WHY ROMNEY SEEMS LIKE A FLIP-FLOPPER EVEN WHEN HE DOESN'T REALLY FLIP-FLOP
Yesterday there was a headline at ABC that read in part, "Romney Consistent in Support of Gay Adoption." Today the headlines are a bit different. Think Progress: "Mitt Romney's Support Of Same-Sex Adoption Lasts One Day." National Journal: "Romney Backs Away from Gay Adoptions."
But I'm not sure Romney's really changed his position. Here's part of that National Journal story:
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Friday backed away from his support of adoptions by gay couples, saying that he simply "acknowledges" the legality of such adoptions in many states.
A day earlier, Romney, in an interview with Fox News host Neil Cavuto, had indicated that while he does not support same-sex marriage, he considers the adoption of children by gay couples a "right."
He said on Thursday: "And if two people of the same gender want to live together, want to have a loving relationship, or even to adopt a child -- in my state, individuals of the same sex were able to adopt children. In my view, that's something that people have a right to do. But to call that 'marriage' is something that, in my view, is a departure from the real meaning of that word."
On Friday,he was asked, in an interview with CBS affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, N.C., how his opposition to gay marriage "squared" with his support for gay adoptions. Romney told anchor Paul Cameron, "Well, actually I think all states but one allow gay adoption, so that's a position which has been decided by most of the state legislatures, including the one in my state some time ago. So I simply acknowledge the fact that gay adoption is legal in all states but one."
Romney's problem is that, as he attempts to finesse the process of kowtowing to the far right while trying to appeal to the center, he can't seem to talk about issues like this in a way that even falsely persuades us that he's speaking out of core convictions. Not only does he seem to have no real belief system, he can't even fake one effectively.
And so two statements that are essentially synonymous -- one in which he says that gay people have a "right" to adopt, another in which he declares (rather inaccurately) that gay people have a legal right to adopt without using the word "right" -- sound contradictory. They sound contradictory because we have no sense of what he thinks. In the first statement, he doesn't distance himself from the word "right" -- he doesn't say, in effect, Look, it's out of my hands because this right has been granted already, which might tell us he's not thrilled -- so we think he's cool with that "right."
It's the same thing with another part of what he said on Thursday:
In his most detailed comments to date on the issue of civil rights for gay people, Romney told Fox News host Neil Cavuto, "I know many gay couples that are able to adopt children. That's fine. But my preference is that we ... continue to define marriage as the relationship between a man and a woman."
When he says, "That's fine," who can blame people for thinking he thinks it's, y'know, fine? But clearly it isn't fine to him -- or it isn't fine today, at least.
If you go back through the history of Romney's words and deeds on gay adoptions, you get the feeling that gay adoption is not "fine" with him, but he's accepted it, more or less. But he's been all over the map in how he's tried to position himself on gay issues in his political career, so he's addressed the issues in so many ways that he can't get himself to talk about them in words that even seem genuine.
By contrast, in the period when Barack Obama was opposed to gay marriage, he communicated a sense of fellow-feeling toward gay people; that was genuine, and it seemed genuine, even if the marriage opposition seemed cynical and calculated. Somewhere inside the politician was a human.
We're still looking for a human in Romney. And we're still not finding one.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
Saturday, May 12, 2012
MAYBE ROMNEY SHOULD JUST GO AHEAD AND CHANGE HIS SLOGAN TO "BACKWARD"
Politico's Reid Epstein looks at the Romney campaign and spots a trend:
For President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney is an obvious throwback to another era -- a stiff Father Knows Best-type who straps the dog to the station wagon and marries his high-school sweetheart.
But Romney is pursuing his own strategy to puncture Obama's next-generation cool and paint the president as a retread, comparing him to Jimmy Carter and his fuzzy-headed liberal thinking. To the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, Carter is not just a former president, he's a potent metaphor and political weapon.
... When asked on the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden whether he would have green-lighted the mission, Romney told reporters on a New Hampshire rope line that "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order" to kill bin Laden.
Two days later at a rally in northern Virginia, he explicitly referred to the Carter era as better for businesspeople than the Obama years have been.
"What the president has done, and I think unknowingly, never having spent any time in the private sector himself ... was one item after another make it harder and harder for small business to thrive and to grow and to start up," Romney said.
"It was the most anti-small business administration I've seen probably since Carter. Who would’ve guessed we'd look back at the Carter years as the good ol' days, you know? And you just go through the president's agenda over ... the last several years and ask yourself, did this help small business or did it hurt small business?"
But, of course, as Epstein acknowledges, the Carter-as-Antichrist meme is meaningless to non-wingnut voters under 45, whose memories of the Carter presidency are dim or nonexistent. This is Romney targeting older voters precisely the way Obama is targeting younger voters (and precisely the way Fox News targets older voters). It's not an attempt by Romney to turn Obama into a throwback -- it's an attempt by Romney to turn himself into a throwback (or even more of a throwback), for a voting bloc that (he hopes) sees that as a good thing. It's as if he's not even trying to communicate with younger voters.
****
This make me wonder about the likely reaction to the Romney bullying story, coming as it did just after Obama's endorsement of gay marriage. It's obvious that a lot of older voters, including some who aren't on the right, will never stop thinking that gayness is icky -- and I think their reaction to the bullying story might, in a similar way, differ from that of the young. Rush Limbaugh really may have been tapping into that strain of thinking a couple of days ago:
Rush Limbaugh ... dismissed a Washington Post report detailing "pranks" and "troubling incidents" Mitt Romney engaged in as a high school student, saying: "You had long hair in 1965, you were gonna get razzed. It didn't matter. They weren't gonna think you were in the Beatles. If you had long hair in 1965, you were gonna get made fun of." Limbaugh added: "See, 1965's a great year; bullying was legal."
(Emphasis added.)
The debate we're having is whether this was a relatively trivial "stupid thing" Romney did, or was something worse than that. But there's a percentage of the population for whom, I think, it wasn't a minor bad act or a major bad act -- it was a perfectly appropriate thing to do to a freak who had it coming. We know that lots of people on the right, of all ages, still believe this -- but they're already likely to vote for Romney, and they're certainly not going to vote for Obama. I wonder how many people of a certain age in the center (and maybe even of a more or less liberal persuasion) feel the same way. I wonder if the criticism of Romney for this makes them see him as a martyr, crucified for something he did that was actually admirable.
****
Oh, and while we're talking about conformity and hair in the 1960s, I'll share with you Rush Limbaugh's high school yearbook photo. It ain't pretty.
Politico's Reid Epstein looks at the Romney campaign and spots a trend:
For President Barack Obama, Mitt Romney is an obvious throwback to another era -- a stiff Father Knows Best-type who straps the dog to the station wagon and marries his high-school sweetheart.
But Romney is pursuing his own strategy to puncture Obama's next-generation cool and paint the president as a retread, comparing him to Jimmy Carter and his fuzzy-headed liberal thinking. To the presumptive GOP presidential candidate, Carter is not just a former president, he's a potent metaphor and political weapon.
... When asked on the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden whether he would have green-lighted the mission, Romney told reporters on a New Hampshire rope line that "even Jimmy Carter would have given that order" to kill bin Laden.
Two days later at a rally in northern Virginia, he explicitly referred to the Carter era as better for businesspeople than the Obama years have been.
"What the president has done, and I think unknowingly, never having spent any time in the private sector himself ... was one item after another make it harder and harder for small business to thrive and to grow and to start up," Romney said.
"It was the most anti-small business administration I've seen probably since Carter. Who would’ve guessed we'd look back at the Carter years as the good ol' days, you know? And you just go through the president's agenda over ... the last several years and ask yourself, did this help small business or did it hurt small business?"
But, of course, as Epstein acknowledges, the Carter-as-Antichrist meme is meaningless to non-wingnut voters under 45, whose memories of the Carter presidency are dim or nonexistent. This is Romney targeting older voters precisely the way Obama is targeting younger voters (and precisely the way Fox News targets older voters). It's not an attempt by Romney to turn Obama into a throwback -- it's an attempt by Romney to turn himself into a throwback (or even more of a throwback), for a voting bloc that (he hopes) sees that as a good thing. It's as if he's not even trying to communicate with younger voters.
****
This make me wonder about the likely reaction to the Romney bullying story, coming as it did just after Obama's endorsement of gay marriage. It's obvious that a lot of older voters, including some who aren't on the right, will never stop thinking that gayness is icky -- and I think their reaction to the bullying story might, in a similar way, differ from that of the young. Rush Limbaugh really may have been tapping into that strain of thinking a couple of days ago:
Rush Limbaugh ... dismissed a Washington Post report detailing "pranks" and "troubling incidents" Mitt Romney engaged in as a high school student, saying: "You had long hair in 1965, you were gonna get razzed. It didn't matter. They weren't gonna think you were in the Beatles. If you had long hair in 1965, you were gonna get made fun of." Limbaugh added: "See, 1965's a great year; bullying was legal."
(Emphasis added.)
The debate we're having is whether this was a relatively trivial "stupid thing" Romney did, or was something worse than that. But there's a percentage of the population for whom, I think, it wasn't a minor bad act or a major bad act -- it was a perfectly appropriate thing to do to a freak who had it coming. We know that lots of people on the right, of all ages, still believe this -- but they're already likely to vote for Romney, and they're certainly not going to vote for Obama. I wonder how many people of a certain age in the center (and maybe even of a more or less liberal persuasion) feel the same way. I wonder if the criticism of Romney for this makes them see him as a martyr, crucified for something he did that was actually admirable.
****
Oh, and while we're talking about conformity and hair in the 1960s, I'll share with you Rush Limbaugh's high school yearbook photo. It ain't pretty.
BREITBART.COM ACTUALLY BREAKS SOME NEWS
Headline at Breitbart's Big Hollywood:
Report: Lovitz Put Career in Jeopardy by Critiquing Obama
Wow, that's news to me -- Jon Lovitz still has a career?
Headline at Breitbart's Big Hollywood:
Report: Lovitz Put Career in Jeopardy by Critiquing Obama
Wow, that's news to me -- Jon Lovitz still has a career?
Friday, May 11, 2012
EDWARD KLEIN IS A CONTEMPTIBLE SLEAZEBAG, AND THE WORST DIALOGUE WRITER EVER
If you think you should concern yourself with whether Bill Clinton called Barack Obama an "amateur," as Edward Klein claims in his forthcoming book The Amateur (according to today's New York Post), then I just want to remind you of the reaction to Klein's 2005 book, The Truth About Hillary.
No, not the expected outrage from liberals and Democrats. I'm talking about the reaction from the right.
John Podhoretz wrote (in the New York Post):
This is one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word.
To which National Review's Jim Geraghty responded, "John Podhoretz is my hero."
Joe Queenan wrote:
... it is a very bad book ... it is a lazy, cut-and-paste recycling of other people's work ... it relies too much on nasty personal comments about Senator Clinton provided by anonymous sources ... it sleazily intimates that Hillary Clinton is a lying, scheming, smelly, left-leaning lesbian and a non-maternal parent who consorts with lawyers who defend mobbed-up unions and bears a striking character resemblance to both Richard Nixon and Madonna, and who tacitly approved of her husband's rape of a young woman at a time when Mrs. Clinton may or may not have been bathing, washing her hair or shaving her underarms, while hanging out with short-haired women from the sapphic charnel house Wellesley College.
