News Roundup for 8/4/09

Barack Obama, shown making a disparaging observation about white men

-Headline of the day-
"Obama hates the white man."

"The white man" is apparently plural, since Jesse Lee Peterson makes the case that President Obama hates all whites -- and men especially. "Barack Obama hates white people – especially white men," he writes for WorldNetDaily. "Sorry folks, but the truth will set you free!" When your second sentence ends in a bang, you know you're in for some over-the-top crazitude.

Turns out that Obama's big beer summit didn't impress Peterson, since saying that police acted "stupidly" in arresting a Henry Louis Gates (for the crime of being home) clearly means that he hates all white people -- and men especially. It just stands to reason. And you better just watch it, because he's coming to your house to hate you personally!

"Barack Obama is Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is the NAACP and the Congressional Black Caucus!" Peterson writes in hysterical italics, just in case you don't get the point that this Obama guy's a scary black radical come to destroy all white people. He is a secret illegal alien Muslim terr'ist, after all. The [white] people must be warned.

"Barack Obama is dividing the races like no other president in history ... Both Obama and his friend Henry Louis Gates are racist ... President Obama spoke of this being a teachable moment, and it certainly is for white Americans," he shrieks -- as much as you can shriek in print (turns out you can shriek pretty well). "The lesson is that they need to speak up or lose their country!" Eek!

So, who is this defender of white pride? This guy:



They never look the way you expect them to when you get the hoods off, do they? (WorldNetDaily, via Right Wing Watch)


-Happy Birthday, Mr. President...-
Here's the white-hatin' SOB himself, pretending that he was born in Hawaii 48 years ago today!



Think he's cozying up to a white lady? Ha! We know he hates white ladies and he's just trying to fool us by hugging a white-looking lady. That's Helen Thomas, who's a well-known commie Lebanese radical terr'ist America-hater. Birds of a feather...

Enjoy your cake, comrades! (E&P Pub)


-Top that-
What did you get for your last birthday?

Obama got a whole freakin' mountain. In Antigua.

Your birthdays suck. Loser. (Wonkette)

Teabaggers II

At the end of July, Politico reported that congress members coming home to their districts were facing angry mobs at town hall meeting and listening sessions. The website reported "screaming constituents, protesters dragged out by the cops" and "congressmen fearful for their safety," as local town halls are taken over by "angry, sign-carrying mobs" who hate the idea of health care reform.

Are these spontaneous outbreaks of righteous anger from outraged citizens or just gullible chumps sent to scare the bejeezus out of congress critters? It's not really much of a question. Like the tea baggers and the birthers -- who both probably make up about 99% of the protesters -- these people couldn't organize a yard sale, let alone a nationwide campaign to shut down debate on health care reform. The big "tea party" protests were arranged by Republican operatives and special interest lobbyists and the word got out through infomercials on FOX News. These "grassroots" displays of citizen outrage had the distinct smell of astroturf. And the birthers? Well, they're just too stump-dumb to make a sandwich without step-by-step instructions. A big campaign to shout down debate on health care reform would be completely beyond them.

No, these people needed guidance here. And they got it.


[Talking Points Memo:]

...As Think Progress first reported, one tea-party friendly group has disseminated a strategy memo for other anti-reform and anti-government groups, outlining what they consider best-practices for protesters who plan to enter and disrupt town hall events hosted by members of Congress over the August recess--practices that, according to the memo, "could be useful to activists in just about any district where their Congressperson has supported the socialist agenda of the Democrat leadership in Washington."


Of course, the Republican party thinks this is just the best idea anyone ever had about anything. Stuck with their "party of no" label and offering no real ideas of their own, the GOP needs someone else to get out there and act like idiots, because doing it themselves is killing them.

In a very approving post at his blog, house GOP leader John Boehner writes, "Back home for the August recess, rank-and-file Democratic Members of the House are facing a backlash from their constituents, who are already fed up with Washington’s job-killing agenda and don’t support Democrats’ government takeover of health care."

The post is titled, "Democrats Face Angry Reaction Back Home on Health Care: Heartland Crowd Chants "Just Say No" to President Obama's Government Takeover of Health Care." I guess the "government takeover" part is the public option, which would be a government-run program that would compete with private insurers. You'd think a "government takeover of health care" would involve the government taking over the health care industry, but that's not the case here. Then again, expecting the Republicans to make sense these days is asking way too much -- every word is a dog whistle to the wingnut right. None of it has to be true, statements just have to contain buzzwords that freak out the chumps. If the GOP needs to step it up a bit, expect statements that read like "Government takeover Obama tax-and-spend big government socialism second amendment freedom 9/11!" As I say, it doesn't have to make any sense. That's why Sarah Palin talks that way.

