The president made a proposal. That’s great. Except David Sirota says the proposal is just another example of Obama looking out for the Big Guy, and John Cole says it won’t even merit a debate. You want to know what the problem is? No one on the left is fighting for the president’s agenda. Half the progressives are spending all their time bitching and the other half are spending all their time in utter despondency.
I don’t call myself a progressive. I don’t even think of myself as part of the left anymore, which I did for nigh on fifty years, until now. Since five minutes after the President was elected, it’s been an unproductive, destructive whine fest, while the right organized itself into the 2010 elections. It’s like nobody can figure out how to have a Democratic president. The only thing I will call myself anymore is a Democrat and I will let anybody else interested figure out the rest.
Really, what a waste of time and energy this whole argument has been. You can’t support the President because you’re not getting what you want; he can’t give you what you want unless you strengthen his hand, instead of weakening it. It’s that simple and that crazy-making.
But while there is a part of the left who couldn’t care less that there is a Democratic President or Congress, don’t care that they are collaborating with the right wing to damage the Obama administration–they’re just as happy damaging Democrats as Republicans–I do understand those on the left who mostly just want to see the guy we elected now and again. The guy who gave this speech on Monday.
You see that picture there? That’s the bad ass motherfucker we elected, not the milquetoast pussy that gave the worthless Oval Office speech on Iraq last week. You see who’s behind him there? Those are mostly white workers. If you saw them at a gathering of teabaggers, you wouldn’t be surprised. It was as if President Obama let out his inner Barack, unencumbered by chimeric bipartisanship and briefly let loose by Rahm “Fucking” Emanuel. And Barack enjoyed coming out to play. We last had a play date with Barack sometime around June 30.
This was Obama’s Labor Day speech, where he genuinely brought the old time noise, going after Republicans with a surprising streak of viciousness and anger. “Even on things we usually agree on, they say no. If I said the sky was blue, they say no,” he mocked, to laughter in the large crowd “If I said fish live in the sea, they’d say no.” He said that the “special interests” in DC “talk about me like I’m a dog.” And he proposed a near-certainly dead-on-arrival $50 billion infrastructure rebuilding plan and tax cuts for business investments in new equipment. If he’s up to what the Rude Pundit think he might be, its failure could be the rallying point for Democrats (assuming Democrats understand this).
Remember (and sometimes the Rude Pundit has to remember this, too): Obama’s game has always been rope-a-dope. Lull the opposition into a sense of security. Play turtle to their hare. And then rip off the shell at the last minute to sprint to the end. …
In its report this morning, NPR interviewed some guy who didn’t like the speech. Obama promised bipartisanship, the man said. All he heard was more of the same old politics.
“And it’s about time,” the Rude Pundit wanted to tell the man.
I understand the Rude One. I feel that way sometimes, too. The Rude One is right. And BooMan’s got it exactly right: “You want to know what the problem is? No one on the left is fighting for the president’s agenda.” When we have both of these things, together at the same time, is when we get ours, and not before.
I just spoke with one of the ranchers who had been identified as being a victim in this story. Mr. Hector Farias of Laredo, spoke with me on the phone this morning about this matter. He told me the first he heard of this story was when he was contacted by the FBI. He has owned this ranch for over 30 years and has never had a problem on his ranch regarding illegal immigration or smuggling. He stated he was at his ranch over the weekend and everything was fine there and in the entire area. The story on the internet states that he was confronted by drug cartels. He said this is not true. There is no reason not to take him at his word.
I am most certain reason will be found, but I am glad Mr. Price checked with Mr. Farias.
Meanwhile, on Breitbart’s BigJournalism continued pot-stirring as late as yesterday:
Local law enforcement were not saying much–but they were not denying it either. The policeman I spoke to alternated “I can’t confirm” with “I can’t say anything” for his answers. When asked if the “Webb County Sheriff was taking the lead on this,” the Laredo spokesman answered, “Yeah, and they can’t confirm anything either.”