Its most scurrilous charge was that Chelsea Clinton was conceived during a rape of Hillary by her husband, a charge Klein backed down from when he was challenged by -- of all people -- Sean Hannity.
So we're talking about a guy so sleazy even wingers give him a wide berth (or at least they did back in 2005). And now we have this in the New York Post -- and if we can't prove that Klein is peddling irresponsible nonsense, we can at least say with certainty that he writes some of the most implausible dialogue in the history of the English language:
... according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president's home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.
"The economy's a mess, it's dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating ... You know better than Obama does," Bill said....
Obama, Bill Clinton said, "doesn't know how to be president" and is "incompetent." ...
"Why risk everything now?" a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.
"Because," Bill replied, his voice rising, "the country needs you!"
"The country needs us!" added Bill....
"I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote," Hillary argued....
"I know you're young enough!" Bill said, his voice booming. "That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that I'm not young enough."
"I'm the highest-ranking member in Obama's Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?" she responded.
Wow -- this is like Politico fan fiction.
Even if something vaguely like this actually happened, couldn't Klein have at least gotten some help reproducing the moment -- perhaps from someone who has a passing familiarity with the way English is spoken by actual humans?
If you think you should concern yourself with whether Bill Clinton called Barack Obama an "amateur," as Edward Klein claims in his forthcoming book The Amateur (according to today's New York Post), then I just want to remind you of the reaction to Klein's 2005 book, The Truth About Hillary.
No, not the expected outrage from liberals and Democrats. I'm talking about the reaction from the right.
John Podhoretz wrote (in the New York Post):
This is one of the most sordid volumes I've ever waded through. Thirty pages into it, I wanted to take a shower. Sixty pages into it, I wanted to be decontaminated. And 200 pages into it, I wanted someone to drive stakes through my eyes so I wouldn't have to suffer through another word.
To which National Review's Jim Geraghty responded, "John Podhoretz is my hero."
Joe Queenan wrote:
... it is a very bad book ... it is a lazy, cut-and-paste recycling of other people's work ... it relies too much on nasty personal comments about Senator Clinton provided by anonymous sources ... it sleazily intimates that Hillary Clinton is a lying, scheming, smelly, left-leaning lesbian and a non-maternal parent who consorts with lawyers who defend mobbed-up unions and bears a striking character resemblance to both Richard Nixon and Madonna, and who tacitly approved of her husband's rape of a young woman at a time when Mrs. Clinton may or may not have been bathing, washing her hair or shaving her underarms, while hanging out with short-haired women from the sapphic charnel house Wellesley College.
Its most scurrilous charge was that Chelsea Clinton was conceived during a rape of Hillary by her husband, a charge Klein backed down from when he was challenged by -- of all people -- Sean Hannity.
So we're talking about a guy so sleazy even wingers give him a wide berth (or at least they did back in 2005). And now we have this in the New York Post -- and if we can't prove that Klein is peddling irresponsible nonsense, we can at least say with certainty that he writes some of the most implausible dialogue in the history of the English language:
... according to the book, Bill Clinton unloaded on Obama and pressed Hillary to run against her boss during a gathering in the ex-president's home office in Chappaqua last August that included longtime friends, Klein said.
"The economy's a mess, it's dead flat. America has lost its Triple-A rating ... You know better than Obama does," Bill said....
Obama, Bill Clinton said, "doesn't know how to be president" and is "incompetent." ...
"Why risk everything now?" a skeptical Hillary told her husband, emphasizing that she wanted to leave a legacy as secretary of state.
"Because," Bill replied, his voice rising, "the country needs you!"
"The country needs us!" added Bill....
"I want my term [at the State Department] to be an important one, and running away from it now would leave it as a footnote," Hillary argued....
"I know you're young enough!" Bill said, his voice booming. "That's not what I'm worried about. I'm worried that I'm not young enough."
"I'm the highest-ranking member in Obama's Cabinet. I eat breakfast with the guy every Thursday morning. What about loyalty, Bill? What about loyalty?" she responded.
Wow -- this is like Politico fan fiction.
Even if something vaguely like this actually happened, couldn't Klein have at least gotten some help reproducing the moment -- perhaps from someone who has a passing familiarity with the way English is spoken by actual humans?
SKY STILL BLUE, POPE STILL CATHOLIC, HYPOCRISY STILL NOT A BAD THING AT FOX
I see that on the Fox News show The Five there was a discussion yesterday of the (non-)fact that Barack Obama used to deal drugs:
As Fox News discussed the report that Mitt Romney forcibly cut a high school classmate's hair, the channel's hosts steered conversation toward President Obama admitting to drug use in his memoir, Dreams From My Father.
But Fox could not confine itself to reliving the details of a book published 17 years ago -- its hosts baselessly suggested that Obama had dealt drugs.
During the May 10 edition of The Five, co-hosts Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld had this exchange....
That would be Greg Gutfeld, author of the 2010 book The Bible of Unspeakable Truths -- which includes a chapter with this title and subtitle:
In this chapter (after a bit of damning-with-faint-praise of Obama for acknowledging drug use in his memoir), Gutfeld goes on to say:
Which leads to my major truth: People who never tried drugs are, well, weird. It's a natural human inclination to want to try things that seem fun, and I've never met a human being who didn't want to seek oblivion in one form or another. People who don't have that need aren't stupid or evil, they're just kind of odd.
This from a man whose job from now till November is to help get Mitt Romney elected.
I see that on the Fox News show The Five there was a discussion yesterday of the (non-)fact that Barack Obama used to deal drugs:
As Fox News discussed the report that Mitt Romney forcibly cut a high school classmate's hair, the channel's hosts steered conversation toward President Obama admitting to drug use in his memoir, Dreams From My Father.
But Fox could not confine itself to reliving the details of a book published 17 years ago -- its hosts baselessly suggested that Obama had dealt drugs.
During the May 10 edition of The Five, co-hosts Eric Bolling and Greg Gutfeld had this exchange....
BOLLING: What would you call a guy who not only used cocaine, but dealt cocaine in high school and/or college? What would you call that kind of guy?
GUTFELD: The president.
[laughter]
BOLLING: Besides "president."
That would be Greg Gutfeld, author of the 2010 book The Bible of Unspeakable Truths -- which includes a chapter with this title and subtitle:
In this chapter (after a bit of damning-with-faint-praise of Obama for acknowledging drug use in his memoir), Gutfeld goes on to say:
Which leads to my major truth: People who never tried drugs are, well, weird. It's a natural human inclination to want to try things that seem fun, and I've never met a human being who didn't want to seek oblivion in one form or another. People who don't have that need aren't stupid or evil, they're just kind of odd.
This from a man whose job from now till November is to help get Mitt Romney elected.
BREAKING NEWS!!! ARPAIO SAYS OBAMA MAY HAVE COMMITTED FRAUD IN REGISTERING FOR A NONEXISTENT DRAFT!!!
I learn from The Washington Times today that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has opened a new front in his civil war with the Obama administration -- involving (gasp!) the card Barack Obama filled out in 1980 to register for a draft we never actually had:
Lead investigator Michael Zullo of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (ARIZ) "Cold Case Posse" dispatched an urgent letter on Wednesday to Selective Service System Director Lawrence Romo, demanding to know if the federal agency has custody of microfilm which presumably contains President Barack Obama’s draft registration form....
The letter follows Sunday's discovery by Communities @WashingtonTimes.com that the Selective Service System published new privacy rules, changing the status of microfilm copies of draft registration forms from "federal records" to "nonrecords".
Nonrecord microfilm copies are subject to disposal.
The new privacy rules were published September 20, 2011, four days after a report in World Net Daily that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was opening a "Cold Case Posse" investigation to explore allegations that a copy of President Obama's draft card released in 2008 is a forgery....
Yes -- back in mid-September 2011, Arpaio started this little publicity stunt/fishing expedition ... and then, a few days later, the feds announced new regulations to destroy old archived Selective Service records (PDF). Coincidence???
Um, maybe. Also in 2011, I see that rules were put in place that led to the destruction of millions of federal court records concerning cases that never went to trial. This was done (see the linked story) as a way to save money on storage. It's my understanding that people have jobs that involve deciding this stuff, and sometimes they decide that certain old records need to go. (This seems especially likely to have happened at federal agencies as a result of the post-2010 budget-cut mania.)
But Arpaio and The Washington Times don't believe that. Nor does (naturally) World Net Daily, which thinks the Obama registration form that was made public four years ago is fraudulent -- in part because the Post Office date stamp on the form shows the year as "80" rather than "1980." No, really:
The folks at WND actually attempted to figure out how you would make a Post Office date stamp that didn't include the "19," and decided to reverse-engineer such a weapon of truth destruction using an X-Acto knife:
It's never made entire clear why, if the people around Obama were creating a forgery, they would actually want to do this. It's also never pointed out that date stamps, um, aren't exactly built to last. They're made of thin metal and rubber. They wear out. Obama's post office was in Honolulu. You think perhaps metal and rubber lose their ability to deliver precision performance after a few years (or decades) of use in salty, humid air?
Some wingnuts have been on this beat for years. Debbie "Why Am I Not as Famous as Pam Geller?" Schussel began squinting at the Obama Selective Service card shortly after it was released. Here's just a taste of what she wrote abouit it shortly after the '08 election:
But, checking the history of SSS Form 1 (see http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=198002-3240-001#), it's apparent that in February 1980, the Selective Service agency withdrew a "Request for a new OMB control number" for SSS Form 1 (see also, here)--meaning the agency canceled its previous request for a new form, and one was never issued in "FEB 1980".
Since under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-511, 94 Stat. 2812 (Dec. 11, 1980), codified in part at Subchapter I of Chapter 35 of Title 44 a federal agency can not use a form not approved by OMB (Office of Management and Budget), it's nearly impossible for Senator/President-Elect Obama’s SSS Form 1 to be dated "Feb 1980." And since that makes it almost certainly dated "Feb 1990," then how could Barack Obama sign it and the postal clerk stamp it almost ten (10) years before its issue?! Simply not possible.
The lower right hand corner reflects that the Obama SSS form 1 was approved by OMB with an approval number of 19??0002, labeled as "C". The double question marks (??) reflect digits that are not completely clear.
Well, obviously! Who could argue with that?
The odd thing is that, whereas the wackos think we can't trust the Obama birth certificates (both versions) because we have computerized reproductions and not paper copies, in this case they have a paper copy and are demanding to see microfilm. And, of course, if they ever get microfilm and it doesn't reveal that they're right, they'll say that was forged. This really never has to end for these people.
I learn from The Washington Times today that Sheriff Joe Arpaio has opened a new front in his civil war with the Obama administration -- involving (gasp!) the card Barack Obama filled out in 1980 to register for a draft we never actually had:
Lead investigator Michael Zullo of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office (ARIZ) "Cold Case Posse" dispatched an urgent letter on Wednesday to Selective Service System Director Lawrence Romo, demanding to know if the federal agency has custody of microfilm which presumably contains President Barack Obama’s draft registration form....
The letter follows Sunday's discovery by Communities @WashingtonTimes.com that the Selective Service System published new privacy rules, changing the status of microfilm copies of draft registration forms from "federal records" to "nonrecords".
Nonrecord microfilm copies are subject to disposal.
