The Seventh Sense

You Thought "Birtherism" Was A Dead Issue?

No, it ain't: 

Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett® told KFYI he’s not entirely convinced President Obama was really born in the United States and suggested he could be knocked off the state’s presidential ballot.

Said Bennett: “I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii—or at least I hope he was. But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.”

 

North Carolina Is Now Birther Central

ThinkProgress:

North Carolina is apparently ground zero of the latest resurgence of the birther movement, as a number of Republican candidates in the state are expressing doubts about President Obama’s birthplace.

ThinkProgress has previously noted that Richard Hudson, running for a congressional seat in the state’s 8th district, said Obama is “hiding something on his citizenship,” while the Charlotte Observer rescinded its endorsement of Jim Pendergraph, running in the 9th district, after he expressed his own doubts about Obama’s birth certificate.

Now, the Observer reports that Dr. John Whitley, one of Hudson’s opponents in tomorrow’s GOP primary, has also gone birther. He declared Obama’s birth certificate a “poorly reproduced forgery” after comparing it to the Hawaiian birth certificate of one of his campaign workers. “There is a tremendous amount of smoke here,” Whitley said. “In fact, it’s called a smoke screen.”

Meanwhile, Ilario Pantano, running the 7th district, also has “real questions” about Obama’s birthplace. “The way I see this is whether he was born on the moon or Nicaragua or Honolulu, the bottom line is he has to be defeated in November,” Pantano said.

Tough Obama Ad Dings Romney on Swiss Bank Accounts

The Obama campaign is up with a new ad in Ohio, Virginia, and Iowa.

 

That's going to leave marks.

Running On Bin Laden's Death

The Republicans have a problem with President Obama taking credit for Osama bin Laden's death.  And it is not hard to see why.  Mitt Romney didn't want us going into Pakistan to catch bin Laden, which is in fact where we got him. Good thing Mitt Romney didn't win the presidency in 2008 or Osama bin Laden still might be alive.

Interestingly, Republicans had no problem with George Bush taking credit for capturing Saddam, and on September 11 no less. From USA Today on September 11 (no less) of 2004:

In a harsh new attack on rival John Kerry, President Bush said Friday that if the Democratic presidential candidate "had his way," Saddam Hussein's regime would be running Iraq and threatening the safety of other nations.

The newest wrinkle is that Sen. Kerry has now decided we are spending too much money in Iraq even though he criticized us earlier for not spending enough," Bush said. "One thing about Sen. Kerry's position is clear ... if he had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power and would still be a threat to our security and to the world."

What surprises me most about this little squabble is the GOP playbook on it.  The more they complain about Obama "using" bin Laden's death for political gain, the more they remind everybody that Obama got bin Laden.  This is one of those stories that the GOP needs to let die as soon as possible.  Yet, they keep on stirring it.  Pretty stupid.

Tinfoil Hat Stories We Love

This from WND:

Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate.

Andrew Breitbart died on the day that loony Arizona Sheriff announced that Obama's birth certificate was forged?  And now Breitbart's coroner has died?

It MUST be an Obama plot!

And read the comments, too!

Is This A Bad Ad?

Karl Rove's PAC put this ad out this week.  It's saying that the president is being "cool" while all these problems are going on.

 

Um.... I think it makes Obama look good.  I don't think anyone (except those who hate Obama no matter what) is going to believe that Obama has spent the last 3 years singing.

And highlighting some of the remains of the Bush era?  Is that smart?

UPDATE:  Well, now I don't know what to think.  Because Trump agrees with me:

“They are making Obama look great," Trump said. "They are making him look like that’s the man we want to be president. I looked at that clip very closely, and actually, I couldn’t believe it.”

Obama Needs More Backbone

Obama is in North Carolina again today.  He's speaking at UNC to talk about college loans....

But President Obama is not expected to touch the subject when he appears in Chapel Hill on Tuesday — even though it is roiling the electorate there.... His delicate sidestep of Amendment One, a ballot initiative to be decided May 8 that would recognize marriage between a man and a woman as the only legal domestic partnership in North Carolina, is seen by some as another sign that he is not fully committed to gay rights — an interpretation that could dampen the enthusiasm of the young voters he is trying to court.

I get that the White House wants to stay on message and talk about the economy rather than gay stuff.  But he's really turning off some elements of his consituency -- which he needs desparately.  North Carolina is a key swing state, which Obama barely won 4 years ago, and it really shouldn't hurt him if he throws a nod toward, you know, civil rights.

Conspiracy Theorists Are Going To Love This

Two stories:

First, this one about one of the Obama girls going on spring break with her class to Oaxaca Mexico.  Initial press reports about it on the Internet were "scrubbed".

An AFP report that President Barack Obama’s 13-year-old daughter, Malia, is spending spring break in Oaxaca, Mexico appears to have been completely scrubbed from the Internet news sites that first reported it. Pictures have appeared in Mexican magazine Quién.com allegedly showing Malia visiting Oaxaca.

AFP, the French news agency, first reported around mid-day Monday that Malia Obama was vacationing in Mexico with 12 friends under the protection of 25 Secret Service agents and a number of local police officers.

Second, this one, which happened an hour ago:

A strong 7.4-magnitude earthquake hit Mexico on Tuesday, shaking central and southern parts of the country, collapsing a pedestrian bridge and swaying buildings in Mexico City. Plaster fell from ceilings and windows broke in the center of the capital, but the president said there were no immediate reports of major damage.

The initial quake near the borders of Oaxaca and Guerrero states was followed by a less powerful, magnitude-5.1 aftershock that also was felt in the capital.

Oaxaca.  Hmmmmm.  First the first daughter goes there, THEN there's an earthquake.  COINCIDENCE??????

(And by the way, she's okay)

P.S. The "scrubbing" of the Malia Obama story isn't a big mystery.  Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, confirmed to Politico's Dylan Byers that the White House that it asked news agencies to remove the story:

From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.

The Latest Stupid Kerfuffle

Robert DeNiro at Obama fundraiser last night: "Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?"

A joke, right?  Not a side-splitter, but obviously a joke.

Newt Gingrich feigns outrage and demands an apology from Obama:

“What DeNiro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologize for him. It was at an Obama fundraiser, it is exactly wrong, it divides the country,” he said. “If people on the left want to talk about talk show hosts, then everybody in the country should hold the president accountable when someone at his event says something that is utterly and terribly unacceptable as what Robert DeNiro said.”

Okay.  Somebody tell me please why the statement is "utterly and terribly unacceptable"?  According to Gingrich, DeNiro's comment "sows racial division".  Um.... how?  No, seriously.  How? 

I mean, if you really want to break down DeNiro's quip and take it seriously, this country obviously is ready for a white first lady, seeing as how we've had one for 232 out of the past 235 years.  So, you know...

This statement would have gone unnoticed, had Newt not started jumping up and down about it.  (Psssst.  Guess who is playing the race card.....)

And why exactly should Obama apologize?  You really want to start playing the "I'm-reponsible-for-what-my-friends-say" game, Newt?  Because one of your biggest supporters, Rush Limbaugh, has made some controversial statements lately. 

UPDATE: Oh Jesus Christ, c’mon: “Per @CarrieNBCNews, FLOTUS spokeswoman Olivie Alair says Robert DeNiro’s joke last night about a white first lady is ‘inappropriate.’”

The Right Wing Continues To Vet Obama As If He Hasn't Been President For 3 Years

Let's see...

So last week the bid deal-i-o was that Obama, when he was a Harvard Law student in the 1990's, said something positive about Harvard Law's first tenured black professor, Derrick Bell.  This means that Obama is a radical Muslim who wants to put white people in concentration camps (and the first few years of normalcy under the Obama Administration was just a ruse to lull us crackers into a false sense of security).

And now, the diligent right-o-sphere has uncovered another bombshell.  It's from an interview Obama gave in 1990 to the (Boston) Daily Herald.  Here's the graphic from one of the websites hawking this:

That's right.  Obama said, in the interview:

“There’s certainly racism here. There are certain burdens that are placed, more emotionally at this point than concretely,” Obama said.

“Professors may treat black students differently, sometimes by being, sort of, more dismissive, sometimes by being more, sort of, careful because they think, you know, they think that somehow we can’t cope in the classroom,” he said.

Obama sees the inner cities as the front lines of racism.

“It’s critical at this stage for people who want to see genuine change to focus locally. And it is crucial that we figure out how to rebuild the core of leadership and institutions in these communities,” he said.