Which makes those with suspicious minds wonder: why does someone take the lead on an event that’s not happened? Perhaps the spokesman misspoke?
That local police were not confirming the story is hardly surprising: if Los Zetas, a particularly lethal paramilitary outfit, had seized a ranch, it’s not hard to see why authorities wouldn’t want curious civilians or the press in the area.
What’s notable about this story is how few other outlets have done the same. And as a result, one of the most important aspects of the Sherrod mess is going almost entirely ignored: The vast difference it highlighted between media on both sides.
To make this point one more time, it’s true that “both sides,” to one degree or another, let their ideological and political preferences dictate some editorial decisions, such as what stories to pursue, how to approach them, who to interview, etc. But what’s underappreciated is the degree to which the Breitbart-Fox axis goes far beyond this, openly employing techniques of political opposition researchers and operatives to drive the media narrative.
This simply has no equivalent on the left. The leading lefty media organizations have teams of reporters who — even if they are to some degree ideologically motivated — work to determine whether their material is accurate, fair, and generally based in reality before sharing it with readers and viewers. They just don’t push info — with no regard to whether it’s true or not — for the sole purpose of having maximum political impact. Period.
This is an important difference that’s critical to understanding the rapidly shifting landscape in the new-media age. If I ran the universe more media figures would come right out and say what the Times hinted at today: No, both sides don’t do it.
Issued an Executive Order on the Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts, and the Great Lakes.
Signed the The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009, creating the strongest consumer protections in our country’s history.
Signed the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act (pdf) as a part of his Accountable Government Initiative, saving us tens of billions of dollars in erroneous payments.
Ushered the Tribal Law and Order Act through Congress.
Finally got the Senate to extend unemployment insurance.
Nominated marshals and judges and ambassadors (all career Senior Foreign Service members, by the way).
Expanded the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Target for Federal Operations.
In conjunction with this announcement today, Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, Hilda L. Solis, Secretary of Labor, Martha Johnson, Administrator of the General Services Administration, and Ronald Sims, Deputy Secretary of the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development convened a Clean Energy Economy Forum on Federal leadership in High Performance Sustainable Building.
Saw the Senate Judiciary Committee approve Elena Kagan’s nomination and send it the floor.
And hosted UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
You want to know why people are frustrated and unmotivated? It isn’t just compromise and obstruction. It’s that we don’t pay attention to what is getting accomplished and focus way too much on the negative. How many of you knew about all the stuff on that list? Where else would you have learned about it?
When Andrew Breitbart offers $100,000 for a private email list-serv archive, essentially all bets are off. Every blogger or writer who has ever offered an opinion is now on warning: your opponents will not just argue against you, they will do all they can to ransack your private life, cull your email in-tray, and use whatever material they have to unleash the moronic hounds of today’s right-wing base.
Yes, the Economist was right. This is not about transparency, or hypocrisy. It’s about power. And when you are Andrew Breitbart, power is all that matters. There is not a whit of thoughtfulness about this, not an iota of pretense that it might actually advance the conversation about how to deal with, say, a world still perilously close to a second Great Depression, a government that is bankrupt, two wars that have been or are being lost, an energy crisis that is also threatening our planet’s ecosystem, and a media increasingly incapable of holding the powerful accountable.
Meanwhile, the GOP leaders, having done all they can to destroy a presidency by obstructing everything and anything he might do or have done to address the crippling problems bequeathed him by his predecessor, are now also waging a scorched earth battle to prevent the working poor from having any real access to affordable health insurance.
This is what the right now is: no solutions, just anger, paranoia, insecurity and partisan hatred.
If only the 11 spies had grown fat and covered themselves in tattoos and constantly threatened to kill the president and blow up Congress, nobody would’ve ever noticed them.
Nate went from Daily Kos to his own site 538 and is now joining the New York Times. Nice trajectory in two years time.
