A Retrospective: What Was The President Thinking At That Saturday Night Dinner?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Looking back at Saturday night's White House Correspondents Dinner, it's clear now that some of the jokes were more than little pungent -- considering that the president at that point had authorized the mission to kill Osama bin Laden.

For example, there was this bit from Seth Meyer's ribbing of various entities, including the president and C-SPAN:

MEYERS: Every time I tune into C-SPAN it looks like they just had a fire drill. C-SPAN is one unpaid electric bill away from being a radio station.

People think Bin Laden is hiding in the Hindu Kush. But did you know that every day from 4 to 5 he hosts a show on C-SPAN?

You can see that Obama enjoyed that joke quite a bit. You have to wonder what he was thinking just then.

That's even more the case in his pwnage of Donald Trump:



Josh Marshall pointed this one out:

OBAMA: But all kidding aside, obviously, we all know about your credentials and breadth of experience. (Laughter.) For example -- no, seriously, just recently, in an episode of Celebrity Apprentice -- (laughter) -- at the steakhouse, the men's cooking team cooking did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. And there was a lot of blame to go around. But you, Mr. Trump, recognized that the real problem was a lack of leadership. And so ultimately, you didn't blame Lil' Jon or Meat Loaf. (Laughter.) You fired Gary Busey. (Laughter.) And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night. (Laughter and applause.) Well handled, sir. (Laughter.) Well handled.

That was already a cutting and sardonic appraisal. Given the weight that Obama was carrying that night, it now appears in retrospect to be flatly devastating.

The Torture Apologists Have To Rewrite All Kinds Of History

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We know Republicans seem to have a deep-seated belief that only torture will keep us safe from the terrorists, even though the people who do real intelligence gathering can tell you that just wrong: It's ineffective and counterproductive -- not to mention morally depraved. Not that any of this seems to deter conservatives.

So the spectacle of every right-winger on the planet rushing to claim that it was torture that provided the intelligence leading to the killing of Osama bin Laden was nothing if not predictable. And of course, it turned out to be wholly wrong.

For instance, here were Rudy Giuliani and Sean Hannity last night on Fox. Most of the segment was devoted to claiming that it was "aggressive interrogation techniques" that provided the key intelligence to finding Bin Laden, though at one point Hannity actually commended President Obama -- and then lied about him:

HANNITY: But we needed the intelligence to confirm that right. Does this now bring this debate back to the forefront? And by the way, and I give President Obama a lot of credit here. Because I thought it was a gutsy choice.

GIULIANI: It was.

HANNITY: A gutsy choice, not to drop a 2,000-pound bomb but to send these guys in, so we can confirm that it's him.

GIULIANI: When you consider everything that could have gone wrong and how President Obama would look today if it did, it took a lot of courage to do that and I do admire that. And I think there's a good day the last two days for both President Obama and President Bush. Because I think President Bush set in motion all of the things that led to this. And then President Obama picked up on it and carried it out. And I give both of them a tremendous amount of credits.

HANNITY: And I do too. And this is a good day for this country and we'll going to talk to Todd Beamer's dad who's going to be on the program. And -- is going to be on the program tonight. And General Tommy Franks is on tonight. But as I look at this, would President Obama not now realize that without the intelligence, he wouldn't have had the ability to make this decision, I would hope that it might change his mind.

GIULIANI: Maybe it will. And the reality is he also at that very last minute when he's made the decision had to know that intelligence had to know, 50/50. I mean, you never know.

HANNITY: You'll never know.

GIULIANI: They were going in there to get Osama Bin Laden but who knows if it wasn't somebody that just looked like him or was like him. The better your intelligence, the more accurate your decision making and the safer we are. And the reality is, and I was glad to hear the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton say this. This is not the end, we are in the middle of this, and we can't let down our guard. We shouldn't be leaving Afghanistan as a result of this. We shouldn't be leaving Iraq, we should remain there to get the job done.

HANNITY: I agree but this is where I find myself a little conflicted here because this is almost the opposite of what candidate Obama said he would do. And maybe for the first time he's grown in office.

Oh, yeah, it was almost the opposite: -- if by "almost" you mean "the opposite of":

Now, you can argue that Hannity and Giuliani couldn't have known that they were 100 percent wrong in their speculation, since John Brennan didn't officially shoot it down until today.

But in fact, we already knew that waterboarding had nothing to do with this intelligence. It had already been reported by the Associated Press:

Mohammed did not discuss al-Kuwaiti while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He acknowledged knowing him many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

It took years of work before the CIA identified the courier's real name: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. When they did identify him, he was nowhere to be found.

Once again, smart, lawful intelligence gathering made the difference here. I gather that this is anathema to the conservative mindset, however. No wonder they're so incompetent.

Fox & Friends Wants To Be Sure Everyone Gives George W. Bush Credit For Bin Laden's Death

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Fox & Friends had wall-to-wall coverage of the celebrations inspired by news of Osama bin Laden's death this morning, and had on lots of analysts to discuss the Obama administration's big victory in the so-called "war on terror".

To do that, strangely enough, they had on all sorts of commentators, including various politicians, such as Karl Rove, and featured statements from the likes of Dick Cheney. Oddly enough, not a single segment managed to include a Democratic politician or even one person from the Obama administration.

Instead, what we heard all morning was how George W. Bush deserves credit too! They even ran a segment featuring Bush vowing in 2001 he would eventually get Bin Laden, with the longest time frame being a year from then.

As Steve Benen puts it:

There's a fair amount of this rhetoric bouncing around this morning, and it's not especially surprising -- Republicans aren't going to credit President Obama, regardless of merit, so it stands to reason they'll try to bring George W. Bush into the picture.

If this is going to be a new GOP talking point, we might as well set the record straight.
In March 2002, just six months after 9/11, Bush said of bin Laden, "I truly am not that concerned about him.... You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with you."

In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden.

In September 2006, Bush told Fred Barnes, one of his most sycophantic media allies, that an "emphasis on bin Laden doesn't fit with the administration's strategy for combating terrorism."

And don't even get me started on Bush's failed strategy that allowed bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora.

I'm happy to extend plenty of credit to all kinds of officials throughout the government, but crediting Bush's "vigilance" on bin Laden is deeply silly.

But it's what we expect from Republicans. And especially the crew at F&F.

Sarah Palin Gets Her Message Across On Fox, All Right: She's Dangerously Clueless

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It's been quite a whirlwind the past couple of weeks, watching Donald Trump wow the Republican world with his dazzling mixture of aggressive ignorance and utter crassness. He's like Sarah Palin on steroids.

But Palin herself remains a potent spokesperson for the forces of ignorance. And while a lot of her apologists and defenders like to claim that Palin is unfairly victimized by quick sound bites, she really makes a much bigger impression -- as someone so utterly clueless they should never be permitted near any public office again -- in longer formats, such as her wide-ranging and rambling interview yesterday with Fox News' Bret Baier.

It produced little exchanges like this one, on increasing the debt ceiling:

PALIN: Hells no. I would not vote to increase that debt ceiling. Otherwise it just shows the American public we're not serious yet. We're still gonna incur more debt. No. And we don't have to increase the debt ceiling here in the next few weeks. It turns my stomach to hear this assumption articulated that, well, we have to despite the fact that we're raking in, the federal government, six billion dollars a day.