For five years before law school, Obama took on that task in Chicago. As the director of a program that tried to bring South Side churches, unions and block associations together on projects, Obama was not trying to solve local problems, he said. Instead he sought to construct something more lasting — a forum for the community, “I’m interested in organizations, not movements, because movements dissipate and organizations don’t,” Obama said.

America suffered when the movements of the 1960s dissipated, he said. Those movements succeeded in raising doubts about harmful traditions of sexism and racism, but failed to offer a viable alternative.

“Hopefully, more and more people will begin to feel their story is somehow part of this larger story of how we’re going to reshape America in a way that is less mean-spirited and more generous,” Obama said.

OMG!  He hates white people!!  Or.... something....

But seriously, what does the right think this will DO to Obama?  He's saying that he wants American to be less mean-spirited and more generous?  This is a BAD thing?  How does this hurt him in the upcoming election?

At The Pump

Can we get one thing straight?

The Republican candidates are hoping to make it Obama's fault that gas prices are on the rise.  It's ridiculous.  Gas prices are on the rise because of the unsettled Middle East.  And while Obama hasn't resolved the Middle East conflicts, nobody has in... well, centuries.

The other thing the GOp candidates say is that gas prices are high because Obama doesn't like to drill.

Nice argument, except for two things: (1)  there are more domestic oil rigs pumping oil now (under Obama) than at any time in previous American history and (2) the gas prices are going up nonetheless.

Here's the chart that tells it all:

Sarah Palin Wants To Debate Obama

In response to the Obama ad featuring Sarah Palin, Sarah responded via her Facebook page:

Exhibit A in these diversionary tactics is an absurd new attack ad President Obama has released taking my comments out of context. I’m not running for any office, but I’m more than happy to accept the dubious honor of being Barack Obama’s “enemy of the week” if that includes the opportunity to debate him on the issues Americans are actually concerned about. (Remember when I said you don’t need a title to make a difference?)

Palin debate Obama?

That would be soooooo awesome.

The Terrible Obama Video That Haunts Him

Just before he died last week, media provocateur Andrew Breitbart teased his readers and followers by saying that he had "never-before-shown" video of Barack Obama during his college days.

The right wing, teased into a tizzy by Breitbart, went full into speculation mode.  Was it Barry Osama bin Obama doing drugs with Bill Ayers?  Could he have been making sweet love with Saul Alinsky?  What was it?

No.  It turns out that it is a video showing Barack Obama, speaking at a small rally in support of Professor Derrick Bell, a black constitutional law professor, who was seeking to get Harvard to tenure more minority and women law professors.  It was 1990, and Obama was in law school at the time (the first black president of the Harvard Review), not college.

Ooooooh.  Radical stuff.

The video was relased yesterday by Buzzfeed, scooping Breitbart.  Breitbart's people then claimed that the released video was "selectively edited".

Finally, a REAL news organization, the one that actually SHOT the video in 1990, stepped in.  A little thing called PBS Frontline:

The web is abuzz today about video of a speech Barack Obama gave in 1990 (some reports have incorrectly identified the speech as occurring in 1991) at Harvard Law School defending the actions of Professor Derrick Bell. Bell, the law school’s first tenured black professor, had protested Harvard’s failure to offer tenure to women of color as law school professors. Online publisher Andrew Breitbart, who died last week, had said he possessed the speech and hinted that he would release it, arguing that it provided evidence that Obama has long held radical political beliefs.

Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Breitbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.

But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008,  FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then.

So apparently Breitbart's "exclusive" video of Obama back in 1990, has been around -- even online! -- since 2008.  Great scoop, morons at Breitbart.

And by the way, what the video shows of Obama is positive.  He's articulate and engaging (yes, without teleprompters!).  Here is the video:

 

Scandalous.  Obama calling for diversity at Harvard Law.

The larger "unedited" video (at the PBS link above) shows the full news piece, but Obama isn't in any of it (except briefly in one crowd shot).

Somehow not shamed by their utter failure, the right is now trying to paint Professor Derrick Bell, now deceased, as some kind of radical.  He wasn't.  I knew him.  He taught at NYU law school when I was there, one year after this video was shot.  He was smart.  He was affible.  He cared about equality and justice.  Now, to many on the right, a black man who cares about equality and justice IS a "radical".  But to most normal people, Obama's loose affiliation with Bell is not a scar at all.  

But watch and laugh as Sean Haniity and Michelle "Twitchy" Malkin try to hype this up:

 

Epic fail.

The Obama Scandal You Haven't Heard About Yet

The lamestream media is trying its best to keep this hidden from we the people.  But it's only a matter of time before this story gets full-blown coverage, and takes down the current administration:

Two former participants in the CIA’s Mars visitation program of the early 1980’s have confirmed that U.S. President Barack H. Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and was among the young Americans from the program who they later encountered on the Martian surface after reaching Mars via “jump room.”

Andrew D. Basiago, 50, a lawyer in Washington State who served in DARPA’s time travel program Project Pegasus in the 1970’s, and fellow chrononaut William B. Stillings, 44, who was tapped by the Mars program for his technical genius, have publicly confirmed that Obama was enrolled in their Mars training class in 1980 and that each later encountered Obama during visits to rudimentary U.S. facilities on Mars that took place from 1981 to 1983.

***

Mr. Basiago and Mr. Stillings have each issued public statements confirming that they both attended Mars training with Mr. Obama and later encountered him on Mars during separate visits.

On August 21, 2011, Mr. Basiago stated:  "Something highly significant has happened, and that is that two individuals from the same Mars training class in 1980 (Basiago and Stillings) have met and are comparing experiences and are able to corroborate not only that they were on the surface of Mars together but that before reaching Mars via jump room they were trained with a group of teenagers that included the current President of the United States (Obama) and director of DARPA (Dugan)."

Mr. Stillings’ statement, released at the same time, read:  "I can confirm that Andrew D. Basiago and Barack Obama (then using the name "Barry Soetoro") were in my Mars training course in Summer 1980 and that during the time period 1981 to 1983, I encountered Andy, Courtney M. Hunt of the CIA, and other Americans on the surface of Mars after reaching Mars via the "jump room" in El Segundo, California.”

In a statement made Sept 20, 2011, Mr. Basiago confirmed Mr. Obama’s co-participation in the 1980 Mars training class, stating:  “Barry Soetoro, a student at Occidental College, was in my Mars training class under Major Ed Dames at The College of the Siskiyous in Weed, California in 1980. That fact has been corroborated by one of my other classmates, Brett Stillings. Two years later, when he was taller, thinner, more mature, a better listener, using the name ‘Barack Obama,’ and attending a different college, Columbia University, we crossed paths again in Los Angeles and I didn't recognize him as the person that I had been trained with in the Mars program and encountered on the surface of Mars. In fact, doing so would have been virtually impossible in any case, because measures had been taken to block our later memories of Mars shortly after we completed our training in 1980.”

Mr. Basiago states that during one of his trips to Mars via “jump room” that took place from 1981 to 1983, he was sitting on a wall beneath an arching roof that covered one of the “jump room” facilities as he watched Mr. Obama walk back to the jump room from across the Martian terrain. When Mr. Obama walked past him and Mr. Basiago acknowledged him, Mr. Obama stated, with some sense of fatalism:  “Now we’re here!”

Why is Obama covering up his trip to Mars?  And why did he go?  Was he trying to spread socialism to the red planet?!?!?

Birther Stupidity

World News Daily (aka World Nut Daily) is actually boasting on their website about how they had an airplane fly over the Cowboys-Giants game this weekend, towing a banner inquiring about Obama's "real" birth certificate.

Yes, doing a banner flyover of a domed stadium.  Good call, guys.

 

GOP Filibusters Middle Tax Cut Again

A bill to extend the payroll tax holiday failed in the Senate this afternoon after Republicans filibustered the extension for a third time, preventing it from getting the 60 votes needed to begin debate or receive an up-or-down vote. The latest bill would have paid for the extension of the holiday, which primarily affects middle and low income Americans, by assessing a small, temporary tax on the top 0.2 percent of income earners. The vote was 50-48.

CFPB Nominee Filibustered

I don't know how the Republicans think they can possibly benefit from things like this:

Earlier today, 53 percent of the Senate voted to move forward with Richard Cordray’s nomination to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — depriving him of thesupermajority he needs in order to be confirmed. One of the senators joining this filibuster, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), was uncharacteristically candid about why he helped build this wall of obstruction — he simply wants to sabotage the agency:

I have met Mr. Cordray, and my decision to oppose his confirmation by the Senate has nothing to do with his qualifications. Rather, I feel it is my duty to oppose his confirmation as part of my opposition to the creation of CFPB itself. . . . Confirming any director for this bureau would be tantamount to agreeing that we need a uniquely powerful super-agency that is not even designed to prevent a repeat of the financial crisis. Until the CFPB is reformed, I will not support it in any way.