And what's real the problem with a public option? Former Cigna insurance executive Wendell Potter explained it to PBS's Bill Moyers recently:


BILL MOYERS: Why is public insurance, a public option, so fiercely opposed by the industry?

WENDELL POTTER: The industry doesn’t want to have any competitor. In fact, over the course of the last few years, has been shrinking the number of competitors through a lot of acquisitions and mergers. So first of all, they don’t want any more competition period. They certainly don’t want it from a government plan that might be operating more efficiently than they are, that they operate. The Medicare program that we have here is a government-run program that has administrative expenses that are like three percent or so.

BILL MOYERS: Compared to the industry’s–

WENDELL POTTER: They spend about 20 cents of every premium dollar on overhead, which is administrative expense or profit. So they don’t want to compete against a more efficient competitor.


If government competes with the private sector, insurance companies find themselves facing a competitor who's as much as 700% more efficient. That stuff about the super-efficient private sector? Complete BS. Arguing in favor of what can barely be called a "health care system" that's so obviously failing is a loser. So Republicans aren't doing that. They're letting others do it.

"To the extent that Republicans are discussing healthcare, they’re relying on trite McCain-campaign talking points and old hands from the 1990s," writes Howard Dean. "In other words, they’ve outsourced the conversation to attack dogs and relinquished the serious debate about how to lower costs, increase access, and improve quality."

Those attack dogs are sicking their attack dogs on Democrats as they come home for summer recess. Blue Dog Democrats did Republicans a tremendous favor by pushing back a vote on a bill until after the recess and they're paying for it now. It's very likely that this stupid, stupid move will cost them the most. Associated Press reports that the GOP is targeting 70 house dems in what they see as vulnerable districts. According to the report, "Those targeted satisfy at least one of these requirements: They won less than 55 percent of the vote last year or they represent a district carried in 2008 by John McCain, the Republican presidential nominee." Democrats in reddish districts; i.e., centrists. If you want a list of Democrats most likely to be targeted by this GOP astroturf campaign, there you go.

Smooth move guys. I'd take comfort in the fact that you've completely screwed yourselves with this brainless maneuver if you hadn't raised the danger of screwing us all, too.

If you live in one of those 70 districts, get to town hall or listening session. Take a camera -- preferably video. These nuts are the same ones from the tea parties, so we can expect racism, ignorance, and stupidity. They simply can't avoid making complete fools of themselves, because they're almost entirely complete fools. The tea parties didn't make any real difference -- in fact, it probably hurt the GOP by encouraging the racists and the birthers and other Glenn Beck types. Part of that failure can attributed to the examples of teabagger idiocy that were posted all over the net.

Let them shriek, let them claw their eyes out, let them compare Obama to Hitler and say their local congress member is like Mao. Catch the birthers as they rant about Kenya and Indonesia. Catch the racists as they hold up signs calling the president "boy." Let them be exactly as crazy and idiotic as they want to be.

Give them enough rope...

-Wisco


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News Roundup for 8/3/09

Barack Obama action figure

-Headline of the day-
"Birther news site: Did Jesus reveal Obama as the antichrist?"

Barack Obama isn't just a secret illegal alien Muslim terr'ist, but he's also Satan incarnate. And probably a vampire or something.

According to a youtube video by some lunatic who goes by "ppsimmons," Obama is the antichrist and that's good enough WorldNetDaily. See, it works like this; in the book of Luke, Jesus says, "I beheld Satan as lightning fell from heaven." And that means that Barack Obama is the freakin' antichrist!

What, that's not enough? OK, in Hebrew, the word for "lightning" is "baraq" and the word for "heaven" is "bamah." Baraq Bamah, Barack Obama -- close enough. The End Times are upon us!

The problem here is that the Hebrew word for "heaven" is actually "uvamah." Barack Uvamah... still close enough. Except, as we all know, Jesus spoke Aramaic -- and who the hell knows what "heaven" and "lightning" are in that language?

Actually, I do (thanks to an online English to Aramaic Dictionary). We're looking for a guy named B'aRQaA B'aSHMaYoA. I don't think that's close enough.

It should be mentioned that WorldNutDaily recently posted a photo of Barack Obama's Kenyan birth certificate showing that he was born in the Republic of Kenya in 1961. That story lasted the five minutes it took for someone to point out that there wasn't any Republic of Kenya in 1961.

The moral of this story is that if you ever think of WND as anything other than a joke, consider it proof that you're a moron. (Raw Story)


-Michelle Malkin is stupid-
OK, not much of a newsflash, but there ya go.

Shelly was invited to be on ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos this weekend, for reasons that media-watchers are still trying to figure out. Maybe the roundtable discussion hasn't included enough crazy people lately.