Take that money and service our debt first! And pay down some of that debt. Make sure that we're showing the international financial markets and our lenders that we're serious about getting our debt and our deficit problems under control.

BAIER: So, what would you say to the Republicans who do vote for it, on the advice of some experts on Wall Street and around the country who believe that not increasing it would really hurt the economy and create a disaster?

PALIN: I would say, before you seriously think about voting to increase the debt limit and incur more unsustainable, immoral, unethical debt that is really going to ruin our country, to continue down this path -- prioritize, service the debt first, pay for the very essential services that are constitutionally mandated.

Let the states take care of a whole lot of these services and projects, and if a state wants to do something a little bit special, like some extra roads or some extra museums and monuments and cowboy poetry, let that state figure out how they're gonna pay for it.

Palin also sort of weighed in on the other presidential candidates, though you'll notice she actually says nothing at all about any of them, other than that she respects them because they're good Republicans and by golly she loves to see them running; and then remains firmly noncommittal about her own prospects for running.

Then she wraps it all up by suggesting that President Obama had foreign money flowing into his campaign accounts in the 2008 election -- which would, of course, be a crime. Baier asks her:

BAIER: Before I let you go, are you suggesting that the FEC may find that foreign money got into the Obama campaign in 2008?

PALIN: Am I wrong to bring up the fact -- and maybe, Bret, at this point you have more information than I do on where a lot of those dollars were that were unaccounted for. Remember that we saw much proof of a lot of the donations to Obama's campaign -- credit-card contributions under fake names, addresses that perhaps weren't even real addresses in the U.S.

You know, I hope that we don't just give up on making sure that we have free and fair elections -- not just Obama's! Heck, some on the GOP too! Uh, on the GOP side. Let's make sure that rules are being followed. We are a land of laws.

Methinks she's been dipping into Pam "Atlas Wanks" Geller's beandip again.

Apparently, God's Wrath Was Directed At Those Southern Tornado Victims

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

First we had the the professional corporate climate-change deniers snorting at the idea that global warming might have played a role in this week's devastating tornadoes in the South.

Now we have religious-right climate-change deniers claiming that they know what did cause those tornadoes: in fact, the storms were a product of God's wrath and an expression of his judgment.

This time it's Dr. Calvin Beisner, voicing his views on the radio show of the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer, via RightWingWatch:

BEISNER: What this tells me, Bryan, is that we need to recognize that natural disasters like this are like distant early-warning signals. There is judgment to come. We are all sinners. None of us, none of us is righteous enough to say, 'Oh, I wouldn't deserve it if that happened to me.'

I'm sure folks in Alabama and Georgia will be pleased to hear that God singled them out for judgment -- especially ahead of such godless places as Hollywood -- just to prove that it can happen to good people too.

And why are we getting God's wrath? you ask. Well, Pat Robertson has the answer -- it's because we've become a modern-day "Sodom and Gomorrah":

Robertson: And I believe that the anointing of the Lord has been here to fulfill the desire of those early settlers, to take the gospel from America throughout the world, and that’s what we’ve been here to do. But let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, it doesn’t take a great scholar to tell you the United States has lost its moorings.

When you think that courts have denied children the right to pray in schools, that there’s a vendetta against religious belief, that now homosexuality has been made a constitutional right, that abortion has been made a constitutional right, the courts and judges have trampled on the early origins of our nation, they have distorted the meaning of the First Amendment. It’s all been done, and we’ve let it happen.

But I was reading today about a place called Sodom and Gomorrah, and a man named Abraham stood before God, and he says, “God, there’re righteous people in that city, would you kill them along with the wicked, must not the judge of all the earth do right?” And God finally promised, “If I can find ten righteous in that city, I will spare it,” just ten. Well the time came he could only find six, so they destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

But there’re many righteous here in America, and we need to band together and pray that God Almighty will spare this great land and reestablish in our hearts the vision of the pioneers.

Well, considering that the storms struck hardest in states represented by some of the most hardcore global-warming denialists, maybe they're onto something with this whole "God's retribution" bit. Though not for the reasons they presume.

Donald Talks Dirty To The Ladies: Trump Launches Obscenity-laced Rant In Vegas Talk To GOP Women [unbleeped]

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I'll bet the sweet ladies of the Spring Mountain Republican Women's club in Nevada weren't really prepared for this.

Speaking before several GOP women's groups who invited him to Las Vegas, Donald Trump launched into a profanity-laced tirade against President Obama and his administration's policies.

Among the bon mots, as you can hear in the amateur video above [originals here]:

-- Trump would deal with OPEC in order to lower oil prices just by being tough: "We have nobody in Washington that sits back and said, you're not going to raise that f—-ing price."

-- Here's how he'd tell China he intends to slap a tariff on their exports: "Listen you mother——ers we're going to tax you 25 percent!"

He sprinkled obscenities throughout, including one not in the video, describing Iraq: "We build a school, we build a road, they blow up the school, we build another school, we build another road they blow them up, we build again, in the meantime we can't get a f---king school in Brooklyn."

Oh, and apparently he believes that the idea that Iraq could become a democracy is a joke. Which makes you wonder about his audience of former George W. Bush devotees -- especially when they applaud this loudly.

Now, I understand that, you know, when in Rome, blah blah blah. But you gotta wonder if Franklin Graham or the rest of the Religious Right still think Trump is a good horse to be backing, you know what I mean? Not to mention the Spring Mountain Republican Women's Club.

Conservatives Like O'Reilly Fleeing The Birther Bogosity Insist: What Racism?

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Bill O'Reilly thinks it's just shameful that liberals are calling out the Birthers for their racism so last night he brought on Margaret Hoover and Alicia Menendez to talk about it.

Of course, Hoover thought it was entirely "predictable" that people would decry the innate racism of the Birther theories and their progenitors -- which is like saying it's "predictable" people would be distraught by a terrorist attack.

Then Menendez sort of agreed with Hoover, but added:

MENENDEZ: There are big conversations we need to be having about the fact that there are so many racial tensions and anxieties in this country.

O'REILLY: Well, let me stop you there.

MENENDEZ: When you start calling people racist...

O'REILLY: Let me stop you there. I don't see all of these racial confrontations in this country, and I do this every day. What I see is Barack Obama elected president with 43 percent of the white vote. He got something like 67 percent of the Hispanic vote. I don't see it. And unless you can show it to me, Alicia...

... Look, wouldn't you both agree that calling somebody a racist, anybody, without proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a vicious, hateful thing to do? Would you agree?

MENENDEZ: As vicious as suggesting that the president of the United States is not a real American.

O'REILLY: No, no, no. Just answer my question, Alicia. Calling somebody a racist without proof beyond a reasonable doubt, a vicious, hateful thing, yes or no?

MENENDEZ: I agree.

O'REILLY: OK, you agree.

MENENDEZ: I think that part of the reason you see that rhetoric...

O'REILLY: Now we have a cadre of people on national television doing a vicious, hateful thing. Yet...

MENENDEZ: But Bill, they're doing it in response to what was a vicious and hateful thing coming out of the right. And there were very few people like you who are being honest and calling it what it was.