The new privacy rules were published September 20, 2011, four days after a report in World Net Daily that Sheriff Joe Arpaio was opening a "Cold Case Posse" investigation to explore allegations that a copy of President Obama's draft card released in 2008 is a forgery....
Yes -- back in mid-September 2011, Arpaio started this little publicity stunt/fishing expedition ... and then, a few days later, the feds announced new regulations to destroy old archived Selective Service records (PDF). Coincidence???
Um, maybe. Also in 2011, I see that rules were put in place that led to the destruction of millions of federal court records concerning cases that never went to trial. This was done (see the linked story) as a way to save money on storage. It's my understanding that people have jobs that involve deciding this stuff, and sometimes they decide that certain old records need to go. (This seems especially likely to have happened at federal agencies as a result of the post-2010 budget-cut mania.)
But Arpaio and The Washington Times don't believe that. Nor does (naturally) World Net Daily, which thinks the Obama registration form that was made public four years ago is fraudulent -- in part because the Post Office date stamp on the form shows the year as "80" rather than "1980." No, really:
The folks at WND actually attempted to figure out how you would make a Post Office date stamp that didn't include the "19," and decided to reverse-engineer such a weapon of truth destruction using an X-Acto knife:
It's never made entire clear why, if the people around Obama were creating a forgery, they would actually want to do this. It's also never pointed out that date stamps, um, aren't exactly built to last. They're made of thin metal and rubber. They wear out. Obama's post office was in Honolulu. You think perhaps metal and rubber lose their ability to deliver precision performance after a few years (or decades) of use in salty, humid air?
Some wingnuts have been on this beat for years. Debbie "Why Am I Not as Famous as Pam Geller?" Schussel began squinting at the Obama Selective Service card shortly after it was released. Here's just a taste of what she wrote abouit it shortly after the '08 election:
But, checking the history of SSS Form 1 (see http://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAViewICR?ref_nbr=198002-3240-001#), it's apparent that in February 1980, the Selective Service agency withdrew a "Request for a new OMB control number" for SSS Form 1 (see also, here)--meaning the agency canceled its previous request for a new form, and one was never issued in "FEB 1980".
Since under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, Pub. L. No. 96-511, 94 Stat. 2812 (Dec. 11, 1980), codified in part at Subchapter I of Chapter 35 of Title 44 a federal agency can not use a form not approved by OMB (Office of Management and Budget), it's nearly impossible for Senator/President-Elect Obama’s SSS Form 1 to be dated "Feb 1980." And since that makes it almost certainly dated "Feb 1990," then how could Barack Obama sign it and the postal clerk stamp it almost ten (10) years before its issue?! Simply not possible.
The lower right hand corner reflects that the Obama SSS form 1 was approved by OMB with an approval number of 19??0002, labeled as "C". The double question marks (??) reflect digits that are not completely clear.
Well, obviously! Who could argue with that?
The odd thing is that, whereas the wackos think we can't trust the Obama birth certificates (both versions) because we have computerized reproductions and not paper copies, in this case they have a paper copy and are demanding to see microfilm. And, of course, if they ever get microfilm and it doesn't reveal that they're right, they'll say that was forged. This really never has to end for these people.
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Did He Free the Slaves...or Enslave the Free?
So here's a video of the guy who knocked Dick Lugar out of the Senate comparing the tax burden of the wealthy to 'slavery'.And quoting Abraham Lincoln to make his point.
'Abraham Lincoln'...that name is really, really familiar. Where do I recognize it from?
Oh, yeah...now I remember! He was the guy who signed into law the very first progressive income tax. That's where I've heard of him before.
But, y'know, I'm pretty sure he'd agree with Mourdock on just about everything.
(h/t Ed Kilgore)
HE WANTS TO KNOW THE NAMES OF ALL THOSE HE'S BETTER THAN
After reading the Washington Post article about Mitt Romney's prep school days, I think I have a better idea of why he was able to win the Republican presidential nomination, despite the base's doubts about him. He may not be a dyed-in-the-wool wingnut, but he won because the base can tell that he shares a core belief of theirs: that some people are just unworthy of respect and courtesy and common decency. That's what right-wing politics is all about these days -- sorting the worthy from the unworthy, celebrating the former, and declaring the latter to be somewhat less than human.
I say this not just because of the incident that's getting most of the attention, the one involving a "soft-spoken" classmate with long, bleached-blond hair, whom Romney and some friends physically subdued and gave a forced haircut. It's also this:
One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, [was] nicknamed "the Bat" for his diminished eyesight....
As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life's indignities.
Nice.
Romney's party believes that all sorts of people are beneath contempt: union workers, liberals, city-dwellers, gay people, immigrants, people who aren't Christian or Jewish, non-whites who stubbornly refuse to turn right-wing, the uninsured, the (allegedly lazy) unemployed, the underemployed and underpaid, people with underwater mortgages or massive student loan debt, and pretty much anyone (other than a corporate CEO) who ever uses any government program whatsoever (Social Security and Medicare possibly excepted). That's a partial list. The message of conservatism is that some people deserve respect and empathy and some just don't. Some people are "us" -- full members of the community; others are "them" -- parasites and losers.
On a gut level, it's clear that Mitt Romney had already come to that conclusion back in prep school. And I think it became clear to GOP voters during the primaries, from the way he talked about Obama, about Gingrich, about Santorum, about anyone who got in his way, that his view hasn't changed.
After reading the Washington Post article about Mitt Romney's prep school days, I think I have a better idea of why he was able to win the Republican presidential nomination, despite the base's doubts about him. He may not be a dyed-in-the-wool wingnut, but he won because the base can tell that he shares a core belief of theirs: that some people are just unworthy of respect and courtesy and common decency. That's what right-wing politics is all about these days -- sorting the worthy from the unworthy, celebrating the former, and declaring the latter to be somewhat less than human.
I say this not just because of the incident that's getting most of the attention, the one involving a "soft-spoken" classmate with long, bleached-blond hair, whom Romney and some friends physically subdued and gave a forced haircut. It's also this:
One venerable English teacher, Carl G. Wonnberger, [was] nicknamed "the Bat" for his diminished eyesight....
As an underclassman, Romney accompanied Wonnberger and Pierce Getsinger, another student, from the second floor of the main academic building to the library to retrieve a book the two boys needed. According to Getsinger, Romney opened a first set of doors for Wonnberger, but then at the next set, with other students around, he swept his hand forward, bidding the teacher into a closed door. Wonnberger walked right into it and Getsinger said Romney giggled hysterically as the teacher shrugged it off as another of life's indignities.
Nice.
Romney's party believes that all sorts of people are beneath contempt: union workers, liberals, city-dwellers, gay people, immigrants, people who aren't Christian or Jewish, non-whites who stubbornly refuse to turn right-wing, the uninsured, the (allegedly lazy) unemployed, the underemployed and underpaid, people with underwater mortgages or massive student loan debt, and pretty much anyone (other than a corporate CEO) who ever uses any government program whatsoever (Social Security and Medicare possibly excepted). That's a partial list. The message of conservatism is that some people deserve respect and empathy and some just don't. Some people are "us" -- full members of the community; others are "them" -- parasites and losers.
On a gut level, it's clear that Mitt Romney had already come to that conclusion back in prep school. And I think it became clear to GOP voters during the primaries, from the way he talked about Obama, about Gingrich, about Santorum, about anyone who got in his way, that his view hasn't changed.
MALKIN: THE KOCH BROTHERS ARE THE REAL VICTIMS OF BULLYING IN THIS SOCIETY
I could add to the millions of online words already posted or about to be posted in reference to the Washington Post story about Mitt Romney's prep-school bullying of a gay classmate (in the incident cited by the Post, Romney and several prep school friends tackled a classmate whose haircut they regarded as effeminate and forcibly hacked away at his hair). For now, though, I'll just give you Michelle Malkin's reaction on Twitter:
The wingers just can't help it, can they? You give them an example of cruel, callous treatment of a truly helpless or vulnerable person, and when they try to respond in kind, the only "victims" they can imagine on their own side, the only people for whom they can bear to feel empathy, are some of the most powerful people on earth. The Supreme Court? Fox News? Republican donors? Is she serious? Well, yes, she is. Up is down, east is west, only blacks are racist, only feminists are sexist, and only people with massive amounts of power are powerless. That's right-wing thinking right now.
I could add to the millions of online words already posted or about to be posted in reference to the Washington Post story about Mitt Romney's prep-school bullying of a gay classmate (in the incident cited by the Post, Romney and several prep school friends tackled a classmate whose haircut they regarded as effeminate and forcibly hacked away at his hair). For now, though, I'll just give you Michelle Malkin's reaction on Twitter:
The wingers just can't help it, can they? You give them an example of cruel, callous treatment of a truly helpless or vulnerable person, and when they try to respond in kind, the only "victims" they can imagine on their own side, the only people for whom they can bear to feel empathy, are some of the most powerful people on earth. The Supreme Court? Fox News? Republican donors? Is she serious? Well, yes, she is. Up is down, east is west, only blacks are racist, only feminists are sexist, and only people with massive amounts of power are powerless. That's right-wing thinking right now.
WHY "FLIP-FLOP" WON'T STICK TO OBAMA ON GAY MARRIAGE
Right-wingers instantly settled on "Flip-flopper!" as their principal line of attack after President Obama declared himself in favor of gay marriage -- the word "war" was taken out of that Fox Nation headline, but it went from "Obama Flip Flops, Declares War on Marriage" to "Obama Flip Flops on Gay Marriage," and Rush Limbaugh whined the same talking point ("So when Obama flip-flops, it's called 'evolving.' When Romney evolves, it's called 'flip-flopping'").
But here's the thing: we're used to seeing people change their minds about homosexuality. An awful lot of older Americans had to go through an evolution of thinking before they were able to see gay people as fully human and worthy of respect. (That's true even of people who are gay themselves and who internalized society's contempt.) Fewer young people have had to go through this (although it's not as if homophobia is nonexistent among the young) -- but even young people who've never had a struggle on this issue have watched plenty of people struggle and evolve, quite possibly including their own parents and grandparents.
You can't say the same thing about, oh, say, the bailout of Detroit, or universal health care coverage with an individual mandate, or many of the other things Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on. Nobody grew up hearing picked-on kids being called "auto bailer-outers," only to realize years later that auto bailer-outers are human beings worthy of respect. Obama's changed position on an issue that taps into deep feelings people have about themselves and others; Romney flip-flops on ... well, pretty much anything.
And even when Romney flip-flops on more profound issues -- gay rights in general, abortion -- he's self-righteous on both sides of the issue. Here he is on abortion in 2002:
He's self-righteous on the other side now -- as he's been self-righteous on multiple sides of multiple issues. Obama used to oppose gay marriage, but he was never a self-righteous opponent. It's different.
So, no, the "Obama flip-flopper" dog won't hunt.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
****
UPDATE: Paul Waldman of The American Prospect has very similar thoughts.
Right-wingers instantly settled on "Flip-flopper!" as their principal line of attack after President Obama declared himself in favor of gay marriage -- the word "war" was taken out of that Fox Nation headline, but it went from "Obama Flip Flops, Declares War on Marriage" to "Obama Flip Flops on Gay Marriage," and Rush Limbaugh whined the same talking point ("So when Obama flip-flops, it's called 'evolving.' When Romney evolves, it's called 'flip-flopping'").