When the subject of extending unemployment benefits came up, Malkin said some stuff about cheese.

"If you put enough government cheese in front of people, they are just going to keep eating it and you're just kicking the can down the road," Shelly said. "And just to hammer this point about the unemployment benefits extension again, it was Larry Katz, who's a chief labor economist for the Clinton labor department, who came out with a study -- and there are a lot of these smart economists who say this -- that if you keep extending these 'temporary' unemployment benefits you're just going to extend joblessness even more."

"When host George Stephanopoulos suggested that didn't make sense, Malkin responded, 'That was a Clinton economist who said it, George,'" reports Steve Benen. "When Stephanopoulos pressed further, Malkin added that 'this Clinton economist' made the case against extended unemployment benefits."

Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker brought up the unfortunate fact that there are more jobseekers than jobs, so the unemployment numbers are probably not the result of sudden and rampant laziness. But Malkin wasn't having it; Clinton economist, Clinton economist, Clinton economist!

Except the Clinton economist doesn't say that. He says this:


Traditionally, many economists have been leery of prolonged unemployment benefits because they can reduce the incentive to seek work. But that should not be a concern now because jobs remain so scarce, said Lawrence Katz, a labor economist at Harvard.

For every job that becomes available, about six people are looking, Dr. Katz said. “Unemployment insurance gives income to families who are really suffering and can’t find work even if they are hustling to look,” he said.

With the economy still listing, he added, a temporary extension can provide a quick fiscal stimulus. And, Dr. Katz said, when people exhaust unemployment and health insurance, many end up applying for disability benefits, which become a large, unending drain on the Treasury.


Sooner or later, Michelle Malkin's going to be right about something. The odds are just so against someone being wrong every, single time -- even if they try. If ABC News wanted Shelly to say something stupid, mission accomplished. (Political Animal)


-Bonus HotD-
"Memoir of former White House official reveals Bush thought Barney was 'the son he never had.'"

Turns out that there's "growing nervousness these days" on the right about an upcoming book by former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer. Another book from a former Bushie? Do these people really believe we don't already know how crazy Bush was?

Man, you wish thinking Barney was "the son he never had" was the worst of it. (Think Progress)

Peak Oil on the Horizon

Ever hear of "peak oil?" It's time to start thinking seriously about a world without petroleum.


[The Independent/UK, via Common Dreams:]]

The world is heading for a catastrophic energy crunch that could cripple a global economic recovery because most of the major oil fields in the world have passed their peak production, a leading energy economist has warned.

Higher oil prices brought on by a rapid increase in demand and a stagnation, or even decline, in supply could blow any recovery off course, said Dr Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the respected International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris, which is charged with the task of assessing future energy supplies by OECD countries.

In an interview with The Independent, Dr Birol said that the public and many governments appeared to be oblivious to the fact that the oil on which modern civilisation depends is running out far faster than previously predicted and that global production is likely to peak in about 10 years - at least a decade earlier than most governments had estimated.


"[T]he first detailed assessment of more than 800 oil fields in the world, covering three quarters of global reserves, has found that most of the biggest fields have already peaked and that the rate of decline in oil production is now running at nearly twice the pace as calculated just two years ago," we're told.

We've always known that petroleum was a finite resource, but we've been operating as if it's not. On top of global warming, we also have to deal with the indisputable fact that we won't have any oil to burn in the future -- and that future may come sooner than we think. Do we want to fight wars over a dwindling resource we'll eventually have to do without anyway or do we want to prepare for the inevitable?

Reducing our oil consumption significantly is one thing, but reducing it to zero is another. And reducing it to zero is not something we can avoid forever.

"One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day," Dr Birol said. "The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously."

Crunch time is now, because waiting until the well runs dry would be incredibly stupid.

Panetta in Defense of Crime

There aren't many issues on which the Obama administration has been as disappointing as on the issue of the crimes of the previous administration. The ruling fiction coming from the White House is that it's time to move on, as if the law only applies to things that are happening right now, as if you can only arrest and charge a criminal if you catch them in the act. If they manage to commit a crime and not be arrested on the spot, then that means they've gotten away with it.

It's gotten so bad that when Attorney General Eric Holder announced last month that he might appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture, it was big, big news. "Nation's Top Cop May Investigate Crime" really shouldn't be a big headline. At least, not in a country that applies the law evenly, regardless of how powerful the criminal is or was. Torture is one of the most heinous crimes that a state can commit and it's astounding that there's any controversy about prosecuting it. If you need evidence of just how badly this sort of crime can harm the nation committing it, there you go -- respect for law among the country's most powerful has been shattered by the action. And respect for law among the country's most powerful must be restored.