Simply put, this is nothing less than a direct assault on the rule of law. The CFPB was created by an Act of Congress and can only be repealed or modified by an Act of Congress. By his own admission, Lee’s filibuster is an attempt to make an end run around the Constitution’s legitimate lawmaking process.

But, of course, this filibuster is also just once more example of the Tea Party senator’s nihilistic approach to governance. Lee believes that federal child labor laws, FEMA, food stamps, the FDA, Medicaid, income assistance for the poor, and even Medicare and Social Security violate the Constitution. He not only sponsored a radical constitutional amendment that would force the United States to adopt Tea Party fiscal policy forever, he then openly admitted that he was using last summer’s debt ceiling crisis to extort the rest of the Congress into passing his amendment.

People really need to stop and process this.  The CFPB is designed to protect consumers against things like preditory lending (one of the lead reasons for the economic crisis we are in), and fraud against consumers commited by banks and credit card customers.  It protects you; it protects me.  Why would any politician NOT IN THE POCKETS OF BIG BUSINESS be opposed to such a thing?

These people hate Obama so much, they are willing to hurt ordinary Americans rather than give Obama a victory.

That's messed up.

Teleprompter Racism

Oh, there's Aaron again.

Once again, he's bemoaning black unity and calling it "racism" again.  By Aaron's logic, women who want to see a woman as president (like Hillary), or a woman as vice-president (like Sarah) are sexist.  Clearly, like so many white Southern boys, Aaron has a hard time distinguishing pride in ones race, on the one hand, and the sterotyping and hatred of other races, on the other hand.  Just because the Klan made those two concepts synonymous doesn't mean they are synonymous, Aaron.

And not surprisingly, he doesn't see the racial overtones in continuing the myth that Obama's erudition comes from words put in his mouth via the teleprompter, ignoring the fact that his debate skills and interviews demonstrate that he has the innate and genuine verbal skills of the Harvard Law Review editor that he once was.

Pedantic bigotry at its best.

The Right's Frenzy About Obama And The Earthquake

Steve Benen is right.  Can this be any sillier?

So, there was an earthquake. The president was made aware of it. There was no serious damage, no casualties, nothing for emergency response teams to do, and nothing for Obama to do. He was kept apprised and went about his afternoon. I don't know why this is supposed to be interesting.

I realize conservatives are a creative bunch, and can manufacture outrage out of whole cloth, but even for the right, making a fuss about this is just childish. Indeed, at a certain level, it's counter-productive -- shouldn't the right be more selective, going on the attack when Obama actually messes up, so it would have a greater impact?

In the case of the earthquake, if there'd been an actual disaster, and Obama sat around reading a children's book while Americans were dying, I could see conservatives getting upset. If Obama had been told a month ago that a serious disaster was poised to happen, and he told the geologists, "All right, you've covered your ass now" before ignoring the warnings, the right would have plenty of room for criticism.

But this is weak tea. When pundits are reduced to wanting to see the president "pretend to do something," you know the discourse has badly gone off the rails.

Indeed, if we're going to have a substantive discussion about politics, policy, and natural disasters, perhaps the better place to start would be with Republican efforts to cut funding for the U.S. Geological Survey, which monitors earthquakes, and mocking investments in studying seismic activities.

Given the circumstances, this seems far more interesting.

 

The Fall of Ghadaffi

It's amusing to watch the GOP deal with the inevitable fall of Ghadaffi.  They spend the past few months criticizing Obama for going into Libya and supporting the rebels in the first place.  Now that the rebels are on the brink of victory, the GOP cannot find the words to credit Obama's Libya policy.

Think Progress picks up the story:

Republican presidential hopefuls have been offering giving their reactions to the fall of Qaddafi’s regime, giving praise for many involved save for — perhaps predictably — President Obama, who many of them attacked for endorsing the NATO intervention earlier this year.

Rick Santorum: “Ridding the world of the likes of Gadhafi is a good thing, but this indecisive President had little to do with this triumph.”

It’s hard to see how that statement bears any resemblance to reality, considering that many in Santorum’s own party attacked Obama for doing too much in Libya. In fact, Santorum himself accused Obama of “dithering” and”do[ing] nothing” in Libya in April, saying Obama “really missed an opportunity.”

Mitt Romney: “The world is about to be rid of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the brutal tyrant who terrorized the Libyan people. It is my hope that Libya will now move toward a representative form of government that supports freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. As a first step, I call on this new government to arrest and extradite the mastermind behind the bombing of Pan Am 103, Abdelbaset Mohmed Ali al-Megrahi, so justice can finally be done.”

In March, Romney accused Obama of being “weak” with the Libya intervention, suggesting Obama’s foreign policy “can’t prevail.” “He calls for the removal of Moammar Qaddafi but then conditions our action on the directions we get from the Arab League and United Nations,” Romney added. In a blog post for National Review in April, Romney warned of “mission creep” and approvingly quoted former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, who Romney said “rightly notes that Obama has set himself up for ‘massive strategic failure’ by demanding Qaddafi’s ouster.” Of course, Obama’s approach did “prevail.”

Hee-hee.

And, Right On Cue, The Birthers Are Claiming It's A Fake

 

By the way, if you watch the video and get sucked in by what they are saying, there's a perfectly good reason for the phenomenon they show.  If you scan a doc with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) turned on, Adobe Acrobat is capable of taking a scanned doc and breaking it out into layers automatically. That’s what seems to have happened here. There are still one or two funky anomalies, like the text in box 17a getting split into two separate layers and the date in 20 getting its own, but OCR is an imperfect beast and stuff like that happens.

Not that facts like this matter.

How A Birther Views Obama's Birth Certificate

By the way, David Frum, who writes "as an opponent of virtually every major and minor action of this administration", has a nice little coda to the birther controversy, wherein he chastises his own party:

Even for the small band that sustained the phony controversy until now, the birth certificate so-called issue ends today.

Any last lingering doubts that maybe, perhaps, a pregnant Stanley Ann Dunham in the summer of 1961 boarded a propeller plane from Honolulu to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles to New York City, then from New York City to Gander, then from Gander to London, then from London to Nairobi – and then repeated the trip backward a few weeks later – all so that her baby could acquire Kenyan nationality – those doubts are definitively squelched, as they should have been three years ago.

Now the more haunting question: How did this poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation get such a grip on our conservative movement and our Republican party?

I know there will be Republican writers and conservative publicists who will now deny that birtherism ever did get a grip. Sorry, that’s just wrong. Not only did Trump surge ahead in Republican polls by flaming racial fires – not only did conservative media outlets from Fox to Drudge to the Breitbart sites indulge the birthers – but so also did every Republican candidate who said, “I take the president at his word.” Birthers did not doubt the president’s “word.” They were doubting the official records of the state of Hawaii. It’s like answering a 9/11 conspiracist by saying, “I take the 9/11 families at their word that they lost their loved ones.”

Yet even now, the racialist aspect of the anti-Obama movement has not subsided. Trump has moved from the birth certificate to questioning the president’s academic qualifications for the Harvard Law School. Trump himself was a troubled student (at one point he attended a military school) who nonetheless gained admission to Wharton. His father’s wealth and business success cannot have hurt with that application. Yet he feels himself qualified to pronounce on who is and who is not smart enough to attend Harvard Law. Barack Obama graduated magna cum laude. (And to anticipate a new line of attack – yes, Harvard Law School exams were blind-graded.) He was elected editor of the law review. And his classmates, left and right, universally admired his abilities.

I wish it were otherwise, but it does seem that these racialized attacks on Obama have exacted a toll on him. But they also have exacted a toll on the opposition to Obama. The too-faint repudiation of birtherism by regular Republicans has shaped not only the Obama brand, but also the Republican brand. It was not only white people who heard the implied message about who counts and who does not count as a “real American.”

***

And those who imagine that they somehow enhance the value of that citizenship by belittling the American-ness of their president – they not only disgrace the politics they uphold, but they do damage that will not soon be forgotten by the voters a revived Republicanism must win.

Yup.  Birtherism was racism thinly disguised.

UPDATE --  Stories we stopped reading.....