The New York Times said Thursday that it would begin hosting the popular blog FiveThirtyEight and make its founder, Nate Silver, a regular contributor to the newspaper and the Sunday magazine.
Mr. Silver, a statistical wizard, became a bonafide media star during the last presidential election season for his political projections based on dissections of polling data. He retains all rights to FiveThirtyEight and will continue to run it himself, but “under the banner and auspices of NYTimes.com,” The Times said in a news release. The arrangement is similar to one The Times struck with the authors of the blog Freakonomics in 2007.
The Freakonomics blog appears in the Opinion section of NYTimes.com. FiveThirtyEight content will be incorporated in the politics section of NYTimes.com.
Along with his contributions to the newspaper and Sunday magazine, Mr. Silver will also work with the journalists and software developers who create interactive graphics for NYTimes.com.
“Nate won considerable recognition during the 2008 presidential campaign for his timely and prescient reports on the electoral races and on public opinion,” Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said in a statement. “We look forward to his unique perspectives on statistics, covering a wide swath of issues relating to politics, culture and sports.”
Doc Conspiracy has taken a fresh look at the Lucas Smith Kenyan birth certificate, known hereabouts as FKBC2: Lucas Smith “certificate” makes African genesis less plausible. Last I heard, the FKBC2 was in the hands of Homeland Security, but also Lucas has posted three videos to his YouTube channel explaining his claimed Mombasa visit in February 2009. I admit I haven’t watched them, so far, but the presentation is there, if you want to.
Doc Conspiracy concludes:
By turning general theories that can be reinvented to meet new facts–into hard time lines, names and locations, it becomes more difficult for the birthers to bob and weave and keep their theories alive. Of course, the birthers were quite happy to throw TechDude under the bus, and the first fake Kenyan birth certificate (the Bomford clone). I suspect Lucas Smith will meet the same fate.
The right doesn’t want to persuade its opponents. The right wants to rally the base, gull or intimidate the center, and antagonize the opposition as much as humanly possible (which is the main technique it uses to rally the base). When righties have power, they do what they want, while simultaneously declaring themselves under attack, and they dare 50% plus one of the public to stop them.
You people are so sanctimoniously full of crap! You and your fellow travelers in the lamestream media have thrashed and fileted this woman and her family for now nearly 3 years. Disagree with her politically all you want; no one’s concerned about your politics. But your antics and tactics are downright disgraceful, as you justify continuous persecution of her family. You’d never tolerate conservative media going after the family of your anointed Messiah, right? Can’t even investigate Barry’s past, can we? That would be “hate-filled”, right? But, Palin, her past, and her family are fair game.
That’s why we detest you, your publication and all of the lamestream media. We relish in your demise. We rubes who you disdain are the ones not buying your papers and rag magazines, watching your network newscasts, and watching the regime’s cable propoganda outlets. Better hope you get that “bailout”.
Weigel is pretty unflappable, as a rule, and he actually reasons with these maniacs. I don’t know how he does it.
While it’s a hoot following the antics of Birfistan, I find I need a little time to devote to the real world I live in, so I will be taking weekends off from here out. I hope OFGS readers will continue to visit Mondays through Fridays.
A warblog out of Korea, ROK Drop brings an example of what can come of open minds:
GI Korea posted an opinion this week about LTC Lakin and his refusal to follow deployment orders:
It is pretty clear that this guy is putting his own personal political beliefs ahead of his own military responsibilities, which is screwing over some other soldier that will have to deploy in his place.
Sesame Seed responded in the thread on ROK Drop:
If this guy really believes in what he’s saying, then he’s doing the right thing. It takes courage to do that and in line with Army Values, so he is doing service to the uniform.
I recall this oath: “…I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States…” Obeying orders comes AFTER that, so IF he is right, then he shouldn’t be punished, but of course, the stakes are painfully high if he’s wrong.