Part of the problem is that Washington insiders live in a separate reality, where what is right is determined by what is good politics and where what is possible is determined by the number of insiders an action would hurt. Entrenched thinking pervades agencies like the FBI and the CIA and the battlecry of "change" doesn't reach into those trenches. On the issue of torture, the argument is made that it would harm people's abilities to do their jobs. If you start prosecuting for torture, interrogators would be overly careful, for fear of prosecution. If this is true, you wonder how intelligence gathering operated before the Bush administration showed up and torture was clearly illegal. It could only have been by tremendous luck that the United States was never destroyed by her enemies, because interrogators must've been terrified into paralysis about doing their jobs.

None of which excuses the Obama administration. The FBI and CIA serve the government, not vice versa. And if the agencies are resistant to change and fearful of accountability, it's the duty of the White House to ask them one very important question; "So what?" When someone tells the administration, "That's not how we do things around here," the correct response should be "It is now."

Pushing back against the idea of accountability is Leon Panetta, Obama's appointment to CIA Director. In a Sunday op-ed in the Washington Post, Panatta makes the case for doing nothing about what is inarguably a crime.


Last month, at a meeting overseas of intelligence service chiefs, one of my counterparts from a major Western ally pulled me aside. Why, he asked, is Washington so consumed with what the CIA did in the past, when the most pressing national security concerns are in the present? It was a very good question. In fact, I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action.

In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much on consensus as it does on secrecy. We need broad agreement between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues -- including the detention and interrogation of terrorists -- the consensus deteriorated. That contributed to an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.


Apparently, our "major Western ally" is incapable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. All that torture stuff is in the past, what's the deal with worrying about it now? Never mind that every single person who's ever been convicted of any crime has been convicted of a crime they committed in the past. "Let's let bygones be bygones" hasn't been a successful defense in a single one of those cases.

And we need consensus between the CIA and congress? Yeah, that'd be great. But we're not talking about co-equal branches of government here. The CIA serves the nation, which means they answer to congress. Get a contitutional amendment making the CIA a fourth branch of government and you've got a point, Leon. Otherwise, that's not a very good argument. If a consensus is essential, it's your job to get it. You bring the CIA in line with the rest of the government, because doing it the other way is as insane as it is unconstitutional. Oversight means oversight, not bending over backwards to let agents do whatever the hell they want to do. The word "overseer" does not imply a subservient position.

Panetta goes on to argue that the CIA has made changes and that should be the end of the story. After briefing congress on a program that the agency kept secret from the legislative branch, congress apparently went nuts and decided that their constitutional duties actually meant something. How crazy is that?


Unfortunately, rather than providing an opportunity to start a new chapter in CIA-congressional relations, the meeting sparked a fresh round of recriminations about the past. I recognize that there will always be tension in oversight relationships, but there are also shared responsibilities. Those include protecting the classified information that shapes our conversations. Together, the CIA and Congress must find a balance between appropriate oversight and a recognition that the security of the United States depends on a CIA that is totally focused on the job of defending America.


There it is again, a "new chapter" of letting bygones be bygones. Besides, Panetta briefed congress and then some members blabbed about it -- without giving away any state secrets. The CIA can't trust congress and that's bad.

Or it would be if the Constitution didn't say otherwise. Once again, Panetta seems to argue that the CIA is congress's constitutional equal and that co-operation between the agency and the people under the Capitol dome is the result of negotiation and understanding -- like a treaty between two nations.

But Panetta's argument still hasn't plumbed the depths of deliberate stupidity. Perhaps realizing that he isn't making any damned sense at all so far, he runs up the favorite flag of the previous administration.


The time has come for both Democrats and Republicans to take a deep breath and recognize the reality of what happened after Sept. 11, 2001. The question is not the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11. The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong. But that should not taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided. The last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction.


Shut up, Leon. You're right about one thing, the question isn't "the sincerity or the patriotism of those who were dealing with the aftermath of Sept. 11." No one gives a damn. The question is the legality of their actions. You might have heard a cliché about the pavement of the road to hell -- no one should give a damn that their intentions were good. And saying that the "country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could" is irrelevant. This is basically saying that the Bush administration panicked at the exact moment they should've kept their heads. I couldn't care less how terrified the perpetually frightened Dick Cheney was. The motive is evidence, not a defense. If 9/11 sent the Bush administration over the edge, then that's just one more strike against them.

If Panetta wants to restore confidence in the CIA, then he can not only work to change the agency -- which, in his defense, he seems to be doing -- but he can also prove it. A first step in doing that would be to prove that the agency understands its relationship to congress. Right now, he's flunking that test badly.

-Wisco


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