O'REILLY: No. 1, you don't commit bad behavior and point to other bad behavior. And what came out of the right -- that's true, Alicia. Write it down. Don't justify bad behavior by pointing to other. Wait a minute. And the second thing is what came out of the right and was absolutely blown apart on this broadcast was the birth certificate might be
phony. I didn't think that had any racial overtone at all. It was a birth certificate deal.

MENENDEZ: So you think -- you think it's just coincidental that the first president to have this type of public questioning of his land of origin of being a real American happens to be our first black president? That's just a weird coincidence?

O'REILLY: It's born out of hatred for the man. They'll get -- the people who hate Barack Obama will latch onto anything.

S'funny: Do any of you remember Bill O'Reilly getting all outraged and denouncing Glenn Beck when he called President Obama a racist who hates white people? Hm? No, I seem instead to recall him launching a multi-city "speaking" tour with Beck.

Strange how O'Reilly's rather selective outrage works, isn't it?

What's especially noteworthy is that he and Margaret Hoover seem to believe that we're long past the days of naked racism and bigotry and that racial tensions don't really exist. Let me point them first to Baratunde Thurston's reply to Donald Trump on that score. Or, for that matter, to those little ol' jus' folks Tea Partiers who strangely seem unable to avoid racist outbreaks.

And nevermind that the Birthers are still going strong, even on Fox.

And seriously: Does O'Reilly believe that these nutcases continue to cling to their Birther beliefs, even after Obama has gotten out his long form too for them, simply because they hate Obama? And that their hatred of Obama has no basis in his race? And he expects the rest of us to be that naive? Really?

He better rename his show's motto "The New Spin Zone".

Sarah Palin To Share Stage With Gen. Jerry 'Jack D. Ripper' Boykin At 'Troop Tribute'

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Gee, it sounds like a match made in Tea Party Heaven: Sarah Palin and Jerry Boykin, appearing on the same stage to deliver a good ol' fashioned right-wing fundamentalist "Tribute to the Troops":

Former Alaska governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker for Tribute to the Troops, a military and veterans appreciation rally at Colorado Christian University on May 2, 2011.

Boykin will speak on "Our Debt of Gratitude". Not sure what that means -- but since it's coming from the guy who brought you both Abu Ghraib and Waco, it could be anything.

As Kyle at RightWingWatch observes:

Since leaving the military, Boykin has joined up with self-proclaimed prophet Rick Joyner and become the Religious Right's resident "expert" on all things Islam and a leading member of the Religious Right's Spartan-like army. He is also the man who exposed the fact that President Obama is a Marxist who intends to use the health care reform legislation to build an army of Brownshirts loyal only to him ...

Indeed, it was while elucidating on this charge that it became clear that Boykin is a direct military descendant of Gen. Jack D. Ripper himself:



And of course, his "expertise" at all things Islam meant that he was the go-to guy when Glenn Beck was expounding on the looming "Caliphate" in the Middle East.

More recently, he's been declaring "Molon Labe" to the dirty America-hating secret-Muslim libruls who he's convinced are coming to take his "rights" away.

Combined with Palin's presence ... well, let's just hope that the critical mass of wingnuttery coming together in one place like that doesn't open a hole in the space-time continuum.

Oh Look. The Birthers Are Already Playing With The New Toy President Obama Gave Them.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Memo to President Obama: You may have thought you finally shut the Birthers up yesterday. But you will never shut them up.

These are people who are deeply invested, emotionally and otherwise, in believing that you are not a legitimate president. It's the only way they can cope with the concept of you holding the office of the presidency in the first place. All you really did yesterday was give them a nice shiny new toy to play with.

The proof was on Fox Business News last night, where Eric Bolling hosted a panel led by wingnut extraordinaire Pam Geller, one of the most reptilian creatures of the entire wingnutosphere.

The entire show was a discussion of Bolling's evident belief that what the president presented yesterday was a forgery:

BOLLING: Pamela, were any of these notation on here - I don't know if our camera can get it in too close --- you can see some of these numbers that are clearly written in handwriting on the side. We don't know what they are. Trying to figure out a zero, a two there, an X up over here, a one up here. Were they on the short form?

GELLER: Look, this is a certification of live birth. When I left the hospital, I left with a birth certificate. I'm sorry, I didn't bring with it me, but it looked very much like Donald Trump's. It's a little piece of paper, you've got the nurse -- you know what I'm talking about? Certificate - you know, birth certificate. This is a certification of a live birth. This is actually not a birth certificate.

BOLLING: I need to know this. You see this fold. This has clearly been photocopied from a book. You see that? It kind of folds back to, like, almost like a binding of a book. And then for some reason, there's a green border around it that had to be Photoshopped in. Trying to figure out why they would do that.

GELLER: Well, this whole border is suspect. I mean, if you're taking a scan of something, it would, to your point, it would be white. Why is this the color of the same --

BOLLING: Note this - note this, you guys, April 25, 2011 -- two days ago -- is when this was requested from the state registrar, Alvin Onaka. So we'll keep our eye on it. We'll keep digging. Hey, listen. It may or may not be, but certainly opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.

The absurdity didn't end there. Perhaps the height of absurdity came when, as Ben Dimiero at Media Matters points out, Bolling suggested that the doctor who delivered Obama should have traveled forward in time in order to know that he had delivered the president:

Memo to President Obama: You may have thought you finally shut the Birthers up yesterday. But you will never shut them up.

These are people who are deeply invested, emotionally and otherwise, in believing that you are not a legitimate president. It's the only way they can cope with the concept of you holding the office of the presidency in the first place. All you really did yesterday was give them a nice shiny new toy to play with.

The proof was on Fox Business News last night, where Eric Bolling hosted a panel led by wingnut extraordinaire Pam Geller, one of the most reptilian creatures of the entire wingnutosphere.

The entire show was a discussion of Bolling's evident belief that what the president presented yesterday was a forgery:

BOLLING: Pamela, were any of these notation on here - I don't know if our camera can get it in too close --- you can see some of these numbers that are clearly written in handwriting on the side. We don't know what they are. Trying to figure out a zero, a two there, an X up over here, a one up here. Were they on the short form?

GELLER: Look, this is a certification of live birth. When I left the hospital, I left with a birth certificate. I'm sorry, I didn't bring with it me, but it looked very much like Donald Trump's. It's a little piece of paper, you've got the nurse -- you know what I'm talking about? Certificate - you know, birth certificate. This is a certification of a live birth. This is actually not a birth certificate.

BOLLING: I need to know this. You see this fold. This has clearly been photocopied from a book. You see that? It kind of folds back to, like, almost like a binding of a book. And then for some reason, there's a green border around it that had to be Photoshopped in. Trying to figure out why they would do that.

GELLER: Well, this whole border is suspect. I mean, if you're taking a scan of something, it would, to your point, it would be white. Why is this the color of the same --

BOLLING: Note this - note this, you guys, April 25, 2011 -- two days ago -- is when this was requested from the state registrar, Alvin Onaka. So we'll keep our eye on it. We'll keep digging. Hey, listen. It may or may not be, but certainly opens up the can of worms that there are at least questions for it.