In a development that will surprise no one, it turns out that President Barack Obama's decision to release his long-form birth certificate hasn't quieted members of the "birther" movement who promote the conspiracy theory that he wasn't born in the United States.

"Look, I applaud this release. I think it's a step in the right direction," so-called "birther queen" Orly Taitz told me in one of her many media interviews this morning. "I credit Donald Trump in pushing this issue."

But she still has her suspicions. Specifically, Taitz thinks that the birth certificate should peg Obama's race as "Negro" and not "African."

Oy.

Like This Will Stop It

In an amazing concession to the lunatic fringe in America, President Barack Obama has released his “long form” birth certificate from Hawaii.

Actually, check that, using the word “released” adopts the narrative of the crazies. It’s more accurate to say that the President of the United States successfully begged Hawaii for a document it doesn’t normally issue in an effort to appease the dumbest of his political rivals.

Here it is in biggie PDF format.

Move on, country?  I think if you're a birther whose been raging for the past two years that Obama is a secret Kenyan, this changes nothing.  You'll start talking about how this isn't the right document, how it's a forgery.....

UPDATE:  Gotta laugh at the Fox News headline and the words "what it says"

The Next Right Wing Freakout

Here it comes.... you ready?  I keep my ear pretty close to the crazy ground, so I think this might have some legs.  From the people that brought you "death panels", the next big fear.

And it goes something like this:

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS GOING TO RETURN MANHATTAN TO THE INDIANS

You see, on December 16, the President announced that the U.S. would reverse course and support the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. The Declaration was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007, but the U.S., under President Bush, opposed it.

The UN Declaration -- known as Article 26 -- says:

1. Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.
2. Indigenous peoples have the right to own, use, develop and control the lands, territories and resources that they possess by reason of traditional ownership or other traditional occupation or use, as well as those which they have otherwise acquired.
3. States shall give legal recognition and protection to these lands, territories and resources. Such recognition shall be conducted with due respect to the customs, traditions and land tenure systems of the indigenous peoples concerned.

The fringe right has seized on this, as well as the fact that Obama was made an honorary member of certain Indian tribes during the 2008 campaign.

And first up to bat the loony theory?  The World Net Daily, of course, which puts in the form of a question: 

Obama to give Manhattan back to Native Americans?

Give a week or two, and that question mark will be an exclamation point.

The Phrase Of The Day Is "Hippie Punching"

Yeah, despite my enjoyment of the GOP/Tea Party rift, I should keep in mind that there's some infighting on the left, too:

Top Obama adviser David Axelrod got an earful of the liberal blogosphere's anger at the White House moments ago, when a blogger on a conference call directly called out Axelrod over White House criticism of the left, accusing the administration of "hippie punching."

"We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day," the blogger, Susan Madrak of Crooks and Liars, pointedly told Axelrod on the call, which was organzied for liberal bloggers and progressive media.

The call seemed to perfectly capture the tense dynamic that exists between the White House and the online and organized left: Though White House advisers in the past have dumped on the left, anonymously and even on the record, Axelrod repeatedly pleaded with the bloggers on the call for help in pumping up the flagging enthusiasm of rank and file Dems.

"You play a great role in informing people about the stakes of elections," Axelrod told the bloggers. "One of the reasons I was eager to expend time was to enlist you."

But hovering over the call was the obvious disconnect between this plea for help and statements like those of Robert Gibbs, who recently pilloried the "professional left" for being overly critical of the White House.

That tension burst out into the open when Madrak directly asked Axelrod: "Have you ever heard of hippie punching?" That prompted a long silence from Axelrod.

"You want us to help you, the first thing I would suggest is enough of the hippie punching," Madrak added. "We're the girl you'll take under the bleachers but you won't be seen with in the light of day."

Axelrod didn't engage on "hippie punching," but he said he agreed with the blogger. "To the extent that we shouldn't get involved in intramural skirmishing, I couldn't agree more," Axelrod said. "We just can't afford that. There are big things at stake here."

Madrak replied that Axelrod was missing the point -- that the criticism of the left made it tougher for bloggers like herself to motivate the base. "Don't make our jobs harder," she said.

"Right back at'cha. Right back at'cha," Axelrod replied, a bit testily, an apparent reference to blogospheric criticism of the administration.

Who is right?  Unfortunately, they both are.

Fake Outrage From One Year Ago: An Update

What topic was the GOP and teapartiers up in arms about a year ago?  Anyone remember?

That's right -- the fact that Obama was going to be making a speech in front of schoolchildren in Philadelphia, a speech to be live telecast to kids throughout the nation.   According to the right wing at the time, it was part of Obama's plan to "indoctrinate" our kids.  I blogged about it here.

Are we any further along in having reasonable "controversies"?

I suspect not.  And I suspect our Kenyan 'anti-colonialist,' Joker-faced socialist, Hitler-mustachioed,detached and aloof, anointed president would agree with me.

But there is this interesting twist:

The man who led the charge against Obama last year is not only facing corruption charges, but he is welcoming the speech and charging his party with racism.

"In the year since I issued a prepared statement regarding President Obama speaking to the nation's schoolchildren, I have learned a great deal about the party I so deeply loved and served," said Jim Greer, the former Florida state party chairman in a written statement, per the Miami Herald. "Unfortunately, I found that many within the GOP have racist views and I apologize to the President for my opposition to his speech last year and my efforts to placate the extremists who dominate our party today. 

So, there is hope...

The Majority Of Republicans Is Stark Raving Mad

Well, what other conclusion can you reach when you read this:

A majority of Republicans believe that President Barack Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world," according to a survey released on Monday.

That figure, buried at the very end of a newly released Newsweek public opinion poll, reflects the extent to which a shocking bit of smear and misinformation has managed to become nearly commonplace within the GOP tent.

(Read the full poll results here.)

A full 14 percent of Republicans said that it was "definitely true" that Obama sympathized with the fundamentalists and wanted to impose Islamic law across the globe. An additional 38 percent said that it was probably true -- bringing the total percentage of believers to 52 percent. Only 33 percent of Republicans said that the "allegation" (as Newsweek put it) was "probably not true." Seven percent said it was "definitely not true." The rest (eight percent) either didn't know the answer or didn't read the question.

Oh, and that question wasn't the only one showing that a majority of Republicans must be eating paste or something....

Fifty-nine percent of Republicans, for instance, said they believed the president favored "the interests of Muslims over other groups of Americans"....

Look, it's one thing to dislike Obama.... but to actually believe this crap, that is an embarrassment to the not only the GOP, but the entire country.

On Obama's Sagging Approval Ratings

"Democrats in Washington are divided and somewhat puzzled over President Obama's fading popularity", writes Matt Bai at The New York Times today.  He then goes on to explain why he thinks Obama's popularity is lackluster in the middle of his first term: because Obama has too much of a legislator -- trying to pass health care, the stimulus, etc.

You know, I don't have a degree in political science, but it seems to me that the simplest explanations of Obama's low numbers are the best explanations.  So here it is, in a nutshell.

(1)  Obama's ratings are not all that low.  Clinton, Carter and Reagan were between 39 percent and 41 percent approval rating at this point in their presidencies.   Obama is at 44 percent.  In other words, barring some cataclysmic nationally unifying event, all presidents experience a huge drop in their popularity in the middle of their first term.  Only two presidents since 1900 didn't lose House seats during the midterm election of their first term -- FDR during the height of the depression, and George Bush after 9/11.  Every other president? Their party lost seats.

So obviously what is driving down Obama's numbers are larger political issues that go beyond what Obama has or hasn't done as a president.  His numbers are down because that always happens in the middle of a president's first term.

(2)  It's the economy, stupid.  Does anyone think that there would be discussion about Obama's "low" approval rating if the unemployment rate was at 7% and falling?  Now, to be sure, some of Obama's "low" approval rating could be attributed to his failure to turn the economy around (so far), but it is a bad economy that he inherited in the first place.  At some point, the recovery will kick in, and his numbers will go up.

But it seems to me rather silly to try to pin Obama's lackluster approval ratings solely on his policies.

Our Stupid Nation

One in five Americans actually think Obama is a Muslim.

UPDATE -- Also this zinger: “Among those who say Obama is a Muslim, 60 percent say they learned about his religion from the media.” 

Anyone want to guess which media?

When Republicans Start Telling The Truth And Stop Bagging Tea

Rep. Bob Inglis, defeated in South Carolina's Republican primary last month, told the AP that the GOP is succumbing to "demagoguery" and talk-show personalities, blasted Sarah Palin's "death panels" comments, and compared American partisans to "Sunni and Shia."