I’m not a “birther”, but there are enough lingering questions to cast some doubt. And IF the President is committed to transparency (thus far he hasn’t been, unsurprisingly) then this is an easy fix.
Arthur B disagreed:
This is not taking place in a vacuum. There is plenty of law and precedent on the question of what makes certain orders illegal, and an order such as the one Lakin got to deploy is legal even if the president is occupying his office through fraud. Situations like this are covered by the de factor officer doctrine.
Someone is guilty of encouraging LTC Lakin to do something really foolish.
Sesame Seed then posted his argument to his own blog, FloriDaegu, where a commenter said something similar:
Sorry, that’s not the way the law works. Try looking up the “de facto officer doctrine.”
I mean, really, is that the kind of military we want — where every single person wearing a uniform can pick and choose which orders to obey based on their own theories about who’s qualified to serve? And then we let them wander around for however many months or years it takes to have their cases resolved, while we try to conduct our military missions without them?
That’s exactly why we have a “de facto officer doctrine.” Look it up. LTC Lakin is toast.
To FloriDaegu’s great credit, he went in search of the de facto officer doctrine, I imagine to better defend his claim that LTC Lakin is in the right to refuse to follow his chain of command’s orders.
So I did. I read this web site with multiple citations…boy oh boy. I’m not a lawyer, but it does present impressive arguments that have been tested multiple times. I am/was wrong. All actions that President Obama has done, even if he is found ineligible, are de facto in force! It seems illogical, but there have been numerous examples where say an officer assumes command even if he wasn’t appointed and executes commands without interference. I must acquiesce. LTC Lakin is going down. This was eye-opening!
I don’t put myself in NBC’s class, far from it, but I’m asked all the time by friends, liberals and leftists, why I do it. Why, day after day, do I work at this blog, wasting my time and energy, instead of just ignoring the idiocy of Birthers? And it’s not, as Birthers would have it, because I am paid. I am not paid and NBC is not paid. We do it for that one honest person, with the open mind and fair judgment, who can be reached with the truth. Nobody especially cares what Birthers think. It’s a form of dementia and there is no reasoning with Birthers. But it’s for the person, like FloriDaegu, who has some doubts and needs to find the information that can settle them, come what may, we try to bring forward the truth, day after day.
Now, FloriDaegu is a Tea Partier and I rarely have a good word for Tea Partiers, either, as OFGS readers well know, often lumping them in with closed-minded Birthers. So, I should say, I learned something, too.
.. John Charles Frémont, the first Republican Presidential candidate in U.S. history and a man born a scant 26 years after the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, was himself the son of a non-U.S. citizen father. Just like Barack Obama. And just as the citizenship of Frémont’s father was no Constitutional impediment to his eligibility, neither is Obama Senior’s an obstacle to his son’s.
The question then is: will the ‘Birthers’ accept this as evidence that their favored definition of “natural born citizen” is wrong, or will they attempt to retroactively declare America’s first Republican Presidential candidate to be an attempted foreign usurper?
When you boil it down to its simplest components, this trial and the entire Patriot / tea Party / militia movement is all about people with no power or personal sense of identity or self-worth suddenly rewriting a vast, glorious mythology for themselves in which they are heroes.
Are you a loser making $12/hr at the factory?
No! You’re a militia commando in a “special ops” mission to recapture America!
Are you a divorced father of two living in a lonely studio apartment with no 401 (k)?
No! You’re one of only 13 jurors in one of the most important trials of the century! You will be remembered in the same breath as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson!
Are you a deeply bitter white racist whose house just lost over half its value?
No! You’re a “humble” patriot who has been called to glory by God Himself. Only you can save the country from that negro who ruined the economy in an effort to emasculate the white men of this once proud country!
It’s all about very sad, lonely and powerless people rewriting their lives and engaging in what is nothing more than live-action role playing.
These people are not rich, heroic, athletic or even educated.