The absurdity didn't end there. Perhaps the height of absurdity came when, as Ben Dimiero at Media Matters points out, Bolling suggested that the doctor who delivered Obama should have traveled forward in time in order to know that he had delivered the president:

BOLLING: Very quickly, Pamela, this doctor right here, the guy who signed it four days after the birth. He passed away, but his wife today, TMZ had his wife saying I had no idea. She didn't know about it. His son said I had no idea. It came as a complete shock to him as well. If you gave birth to the president of the United States, don't you think your family would know about it?

GELLER: Maybe he doesn't know about it, either. I mean, I think it's very telling that for three years he didn't release it. There's a big question there. We have to say why -- why didn't he release it after three years?

As Dimiero acidly observes:

The doctor died in 2003.

Let that sink in for a second.

At the time, Barack Obama was a little-known state senator in Illinois. If the doctor had told his family before he died that he delivered the future president, that would have spawned a much more interesting conspiracy theory (he's a wizard!). Apparently Eric Bolling thinks obstetricians give their families a list of the most interesting people they delivered -- with a special section for "potential future presidents" -- before they die.

Then Monica Crowley chimed in with the argument that Obama might now be disqualified because he was not "a natural born citizen" because his father was African:



Rather hilariously, Crowley claims that the "courts have not adjudicated" the issue of the meaning of "natural born citizen" -- when, in fact, they have done so numerous times. Most recently, the current Supreme Court rejected this argument without comment.

Crowley is just promoting the next phase of the Birthers' claims, one that's been floating out there for awhile and has gone nowhere -- for good reason.

But that never matters to these fanatics.

Obama Releases His Long-Form Birth Certificate. No Apology From Trump, Just Glory-Grabbing.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Apparently, President Obama decided that the Donald Trump Birther Circus was becoming enough of a distraction that he wanted it dealt with, so this morning he released his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii:

Now, normally I would not comment on something like this, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff swirling in the press on at any given day and I've got other things to do. But two weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we're going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.

And so I just want to make a larger point here. We've got some enormous challenges out there. There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work. Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices. We're going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get ahold of our deficit and our debt -- how do we do that in a balanced way.

And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, important debates. And there are going to be some fierce disagreements -- and that’s good. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. And I am confident that the American people and America’s political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems. We always have.
But we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.

And of course, who should step up and claim this as a glorious moment but the Carnival-Barker-in-Chief himself:

"Today I'm very proud of myself, because I've accomplished something that no one else has been able to accomplish," Trump said, adding, "Our president has finally released a birth certificate."

However, he said he would have to check out the certificate himself and wondered why the president didn't do this "a long time ago."

Of course, Obama actually released a birth certificate back in 2008 -- but it wasn't enough to satisfy nutcases like Trump and his political adviser, WorldNutDaily's Joseph Farah.

Trump has nothing to be proud of: Indeed, he owes the president an apology -- for smearing his name and casting doubt on his birth and citizenship.

Not that we'll ever get it. After all, Being Republican Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry.
Ari Melber has a great piece up at The Nation about the naked racism that lies just beneath the surface of Trump's attacks on Obama:

Even respected liberal commentators have given Trump something of a pass for the racial tension animating Birtherism. Hendrik Hertzberg, the authoritative essayist, argues in this week's New Yorker that Trump's appeal to birtherism is "part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality" by Republicans, like denying the science of global warming, or believing that "contraception causes abortion."

I think that a loose relationship with the scientific method surely helps conspiracies spread, but Birtherism draws on passions that depart substantially from greenhouse gasses. It is a putatively non-racial, vaguely constitutional way to challenge the legitimacy of the first black president and appeal to racists without sounding officially racist. Sure, there may be plenty of GOP tenets running counter to reality nowadays, yet none evoke the suppressed fury of the Birthers. They won't go away. They are an audience-in-waiting for any amplified race-baiter, from Lou Dobbs to unserious presidential candidates. Indeed, Politifact, the fact-checking site for politics, says its article about the issue, (with a link to the certification of live birth!), is the most read item that it has ever published.

And really, does the White House honestly believe that releasing this piece of paper will satisfy these nuts? Already, here's the headline over at Fox, via ThinkProgress:

They're never going to stop. Now they'll just move into another phase.

Where Wrong Is Right And False Is True: The Inverted Moral World Of The American Right

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Digby, commenting on Rick Perlstein's marvelous piece in Mother Jones on the rise of our current "mendocracy" and the legitimation of lying by the modern media, added this:

This history provides an important foundation for my ongoing quest to understand the right's ability to operate without the constraints of hypocrisy or consistency in an environment of epistemic relativism so extreme that we end up believing that wrong is right. It's literally mind-boggling.

There are a couple of mechanisms by which this is occurring. An example of the first kind was this truly mind-boggling exchange between Monica Crowley and Stuart Varney the other day on Fox News, wherein Crowley leapt upon the recent releases of intelligence from Guantanamo via WikiLeaks to declare that they established once and for all that, by golly, torture really did work!

VARNEY: I want your judgment. Do you think President Obama would order it done?

CROWLEY: I think if there were an imminent threat, the commander in chief, regardless of who it was, would order it done, yes.

VARNEY: And you think it should be done.

CROWLEY: I absolutely think it should be done. Listen, the commander-in-chief has one job, and that's to protect American lives. You need to do what's necessary when faced with an imminent threat to do it.

Nevermind that Crowley's evidence that torture works is dubious at best. But it's breathtaking how quickly Crowley and Varney leap over the question: If torture works, should you do it?

What seems not to cross either Crowley's or Varney's minds is the notion that the president might have a higher calling to the nation than simply keeping Americans alive -- that preserving the Constitution and, concomitantly, both our long-term security and our standing in the world as a moral beacon, might be such a higher purpose. The president has an obligation not to make America into a nation of torturers, too. (Of course, it's worth observing that the previous president -- an object of ardent admiration by both these pundits -- not only had a disastrous record on this latter obligation, he was also an abject failure in terms of preserving American lives, too.)

This really is a simple and clear moral issue: Does America torture or not? It is not just a cliche but a great truth that "the torturer is the enemy of all mankind". Which side are we on?

But in the inverted moral world of conservatives, that is not even an issue. All that is at stake for them is criticizing any liberal politician or policy and ardently defending any conservative or Republican. That's their moral compass.

This same imperative is what drives the second mechanism by which the Right's world is turned inside out. And that is a simple and uncomplicated refusal to accepts facts as realities and to embrace lies in their place -- if those lies burnish the emotional narratives upon which the Right ultimately relies for its appeal.

This is manifest particularly in the case of the Birthers, who are singularly immune to fact, logic, reason, or rationality, and ultimately reality. Instead, they've built their little bubble world and nothing, NOTHING will draw them out.

Here's Michelangelo Signorile dealing with a Birther on his radio show the other day, which provides a classic example of this:



This is why President Obama's release this morning of his long-form birth certificate will not be the air-clearing catharsis he hopes it will be -- it's just the beginning of the next phase in the Birthers' conspiracism.

Because the overriding narrative in all this is what matters to these folks -- namely, that Barack Obama is not a legitimate president.

They absolutely need to believe this, you see, because these folks are all right-wing authoritarians.