But here's the thing: we're used to seeing people change their minds about homosexuality. An awful lot of older Americans had to go through an evolution of thinking before they were able to see gay people as fully human and worthy of respect. (That's true even of people who are gay themselves and who internalized society's contempt.) Fewer young people have had to go through this (although it's not as if homophobia is nonexistent among the young) -- but even young people who've never had a struggle on this issue have watched plenty of people struggle and evolve, quite possibly including their own parents and grandparents.
You can't say the same thing about, oh, say, the bailout of Detroit, or universal health care coverage with an individual mandate, or many of the other things Mitt Romney has flip-flopped on. Nobody grew up hearing picked-on kids being called "auto bailer-outers," only to realize years later that auto bailer-outers are human beings worthy of respect. Obama's changed position on an issue that taps into deep feelings people have about themselves and others; Romney flip-flops on ... well, pretty much anything.
And even when Romney flip-flops on more profound issues -- gay rights in general, abortion -- he's self-righteous on both sides of the issue. Here he is on abortion in 2002:
He's self-righteous on the other side now -- as he's been self-righteous on multiple sides of multiple issues. Obama used to oppose gay marriage, but he was never a self-righteous opponent. It's different.
So, no, the "Obama flip-flopper" dog won't hunt.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
****
UPDATE: Paul Waldman of The American Prospect has very similar thoughts.
Wednesday, May 09, 2012
I AM NOT FAMILIAR WITH THE WAYS OF YOUR PEOPLE
Does "M.S." of The Economist's Democracy in America blog live in America? Has he or she ever visited our fair nation?
I ask because it beats the hell out of me how you can be a pro blogger on the "democracy in America" beat and write something like this about President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage:
... It's hard to fault him for making the move, on either political or moral grounds.
But it's probably bad for the cause of gay marriage. Until today, the issue had only a moderate partisan cast. Officially, the Republican Party was opposed to gay marriage, and conservatives quickly responded to Mr Obama's declaration by reaffirming their opposition. But the issue didn't have a high profile, and many Republicans of a more libertarian slant on social issues were steadily coming to the conclusion in recent years that there was no reason why gays shouldn't get married just like anybody else can.
As of today, gay marriage is once again a partisan issue at the heart of a presidential election campaign. Many Republicans who might have had flexible opinions as of yesterday are now going to find themselves psychologically inclined to move towards the party line. Mitt Romney will be forced, within the next hours or days, to come out with a full-throated argument against gay marriage. Republican office-holders will have to vocally support that position. Republican media outfits (Fox News, conservative talk radio, RedState and so forth) will have to join the attack. Millions of GOP voters who otherwise might have gradually reconciled themselves to gay marriage within the next few months will be held back by the ideological alignments created in this presidential campaign.
... The move may help re-elect a president who supports gay marriage. But my feeling is that it will delay the moment when support for the right of gays to marry becomes a widespread American consensus.
"Until today, the issue had only a moderate partisan cast"? Seriously? Name me a prominent Republican officeholder not called Ron Paul who's endorsed marriage equality while in office. Name me a state where Democrats have put a gay marriage referendum on the ballot out of the express desire to see marriage rights shot down in their state. Oh, sure -- a lot of Paulbots are cool with gay marriage, but they have no sway in their party yet on issues other than money and the size of government. (And they're going to change their minds now because of what Obama just said? Really? Did they become interventionists when he started withdrawing troops from Iraq?)
And Mitt Romney needs no persuading to be fully opposed to gay marriage -- after all, he made opposition to it a holy crusade from the minute it was legalized by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Yes, I know -- four Republican state senators here in New York broke with their party to support gay marriage -- in return for lots of Wall Street cash. That's four out of 32, in one of the most liberal states in the union.
Trust me, M.S., you really don't get how this works. Marriage equality will happen with a push from Democrats, Paulist renegades, and maybe some mainstream Republicans who are safely out of office. The party mainstream will resist it to the death.
Does "M.S." of The Economist's Democracy in America blog live in America? Has he or she ever visited our fair nation?
I ask because it beats the hell out of me how you can be a pro blogger on the "democracy in America" beat and write something like this about President Obama's endorsement of gay marriage:
... It's hard to fault him for making the move, on either political or moral grounds.
But it's probably bad for the cause of gay marriage. Until today, the issue had only a moderate partisan cast. Officially, the Republican Party was opposed to gay marriage, and conservatives quickly responded to Mr Obama's declaration by reaffirming their opposition. But the issue didn't have a high profile, and many Republicans of a more libertarian slant on social issues were steadily coming to the conclusion in recent years that there was no reason why gays shouldn't get married just like anybody else can.
As of today, gay marriage is once again a partisan issue at the heart of a presidential election campaign. Many Republicans who might have had flexible opinions as of yesterday are now going to find themselves psychologically inclined to move towards the party line. Mitt Romney will be forced, within the next hours or days, to come out with a full-throated argument against gay marriage. Republican office-holders will have to vocally support that position. Republican media outfits (Fox News, conservative talk radio, RedState and so forth) will have to join the attack. Millions of GOP voters who otherwise might have gradually reconciled themselves to gay marriage within the next few months will be held back by the ideological alignments created in this presidential campaign.
... The move may help re-elect a president who supports gay marriage. But my feeling is that it will delay the moment when support for the right of gays to marry becomes a widespread American consensus.
"Until today, the issue had only a moderate partisan cast"? Seriously? Name me a prominent Republican officeholder not called Ron Paul who's endorsed marriage equality while in office. Name me a state where Democrats have put a gay marriage referendum on the ballot out of the express desire to see marriage rights shot down in their state. Oh, sure -- a lot of Paulbots are cool with gay marriage, but they have no sway in their party yet on issues other than money and the size of government. (And they're going to change their minds now because of what Obama just said? Really? Did they become interventionists when he started withdrawing troops from Iraq?)
And Mitt Romney needs no persuading to be fully opposed to gay marriage -- after all, he made opposition to it a holy crusade from the minute it was legalized by the Massachusetts Supreme Court.
Yes, I know -- four Republican state senators here in New York broke with their party to support gay marriage -- in return for lots of Wall Street cash. That's four out of 32, in one of the most liberal states in the union.
Trust me, M.S., you really don't get how this works. Marriage equality will happen with a push from Democrats, Paulist renegades, and maybe some mainstream Republicans who are safely out of office. The party mainstream will resist it to the death.
WILL "SECRETLY GAY" BECOME THE NEW "SECRETLY KENYAN"?
I'm sure you know this already:
President Obama declared for the first time on Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, putting the moral power of his presidency behind a social issue that continues to divide the country.
"At a certain point," Mr. Obama said in an interview in the Cabinet Room at the White House with ABC's Robin Roberts, "I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married."
It's great news -- and I wonder if it's going to send right-wingers even further around the bend than most people anticipate.
Remember the recent Vanity Fair article about Barack Obama's college girlfriends? If you go to news stories about that article and burrow into the comment threads, you'll see that a significant percentage of the wingnut reaction was (I'm paraphrasing) "Oh, give me a break -- everyone knows that Obama's real 'girlfriend' was Larry Sinclair." Sinclair, for those of you who don't follow the knuckledragging right, is a guy who claims to have had gay sex and done drugs with Obama. Google around and you'll find that much of the far right absolutely believes that Obama is secretly gay. As Arthur Goldwag wrote last fall at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog:
It's true that the rumors about Obama's homosexuality have set off barely a whisper in the legitimate news media. But in the anti-Obama blogosphere, the murmurs have become a veritable drumbeat... When the White House issued a statement about longtime aide Reggie Love's resignation on November 10, one far-right blog heralded the "historic and unprecedented press release -- where a male President of the United States has announced his breakup with a male staffer and longtime lover."
...Larry Sinclair wrote a book called Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies, and Murder? in which he claims to have done cocaine with Obama on two occasions in 1999 and performed oral sex on him. He also accuses Obama of conspiring with his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, to murder several gay members of the Trinity United Church of Christ....
The conspiratorially inclined blogger Wayne Madsen released a special report in May 2010 that was picked up by the tabloid The Globe. It tied a host of scurrilous stories into a grand gay conspiracy that not only recapitulated Sinclair’s outrageous accusations but tied Rahm Emanuel (like Obama, Madsen claimed, a lifetime member of a gay Chicago bathhouse), disgraced ex-governor Rod Blagojevich, the imprisoned real estate developer Tony Rezko, and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald into the story as well. Madsen goes on to claim that Obama's male paramours have included not just Reggie Love but former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick....
Why am I bringing all this loony gutter stuff up? Why should sane people care? Well, a person who probably should care is Mitt Romney. I think he should be worried that, one day between now and November, at one of his campaign rallies, some crazy local Republican official who's been tasked with introducing him, or some jackleg preacher who's endorsing him, or some rabidaudience member, is going to start going on and on about "that perverted homosexual in the White House." I think Obama interview today makes that infinitely more likely.
I don't even know if the Obama people are aware that the president's change of heart on gay marriage might bring this kind of craziness to the surface. In any case, I think it could only help him in November.
*****
UPDATE: As I was saying...
I'm sure you know this already:
President Obama declared for the first time on Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, putting the moral power of his presidency behind a social issue that continues to divide the country.
"At a certain point," Mr. Obama said in an interview in the Cabinet Room at the White House with ABC's Robin Roberts, "I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married."
It's great news -- and I wonder if it's going to send right-wingers even further around the bend than most people anticipate.
Remember the recent Vanity Fair article about Barack Obama's college girlfriends? If you go to news stories about that article and burrow into the comment threads, you'll see that a significant percentage of the wingnut reaction was (I'm paraphrasing) "Oh, give me a break -- everyone knows that Obama's real 'girlfriend' was Larry Sinclair." Sinclair, for those of you who don't follow the knuckledragging right, is a guy who claims to have had gay sex and done drugs with Obama. Google around and you'll find that much of the far right absolutely believes that Obama is secretly gay. As Arthur Goldwag wrote last fall at the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch blog:
It's true that the rumors about Obama's homosexuality have set off barely a whisper in the legitimate news media. But in the anti-Obama blogosphere, the murmurs have become a veritable drumbeat... When the White House issued a statement about longtime aide Reggie Love's resignation on November 10, one far-right blog heralded the "historic and unprecedented press release -- where a male President of the United States has announced his breakup with a male staffer and longtime lover."
...Larry Sinclair wrote a book called Barack Obama and Larry Sinclair: Cocaine, Sex, Lies, and Murder? in which he claims to have done cocaine with Obama on two occasions in 1999 and performed oral sex on him. He also accuses Obama of conspiring with his former minister, Jeremiah Wright, to murder several gay members of the Trinity United Church of Christ....
The conspiratorially inclined blogger Wayne Madsen released a special report in May 2010 that was picked up by the tabloid The Globe. It tied a host of scurrilous stories into a grand gay conspiracy that not only recapitulated Sinclair’s outrageous accusations but tied Rahm Emanuel (like Obama, Madsen claimed, a lifetime member of a gay Chicago bathhouse), disgraced ex-governor Rod Blagojevich, the imprisoned real estate developer Tony Rezko, and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald into the story as well. Madsen goes on to claim that Obama's male paramours have included not just Reggie Love but former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick....