While not naming names, 12-year incumbent Rep. Bob Inglis suggested in interviews with The Associated Press that tea party favorites such as former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and right-wing talk show hosts like Glenn Beck are the culprits.

He cited a claim made famous by Palin that the Democratic health care bill would create "death panels" to decide whether elderly or sick people should get care.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Inglis also expressed sympathy for fellow Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), who accused tea partiers of repeatedly shouting racial epithets at him during a protest of the health-care vote. He said racism is part of what is motivating opposition to President Obama:

Inglis said he was too far away during the jeering incident to hear whether the protesters shouted racial epithets, as Lewis and other black lawmakers have claimed. But Inglis said the behavior was threatening and abusive.

"I caught him at the door and said, 'John, I guess you've been here before,'" Inglis said.

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Shorter Charles Krauthammer

Shorter Charles Krauthammer: Obama uses the word "I" a lot, and refers to the secretary of state as "my secretary of state".  Just more proof that he's a uppity n*gger.

Seriously, why does the Washington Post employ this columnist?

Aaaah, It ALL Makes Sense Now (Protester of the Day)

Scary Election of the Day

Today is primary day in a lot of states.  I'm not following it.  I can tell you (and so can everybody else) that anti-incumbancy fever is high, which means that a lot of people in office might get thrown out.  Doesn't look like the nation will swing all the way to the teabaggers, but on the whole, it doesn't look good for the left.

There is one race worth watching.... for comical purposes.  And ironically, if this GOP nominee wins, it will be a HUGE embarassment to the GOP.

California Republicans optimistic about their prospects in November could find themselves with a bit of a problem after the votes are counted in Tuesday’s primaries — a statewide ticket with the so-called “Birther Queen” as one of their candidates.

Orly Taitz is an Israeli émigré who has spent the past two years filing lawsuits challenging President Barack Obama’s right to be president on the grounds that he was born in Kenya. In the process, she has earned herself $20,000 in court fines.

Now she’s running for the GOP nomination for secretary of state, and with her establishment-backed primary opponent mounting a less-than-stellar campaign against her, operatives say there’s a chance she could win.

“It’d be a disaster for the Republican party,” says James Lacy, a conservative GOP operative in the state. “Can you imagine if [gubernatorial candidate] Meg Whitman and [candidate for Lt. Gov.] Abel Maldonado — both of whom might have a chance to win in November — had to run with Orly Taitz as secretary of state, who would make her cockamamie issues about Obama’s birth certificate problems at the forefront of her activities?”

Fingers crossed.

Whoomp, There He Is?

Some people think the guy at the 1:01 mark is Obama.

Of course, the video was made in 1993, when Obama was a Harvard Law professor doing community organizing work in Chicago.  So, it's kind of hard to believe that he would be in a rap video.

How The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Has Turned The Right Wing Into Socialists (and Hypocrites)

Crazy Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), like many of her fellow Republicans, isn't satisfied with the federal response to the BP oil spill disaster because -- get this -- she wanted to see the federal government seize control and ownership of more private property. Seriously.

"Where were the boats that could have been commandeered by the government to be sent into this region to deal with that oil plume as it was coming up to the water and destroying marine life? Nowhere to be found. Why? The administration was hands off on this policy."

I don't get it.  If bailing out Wall Street and the car companies is government-engineered socialism, why isn't taking ownership of BP's private assets?  Why, here is what Bachmann said only last April on Larry King:

BACHMANN: The story in our country has been the federal government takeover of private industry. The federal government literally, in 18 months’ time, has taken either direct ownership or control of 51 percent of the private economy. Eighteen months ago, 100 percent of the private economy was private. But today, the federal government literally owns banks., the largest insurance company in the United States. The federal government owns over half of all home mortgages today in the United States — Chrysler, G.M. the student loan industry and now health care.

The point for Bachmann and her brethren, obviously, is to lash out hysterically and attack the president. Whether it makes sense or is consistent with her so-called principles is irrelevant.  (And I'm sure when she finds out that some little lefty liberals are arguing the same thing, she'll do a complete 180).

I should also note, in passing, that the assertion that the Obama administration has been "hands off" on the oil spill is patently absurd.  I understand the frustration that, as yet, there has been no cessation of the leak.  But that's not because the government is sitting idly by.  It's because nobody -- including the government -- knows exactly how to stop the damned thing.  We're in uncharted (and oily) waters.

RELATED:  Sarah Palin weighs in with this hilarious tweet...

 

Yup.  You're reading that right.  Sarah is taking the Gulf oil spill and doing an "I told you so", as if to say "When I was chanting 'drill baby drill', I didn't mean there.  If only you people had listened to me!"

Unfortunately, Sarah has never taken the position that "drill baby drill" was limited to just onshore places.  In fact, the opposite.  She was the one to convince McCain into supporting offshore drilling!  Here's a Q&A from CNBC's “Kudlow & Company” Interview - Jul 31, 2008:

Q: When we talked about a month ago, you told me you were going to persuade Senator McCain to drill in ANWR. Now actually, McCain’s come a long way on drilling Outer Continental Shelf. Have you yet talked him in to ANWR?

A: I have not talked him in to ANWR yet. But yeah, he has evolved into being open enough to say yes to that offshore. Obama certainly hasn’t gone there. We certainly need this. We need it for American security, & for energy independence.

And during the 2008 Vice Presidential debate against Joe Biden, she chastized Obama's position on offshore drilling, calling offshore drilling "safe" and "environmentally-friendly":

BIDEN: We have 3% of the world’s oil reserves. We consume 25% of the oil. John has voted 20 times in the last decade-and-a-half against funding alternative energy sources, clean energy sources, wind, solar, biofuels. McCain thinks, I guess, the only answer is drill, drill, drill. Drill we must, but it’ll take ten years before any [new drilling delivers oil].

PALIN: The chant is “drill, baby, drill.” That’s what we hear across this country in our rallies because people are hungry for those domestic sources of energy to be tapped into. They know that even in my own energy-producing state we have billions of barrels of oil and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas. Barack Obama and Sen. Biden, you’ve said no to everything in trying to find a domestic solution to the energy crisis. You even called drilling -- safe, environmentally-friendly drilling offshore as raping the outer continental shelf.

"Well, that's all from the 2008 campaign," you say.  Maybe she had a change of heart since then on the subject of offshore drilling.  Nope.  There's this from March, 2009:

Salazar went to Alaska this week as part of the process of developing this administration's offshore energy plan. He has called a time out on new leasing, for more public input, and he got plenty Tuesday.

Whaling captain and mayor of the North Slope Borough Edward Itta advised slowing down: "Mr. Secretary, like all Alaskans, the people of the North Slope depend on the economic engine of oil and gas development. We have supported onshore for well over 30 years now. But, Mr. Secretary, offshore is a different matter."

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin advised speeding up: "Delays or major restrictions in accessing our needed resources for environmentally responsible development are not in the nation's or our state's best interest." 

And just two months ago, in a widely circulated missive, Palin attacked President Obama's plan to open up large swaths of the U.S. coastline to potential drilling for being too little, too late. "[L]et's not forget," she wrote, "that while Interior Department bureaucrats continue to hold up actual offshore drilling from taking place, Russia is moving full steam ahead on Arctic drilling, and China, Russia, and Venezuela are buying leases off the coast of Cuba."

And just eight days ago, despite the BP spill, Sarah said she remains a "big supporter of offshore drilling." 

Now, with her tweet, she would like you to forget she said all that.  When she led the chants of "drill baby drill", she was only talking about onshore drilling, you stupid "greenies" (despite the fact that she wasn't).

For any other politician, members of the news media would confront them about this obvious hypocrisy.  But Sarah avoids those kind of questions (prefering the softball questions of Fox News), so she'll never have to account for her obvious political chicanery and flip-flopping.

What particularly annoys me about this Palin tweet isn't that she's blatently fabricating her own record regarding offshore drilling.  It's that she's doing it in an unctious condescending tone, as if we have failed to understand all along that she was warning us about the dangers of offshore drilling ("Now do you get it"?).  And yet, we DO get it.  We get what she said in the past.  And no matter how belittling her tone, it doesn't change what has come out of her mouth.  She supported offshore drilling.  Period.

P.S.  And it's not like onshore drilling can't hurt the environment.  If an oil well in ANWR had blown up, the oil would just kind of pool all over the tundra, and it would be much easier to just nuke it, like the Russians did.  This, apparently, is desireable, in the Palin world-view.