As I've explained previously:

Right-wing populism is always fueled and populated by right-wing authoritarians -- people who believe that the nation/state needs strong rulers and that it's the duty of citizens to obey them assiduously. This why they suffer so much cognitive dissonance when the nation's top authority is a Democrat/liberal/socialist/Marxist/fascist -- and why their first impulse, in such situations, is to embark on a vicious campaign of delegitimization (see, e.g., Bill Clinton). It's why they basically go insane.

And it's true not merely of the Tea Partiers, but of Beltway Village Establishment conservatives too:

Nothing Obama does will ever satisfy the likes of Liz Cheney. Right-wing authoritarians believe above all in bowing and adhering to those in authority -- and the thought of bowing to a Democratic president, liberal or otherwise, as a legitimate president is too much cognitive dissonance for them to handle.

So they turn the world upside down: Torture is hunky-dory, truth is falsehood, facts are fiction. It's the only way they can continue to cling to a worldview that constantly runs aground on the hard shoals of reality.

The Public Shrugged: Guess They Won't Be Making 'Atlas Wanked' Parts 2 And 3 After All ...

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Hear that sound? That's the sound of a hundred right-wing Randian hearts breaking:

Despite our commenters predicting that “This movie and this idea will grow and grow like a Tsunami” and that “This movie will break records… for years… remember “Star Wars”?,” the film managed a decent enough limited opening a few weeks back picking up $1.7 million at around 300 locations, but this past weekend, it took a hefty 50% drop, despite adding more than 150 screens to its count suggesting that the rails had already run out on the film’s commercial prospects.

And it’s fair to say the film’s hefty drop was down to the critics—“Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1” managed only a 7% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, with most critics happy to tear the film a new asshole. Even Jeff Otto, who reviewed the film for us, who took a far more impartial look at the film that this writer could have managed, gave it a rare ‘F’ grade, calling it “an aimless, amateurish and, more to the point, stone cold boring piece of drivel.” All in all, it seems to mean that Aglialoro won’t push ahead with his plans to film the rest of the book.

24 Frames talked to the producer, who told them “Critics, you won. I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2… Why should I put up all of that money if the critics are coming like lemmings? I’ll make my money back and I’ll make a profit, but do I wanna go and do to? Maybe I just wanna see my grandkids and go on strike.” A strike? Now that’s something that Rand would certainly have approved of. No one loved the labor movement more than she did.

As Aglialoro suggests, he won’t lose money on it—the film was produced far too cheaply for that—but it seems that the effort involved, the low profit margins, and the critical brickbats slung at the film, have sapped his desire to get Rand’s work on screens. So, a victory for our liberal media elite conspiracy! Oh, shit, uh, we mean, uh… Look over there, there’s evidence of Barack Obama faking his birth certificate!

In reality, “Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1” was, ironically, crushed at the free market—the film had every chance of being a crossover hit, but it was marketed exclusively at a niche audience of Tea Party types, who either didn’t bother to show up, or don’t exist in sizable enough numbers to sustain a film like this. Essentially, it’s the “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World” of Objectivist thinking.

Quick, someone get Jonah Goldberg and John Stossel a couple of crying rooms! The magic of the marketplace has spoken ... and their movie sucks!

My guess is that the movie was every bit as tedious and hollow as the book:

Glenn Beck Slags Huckabee And Breitbart Again -- But Hey, There's No Feud Here!

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

As his Fox News show reaches the end of the road, Glenn Beck has been feuding with a couple of noteworthy figures on his own side of the political aisle -- with his Fox colleague Mike Huckabee, labeled by Beck a "progressive" Republican (which in Outer GlennBeckistan is the equivalent of being called a cancerous Nazi) and with Andrew Breitbart, who is still pissed that Beck "threw him under the bus" over the Shirley Sherrod fiasco.

On his Fox show yesterday, Beck tried to address these feuds by claiming that he really doesn't have any serious differences with these two -- they're all on the same side, after all. Then he proceeded to quarrel further with Breitbart by going on ad nauseum about how important God really is to America -- a sly way of holding Breitbart up as unworthy for the Religious Right folks out there in his audience, and also absurdly misleading: Their differences really aren't about religion. Beck has mostly parted ways with Breitbart over the fact that not only has Breitbart misled, distorted, and lied egregiously in his attacks on liberals, he made the egregious misjudgment of getting caught at it.

And he continued his attacks on Huckabee, even while claiming to be dismissing their differences. Indeed, he continued to insist that Huckabee is a "progressive" -- which for Beckheads means he is heading down the path to Nazism (indeed, he's in the same category as neo-Nazis) and is a cancer on the American body politic.

Beck has even tried to claim he didn't say these things. But then again, it isn't only conspiracy theories that can be easily disproven. So can outright lies.

Was SB1070 A Success For Arizona? Pearce Claims U-Haul Rentals Prove It Was. Problem Is, He's Lying.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Russell Pearce is getting increasingly desperate to claim that Arizona's police-state immigration law, SB1070, has been a big success for the state.

So much so that now he's just making shit up:

State Senator Russell Pearce claimed this week he has proof that the controversial illegal immigration legislation is doing its job in Arizona.

Pearce, who authored SB 1070, points to a rise in U-Haul rentals as evidence that Arizona's tough immigration law is forcing illegal immigrants to leave the state. But does Pearce's claim hold true?

... Now that SB 1070 is approaching its one year anniversary, Senator Pearce has claimed that illegal immigrants are leaving Arizona "in caravans" and that U-Haul is busier than ever with one-way trips leaving the state. 9 On Your Side called U-Haul to check on Pearce's claim.

However, the truck rental company confirmed to KGUN9 News, since SB 1070 became law, it's helped 0.5% more people move into than out of Arizona in 2010. These same numbers spiked to double digits, 13.2% to be exact, during the first three months of 2011. Therefore, according to U-Haul, its numbers prove Pearce's claim may not be entirely accurate after all.

Or you could just call it a lie. Because that's what it is.

Especially because we already know that SB1070 has been an unmitigated economic disaster for Arizona:

“I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.”

The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we've explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state's undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state -- some of which are already being felt.

A new study from the Center for American Progress, "A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona" lays it all out in great detail:

The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession.

Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy.

Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.

Glenn Beck's Final Days At Fox: Kind Of A Pathetic Spectacle, Really

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

After all the damage that Glenn Beck has inflicted on the national discourse in the past two-plus years at Fox News, no one will be missing him anytime soon. We especially won't miss the nutty chalkboard rants, which really became so tedious that I don't doubt they played a big role in his steep ratings decline.

But since this is his last week at Fox coming up, he's getting all nostalgic and trying to sum it all up for us, his loyal viewers. He seems to be trying to ball it all up at once, as he did Friday with a session that included one of his fake "town hall" audiences, which he then tried to gin up into an angry mob by telling them that their way of life was going to be destroyed by a conspiracy of secret radicals in the Obama administration.

Oh, and Obama is just another Octavian, according to Beck: conspiring to destroy democracy so that he could assume dictatorial powers.

It's kind of pathetic, actually, because at this point it's just so much hot air escaping into the ether: irrelevant and insignificant.

Meet Grady Warren: Tea Party Stalwart, Presidential Candidate, Flaming Racist

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

The next time your Tea Partying/Breitbart-reading brother-in-law challenges you to demonstrate evidence of racism in the Tea Parties, direct them to Grady Warren's videos.