Why am I bringing all this loony gutter stuff up? Why should sane people care? Well, a person who probably should care is Mitt Romney. I think he should be worried that, one day between now and November, at one of his campaign rallies, some crazy local Republican official who's been tasked with introducing him, or some jackleg preacher who's endorsing him, or some rabidaudience member, is going to start going on and on about "that perverted homosexual in the White House." I think Obama interview today makes that infinitely more likely.
I don't even know if the Obama people are aware that the president's change of heart on gay marriage might bring this kind of craziness to the surface. In any case, I think it could only help him in November.
*****
UPDATE: As I was saying...
FOX NATION: OBJECTIVELY PRO-HEATSTROKE
According to Fox Nation, the latest reason Barack Obama is a fascist is that his administration is encouraging workers in the hot sun to take breaks and drink water. The same advice Hitler would have given!
So what does the Obama "regime" actually say, according to the linked story from CNSNews.com?
"Let's Move," says the Obama White House. But Obama's Labor Department is telling some workers to slow down.
On Monday, the administration launched a national campaign warning people how dangerous it is to work outside in hot weather.
"Drinking plenty of water and taking frequent breaks in cool, shaded areas are incredibly important in the hot summer months," said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the Labor Department, says heat stroke has killed around 30 workers a year, on average, since 2003, and "thousands" of workers" are stricken annually with heat-related illnesses.
"For outdoor workers, 'water, rest and shade' are three words that can make the difference between life and death," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Monday in a news release. "If employers take reasonable precautions, and look out for their workers, we can beat the heat."
Omigod! First they want you to move, then they want you to stop moving occasionally! WHEN WILL THESE TOTALITARIAN DICTATORS MAKE UP THEIR MINDS?!
The CNS story directs us to OSHA's Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness in Outdoor Workers Web page, which includes this commie-red logo:
But what do I see here? Why, it's the exact same logo on an OSHA page dated June 2004! That's impossible! OSHA under the heroic freedom-lover and patriot George W. Bush couldn't have been against heat-related occupational illness! This must be the Obama Ministry of Truth retrofitting the online documents!
Oh, wait -- here's some OSHA heat stuff from 1999. So it's all Clinton's fault.
According to Fox Nation, the latest reason Barack Obama is a fascist is that his administration is encouraging workers in the hot sun to take breaks and drink water. The same advice Hitler would have given!
So what does the Obama "regime" actually say, according to the linked story from CNSNews.com?
"Let's Move," says the Obama White House. But Obama's Labor Department is telling some workers to slow down.
On Monday, the administration launched a national campaign warning people how dangerous it is to work outside in hot weather.
"Drinking plenty of water and taking frequent breaks in cool, shaded areas are incredibly important in the hot summer months," said Dr. David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a division of the Labor Department, says heat stroke has killed around 30 workers a year, on average, since 2003, and "thousands" of workers" are stricken annually with heat-related illnesses.
"For outdoor workers, 'water, rest and shade' are three words that can make the difference between life and death," Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said Monday in a news release. "If employers take reasonable precautions, and look out for their workers, we can beat the heat."
Omigod! First they want you to move, then they want you to stop moving occasionally! WHEN WILL THESE TOTALITARIAN DICTATORS MAKE UP THEIR MINDS?!
The CNS story directs us to OSHA's Campaign to Prevent Heat Illness in Outdoor Workers Web page, which includes this commie-red logo:
But what do I see here? Why, it's the exact same logo on an OSHA page dated June 2004! That's impossible! OSHA under the heroic freedom-lover and patriot George W. Bush couldn't have been against heat-related occupational illness! This must be the Obama Ministry of Truth retrofitting the online documents!
Oh, wait -- here's some OSHA heat stuff from 1999. So it's all Clinton's fault.
WELL, NOW WE KNOW WHO'LL REPLACE HILLARY IN A SECOND OBAMA TERM
Dick Lugar lost his Senate primary yesterday to death-before-compromise teabagger Richard Mourdock. Anne Laurie writes:
If only because he's eighty years old, I trust the Obama Administration to offer him no position beyond the purely ceremonial, despite the siren song of Centrism Triumphant.
Really? I hope that's the case, but I could easily see Lugar being chosen as Hillary Clinton's replacement as secretary of state in a second Clinton term. The Barack Obama of 2008-2010 certainly would have given him serious consideration; maybe the president now knows that there's nothing to be gained from that sort of outreach to the GOP, but I'm not sure.
Then again, could Lugar even be approved by the Senate we'll have next year? Can anyone? If Obama wins, will all the first-term appointees who want to leave after four years simply have to stay on? And on Election Day 2016, will we have a Supreme Court that has only eight or seven or six justices?
That's more or less the warning Jonathan Chait is trying to send us:
The most important and alarming facet of Lugar's defeat, and a factor whose importance is being overlooked at the moment, is one of the reasons Mourdock cited against him: Lugar voted to confirm two of Obama's Supreme Court nominees....
The social norm against blocking qualified, mainstream Supreme Court nominees is one of the few remaining weapons the Republican Party has left lying on the ground. But if Republican Senators attribute Lugar's defeat even in part to those votes for Kagan and Sotomayor, which seems to be the case, what incentive do they have to vote for another Obama nominee? And then what will happen if he gets another vacancy to fill -- will Republican Senators allow him to seat any recognizably Democratic jurist? Especially as the Supreme Court interjects itself more forcefully into partisan disputes like health care, will it become commonplace for the Court to have several vacancies due to gridlock, for the whole legitimacy of the institution to collapse?
I think the crisis could extend to the entire Cabinet. What happens if Eric Holder decides to resign? What happens if there are resignations at Cabinet departments Republicans want to eliminate?
I think a lot of earth is going to be scorched starting in 2013.
Oh, and after this, does anyone still think Mitt Romney will dare to pivot to the center for the general election? Does anyone still think he'll run the risk that the crazy base will stay home or vote third party, especially teabagger third party?
Dick Lugar lost his Senate primary yesterday to death-before-compromise teabagger Richard Mourdock. Anne Laurie writes:
If only because he's eighty years old, I trust the Obama Administration to offer him no position beyond the purely ceremonial, despite the siren song of Centrism Triumphant.
Really? I hope that's the case, but I could easily see Lugar being chosen as Hillary Clinton's replacement as secretary of state in a second Clinton term. The Barack Obama of 2008-2010 certainly would have given him serious consideration; maybe the president now knows that there's nothing to be gained from that sort of outreach to the GOP, but I'm not sure.
Then again, could Lugar even be approved by the Senate we'll have next year? Can anyone? If Obama wins, will all the first-term appointees who want to leave after four years simply have to stay on? And on Election Day 2016, will we have a Supreme Court that has only eight or seven or six justices?
That's more or less the warning Jonathan Chait is trying to send us:
The most important and alarming facet of Lugar's defeat, and a factor whose importance is being overlooked at the moment, is one of the reasons Mourdock cited against him: Lugar voted to confirm two of Obama's Supreme Court nominees....
The social norm against blocking qualified, mainstream Supreme Court nominees is one of the few remaining weapons the Republican Party has left lying on the ground. But if Republican Senators attribute Lugar's defeat even in part to those votes for Kagan and Sotomayor, which seems to be the case, what incentive do they have to vote for another Obama nominee? And then what will happen if he gets another vacancy to fill -- will Republican Senators allow him to seat any recognizably Democratic jurist? Especially as the Supreme Court interjects itself more forcefully into partisan disputes like health care, will it become commonplace for the Court to have several vacancies due to gridlock, for the whole legitimacy of the institution to collapse?
I think the crisis could extend to the entire Cabinet. What happens if Eric Holder decides to resign? What happens if there are resignations at Cabinet departments Republicans want to eliminate?
I think a lot of earth is going to be scorched starting in 2013.
Oh, and after this, does anyone still think Mitt Romney will dare to pivot to the center for the general election? Does anyone still think he'll run the risk that the crazy base will stay home or vote third party, especially teabagger third party?
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
THE CHEROKEE STORY HURTS WARREN, BY WHY DOES THIS MAKE IT WORSE?
Elizabeth Warren has described herself in the past as part Native American in a directory of law professors, though no one has yet demonstrated that she used this reported minority status in anything to do with employment. It's been determined that she is, in fact, 1/32nd Cherokee (just like the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation), but the discovery that she's called herself a Native has been a setback for her Senate campaign.
OK, I get it -- but why should this make the situation worse for Warren?
... Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobsen writes that he genealogical knife cuts both ways -- he says Warren is also related to a militia member who participated in the roundup of Native Americans ahead of the Trail of Tears. If Warren is 1/32nd Native American, she is also 1/32nd atrocity committer -- try getting an educational grant for that.
Really? How is that different from being African-American and also being descended from a slave owner, which is the case for a significant percentage of American blacks -- including both Barack and Michelle Obama? I wouldn't argue that Warren is truly Cherokee the way the Obamas are black, but you don't become less of a member of an oppressed group because you're also descended from the oppressors. That's crazy.
Are we going to stop calling people black if their slave ancestors were forcibly impregnated by their owners? That would be the logical extension of this. So, fine -- go ahead and criticize Warren if you think she passed herself off as something she's not. But her non-European blood is still non-European no matter what was done by the Europeans from whom she's descended.
Elizabeth Warren has described herself in the past as part Native American in a directory of law professors, though no one has yet demonstrated that she used this reported minority status in anything to do with employment. It's been determined that she is, in fact, 1/32nd Cherokee (just like the current principal chief of the Cherokee Nation), but the discovery that she's called herself a Native has been a setback for her Senate campaign.
OK, I get it -- but why should this make the situation worse for Warren?
... Legal Insurrection's William A. Jacobsen writes that he genealogical knife cuts both ways -- he says Warren is also related to a militia member who participated in the roundup of Native Americans ahead of the Trail of Tears. If Warren is 1/32nd Native American, she is also 1/32nd atrocity committer -- try getting an educational grant for that.
Really? How is that different from being African-American and also being descended from a slave owner, which is the case for a significant percentage of American blacks -- including both Barack and Michelle Obama? I wouldn't argue that Warren is truly Cherokee the way the Obamas are black, but you don't become less of a member of an oppressed group because you're also descended from the oppressors. That's crazy.
Are we going to stop calling people black if their slave ancestors were forcibly impregnated by their owners? That would be the logical extension of this. So, fine -- go ahead and criticize Warren if you think she passed herself off as something she's not. But her non-European blood is still non-European no matter what was done by the Europeans from whom she's descended.
DADDY, WHAT WAS GOVERNMENT?
Every time you think America might be emerging from the sinkhole into which it's fallen, you read something like this:
Gov. Christie's approval rate highest ever amongst N.J. residents
Fifty-six percent of New Jersey voters approve of Gov. Chris Christie, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll this morning.
That's Christie's highest ever rating in a Fairleigh Dickinson poll.
"It's hard to imagine that a minority party governor could really do much better," said poll director Peter Woolley. "Unless maybe he runs into a burning building and rescues an old lady. But that trick has been taken."
Women approve of Christie by a margin of 48%-39%, men (naturally) by a whopping 64%-27%. And yes, this is a state where Obama will win handily no matter how the rest of country votes; it's a state where they're cool with gay marriage. None of that matters. Occupy Wall Street assails the 1%, the tea party demonizes Obama, but Chris Christie has united his constituents across the political spectrum by identifying a scapegoat: unionized public sector workers, particularly teachers -- otherwise known as history's greatest monsters.