Obama's Katrina?

A lot of "serious" right-wing contributors are comparing the Obama's response to the Oil Spill to Bush's response to Katrina.  

Read, for example, how unhinged the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan

I don't see how the president's position and popularity can survive the oil spill. This is his third political disaster in his first 18 months in office.

She continues:

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: "Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust." Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: "We pay so much for the government and it can't cap an undersea oil well!"

This is what happened with Katrina, and Katrina did at least two big things politically. The first was draw together everything people didn't like about the Bush administration, everything it didn't like about two wars and high spending and illegal immigration, and brought those strands into a heavy knot that just sat there, soggily, and came to symbolize Bushism. The second was illustrate that even though the federal government in our time has continually taken on new missions and responsibilities, the more it took on, the less it seemed capable of performing even its most essential jobs. 

Peggy conveniently overlooks the obvious.  Katrina is not the same as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in some very significant ways.

For one thing, the federal government never took it upon itself to oversee oil spills caused by private industries.  There is no federal expertise in capping oil blowouts. There is no federal agency tasked specifically with repairing broken well pipes. There is no expectation that the federal government should be able to respond instantly to a disaster like this. There never has been. For better or worse, it's simply not something that's ever been considered the responsibility of the federal government.

The same cannot be said of hurricanes.  In that case, we specifically have FEMA just for that purpose.  And FEMA worked like a charm during the Clinton administration.  But when George Bush became president and Joe Allbaugh became director of FEMA, everything changed. Allbaugh neither knew nor cared about disaster preparedness. For ideological reasons, FEMA was downsized and much of its work outsourced. When Allbaugh left after less than two years on the job, he was replaced by the hapless Michael Brown and the agency was downgraded and broken up yet again. By the time Katrina hit, the upper levels of FEMA were populated largely with political appointees with no disaster preparedness experience and the agency was simply not up to the job of dealing with a huge storm anymore.

So is the oil spill "Obama's Katrina"?  Hardly.  There was nothing for the Obama Administration to do.  BP had the experts to stop the thing.  BP was tasked to stop the thing (although the Obama Administration was clearly breathing down BP's back).

In fact, there's a very good argument that the BP oil explosion could have prevented if the federal agencies under Bush hadn't been watered down.  The BP blowout was made more likely because that Bush administration decided that government regulation of private industry wasn't very important and turned the relevant agency into a joke. If you believe that government is the problem, not the solution, and if you actually run the country that way for eight years, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But we shouldn't pretend it's inevitable.

Rand Paul Doubling Down By Showing Support For BP

Bruce Bartlett may have said it best when he wrote that Paul suffers from foolish consistency syndrome:

I don't believe Rand is a racist; I think he is a fool who is suffering from the foolish consistency syndrome that affects all libertarians. They believe that freedom consists of one thing and one thing only--freedom from governmental constraint. Therefore, it is illogical to them that any increase in government power could ever expand freedom. Yet it is clear that African Americans were far from free in 1964 and that the Civil Rights Act greatly expanded their freedom while diminishing that of racists. To defend the rights of racists to discriminate is reprehensible and especially so when it is done by a major party nominee for the U.S. Senate. I believe that Rand should admit that he was wrong as quickly as possible.

For his part, Rand Paul has spent the last 24 hours backtracking very fast.  Originally he had problems with parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; now he claims he would have voted for it, even the parts he didn't like (i.e., the part which compelled businesses not to discriminate).

Some conservatives -- and even Paul himself -- have tried to dismiss the whoe Civil-Rights-gate issue as a gotcha game, based on an historic event which has no bearing on the present.  But wiser people (like me) understand that the issue isn't civil rights, but Paul's adherence to a hands-off government.  That has real world applications to current events.

And this morning shows why.  In an interview on ABC News’ Good Morning America today, host George Stephanopoulos pressed GOP Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul on “how far” he would “push” his anti-government views. Playing a clip of Paul telling Fox Business that he wants to “get rid of regulation” and “get the EPA out of our coal business down,” Stephanopoulos asked if Paul believed “the EPA should not be allowed to tell oil companies they can’t use certain chemicals to enforce safety regulations on that rig out there?” “No,” replied Paul, saying that he was referring to the EPA’s effort to regulate carbon emissions.

When Stephanopoulos followed up with a question about getting “rid of the EPA,” Paul defended BP’s response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last month and attacked the Obama administration’s crackdown on the oil giant as “really un-American“:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don’t want to get rid of the EPA?

PAUL: No, the thing is is that drilling right now and the problem we’re having now is in international waters and I think there needs to be regulation of that and always has been regulation. What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, you know, “I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.” I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault. Instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I’ve met a lot of these miners and their families. They’re very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.

Really, Rand?  Coming out in favor of BP?  It's un-American to come down hard on British Petroleum?

Great timing.  And great way to change the subject....

Rand Paul And The Civil Rights Act: Part II

As the day progresses, Rand Paul is clarifying his position on the 1964 Civil Rights Act, assuring the voters that he will not try to repeal it.  This afternoon, a spokesman for the Paul campaign told Greg Sargent, "Civil Rights legislation that has been affirmed by our courts gives the Federal government the right to insure that private businesses don't discriminate based on race. Dr. Paul supports those powers."

It's nice that Paul doesn't want to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits private businesses from discriminating on the basis of race, but it still skirts the issue.  Because clearly, if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were to come about now, Rand would be against it.

How do we know?  Because Paul objected to another act which sought to end racial discrimination, this time in 2002:

In a May 30, 2002, letter to the Bowling Green Daily News, Paul's hometown newspaper, he criticized the paper for endorsing the Fair Housing Act, and explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin."...

"The Daily News ignores," wrote Paul, "as does the Fair Housing Act, the distinction between private and public property. Should it be prohibited for public, taxpayer-financed institutions such as schools to reject someone based on an individual's beliefs or attributes? Most certainly. Should it be prohibited for private entities such as a church, bed and breakfast or retirement neighborhood that doesn't want noisy children? Absolutely not."

In language similar to the language he's used talking about the Civil Rights Act, Paul criticized racism while defending the right of businesses to discriminate.

"A free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination," wrote Paul, "even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin. It is unenlightened and ill-informed to promote discrimination against individuals based on the color of their skin. It is likewise unwise to forget the distinction between public (taxpayer-financed) and private entities."

So even though Paul won't try to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he's still in favor of allowing businesses to discriminate on the basis of race.  Not in favor of it morally (he insists), but in favor of allowing businesses to get away with it.

Much as Rand Paul would like, this issue really isn't about the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  His worldview applies to discrimination today.  What are his views on the Lilly Ledbetter Act, or a law against discriminatory housing against gays?  I think we know where he stands.  It's where he would have stood back in 1964.

Alabama Education

The Birmingham News:

A Jefferson County teacher picked the wrong example when he used as�sassinating President Bar�ack Obama as a way to teach angles to his geome�try students.

Someone alerted autho�rities and the Corner High School math teacher was questioned by the Secret Service, but was not taken into custody or charged with any crime.

"We did not find a credible threat," said Roy Sex�ton, special agent in charge of Birmingham's Secret Service office. "As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into it, we talked to the gentleman and we have closed our investigation."

***

The teacher was appar�ently teaching his geometry students about parallel lines and angles, officials said. He used the example of where to stand and aim if shooting Obama.

"He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,' " said Joseph Brown, a senior in the geometry class.

Nice.

The teacher has been put on leave.

I Like This Obama Better Than Bipartisan-Wannabe Obama

OBAMA: After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want to keys back. No! You can’t drive! We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.

Jon Chaitt adds:

I think we can see his main political theme for 2010 and 2012 taking shape here: Republicans screwed the country up, Obama got to work fixing it, Republicans took an ultra-partisan stance on every issue, and if you give them power they'll screw things up again. It's quite simple, and has the added virtue of being true.

So Far, The Attacks On Kagen Are Lame

The Hill:

Republicans are questioning Elena Kagan’s ties to a liberal icon and the nation’s first African American Supreme Court justice, Thurgood Marshall.

In its first memo to reporters since Kagan’s nomination to the high court became public, the Republican National Committee highlighted Kagan’s tribute to Marshall in a 1993 law review article published shortly after his death. 

Kagan quoted from a speech Marshall gave in 1987 in which he said the Constitution as originally conceived and drafted was “defective.” She quoted him as saying the Supreme Court’s mission was to “show a special solicitude for the despised and the disadvantaged.”