Warren is a sport-fishing promoter in Florida who runs a site called "Conservative Sportsmen" that seems now to have become the launching pad for Warren's presidential ambitions. As you can see, he's already declared.

His platform: Deport all Muslims. Deport all "illegal aliens." Force blacks into "re-education camps". Bring all liberals "to justice." And deny nonwhites the right to vote.

And he voices it so charmingly -- especially in his attacks on President Obama:

WARREN: Barack, you're in a fight you will not win. Because you have underestimated how many millions of Americans love this country and have lost loved ones for these United States.

You have declared war on the white man in America -- putting the wants and needs of moochers, leeches, looters, and criminals ahead of the producers, and the workers of America. And we don't want 15 to 20 million illiterate Mexicans and Chicanos as our new welfare society, living like rats in our neighborhoods.

They must go, and either the government steps up, or the government will have to clean up. They will not stay and get citizenship for breaking the law.

Barack, you, your advisers, pollsters, pundits, talking heads, have wanted to know: Who are the pissed-off people in this country? Well, the pissed-off people, sir, are the white people. It's the white people, stupid.

You'll notice, in fact, that all Warren is doing is taking standard Tea Party rhetoric and just amping it up to the next level -- the level, in fact, that you often encounter among the movement's rank and file, where they're not as inhibited about believing insane things or saying vicious and bigoted things. This is why the Birther garbage continues to be so popular with this crowd.

This was embodied in Warren's defense of the Tea Party last fall against charges of racism -- by, essentially, claiming that racist behavior and beliefs were perfectly legitimate:



Transcript from Julie Driscoll at the Chicago Liberal Examiner:

WARREN: Barack Hussein Obama. Mmm mmm hmm. And Ben Jealous of the NAACP. John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Charlie Rangel, and all the other criminals in the Congressional Black Caucus. And Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and all the nigra race pimps out there. On behalf of the Tea Party we are sick and tired of being called racist when our mission is to educate legal American voters on the most conservative candidates to consider voting for. That's it. We are good Americans, we are moral Americans. We are religious and non. We are taxpayers, we are civil to our neighbors, and we are law-abiding citizens. We love this country and we are willing to fight for what's right. Not political correctness, not for the Republicans, not for the Democrats, and especially not for the liberals. The Tea Party is tired of Blacks, nigras, Muslims, and Hispanics, especially the illegals, calling us racist for trying to save the America that we love.

So on this 3rd day of November, 2010, I declare a Teahad on political correctness and the groups out to destroy America. Muslims for example have a rich history of infiltrating, procreating and then eliminating. This is a fact of history, therefore we believe in stopping their progress and starting deportations of all Muslims as soon as possible."
Now Blacks, they only make up 13 percent of the population, but somehow they make up 45 percent of the city, state and federal jobs. And we wonder why the government doesn't work. And we wonder why blacks cause more crimes than all other races combined. Ben, is it racist if I say that every other minority group that has come to America, no matter how they got here, have succeeded - most in just one generation?

The Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Cambodians, and many others. But not the blacks. After trillions of dollars have been given in reparations to the blacks, and this has not been given to the other races, blacks are still where they were pretty much 50 years ago. Is that being racist when I ask that question?

Well, Ben, I'm sorry, but that's a fact. Why are most blacks on some form of welfare, and why do we allow billions in fraud each and every year on social programs? Is it racist to want 12-20 million illegal aliens to be deported and the southern border wall completed? Is it racist to scream out loud when we see illegals desecrating the American flag on American streets, grabbing their crotches, flipping us off, basically saying, screw you, on our soil? Is that racist to get upset when we do that? Or when the President puts devout Muslims in charge of Homeland Security? Are we racist because we do not want to kill babies or because we love Christmas, we want God in our lives as Americans? Or is it racist when we ask that our children not be taught that little Johnny's got two moms or two dads, and that's normal, desecrating marriage between a man and a woman? Or is it racist because we love Sarah Palin, because she is a female version of Ronald Reagan, and to millions of men she is their fantasy wife? Sarah is all about what's great in America.

Barack Hussein Obama recently told college students that the Tea Party conservatives and white people did not want them of color to vote. You are correct, sir. The 91 percent of blacks that approve of you, you're damn right. We don't want 'em anywhere near the polls. They have not been educated enough to vote. They vote skin color and Democratic, period. And the same goes for the Hispanic community and the rest of the ignorant and uneducated liberals. Is it racist to only want taxpayers and semi-educated folks to vote? Is it racist to want the Fair Tax where every citizen has to pay taxes.

Ladies, gentlemen, young people, I will fight the left, the right, Republicans, Democrats, and political correctness. Our Teahad needs you, so please, join me in this fight and to Ben Jealous and all the Black criminal leaders out there, if asking these questions and being good Americans makes the Tea Party members racist, well I guess this Huckleberry is just a racist.

As always, when you scratch the surface of a bellicose ultra-right-winger, you find a scam artist not far beneath. It seems that, in addition to his involvement in any number of fishing derbies, Warren also was involved in an earlier scam to claim that people were fishing for sharks with kittens.

Mind you, there's not a lot of evidence that Warren has much actual influence within the Tea Party -- he's just attached himself to the movement. That's known to happen. But what hasn't happened is also significant: Warren has neither been denounced by Florida Tea Partiers nor driven from their ranks.

As Rick at South Florida Daily Blog observes:

Guys like Grady certainly don't make up the entirety of the Tea Party. But he's representing and there are plenty on the Right who feel that Grady represents them. More importantly, there is no one on the Right shouting these people down.

What is not being said says volumes.

Julio Varela has more.

Oh, So Now The Gullible Adoption Of Nutty Conspiracy Theories Is 'Inconsequential', According To O'Reilly

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Funny. It was just a couple of weeks ago that Bill O'Reilly was making fun of anyone who would buy into the Birther conspiracy theories. Now that the Donald Trump candidacy has had a couple of weeks to ripen into a really fetid mess for Republicans, O'Reilly has decided he's down with it.

On Wednesday night, he devoted his opening Talking Points Memo segment to plumping up a Trump candidacy without a single mention of Trump's ardent adoption of the Birther conspiracy theories.

O'REILLY: Well, I don't even care about the Birther stuff. Because it's inconsequential. It really is. Because that's an issue that's not going to affect anybody.

This is just gobsmacking hypocrisy, of course: O'Reilly has declared that anyone who adopts the 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories is vile and beyond the pale: He attacked Rosie O'Donnell for holding those views -- she was being "hurtful" and "grossly irresponsible" -- as well as Charlie Sheen and other figures, including Van Jones (who didn't even actually adopt the theories).

And of course, the Birther theories are every bit as offensive, hurtful, and grossly irresponsible. But hey, they don't mean anything ... because it's a right-wing candidate who likes to talk tough like O'Reilly, so he's good with that.

It's true that the Birther controversy at a certain level really is meaningless, because it has zero grounding in reality and is not going to affect reality directly in any way. (Sorta like the 9/11 theories.) But that doesn't mean that a public figure's embrace of them is meaningless. Especially when that person is running for public office. Especially when he's running for the presidency.