It just makes me think that maybe this is a right-center nation after all -- but if it is, it is because voters literally don't understand the left-center alternative. They don't because it's been decades since any prominent officeholder has articulated an unapologetic defense of liberalism and government, thus giving voters a framework for understanding why they should continue supporting programs that they already depend on and use, and why they should support the taxation necessary to keep those programs afloat.
****
This is why Mitt Romney really has nothing to fear from this:
For Ron Paul, it's no longer about becoming president.
His backup plan since January has been to use delegates as a bargaining chip to extract concessions at the GOP convention: a prominent speech or the inclusion of Paul's views in the party platform that will be approved in Tampa, Fla., in August. To some degree, his campaign is about influence and leverage....
For a long-shot candidate like Paul, success might be the mainstreaming of his ideology....
With Nevada, and Maine, Paul now has the support of at least two delegations, with Minnesota and Missouri on the horizon as a possible third and fourth. He also might enjoy strong support from Alaska, where his supporters ousted the sitting party chairman at April's state convention.
He also has a mathematical shot at winning delegations from Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont, which have yet to hold significant delegate-selecting conventions....
So, yeah, he's going to make demands of Romney in return for playing nice at the convention. And mainstreaming his ideology is probably something Romney will agree to.
Now, it would be3 nice if that included a climbdown from the extremes of American interventionism, or a curtailing of the drug war, but I bet Romney will hold firm on those items, and I bet Paul doesn't really care. It's the economic stuff he cares about.
I bet Romney can adopt all sorts of Ron Paul economic planks, diluted or otherwise, and a large chunk of the "moderate" (and even "liberal") public won't even blink. They've been brainwashed so thoroughly about the evils of government, for so many Reagan and post-Reagan decades, that they won't find most of the Paulite ideas in any way extreme. I still think Obama will win, but only because Romney's a stiff -- and because there's a coalition of non-whites and a smattering of (disproportionately female) liberal whites that gets it.
But the rest of the country is ready for government-bashing. And we're probably delaying our Randian future only temporarily this year.
Every time you think America might be emerging from the sinkhole into which it's fallen, you read something like this:
Gov. Christie's approval rate highest ever amongst N.J. residents
Fifty-six percent of New Jersey voters approve of Gov. Chris Christie, according to a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll this morning.
That's Christie's highest ever rating in a Fairleigh Dickinson poll.
"It's hard to imagine that a minority party governor could really do much better," said poll director Peter Woolley. "Unless maybe he runs into a burning building and rescues an old lady. But that trick has been taken."
Women approve of Christie by a margin of 48%-39%, men (naturally) by a whopping 64%-27%. And yes, this is a state where Obama will win handily no matter how the rest of country votes; it's a state where they're cool with gay marriage. None of that matters. Occupy Wall Street assails the 1%, the tea party demonizes Obama, but Chris Christie has united his constituents across the political spectrum by identifying a scapegoat: unionized public sector workers, particularly teachers -- otherwise known as history's greatest monsters.
It just makes me think that maybe this is a right-center nation after all -- but if it is, it is because voters literally don't understand the left-center alternative. They don't because it's been decades since any prominent officeholder has articulated an unapologetic defense of liberalism and government, thus giving voters a framework for understanding why they should continue supporting programs that they already depend on and use, and why they should support the taxation necessary to keep those programs afloat.
****
This is why Mitt Romney really has nothing to fear from this:
For Ron Paul, it's no longer about becoming president.
His backup plan since January has been to use delegates as a bargaining chip to extract concessions at the GOP convention: a prominent speech or the inclusion of Paul's views in the party platform that will be approved in Tampa, Fla., in August. To some degree, his campaign is about influence and leverage....
For a long-shot candidate like Paul, success might be the mainstreaming of his ideology....
With Nevada, and Maine, Paul now has the support of at least two delegations, with Minnesota and Missouri on the horizon as a possible third and fourth. He also might enjoy strong support from Alaska, where his supporters ousted the sitting party chairman at April's state convention.
He also has a mathematical shot at winning delegations from Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon and Vermont, which have yet to hold significant delegate-selecting conventions....
So, yeah, he's going to make demands of Romney in return for playing nice at the convention. And mainstreaming his ideology is probably something Romney will agree to.
Now, it would be3 nice if that included a climbdown from the extremes of American interventionism, or a curtailing of the drug war, but I bet Romney will hold firm on those items, and I bet Paul doesn't really care. It's the economic stuff he cares about.
I bet Romney can adopt all sorts of Ron Paul economic planks, diluted or otherwise, and a large chunk of the "moderate" (and even "liberal") public won't even blink. They've been brainwashed so thoroughly about the evils of government, for so many Reagan and post-Reagan decades, that they won't find most of the Paulite ideas in any way extreme. I still think Obama will win, but only because Romney's a stiff -- and because there's a coalition of non-whites and a smattering of (disproportionately female) liberal whites that gets it.
But the rest of the country is ready for government-bashing. And we're probably delaying our Randian future only temporarily this year.
WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS, MAN...
Coincidence? World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi thinks not:
A private investigator has been unable to find the only eyewitness to the sudden death of media innovator and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart.
The apparent disappearance of Christopher Lasseter, who says he saw Breitbart drop to the sidewalk in front of a restaurant, adds to the mystery surrounding Breitbart’s March 1 death....
After recruiting the assistance of private investigators, WND found that Lasseter, the 26-year-old witness who saw Breitbart drop dead, is no longer residing at his last known address in California....
After determining that Lasseter lived with his parents, Thornton, age 64, and Elaine, age 56, at a Los Angeles address, the investigator visited the residence in-person to see if he could make contact.
During the visit, the investigator reported, no one picked up the phone when he dialed the Lasseter apartment number outside the building....
Omigod -- a 26-year-old guy who lived with his parents has moved out and left no forwarding address! How often does that happen?
The investigator concluded Christopher Lasseter had "hunkered down" in what seemed to be an attempt to avoid further questioning.
Gee, ya think?
Imagine it: You're a young guy, possibly carefree and without a lot of attachments and obligations, and suddenly you happen to witness the death of the Wingnut Messiah. Now, in all likelihood, you've got thousands of crazy cultists tracking your every move, probably picking through your garbage, and in all likelihood doing pseudo-scholarly exegeses on message-board posts you wrote years ago about Mexican wrestling or Motorhead. Who the hell knows -- I don't know a damn thing about this guy, and I don't want to, but I bet a lot of Breitbart cultists either want to touch the hem of his garment or assassinate him. Or both.
Yeah, yeah, I know -- the L.A. coroner died suddenly just as Breitbart's autopsy results were announced. Except that (as the LA Weekly notes) Michael Cormier was actually just a forensic technician, not a doctor, and thus did not work on Breitbart's autopsy. And, yes, he did die suddenly of what possibly could have been arsenic poisoning -- but he ran his own autopsy business on the side, so he surely had access to chemicals that could kill him, and may well have ingested them accidentally, or deliberately, for totally non-Breitbart-related reasons.
Oh, and, as Jerome Corsi acknowledges, even Steve Bannon, now the "executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network," thinks Breitbart died exactly the way the authorities said he did -- from an enlarged heart. (We will pass over in silence the possible causes of that particular condition.)
Corsi's story closes with a curious aside:
On Feb 5, Breitbart had dinner cooked by Ayers at the home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn after Daily Caller publisher Tucker Carlson won a "Super Bowl Dinner" auctioned off by Ayers for $2,500.
This is true -- Breitbart and Carlson did actually dine with Ayers and Dohrn. (Breitbart called Ayers a "sociopath" but loved the food.)
So, um, is that WND's theory? Ayers and Dohrn poisoned Andrew Breitbart?
And let Tucker Carlson live?
Coincidence? World Net Daily's Jerome Corsi thinks not:
A private investigator has been unable to find the only eyewitness to the sudden death of media innovator and conservative activist Andrew Breitbart.
The apparent disappearance of Christopher Lasseter, who says he saw Breitbart drop to the sidewalk in front of a restaurant, adds to the mystery surrounding Breitbart’s March 1 death....
After recruiting the assistance of private investigators, WND found that Lasseter, the 26-year-old witness who saw Breitbart drop dead, is no longer residing at his last known address in California....
After determining that Lasseter lived with his parents, Thornton, age 64, and Elaine, age 56, at a Los Angeles address, the investigator visited the residence in-person to see if he could make contact.
During the visit, the investigator reported, no one picked up the phone when he dialed the Lasseter apartment number outside the building....
Omigod -- a 26-year-old guy who lived with his parents has moved out and left no forwarding address! How often does that happen?
The investigator concluded Christopher Lasseter had "hunkered down" in what seemed to be an attempt to avoid further questioning.
Gee, ya think?
Imagine it: You're a young guy, possibly carefree and without a lot of attachments and obligations, and suddenly you happen to witness the death of the Wingnut Messiah. Now, in all likelihood, you've got thousands of crazy cultists tracking your every move, probably picking through your garbage, and in all likelihood doing pseudo-scholarly exegeses on message-board posts you wrote years ago about Mexican wrestling or Motorhead. Who the hell knows -- I don't know a damn thing about this guy, and I don't want to, but I bet a lot of Breitbart cultists either want to touch the hem of his garment or assassinate him. Or both.
Yeah, yeah, I know -- the L.A. coroner died suddenly just as Breitbart's autopsy results were announced. Except that (as the LA Weekly notes) Michael Cormier was actually just a forensic technician, not a doctor, and thus did not work on Breitbart's autopsy. And, yes, he did die suddenly of what possibly could have been arsenic poisoning -- but he ran his own autopsy business on the side, so he surely had access to chemicals that could kill him, and may well have ingested them accidentally, or deliberately, for totally non-Breitbart-related reasons.
Oh, and, as Jerome Corsi acknowledges, even Steve Bannon, now the "executive chairman of the Breitbart News Network," thinks Breitbart died exactly the way the authorities said he did -- from an enlarged heart. (We will pass over in silence the possible causes of that particular condition.)
Corsi's story closes with a curious aside:
On Feb 5, Breitbart had dinner cooked by Ayers at the home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn after Daily Caller publisher Tucker Carlson won a "Super Bowl Dinner" auctioned off by Ayers for $2,500.
This is true -- Breitbart and Carlson did actually dine with Ayers and Dohrn. (Breitbart called Ayers a "sociopath" but loved the food.)
So, um, is that WND's theory? Ayers and Dohrn poisoned Andrew Breitbart?
And let Tucker Carlson live?
Monday, May 07, 2012
Things That Matter, and Things That Don't
Today seems to be the day for everyone to slam the President's position on marriage equality. And by 'everyone', I mean not just liberals but the Washington press corps and the chair of the RNC (Dave Weigel eviscerates Priebus' idiocy).And somehow, lost in this discussion is the single most important point: it doesn't matter.
The President's 'opposition' (whether sincere, halfhearted, or feigned) is inconsequential in the most literal sense of the word: it has no consequences. It does not affect marriage equality either way.
With one big glaring exception, marriage laws are entirely the province of the states. The President of the United States has no authority over them. It matters what governors think about marriage equality, or what state legislators think, or what the voters in North Carolina and Minnesota think (this election cycle) and what California voters thought in 2008 (and will think next time it's on the ballot). It does not matter what the President thinks.