Yet they have consciously written new roles for their sad lives that simultaneously exalt themselves to heroic status and rationalize (via an elaborate conspiracy theory) their deep hatred for people who are “better” then they are.
It’s not really even about race. It’s about the “rich” people (whom they are convinced are Democrats) who flaunt their wealth, education and accomplishments in their faces.
“Those damn elitists!”
There is a reason millionaires and the ultra successful aren’t wasting their time joining militias or sitting in our fake trials. Only the people who feel like losers need this kind of rewrite in order to make themselves feel better about their own failed lives.
It’s a question I ask myself all the time, whether I am reading about Birthers, ‘Baggers or the right wing in general. Why do they lie so much? My friend Patrick McKinnion at Bad Fiction takes it further in a sober piece, which I highly recommend you read, especially if you are a Birther, about Rev. Manning’s fake trial: Why are they believed?
2003 saw former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf reassuring the Ba’athist faithful that everything was okay and that the invaders would be repelled, while US tanks were only a few blocks away. Finally reality could not be ignored and the lies were exposed for what they were.
When one is lied to day after day after day, there comes a point that reality itself proves the lie, when one has to accept truth for what it is or slide into denial and madness.
Which is where things are today in Birtherstan. …
At what point does th[e] person make the leap from complaining that they’re not allowing videos and pictures to questioning WHY they’re not??
The birtherstani propaganda ministers are working far into the night to spin Manning’s “trial” as anything other than an epic fail. Because to show the birtherstanis the actual truth undercuts their cause far more than anything else can. So they lie and lie some more.
But when an entire movement is based on lies, lying some more comes easy to them.
This happened a few days ago, but good luck to Doug in his new spot:
Starting tomorrow, I will be joining the excellent stable of writer’s over at James Joyner’s Outside The Beltway. It’s a real honor for me because, along with Instapundit and Vodkapundit, Outside The Beltway was one of the blogs that I started reading on a regular basis back in 2003 or so, and one of the inspirations for me to start doing this on my own back in July of 2005. Being asked to be part of one of the best blogs on the Internet is exciting.
I didn’t know Malcolm Gladwell had become “uncool and the trendy thing these days, especially among journalists, is to hate on his work” until Matt Yglesias pointed it out, but I agree with him that the writing is really good. I love this stuff.
EXCLUSIVE: Claim that alleged bomber is a registered Democrat collapses
Right-wing media have falsely claimed — citing no evidence — that alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad is a registered Democrat. Media Matters for America has contacted the offices of the registrar in Shahzad’s hometowns and confirmed that he is in fact not a registered voter in those towns.
Shahzad’s hometowns: Shahzad is not a registered voter
Media Matters confirmed registration status with Bridgeport, Shelton offices of the registrar. According to media reports, Shahzad — who became a naturalized citizen in 2009 — has lived in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and Shelton, Connecticut, for the past several years. Media Matters contacted the office of the registrar in both locations, and each confirmed that Shahzad is not a registered voter.
RightPundits originated, then walked back registration myth
Original post: Shahzad is “a registered Democrat in the state of Connecticut.” In the original version of its May 4 post, RightPundits.com reported: “An Islamic terrorist named Faisal Shahzad is the Time Square bomber according to media reports. He is Muslim of Pakistani heritage with dual citizenship in the United States, a registered Democrat in the state of Connecticut who may be an Obama donor. He was recently naturalized as a U.S. citizen under the Obama administration’s lenient open door policy.”
RightPundits updated post to say it was “attempting to confirm reports of his voter registration status as a Democrat.” RightPundits.com subsequently updated the post without comment to read: “An Islamic terrorist named Faisal Shahzad is the Time Square bomber according to media reports. He is Muslim of Pakistani heritage with dual citizenship in the United States, recently naturalized as a U.S. citizen under the Obama administration’s lenient open door policy. We are still attempting to confirm reports of his voter registration status as a Democrat.”