Because it's a powerful demonstration of that person's judgment -- or rather, the complete and utter lack thereof. It means that they are stupid, gullible, and wantonly, willfully ignorant. Even more disturbingly, it means that the people who support him eagerly embrace that ignorance.

Actually, Donald Trump reminds me of a half-dozen different bosses I have had over the course of my lifetime. You know the pointy-haired boss in Dilbert? That guy: So gorged on his own certitude he becomes utterly uncaring about how well informed he is regarding issues he's making command decisions about. Like the way he was completely stumped about the right to privacy the other day. And like those pointy-haired bosses, he just pulls crap out of ass and hurls it with extreme certitude and then thinks that he won the argument.

Donald Trump is the pointy-haired boss on steroids. The only people I can imagine dumb enough to vote for him are Tea Partying Republican base voters. Not to mention Bill O'Reilly and Andrea Tantaros.

Russell Pearce Gets Belligerent With Reporter Who Wants Him To Produce Fiesta Bowl Invoices

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

Our favorite Nazi-coddling nativist politician, Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce, just can't seem to escape the corruption scandal that's dogging him daily now -- namely, his major role in the distribution of illegal free tickets as part of the Fiesta Bowl's running malfeasance scandal.

Wendy Halloran of Phoenix's Channel 12 News, while reporting on this weekend's ugly Tea Party rally in Phoenix (more about that soon), tried to corner Pearce and ask him about his promised delivery of invoices proving he had paid for his tickets, as he has tried to claim.

What she got was Pearce walking away from her and getting surly:

HALLORAN: Where are your invoices for the Fiesta Bowl?

PEARCE: You know what, you're not going to come in and ambush me with these kind of games.

HALLORAN: But with all due respect, where are the invoices, and why won't --

PEARCE: I'm going to go do my job.

HALLORAN: Senator Pearce, with all due respect, it's my job to hold you accountable. Where are your invoices?

PEARCE: You know, your job is not to harass.

HALLORAN: I'm not trying to harass you, sir. My job is to hold you accountable. Can you just tell me when we're going to see the invoices, sir?

PEARCE: I don't have to show you anything.

The best part of this report came in the form of a coda from Kelly Townsend, one of the local Tea Party organizers in Phoenix, who had earlier explained to Halloran the whole purpose of that day's rally, what it was about:

TOWNSEND: We are going to basically shine a light on our politicians so that there's no secret -- as much as we can possibly do that, and help keep them accountable fiscally, you know, ethically, all those issues, and that's what this is about today.

You betcha! Mission accomplished!

No wonder the recall campaign against Pearce is gaining steam.

Channel 12 followed up with a report today explaining that, as of today as well, Pearce has produced no documentation that he in fact paid for his pricey sports tickets from Fiesta Bowl lobbyists:

The Sweet Little Old Folks Of The Tea Parties Seem To Have A Lot Of Extremism And Bigotry Bubbling Up Around Them. Hmmmmmm.

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

I got quite a kick out of how the Breitbart crowd and the Fox talkers devoted so much energy this week to portraying the anti-Tea Party protesters at Tea Party gatherings like those in Wisconsin as incredibly vicious. Of course, these folks have made a cottage industry out of denying the realities of Tea Partiers' nasty and frequently bigoted rhetoric, so it's only natural that they'd play the grotesque hypocrite in one swell foop.

Meanwhile, here's some footage you won't see on The O'Reilly Factor or over at Big Ego. This comes from Channel 12's reportage on this weekend's ugly Tea Party event in Phoenix:

TEA PARTIER: That's why you don't have a higher standard of living than Mexico! The United States has a higher standard of living than Mexico because it's populated by white people. Mexico is a [BLEEP]!

And then, of course, there was the nice little old lady Tea Partier in California who just thought that Obama-as-a-chimp Photoshop was just too cute not to forward to all her fellow Republican committeemen. She did manage to make an actual apology -- after a coupla tries:

Shortly after sending the email, Davenport said in a follow up that she was sorry if she had offended anyone with the image. She denied the implication that the depiction was racist.

"I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origin of birth," she wrote in an email. "In no way did I even consider the fact he's half black when I sent out the email."

"In fact, the thought never entered my mind until one or two other people tried to make this about race," she added. "I received plenty of emails about [former president] George Bush that I didn't particularly like yet there was no 'cry' in the media about them."

But in a subsequent email, sent to the Orange County Republican Central Committee late Monday night, Davenport apologized more strongly. She asked for forgiveness for her "unwise behavior" and noted that she "didn't stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive."

"To my fellow Americans and to everyone else who has seen this email I forwarded and was offended by my action, I humbly apologize and ask for your forgiveness of my unwise behavior. I say unwise because at the time I received and forwarded the email, I didn't stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive," Davenport's apology read.

The reality, as we've said many times, is that no matter how hard the Tea Partiers and their right-wing-media apologists try, they'll never be able to paper over their very real and deep extremist base. They'll never be able to keep all the nutcases they've gathered in one place under a lid forever.

This was driven home by a superb piece of reporting from Devin Burghart at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights: "Tea Time With the Posse: Inside an Idaho Tea Party Patriots Conference".

Burghart revisited Idaho Tea Party leader Pam Stout, who we discussed back when she was profiled in the New York Times. While she appeared shortly after that on the David Letterman Show and convincingly sold the image of the Tea Parties as rational folks concerned about TARP and health-care reform, Burghart found that was no longer the case:

Little talk of repealing “Obamacare” or of modifying objectionable provisions of healthcare legislation took place at Stout’s “Patriots Unite” event, held March 26. The impending possibility of a government shutdown due to an impasse over the budget was hardly mentioned. Nary a word was spoken about bailouts or taxes. Instead, speakers at this Tea Party event gave the crowd a heavy dose of racist “birther” attacks on President Obama, discussions of the conspiracy behind the problem facing America (complete with anti-Semitic illustration), Christian nationalism, anti-environmentalism, and serious calls for legislation promoting states’ rights and “nullification.”

Stout, the Idaho state coordinator for Tea Party Patriots attracted around seventy Tea Party activists from Idaho, Montana, and Washington to the Coeur D’Alene Inn for the conference. The goal: to bring isolated Tea Party groups together. Originally scheduled as a two-day conference, Stout noted that the event was shortened because, “our workshop presenters are still in Wisconsin” presumably engaged in Tea Party anti-union organizing efforts.

Much of what he found was similar to what I experienced in Montana attending a very similar kind of gathering.

Burghart observed a Spokane Valley legislator named Matt Shea (whose activities we've previously discussed) explaining state nullification schemes of the kind promoted by Glenn Beck and now working their way through various state legislatures where the Tea Partiers have complete control, such as Montana's.

He also describes how regional leaders from the John Birch Society hold forth at length about their many commonalities with the Tea Partiers, and they manage along the way to win quite a few new friends.

But the really disturbing talk comes from a Birther radio talk-show host from Elk, Washington, named Laurie Roth. If you need any convincing of the toxicity of the Birther beliefs -- and where they're headed -- then this excerpt will do the job:

She also expressed the urgency of the birther fight, stopping in the middle of her talk to engage an audience member in a discussion about whether impeachment, arresting president Obama, or a military coup would be the best solution.