The big glaring exception, of course, is DOMA, which creates a Federal barrier to marriage equality. (Limited-government conservatives consider this
It is possible that marriage equality will be federalized in the not-too-distant future, because of a Federal-court challenge to a state law. That's a matter for the judicial branch, and (again) not within the President's authority to affect one way or the other.
And yeah, in theory, Congress could pass a law mandating marriage equality, or Congress and 38 states could pass a constitutional amnedment, but really: naga happen. Which means the President's opinion on these hypotheticals (whatever it is) is about as consequential as his opinions about unicorn sex.
Of course, the President is free to comment on state-level marriage laws. Which he has done, opposing anti-marriage-equality initiatives in North Carolina and Minnesota. Just as, four years ago, he opposed Proposition 8. So, y'know, there's that.
So it comes down to this: the one thing the President has the latitude to do that would have a concrete, practical impact on marriage equality, he has done. And where he doesn't have the authority, he has taken a stand. (Maybe not as forcefully or as frequently as some people would like, but he has taken a stand.)
This is a thing that drives me nuts about 'progressives'. This obsession with posturing over governing, with symbolic gestures over practical impact. There are legitimate complaints about the President's record on LGBT rights (e.g., not issuing an executive order mandating non-discrimination by Federal contractors); there is also the perspective that the President has done more for LGBT rights than any previous president, while Romney has committed to aggressively moving things backwards. When the conversation is about what he says about an issue that is largely out of his control, both of these points are lost.
And when the focus on the inconsequential crowds out the things that have a practical impact, we lose. Progressives lose, liberals lose, Democrats lose, everyone who wants to have a fact-based discourse loses, everyone who wants government to solve real problems loses.
Keep your eye on the ball. Everything depends on that.
IN ROMNEY'S (SEMI-)DEFENSE
You may already know about this moment from the campaign trail today:
Romney Silent As Woman Says Obama Should Be Tried For Treason
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn't comment on a supporter's assertion that President Barack Obama should be tried for treason at a town hall event here.
A woman in the audience expressed dismay that Obama was "operating outside the Constitution," then said Obama should be tried for treason for violating separation of powers.
"I do believe he should be tried for treason," she said to applause from the audience.
Romney ... allowed her to clarify what specifically she thought Obama had violated, and the woman proceeded to spout references to Executive Orders....
It's being said that John McCain showed more courage on the campaign trail in 2008 when he challenged a woman who said that Barack Obama was an Arab.
But there's a difference. That was an early variant of what later became full-fledged birtherism. The varieties of birtherism include the belief that Obama is secretly Muslim, along with the belief that he wasn't born in America. But the establishment right has always seen birtherism as somewhat toxic -- officially, any Republican or right-winger who expects to be taken seriously has to at least pay lip service to the notion that birtherism and its variants are beyond the pale.
But that's not the case when it comes to the notion that Barack Obama is a traitor. The notion that his presidency flagrantly violates legal and constitutional restraints is articulated day in and day out by Republicans and rightists of all degrees of prominence. It's not considered controversial. Whether it's the use of so-called czars, the inclusion of an individual mandate in the health care law, or merely the collecting and distribution of tax money for any social program at all, mainstream rightists and Republicans now deem it a violation of the Constitution and an example of full-blown, undiluted socialism.
This, of course, is nuts. It's nutty, conspiratorial, fringe thinking -- it's not birtherism, but it's exactly as crazy as birtherism. Taken to its logical conclusion, it would define just about every president of the past century as a traitor to the Constitution.
But it's simply what Republicans believe now. It's mainstream GOP thinking.
So you can't really blame Mitt Romney for failing to criticize that woman, can you? It's not his fault -- the fault lies with the degeneracy of his party's philosophy.
You may already know about this moment from the campaign trail today:
Romney Silent As Woman Says Obama Should Be Tried For Treason
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney didn't comment on a supporter's assertion that President Barack Obama should be tried for treason at a town hall event here.
A woman in the audience expressed dismay that Obama was "operating outside the Constitution," then said Obama should be tried for treason for violating separation of powers.
"I do believe he should be tried for treason," she said to applause from the audience.
Romney ... allowed her to clarify what specifically she thought Obama had violated, and the woman proceeded to spout references to Executive Orders....
It's being said that John McCain showed more courage on the campaign trail in 2008 when he challenged a woman who said that Barack Obama was an Arab.
But there's a difference. That was an early variant of what later became full-fledged birtherism. The varieties of birtherism include the belief that Obama is secretly Muslim, along with the belief that he wasn't born in America. But the establishment right has always seen birtherism as somewhat toxic -- officially, any Republican or right-winger who expects to be taken seriously has to at least pay lip service to the notion that birtherism and its variants are beyond the pale.
But that's not the case when it comes to the notion that Barack Obama is a traitor. The notion that his presidency flagrantly violates legal and constitutional restraints is articulated day in and day out by Republicans and rightists of all degrees of prominence. It's not considered controversial. Whether it's the use of so-called czars, the inclusion of an individual mandate in the health care law, or merely the collecting and distribution of tax money for any social program at all, mainstream rightists and Republicans now deem it a violation of the Constitution and an example of full-blown, undiluted socialism.
This, of course, is nuts. It's nutty, conspiratorial, fringe thinking -- it's not birtherism, but it's exactly as crazy as birtherism. Taken to its logical conclusion, it would define just about every president of the past century as a traitor to the Constitution.
But it's simply what Republicans believe now. It's mainstream GOP thinking.
So you can't really blame Mitt Romney for failing to criticize that woman, can you? It's not his fault -- the fault lies with the degeneracy of his party's philosophy.
DEAR JOE SCARBOROUGH: WHEN CHENEY ENDORSED GAY MARRIAGE, HE WAS NOT BRAVE
President Obama still isn't ready to endorse gay marriage, even after Vice President Biden gave his endorsement.
You can see that as politically necessary caution, cravenness, or some combination of the two -- but please, Joe Scarborough, don't try to tell me that Dick Cheney was braver than President Obama when he endorsed gay marriage:
This morning, Joe Scarborough and David Gregory mocked the White House's efforts to push back against Vice President Joe Biden's embrace of marriage equality, with the Meet The Press host remarking "that this administration appears poised to change its position on same-sex marriage." Scarborough asked why the president's rich gay donors "don't just give to Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney supports gay marriage?" "When is the president going to be as brave as Dick Cheney?" he pressed.
Last month, I explained how this stuff works on the right, after Marco Rubio deviated from GOP immigrant-bashing orthodoxy and endorsed a lite version of the DREAM Act:
Republicans want their politicians to be hardcore, but if you're a GOP pol, you get a pass on certain issues if they affect a group of which you're a member. That's why John McCain, a torture victim, was able to get away with saying that waterboarding is torture. That's why Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian, was able to get away with positive words about gay marriage. That's why, more recently, the usually extremely hardcore congressman Allen West, an African-American, was able to get away with expressing outrage at the death of Trayvon Martin.
These carve-outs for Republicans basically track with right-wing thinking about empathy: If an issue doesn't affect you personally, or an affinity group of yours, why should you give a crap about how it affects other people?
So that's why Cheney was given a free pass by the Republican base. That's why he wasn't brave.
Oh, and please recall that Dick Cheney just so happened to endorse gay marriage in August 2004 in response to a conveniently timed question from a voter on the campaign trail in 2004 on the very day that his party circulated a platform calling for a constitutional gay marriage ban. So if you think Biden and Obama are cynically sending mixed signals, well, perhaps they're following the reelection template of George W. Bush and "brave" Dick Cheney.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
President Obama still isn't ready to endorse gay marriage, even after Vice President Biden gave his endorsement.
You can see that as politically necessary caution, cravenness, or some combination of the two -- but please, Joe Scarborough, don't try to tell me that Dick Cheney was braver than President Obama when he endorsed gay marriage:
This morning, Joe Scarborough and David Gregory mocked the White House's efforts to push back against Vice President Joe Biden's embrace of marriage equality, with the Meet The Press host remarking "that this administration appears poised to change its position on same-sex marriage." Scarborough asked why the president's rich gay donors "don't just give to Dick Cheney because Dick Cheney supports gay marriage?" "When is the president going to be as brave as Dick Cheney?" he pressed.
Last month, I explained how this stuff works on the right, after Marco Rubio deviated from GOP immigrant-bashing orthodoxy and endorsed a lite version of the DREAM Act:
Republicans want their politicians to be hardcore, but if you're a GOP pol, you get a pass on certain issues if they affect a group of which you're a member. That's why John McCain, a torture victim, was able to get away with saying that waterboarding is torture. That's why Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian, was able to get away with positive words about gay marriage. That's why, more recently, the usually extremely hardcore congressman Allen West, an African-American, was able to get away with expressing outrage at the death of Trayvon Martin.
These carve-outs for Republicans basically track with right-wing thinking about empathy: If an issue doesn't affect you personally, or an affinity group of yours, why should you give a crap about how it affects other people?
So that's why Cheney was given a free pass by the Republican base. That's why he wasn't brave.
Oh, and please recall that Dick Cheney just so happened to endorse gay marriage in August 2004 in response to a conveniently timed question from a voter on the campaign trail in 2004 on the very day that his party circulated a platform calling for a constitutional gay marriage ban. So if you think Biden and Obama are cynically sending mixed signals, well, perhaps they're following the reelection template of George W. Bush and "brave" Dick Cheney.
(X-posted at Booman Tribune.)
I MUST NOT THINK BAD THOUGHTS
Voters in France and Greece repudiated the austeritycrats over the weekend. I should be happy, but I'm having trouble ignoring evidence that American voters might be on the verge of taking the country in the opposite direction.
While a lot of us have been assuming that Mitt Romney is coming off as a hopeless, pathetic loser, he appears to be quietly closing the gap with Barack Obama -- he's tied with Obama according to Talking Points Memo's poll of polls, he's beating Obama by 1 in a new Politico/Battleground/George Washington University poll, and he's all but closed the gap with Obama in swing states according to Gallup.
I still see Romney as personally unappealing and the Obama campaign as skilled at targeting key constituencies; that's why Obama is likely to win a close election in November, not because Americans truly understand who's screwing them and how unashamedly Romney would defend the screwers' interests as president. An Obama win is far from inevitable. What the Europeans call austerity is what a lot of Americans regard (or can be persuaded to regard) as freedom, which sure sounds like something that will inevitably lead to prosperity, and that's what Romney is peddling. We never have the debate that's taking place in Europe. Maybe we will after the next time we elect a Republican as president and that Republican goes Scott Walker on us. I'm just sorry it'll take that to start the discussion across the country (i.e., outside lefty blogs and Occupy encampments), if the discussion even starts then.
Voters in France and Greece repudiated the austeritycrats over the weekend. I should be happy, but I'm having trouble ignoring evidence that American voters might be on the verge of taking the country in the opposite direction.
While a lot of us have been assuming that Mitt Romney is coming off as a hopeless, pathetic loser, he appears to be quietly closing the gap with Barack Obama -- he's tied with Obama according to Talking Points Memo's poll of polls, he's beating Obama by 1 in a new Politico/Battleground/George Washington University poll, and he's all but closed the gap with Obama in swing states according to Gallup.
