attacked Obama relentlessly since his election in 2008. They regard him as the avatar of godless socialism.

— Jane Mayer profiles Christian radio host Bryan Fischer on today’s Fresh Air.

He wants to shape the policy of the Republican Party because he hopes to change America. He’s evangelizing to make America more in line with his Biblical views. On his own, he probably defines such far out views that there’s a tendency to dismiss him. But what makes Bryan Fischer worth paying some attention to is that he’s part of a larger group — a bloc of voters, the evangelical white voters — who have become a very well-organized and very significant part of the Republican Party at this point.

— On today’s Fresh Air, Jane Mayer from The New Yorker details how a Christian radio host from Tupelo, Miss. is pushing far-right and anti-gay policy decisions on the Romney campaign and the Republican Party.

But as everyone should know by now, liberties begin to erode when you have laws that are too widely drawn. And laws which say that under no circumstances can a court take any account of the Shariah are necessarily discriminatory. They’re necessarily over broad. And they necessarily create communal dissention for no good purpose.

— Sadakat Kadri on the movement to ban Shariah law in America.

Throughout the past four years, we keep hearing about the impact of this economy on the middle class, which of course, is important, but it’s having a great impact on these people, too. They can resort to strategies that make them seem unsympathetic. That’s what’s been missing from this debate. This recession aftermath has been so framed in terms of an impact on the middle class that the poor have largely been pushed out of the spotlight … and they’re really in political oblivion right now.

— On today’s Fresh Air, how the recession has impacted America’s poorest women.

On Tuesday’s Fresh Air, we talk to journalist Peter Beinart about his book The Crisis of Zionism, which argues that Israel cannot be a true democratic state as long as there are settlements in the West Bank, where Jews are citizens of the Israeli state and Palestinians are not. In his book and in a recent New York Times op-ed, Beinart has proposed a boycott of goods made in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

We also talk to journalist Gary Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt, the editor and publish of The Jewish Weekof New York, details the reaction to Beinart’s article and explains why he disagrees with the boycott proposal.

“In these days of 24/7 media — where even the dinkiest problem can get magnified and go viral — campaigns are obsessed with controlling every single thing, including our perception of the campaign’s workings. Watching The War Room, I kept thinking that the most old-fashioned thing about the Clinton campaign was that it trusted anyone to come inside it with cameras running.” — John Powers, Inside Bill Clinton’s Campaign ‘War Room’

Fresh Air: SuperPACS

We aired two segments on yesterday’s show. Both had to do with SuperPACs.

Republican and Democratic SuperPACs, empowered by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, can collect unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations and unions. Trevor Potter became a celebrity when he signed on as Stephen Colbert’s lawyer and advised the satirical TV host on how to create his own SuperPAC.

James Bopp is the lawyer who first represented Citizens United in the case that ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled that corporations and unions could give money to political committees active in election campaigns. That decision and subsequent lower court decisions have led to SuperPACs, which allow corporations, unions and individuals to make unlimited contributions, pool them together, and use the money for political campaigns.

It is fair to say that given the rules, votes count differently in different states – or at least voters have different incentives. It’s easier to participate in a primary state than it is in a caucus state – the time commitment alone forces folks away from that process.

— On today’s Fresh Air political scientist Josh Putnam explains the difference between caucuses and primaries,  how delegates are chosen, and why the process varies by state,

Can’t tell a caucus from a primary? Don’t know why states have different systems for choosing delegates?

Tomorrow’s Fresh Air will answer those questions, and explain how reforms instituted since 1968 are changing the process of delegate selection. Guest: political scientist Josh Putnam from the blog Frontloading HQ.

What these guys realize is that you can dig up all of this negative information, but if it’s coming from a Romney press release about Gingrich, let’s say, it’s going to have a lot less gravity with people than if it comes out in a newspaper like The New York Times or it comes out on MSNBC or CNN. So a lot of what the opposition research is about is getting the information to reporters, getting them to report it, and putting the imprimatur of an objective outlet around it. So this is the warfare that’s going on between these campaigns.

— Joe Hagan on how opposition researchers use the media to influence negative ads.

The distinction between the messaging that is coming out of political campaigns and their Super-PACs and what’s going on in the press is getting more and more blurred.

— Joe Hagan on the relationship between the press and campaign strategists.