Seriously?!?  That's the opening attack on Kagen?  She echoed Thrugood Marshall's belief that the original Constitution was "defective"?

Guess what?  The Constitution "as originally conceived and drafted" was defective.  Most notably, the section which said that slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person for census purposes.  Are Republicans going to take the position that that was correct?  Does the GOP basically want to rule out ALL the amendments since the Constitution's original draft?

UPDATE -- Via Americablog, here is exactly what Thurgood Marshall said - slavery:

[T]he government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite "The Constitution," they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.

For a sense of the evolving nature of the Constitution we need look no further than the first three words of the document's preamble: 'We the People." When the Founding Fathers used this phrase in 1787, they did not have in mind the majority of America's citizens. "We the People" included, in the words of the Framers, "the whole Number of free Persons." On a matter so basic as the right to vote, for example, Negro slaves were excluded, although they were counted for representational purposes at threefifths each. Women did not gain the right to vote for over a hundred and thirty years.

These omissions were intentional. The record of the Framers' debates on the slave question is especially clear: The Southern States acceded to the demands of the New England States for giving Congress broad power to regulate commerce, in exchange for the right to continue the slave trade. The economic interests of the regions coalesced: New Englanders engaged in the "carrying trade" would profit from transporting slaves from Africa as well as goods produced in America by slave labor. The perpetuation of slavery ensured the primary source of wealth in the Southern States.

Despite this clear understanding of the role slavery would play in the new republic, use of the words "slaves" and "slavery" was carefully avoided in the original document. Political representation in the lower House of Congress was to be based on the population of "free Persons" in each State, plus threefifths of all "other Persons." Moral principles against slavery, for those who had them, were compromised, with no explanation of the conflicting principles for which the American Revolutionary War had ostensibly been fought: the selfevident truths "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I think the GOP might have stronger opposition with the military recruiter argument.  As Dean of Harvard Law School, Kagen disallowed the military from recruiting on campus.  It wasn't because she was anti-military; it's because no recruiter on campus could engage in discrimination based on sexual orientation -- which is what Don't Ask Don't Tell does.

UPDATE:  Yeah, this was expected, too:

In a blog post for the far-right American Family Association (AFA) today, Bryan Fischer comes right out and says that the media should pointedly ask Kagan, “Are you a lesbian?” And if she is, according to AFA, she shouldn’t serve on the court:

It’s time we got over the myth that what a public servant does in his private life is of no consequence. We cannot afford to have another sexually abnormal individual in a position of important civic responsibility, especially when that individual could become one of nine votes in an out of control oligarchy that constantly usurps constitutional prerogatives to unethically and illegally legislate for 300 million Americans.

The stakes are too high. Social conservatives must rise up as one and say no lesbian is qualified to sit on the Supreme Court. Will they?

Americans For Truth — a group “devoted exclusively to exposing and countering the homosexual activist agenda” — also put out a statement saying that Kagan needs to answer, “Are (or were) you a practicing homosexual or do you consider yourself homosexual (gay)?” Last month, Focus on the Family also said that it would not be open to a gay Supreme Court justice.

UPDATE -- Kevin Drum:

From Kathryn Jean Lopez, tweeting about Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court:

just wondering: are men allowed to be nominated to the supreme court anymore?

It's pretty remarkable just how little it takes to bring out the pity party in conservatives. Two women in a row and suddenly men are an endangered class in the American legal profession. Conservatives may not care much about discrimination against minorities, but they sure do snap to attention quickly whenever they spy any potential slight against the majority, don't they?

Maine Republicans Officially Go Tea Party

AP:

A group of Knox County conservatives succeeded Saturday in tossing the state Republican Party's proposed platform and adopting an entirely new one, an event that threatened to overshadow the seven gubernatorial candidates seeking to make an impression at the state GOP convention.

The new platform reaffirms a pledge to the U.S. Constitution and the Maine Constitution — not any specific political party — and addresses criticism that the old one was too general, said Steve Dyer of Rockland.

It was created by 12 Republican activists from Knox County. Some of them also attend tea party events and there were tea partiers on the floor of the convention who cheered their effort.

Now, you may think "So what?"... but when you read the actual platform, it's pure wingnut stuff.  In fact, it's so wingnut that Dan Billings, who has served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, had called it "wack job pablum" and "nutcase stuff."

You can read the test of the platform here, but the document:

• calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve
• demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth"
• suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics"
• declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal)
• insists that "healthcare is not a right"
• calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty" and
• declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government."

... plus the usual claptrap about keeping your guns and no gay marriages and the "unborn" are entitled to human rights even if the "unborn" is a two-celled zygote.

Libertarian Ad Doesn't Work

This ad is supposed to make you think that we're over-regulated as a society, but judging by the comments on YouTube, it actually makes you realize how important government regulation is and how much we take it for granted.

All you need to do is change the tone of the background music, and the snarky nonsensical questions at the bottom, and this exact same video would be a pretty good advertisement for your federal tax dollars at work for you. Starting with, when you turn on your radio, and hear only one station at each frequency, instead of an unintelligible jumble of stations trying to drown each other out, yep, that’s the FCC, just as the arrowed caption says. And so on throughout the video.

It's like what I do when I run across a person who thinks government over-regulates and should stay out of business decisions.  I always ask: "You think so?  Tell me, how much rat feces do you like in your hot dogs?"

Quote Of The Day

Former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino on the oil rigger explosion that led to the massive Gulf oil spill:

“I'm not trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, but was this deliberate?  You have to wonder if there was sabotage involved”

Actually, Dana, it's pretty clear you are trying to introduce a conspiracy theory, one right up there with "Obama was born in Kenya", etc.

Third Time A Charm? Don't Bet On It

As I am writing this, the Senate is voting on financial reform legislation.  This is the third time in three or four days that the Senate has held this vote, and each time, the Republicans have universally voted "no".

Important to understand, however, is what the Senate is actually voting on.  They are voting on merely whether to have a debate on financial reform legislation.  That is what Republicans are saying "no" to.  A debate -- not an actual bill, but a debate about whether to have a bill and what it should contain.

I'll update this post if I hear what the results are, but I am guessing the Republicans will -- again -- vote "no".

UPDATE:  yes, it's a no.

UPDATE #2:  The Senate Dems are going to try again this evening.  Ezra Klein notes that the Democratic leadership is considering a new procedural approach, which I call the "Kentucky Derby" ploy:

Word is that the Democrats might make the Republicans actually filibuster FinReg tonight. That is to say, stand on the floor and talk and talk and talk. And if the Democrats are serious about forcing the Republicans to really filibuster the bill, this is the right week for it: The Kentucky Derby starts Friday, and Kentucky's senior senator, Mitch McConnell, would surely prefer to attend. Given that his members are already talking about breaking ranks, McConnell may find himself eager to get this kabuki dance over with a little bit early.

UPDATE #3:  GOP caves.

When Stupid Meets Stupider

The brain trust that encompasses the Georgia State House Judiciary Committee held hearings today surrounding a proposed Georgia state law seeking to ban forced microchip implantation in humans.  That's right -- forced microchip implantation in humans.  Because this is a huge problem?  Well, apparently, some of the lawmakers actually believed that this might come about as a result of ObamaCare, so the Georgia state lawmakers want to nip this in the bud.

Sidenote: The GOP has some sort of strange obsession with microchip implants.  Georgia is the fourth state to work on a law regarding this. A few months ago, a Republican lawmaker from Virginia tried to ban microcip implants because they were -- I'm not making this up -- the sign of the antichrist.

Anyway, the Georgia hearings got a little surreal when a woman got up to testify.  TPM picks up the story:

The Journal-Constitution reports that things started getting weird when a woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County told the committee: "I'm also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip." Apparently no lawmaker took this as a warning sign, and she was allowed to continue her testimony.

"Microchips are like little beepers," the woman told the committee. "Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission."

"Ma'am, did you say you have a microchip?" state Rep. Tom Weldon (R) asked the woman.

"Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area," she replied.

No one laughed. State Rep. Wendell Willard (R), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked her who had implanted the chip.

"The Department of Defense," she said.

Willard thanked the woman for her input, and the committee later approved the bill.

How did they know she was lying?

Oklahoma Apparently Gearing Up For Civil War 2.0

Tea partiers, in conjuncture with the Oklahoma legislature, are talking openly about forming a militia to oppose the federal government. 

Really.