I still see Romney as personally unappealing and the Obama campaign as skilled at targeting key constituencies; that's why Obama is likely to win a close election in November, not because Americans truly understand who's screwing them and how unashamedly Romney would defend the screwers' interests as president. An Obama win is far from inevitable. What the Europeans call austerity is what a lot of Americans regard (or can be persuaded to regard) as freedom, which sure sounds like something that will inevitably lead to prosperity, and that's what Romney is peddling. We never have the debate that's taking place in Europe. Maybe we will after the next time we elect a Republican as president and that Republican goes Scott Walker on us. I'm just sorry it'll take that to start the discussion across the country (i.e., outside lefty blogs and Occupy encampments), if the discussion even starts then.
Sunday, May 06, 2012
SO WHAT NEW EVIL THING HAS OBAMA DONE, ACCORDING TO THE RIGHT?
Well, according to Joseph Curl of The Washington Times, the president hasn't personally offered a eulogy for Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, which means Obama is racist against himself -- or something like that:
... Adam Nathaniel Yauch died Friday. If you’re age 16-66 -- maybe 106 -- you know him as MCA, one-third of the Beastie Boys. He was 47. Way too young. But gone.
Now, half-white Barack Obama (exactly my age) didn't say a word, even though he was talking to college kids that day, but make no mistake, MCA was no JayZ or Kanye West. This guy was the real deal, groundbreaker, up from his bootstraps, Brooklyn boy made good. Funny the "coolest president ever" doesn't say a word about the passing of MCA. Weird and kinda sad, actually.
"Yauch was born an only child in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Frances, a social worker, and Noel Yauch, a painter and architect," Wikipedia says. "His father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish." Kinda like Barack, all over the place, half this, half that, and a tough life ahead from the outset. But nothing from the first half-white, half-black president (MSM has made him black -- he's not; he's half-and-half. No, Trayvon Martin wouldn't have looked like his son.) ...
So we're now getting lectures not only on rap but on genetics from this guy (who sure looks as if he knows precisely how African genes express themselves in the skin color of offspring, doesn't he)?
Um, wouldn't we be having a huge, ridiculous discussion about how Obama was trivializing and demeaning the presidency if he had said something about Yauch? Wouldn't we be hearing about the sexism of the early Beasties lyrics, the reported link between the notorious Glen Ridge rape case and the Beasties' "Paul Revere," not to mention the inflatable penis used in their early live shows and the fact that a working title for the first album was Don't Be a Faggot (never mind the fact that the Beasties repudiated much of this youthful obnoxiousness as they got older)? Did Obama need that grief? Even if the Beasties did back him in '08?
Jim Messina of the Obama campaign was among the political figures who tweeted tributes to Yauch. I think we can give the boss a pass on this one.
Well, according to Joseph Curl of The Washington Times, the president hasn't personally offered a eulogy for Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys, which means Obama is racist against himself -- or something like that:
... Adam Nathaniel Yauch died Friday. If you’re age 16-66 -- maybe 106 -- you know him as MCA, one-third of the Beastie Boys. He was 47. Way too young. But gone.
Now, half-white Barack Obama (exactly my age) didn't say a word, even though he was talking to college kids that day, but make no mistake, MCA was no JayZ or Kanye West. This guy was the real deal, groundbreaker, up from his bootstraps, Brooklyn boy made good. Funny the "coolest president ever" doesn't say a word about the passing of MCA. Weird and kinda sad, actually.
"Yauch was born an only child in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Frances, a social worker, and Noel Yauch, a painter and architect," Wikipedia says. "His father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish." Kinda like Barack, all over the place, half this, half that, and a tough life ahead from the outset. But nothing from the first half-white, half-black president (MSM has made him black -- he's not; he's half-and-half. No, Trayvon Martin wouldn't have looked like his son.) ...
So we're now getting lectures not only on rap but on genetics from this guy (who sure looks as if he knows precisely how African genes express themselves in the skin color of offspring, doesn't he)?
Um, wouldn't we be having a huge, ridiculous discussion about how Obama was trivializing and demeaning the presidency if he had said something about Yauch? Wouldn't we be hearing about the sexism of the early Beasties lyrics, the reported link between the notorious Glen Ridge rape case and the Beasties' "Paul Revere," not to mention the inflatable penis used in their early live shows and the fact that a working title for the first album was Don't Be a Faggot (never mind the fact that the Beasties repudiated much of this youthful obnoxiousness as they got older)? Did Obama need that grief? Even if the Beasties did back him in '08?
Jim Messina of the Obama campaign was among the political figures who tweeted tributes to Yauch. I think we can give the boss a pass on this one.
KEEP YOUR GOVERNMENT HANDS OFF MY DECADES-OLD SOCIAL SAFETY NET!
Over the past week, I missed most of the fuss about the Obama campaign's "Life of Julia" slideshow. I gather it was widely mocked by the right on Twitter; given the fact that the typical American swing voter follows precisely zero right-wing Twitterers, how the hell does this matter? The debate about Julia took place, as far as I can tell, exclusively among people who care a lot about politics and have already picked a candidate for November; it will mean absolutely nothing in November.
And I gather that the main thrust of the right-wing critique is summed up in this ridiculous Ross Douthat paragraph:
At the same time, the slide show's vision of the individual's relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of "the Life of Julia" doesn't envision government spending the way an older liberalism did -- as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government's place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision -- personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
Yeah, right -- Julia's use of government programs is so different from that of the recent past. That's why the Julia slideshow invokes the Small Business Administration, which was founded in 1953, during the presidency of that communist Dwight Eisenhower. That's why it mentions Pell grants, which got their name during the Nixon presidency. That's why it references Head Start, a program from LBJ's time, as well as Medicare and Social Security.
The attack on the Julia slideshow is emblematic of the overall degeneration into idiocy of the standard right-wing argument. It doesn't matter that these programs are in the American grain; it doesn't matter that many of them existed in the very decades many conservatives look back on as a bygone golden age; it doesn't matter that for years they had bipartisan support. Wingers just ignore basic history these days and argue that we were fully self-sufficient pioneers until January 20, 2009, until we suddenly got our first taste of government aid, and then we were enslaved. And no one calls them on this.
Over the past week, I missed most of the fuss about the Obama campaign's "Life of Julia" slideshow. I gather it was widely mocked by the right on Twitter; given the fact that the typical American swing voter follows precisely zero right-wing Twitterers, how the hell does this matter? The debate about Julia took place, as far as I can tell, exclusively among people who care a lot about politics and have already picked a candidate for November; it will mean absolutely nothing in November.
And I gather that the main thrust of the right-wing critique is summed up in this ridiculous Ross Douthat paragraph:
At the same time, the slide show's vision of the individual's relationship to the state seems designed to vindicate every conservative critique of the Obama-era Democratic Party. The liberalism of "the Life of Julia" doesn't envision government spending the way an older liberalism did -- as a backstop for otherwise self-sufficient working families, providing insurance against job loss, decrepitude and catastrophic illness. It offers a more sweeping vision of government's place in society, in which the individual depends on the state at every stage of life, and no decision -- personal, educational, entrepreneurial, sexual — can be contemplated without the promise that it will be somehow subsidized by Washington.
Yeah, right -- Julia's use of government programs is so different from that of the recent past. That's why the Julia slideshow invokes the Small Business Administration, which was founded in 1953, during the presidency of that communist Dwight Eisenhower. That's why it mentions Pell grants, which got their name during the Nixon presidency. That's why it references Head Start, a program from LBJ's time, as well as Medicare and Social Security.
The attack on the Julia slideshow is emblematic of the overall degeneration into idiocy of the standard right-wing argument. It doesn't matter that these programs are in the American grain; it doesn't matter that many of them existed in the very decades many conservatives look back on as a bygone golden age; it doesn't matter that for years they had bipartisan support. Wingers just ignore basic history these days and argue that we were fully self-sufficient pioneers until January 20, 2009, until we suddenly got our first taste of government aid, and then we were enslaved. And no one calls them on this.
IS THE GLASS EMPTY, OR 76.5% FULL? OPINIONS DIFFER!
I imagine I avoided a lot of stupid last week while I was taking a break from blogging, but I see I'm already making up for lost stupid time: President Obama officially kicked off his reelection bid yesterday in Ohio, and right-wingers are informing me that OMIGOD THE HALL WAS ONLY 76.5% FULL HAR HAR HAR OBAMA HAS EMPTY STADIUM!!!1! Yes, "empty" is now a synonym on the right for "76.5% full": The Washington Post tells me that the attendance at the rally in question was 14,000 at a stadium that holds 18,300, which at Breitbart.com results in the headline "Obama Launches Campaign in Empty Arena." This makes me think back to dinner last night: I guess those glasses of wine we were drinking were actually empty, because they weren't filled to the rim (I'm not even sure they were 76.5% filled); perhaps a Breitbartnik can explain to me why there's so little left in the bottle this morning when we were drinking only air.
But a reelection campaign is surely doomed to failure when it can attract only 14,000 for its kickoff rally, right? We can demonstrate this by looking at the 2004 Bush reelection bid, which drew 12,000 people to its kickoff rally in Orlando on March 20, 2004.
Oh, and that Bush reelection kickoff rally in '04 gave us this:
12-year-old Tyler Crotty appeared to be the boredest kid in the world during a 20 March 2004 George W. Bush speech at the Orange County Convention Center in Florida. While Bush spoke at length (42 minutes) Tyler yawned, stretched, looked at his watch, and almost fell asleep on his feet. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a big deal, except that Tyler happened to be onstage, 10 feet from the President at the time. Tyler's fidgety antics quickly appeared on all the news shows and made him an overnight celebrity. Two weeks later, he appeared as a guest on David Letterman's show.
Clearly Bush was doomed to failure, and that's why John Kerry resoundingly defeated him in November 2004.
I imagine I avoided a lot of stupid last week while I was taking a break from blogging, but I see I'm already making up for lost stupid time: President Obama officially kicked off his reelection bid yesterday in Ohio, and right-wingers are informing me that OMIGOD THE HALL WAS ONLY 76.5% FULL HAR HAR HAR OBAMA HAS EMPTY STADIUM!!!1! Yes, "empty" is now a synonym on the right for "76.5% full": The Washington Post tells me that the attendance at the rally in question was 14,000 at a stadium that holds 18,300, which at Breitbart.com results in the headline "Obama Launches Campaign in Empty Arena." This makes me think back to dinner last night: I guess those glasses of wine we were drinking were actually empty, because they weren't filled to the rim (I'm not even sure they were 76.5% filled); perhaps a Breitbartnik can explain to me why there's so little left in the bottle this morning when we were drinking only air.
But a reelection campaign is surely doomed to failure when it can attract only 14,000 for its kickoff rally, right? We can demonstrate this by looking at the 2004 Bush reelection bid, which drew 12,000 people to its kickoff rally in Orlando on March 20, 2004.
Oh, and that Bush reelection kickoff rally in '04 gave us this:
12-year-old Tyler Crotty appeared to be the boredest kid in the world during a 20 March 2004 George W. Bush speech at the Orange County Convention Center in Florida. While Bush spoke at length (42 minutes) Tyler yawned, stretched, looked at his watch, and almost fell asleep on his feet. Ordinarily this wouldn't be a big deal, except that Tyler happened to be onstage, 10 feet from the President at the time. Tyler's fidgety antics quickly appeared on all the news shows and made him an overnight celebrity. Two weeks later, he appeared as a guest on David Letterman's show.
Clearly Bush was doomed to failure, and that's why John Kerry resoundingly defeated him in November 2004.
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