Roth: "We have to, we can't try, we have to get him out in 2012"
Audience member: "why wait? ...He's an illegal president now."

Roth: "he should be impeached." The audience member replied, he can't be impeached, he's not a citizen."

Roth: "how would you get him out?"

Audience member: “By having the authority of five governors, five senators, march on the Supreme Court, who have abdicated their power and authority to simply render that he is not a legal president. And send the US Marshals to arrest him."

Roth: I couldn't agree more. What we need is a move like Zelaya in Honduras. We need the military, we need somebody to do that, or impeachment, or something like you said. We need something more than we've had.

Ah, but all the conversation the past week has been about nasty left-wingers. Funny how that works, isn't it?

One Year Later, You'd Think The Deepwater Horizon Spill Never Happened At All

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

It was only a year ago today that the Deepwater Horizon oil well ruptured in the Gulf of Mexico, and yet it seems as if the horrendous damage it inflicted on people and wildlife in the region has all been forgotten.

Sure, for a little while, the "drill baby drill" chants subsided for a little while -- but not for very long. Now Republicans are trying to use the spill anniversary to attack President Obama for not opening up MORE drilling.

The public strongly supports efforts to make BP accountable for restoring the Gulf's ecosystem and the damaged communities, while Republicans have been apologizing to BP for those efforts.

But just because the media haven't been paying attention, it doesn't mean that dead wildlife haven't been washing ashore in droves, or that the ecological catastrophe is only starting to become manifest.

Of course, BP has been trying hard to suppress research into the spill's effects, despite increasing evidence that they will be catastrophic.

And at the same time, the government has opened the door for more such catastrophes:

With everything Big Oil and the government have learned in the year since the Gulf of Mexico disaster, could it happen again? Absolutely, according to an Associated Press examination of the industry and interviews with experts on the perils of deep-sea drilling.

The government has given the OK for oil exploration in treacherously deep waters to resume, saying it is confident such drilling can be done safely. The industry has given similar assurances. But there are still serious questions in some quarters about whether the lessons of the BP oil spill have been applied.

The industry "is ill-prepared at the least," said Charles Perrow, a Yale University professor specializing in accidents involving high-risk technologies. "I have seen no evidence that they have marshaled containment efforts that are sufficient to deal with another major spill. I don't think they have found ways to change the corporate culture sufficiently to prevent future accidents."

Mike Conathan at the Center for American Progress has a good summary on the government's abdication of its responsibilities:

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reports that 101 oil-spill-related bills were introduced in the 111th Congress, which came to a close in 2010. Exactly zero were enacted into law. Another 15 have been introduced so far this year—none of which has been acted upon by its committee of jurisdiction.

This is an abject failure on the part of the legislative branch when obvious fixes remain on the table. Mandated liability limits for economic damages incurred by local residents are shamefully low and no mechanism is in place to ensure any fines BP or other responsible parties are forced to pay would actually be returned to a region still devastated by the companies’ negligence.

The limit on liability for economic impacts from an oil spill remains just $75 million. BP recognized that its public relations disaster would only be exacerbated without swift and visible action, so it agreed to create a $20 billion escrow fund to pay claims arising from the accident despite this embarrassingly low liability cap. Given Congress’s reaction it seems BP’s move may have paid off for oil companies. If they will “do the right thing” anyway, why bother changing the law?

He added: "There are so many opportunities for things to go wrong that major spills are unavoidable."

Happy anniversary!

Republican Montana Legislator Thinks Gays Should Face Felony Charges For 'Recruiting' Straights

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

We've reported previously about how Republicans in Montana's Legislature, completely overrun by some of the most extremist of all the Tea Party elements, have been going nuts this session, passing a variety of bills that have been so obviously unconstitutional and frivolous (not to mention downright insane) that last week the Democratic governor felt compelled to make a very public display of his vetoes -- with a branding iron.

But the problem isn't merely with the legislation they're passing. There's also a problem with the legislation they're refusing to pass.

For instance, last month a Democrat offered up a bill that should have been uncontroversial: It would have officially repealed the state's primitive anti-homosexuality law, already long overturned by the state's Supreme Court. But no: the Tea-Partying Republicans running the House committee overseeing the bill simply killed it in the crib.

So one of those Republicans last week explained to the Missoula Independent exactly what his thinking was:

The legislature's inaction was not, it turns out, another non-priority falling off the too-long to-do list. Rather, it's homophobic lawmakers subtly suggesting that homosexual acts should still be outlawed, the Supreme Court—and equal rights in general—be damned. In fact, at least one lawmaker, Rep. Ken Peterson, R-Billings, an attorney, argues that the archaic law may still apply in certain situations.

Which situations? According to Peterson, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, there are at least two prosecutable offenses—felonies punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine. One is the "recruitment" of non-gays. "Homosexuals can't go out into the heterosexual community and try to recruit people, or try to enlist them in homosexual acts," Peterson says. He provides an example: "'Here, young man, your hormones are raging. Let's go in this bedroom, and we'll engage in some homosexual acts. You'll find you like it.'" Peterson hasn't actually seen this happen, he says, because "I don't associate with that group of people at all... I've associated with mainstream people all my life."

The other offense, in Peterson's legal opinion, is the public display of homosexuality, since he believes the Supreme Court's decision only applies to private acts behind closed doors. Being gay in public, he says, is a wholly different matter:

"In my mind, if they were engaging in acts in public that could be construed as homosexual, it would violate that statute. It has to be more than affection. It has to be overt homosexual acts of some kind or another... If kissing goes to that extent, yes. If it's more than that, yes."

He went on Billings TV a little later and defended the remarks:

Peterson says the law in question, which was ruled unconstitutional in 1997, still has merits. He says the Montana Supreme Court's decision had a narrow scope limiting prosecution only in private settings.

"I feel the law can still have some potential application," he said Friday, "I don't think it was repealed with the Grayson case, anyone that says it was repealed hasn't read the case and doesn't understand the case."

He says gays and lesbians can and should be prosecuted for overt sexual acts in public, and for "recruiting" members of the straight community.

However, he also tried to claim that he did not say something that he in fact plainly said:

Friday, he told us he stands by them, but says some were taken out of context. Specifically, he said characterizations that kissing in public could lead to prosecution were untrue.

Peterson said he gets along fine with his gay and lesbian colleagues and did not intend to offend the LGBT community with his comments.

Peterson, in fact, was probably one of the more thoughtful Tea Partiers who weighed in on this issue. Legislators arguing over the bill in committee were even worse:

Sen. Facey said the reason he brought this bill to the legislature is because words matter. And the fact that this law remains on our books sends a message to gay and lesbian people in our state.

Unfortunately, members of the committee did not hear Sen. Facey when he said “words matter.” Throughout the hearing, GOP members constantly equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. In fact, one opposing witness of the bill went so far as to say all pedophiles are either gay or bisexual.

In an even more disturbing exchange, Rep. Bob Wagner (of Anderson Cooper 360 fame) asked a series of questions that were intended to imply that all homosexual men have HIV and then have to rely on state assistance for their medical care.


Proponents of Sen. Facey’s bill, who have worked multiple legislative sessions, said that this hearing was the most disgusting hearing they have seen in their years at the Capitol.

I sure hope Montana voters are proud of what they have wrought.