Associated Press:

OKLAHOMA CITY April 12, 2010, 09:30 pm ET

Frustrated by recent political setbacks, tea party leaders and some conservative members of the Oklahoma Legislature say they would like to create a new volunteer militia to help defend against what they believe are improper federal infringements on state sovereignty.

Tea party movement leaders say they've discussed the idea with several supportive lawmakers and hope to get legislation next year to recognize a new volunteer force. They say the unit would not resemble militia groups that have been raided for allegedly plotting attacks on law enforcement officers.

"Is it scary? It sure is," said tea party leader Al Gerhart of Oklahoma City, who heads an umbrella group of tea party factions called the Oklahoma Constitutional Alliance. "But when do the states stop rolling over for the federal government?"

What's most ironic and disturbing is that this piece of news comes from -- of all places -- Oklahoma City, known in recent history as the site of the Murrah Federal Office Building bombing.  Next Monday marks the 15th anniversary of when Timothy McVeigh's bomb killed 168 people... and McVeigh's beef was the same as those in the AP article -- a supposedly overreaching federal government.

Thus far, the discussions have been exploratory. Even the proponents say they don't know how an armed force would be organized nor how a state-based militia could block federal mandates. Critics also asserted that the force could inflame extremism, and that the National Guard already provides for the state's military needs.

Right.  So what are these "federal infringements on state sovereignty"?  Social Security?  Medicare?  Military?

And what exactly will this militia do, even assuming they declare something to be a violation of state sovereignty?  Violent overthrow of the federal government?  I mean militias are, by their very definition, armed.

One gets the sense that a disturbing number of conservatives harbor revolution fantasies, seeing themselves as founding fathers.  Like some bad movie, they want to act out and become heroes to their cause -- America.  They love America so much, they want to kill Americans.  Bizarre.

Palin and Obama Spar Over Nuclear Weapons

It all started yesterday when Obama was asked to respond to Palin's comments.  Specifically, George Stephanopoulos of "Good Morning America" asked Obama this:

STEPHANOPOULOS:I want to get to some of those broader issues [of nuclear proliferation]. Because you're also facing criticism on that. Sarah Palin, taking aim at your decision to restrict the use of nuclear weapons. Your pledge not to strike nations, non-nuclear nations, who abide by the nonproliferation treaty. Here's what she said. She said, "It's unbelievable, no other administration would do it." And then she likened it to kids on the playground. She said you're like a kid who says, "Punch me in the face, and I'm not going to retaliate." Your response?

OBAMA: I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the string of criticism has been out there among other Republicans as well. They think you're restricting use of nuclear weapons too much.

OBAMA: And what I would say to them is that if the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But not concerned about her criticisms?

OBAMA: No.

The insanely wingnut rightosphere came to Palin's defense with comments like this:

Palin’s view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, our first line of defense against Soviet nuclear weapons. Obama has held his same views since he was a stoner college student and has showed no signs of maturing.

Riiiiiiight.  Because as "commander-in-chief" of the Alaskan National Guard, Palin did what exactly with regard to Russia's nuclear weapons?  (And by the way, there are no "Soviet" nuclear weapons, seeing as there is no Soviet Union).  And what could she have done -- watch silently as the missles fly over head?

And this afternoon, Palin spoke in her own defense in the Southern Republican Leadership Conference:

And acknowledging Thursday's headlines, Palin couldn't resist a mocking jab at President Obama after he charged in an ABC News interview that she is "not much of an expert" on nuclear weapons.

"And President Obama, with all that vast nuclear expertise he acquired as a community organizer, a part-time senator, and a candidate for president, has accomplished nothing to date with Iran or North Korea," she said.

Well, we haven't had the same problems with North Korea that we had under Bush.  So Obama is doing something right. 

Secondly, I'm not sure a half-term governor really ought to cast aspersions on a supposed "part-time" senator.

But it's interesting to note that Palin didn;t -- probably because she couldn't -- speak to her credibility on matter of nuclear proliferation.  So she went for the cheap soundbite.  As for knocking Obama's nuclear expertise and experience, the "part-time" senator has tons more than her.

When I was about 10, I challenged Mike Reed to a game of tennis.  He was a couple of years older than me and a good tennis player.  I had barely even picked up a racquet.  But it looked easy, and I thought I could keep pace with him.  I mean, it was just hitting a ball, right?

He wiped the court with my sorry arrogant ignorant ass.  I was out of my league.

Somehow, this Obama-Palin sparring reminds me of that story.

More Ugly Republicans

Right wing talk jock Neal Boortz tweeted this today:

 

Sadly, retaliation of this sort has already happened:

Last Friday, someone going by the name "dermdoc" posted a thread on a message board for Texas A&M students and alumni with this topic: "Laid off my first Obama voting employee today."

"Our reimbursement rates are spiraling downward, taxes are projected to go up with Obamacare, so I did it," the person wrote. He later added: "I made this decision because I can."

"It is kind of interesting watching their face as you explain to them the economic consequences of the policies of the guy they voted for," wrote dermdoc.

Hotsheet reached out to the person who we believe to have been responsible for the posting, but our requests for comment went unanswered. Late Wednesday afternoon, after Hotsheet's inquiry, the thread appeared to be removed from the TexAgs.com Web site.

The posting prompted 20 pages of comments, some celebrating dermdoc's initial post and others questioning whether it was appropriate for him to have laid off an employee seemingly on the basis of his or her politics.

Dermdoc interacted repeatedly with commenters, and it is possible that his claim about laying off an Obama voter was grounded at least to some extent in bravado. He goes on to lament that his practice will suffer economically under the Obama health care plan.

"Elections have consequences," wrote dermdoc. "If you vote for someone who raises my taxes and lowers my income, you pay the cost."

One may well ask: Is this legal?

It's probably a question which has not been addressed directly by the courts.  Certainly, a government employee cannot be fired on the basis of their vote.  And federal civil rights law protect the firing of someone on the basis of gender, age, disability, race, national origin, etc.  The employment rights laws of each state would add to the list, although I don't know if any state law specifically prohibits the firing of an employee based on who they voted for.

It would make for an interesting test case.  Off the top of my head, it strikes me that firing someone based on who they voted for acts as a civil rights violation (since voting is a protected act).  Punishing someone for how they voted is a deterant to voting (or, at least, voting a certain way), and therefore, a civil rights violation.

But what's disturbing is that this kind of thing is being advocated.  Discriminating against Obama voters seems to be a new trend for the right wing. In Florida recently, a doctor posted a sign reading, “If you voted for Obama…seek urologic care elsewhere.” Yes, the Democrats hated Bush.... but the venom never got to this level of ugliness.

Fox News Cuts Away From Obama... Again

Earlier today, Fox New's Happening Now cut away from President Obama's signing of the health care reconciliation bill (the one that fixed a couple gaps in the big one passed last week) in order to cover.... wait for it... a plane crash that never happened.  Fox News was (it claims) told that the airplane had flap problems, so they cut in to watch a pefectly fine 737 make a perfectly fine landing.

This is becoming quite a pattern:

America Live cut away from Obama health care speech for reports on Toyota Prius crash, "Erin Andrews Peephole Stalker." On March 15, in the last week before the historic health care vote, America Live host Megyn Kelly cut away from Obama's health care speech, gave her own summary of his comments, and directed viewers who wished to see the speech in its entirety to FoxNews.com. She then moved on to discuss a pending news conference about a Toyota Prius that had crashed -- a week earlier.

On Twitter, Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz reported, "Fox breaks away early from Obama health care speech, MS & CNN still with it." He later added, "Now on Fox (instead of Obama): Erin Andrews Peephole Stalker to be Sentenced This Afternoon. Hasn't even happened yet!"

Fox cut away from Obama-GOP Q&A but airs GOP "response" in its entirety. During President Obama's question and answer session with Republican members of Congress at the GOP House Issues Conference, Fox News Channel was the only cable news network to cut away and not show the exchange in its entirety, instead providing commentary on the event. However, Fox News subsequently aired all of the "Republican response" press conference held by House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) after the question and answer session with Obama.

Fox cut away from terrorism press conference to show Glenn Beck. Fox News contributors spent several days criticizing the Obama administration's response to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day. However, Fox News responded to the administration's January 7 press conference about its handling of the incident -- featuring Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, whom several Fox News personalities had called to step down -- by cutting away to commentary on the event and then its regular programming: Glenn Beck, and its host's attack on the progressive movement and its "hundred-year time bomb."

I guess they want to be able to spin the narratives about Obama (how socialist and angry he is, how he always needs a teleprompter, etc) and it doesn't look good when their own coverage contradicts the spin.